Politics

The end of the Cold War was as great a shock to US politics as it was to the Soviet Union’s. The Soviet regime didn’t survive, of course, and late 2021 will mark 30 years since the USSR dissolved. Mikhail Gorbachev had tried to save the Soviet system through reform. The Communist hardliners who briefly deposed him in the summer of 1991 tried to save it by rolling back reform. Neither sufficed — the regime, and the party and ideology at its heart, had lost their legitimacy irrevocably. The first US presidential election after the collapse of the USSR almost rendered the same verdict on the regime in Washington. The 1992 election saw a populist challenge to President George H.W. Bush from within his own party.

You’ve got to admire the left. Granted, they own the internet, the media, the courts (apparently) and now the government, so it’s not like they’re working against insurmountable odds. But still, it’s remarkable that they’ve managed to achieve the seemingly impossible: uniting America. I beg your pardon? Oh yes, they’ve united America — or the America that counts, anyway: the ruling class — and in the cleverest way imaginable. Instead of issuing boring platitudes like 'we must unite for the sake of our nation’ and 'this is not a time for stoking divisions’, they’ve found a scapegoat we can all come together in condemning. No, not Donald Trump; a good half of the country still likes him and clearly isn’t about to change its mind.

There was a glimmer of hope amid the events at the US Capitol building on Wednesday. Could this be the moment of American political violence that causes a revolt against over-heated rhetoric? After such an embarrassing display of emotional incontinence, cooler heads might now prevail across both political aisles and in the media. That glimmer has been quickly extinguished. Democrats were handed another opportunity to impeach Trump on a silver platter, and the media gleefully, and perhaps rightfully, indulged their West Wing fantasies about invoking the 25th Amendment. Common sense melted instantly like the face of a Nazi staring at the Ark of the Covenant. We are right back at Ludicrous Speed.

If the people who stormed the Capitol building in Washington, DC on Wednesday accomplished one thing, it’s that they effectively killed any legitimate inquiry into voter fraud. Spurred by concerns over in-person voting during the pandemic, Democrats successfully changed local and state voting rules at the last minute and pivoted to allowing the bulk of voting to be done via mail. Any major change to the voting system in such a short period of time deserves a full and comprehensive audit, even if the outcome does not change upon its completion. However, because some pro-Trump demonstrators resorted to violence in order to have their concerns heard, politicians will refuse to ever again discuss any voting irregularities.

When he was in his twenties, Missouri’s precocious junior senator Josh Hawley authored a biography called Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness. Might he have been projecting?  Sen. Hawley chases moralizing populist causes like Wile E. Coyote following the Road Runner straight off a cliff. The difference is that the cartoon coyote only ended up hurting himself. Hawley, in his antics worthy of the ACME Dynamite Corporation, could deal a blow to American democracy. Hawley has managed to make a lot of enemies, or at least caused a lot of eyes to roll, over the past few years.

Enough is enough. There really is no other way to contextualize perhaps the darkest day for America since airplanes hit the World Trade Center in 2001. Donald Trump is not going to quell his mob and odds are his followers aren’t going to listen to him anymore anyway. As rioters stormed the Capitol building, several Republicans and pundits demanded Donald Trump speak up and 'call it off’. Who are they talking to? It’s not Donald Trump’s responsibility, apparently. He had his opportunity earlier in the day as he addressed a crowd in a long rambling grievance-fest. Now it’s time for Congress to speak up and use its constitutional authority to end this. Congress has the absolute power to do so. Make it final. Make it unanimous. Make it known.

Two things seem to be agreed upon by most reasonable people debating the November 3 election. First, there was election fraud. There is some degree of election fraud in every cycle. Second, the presidential election of 2020 was susceptible to more than the usual dosage of deceit because of the large number of mail-in ballots. Whether or not you believe that enough fraud existed to change the election results, these realities seem to share consensus. So does the lack of interest in doing anything about them. Republicans care only about election fraud on a scale that would tip the results to President Trump. Democrats care only about election fraud on a scale that might tip the results to President Trump too.