After the former president of the United States ignored a subpoena, a few days ago the FBI obtained a warrant to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for more classified documents and other materials he illegally removed from the White House at the end of his disastrous presidency. Predictably, all the right-wing talking heads, politicians, and their credulous followers are apoplectic, accusing the Justice Department and the FBI of having been “weaponized” against Trump and all his forces of good, and threatening biblical retribution on the Democratic forces of evil trying to shatter American democracy. As Adam Serwer of The Atlantic quotes various Republicans, they are all about law and order when Black Lives Matter protesters are in the streets or Democratic office-holders need investigating, but if law and order is applied to them, the FBI becomes “the gestapo.”
It used to be that bald-faced hypocrisy was disqualifying for government service; now, along with undermining democracy, it is one of the two defining characteristics of the GOP, even at its highest levels: witness Trump continuously claiming the Fifth at his recent deposition in Manhattan, after years of deriding anyone claiming the Fifth as obviously guilty; or former and possible future House Speaker Kevin McCarthy blaming Trump for January 6th immediately after the insurrection but a mere eight days later groveling at Mar-a-Lago and kissing the ring of the former president; or former and possibly future Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also angrily blaming Trump for the assault on the Capitol and the Constitution that day and not long after stating that he would “absolutely” vote for Trump if he is the 2024 nominee.
Or there’s the amazing gymnast cum contortionist Lindsey Graham, calling Trump (1) an “idiot” and “unfit for office” in 2016 (cited by Mark Leibovich in a brilliant takedown of Graham and McCarthy), then (2) squeezing himself back into the Dear Leader’s oozy embrace during Trump’s presidency, then (3) flipping again by declaiming to loud huzzahs on the senate floor the night of January 6th that “Today all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough,” and shortly after (4) flipping back to MAGA orthodoxy, having tested the wind yet again. In the wide, wide world of political gymnastics, Graham smiles in the warm glow of the spectators’ applause. He has just scored a perfect 10 on the (Senate) Floor Exercise event, performing what may be called a Lindsey Quadruple, or a Lindsey Quad as his friends might say. Apparently, in the Republican party of Trump, McCarthy, McConnell, and Graham, there is no longer any shame to be attached to hypocrisy—staying true to some moral standard, or even just to what you said last week, is a game for fools.
Have I mentioned that the country is in decline, albeit, one can only hope, not a permanent and irreversible one? While hypocrisy and authoritarianism define Trump’s party, truth is now its official enemy. There are a few honest (and brave) elected conservative Republicans—Liz Cheney foremost among them—but the party is still Trump’s, and is likely to continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Truth, like the truth about the 2020 election for starters, is anathema to the Trumpanistas. If truth wins, they lose—and they know it. Some, like Greene, Gosar, Boebert, Jordan, and their ilk are so rabid, so intellectually impoverished, that one is tempted to think that they truly believe their idiocies. Jewish space-lasers changing Trump votes to Biden? Secretive Italian operators doing the same? Well, if nothing else, we have established beyond question that jaw-dropping ignorance, head-spinning fantasies, and totalitarian instincts are no bars to being elected to congress—or to the presidency.
During the era of the Vietnam War, there was a saying among conservatives: “My country, right or wrong” (the original 1872 quote from Carl Schurz was “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right”). Now, that dubious half-quote is long gone. Now the unstated standard in the GOP is: My party, my clan, right or wrong—to hell with the country. And we can even see the next and final step: Me, my position, my power; all else—country, honor, courage, truth—is just the posturing I do to get elected and stay in office.
John Rachal's Blog
“ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK”: Well, They Did, in the Form of a Subpoena You Ignored
August 13, 2022 at 4:08 pm (Political Commentary)
After the former president of the United States ignored a subpoena, a few days ago the FBI obtained a warrant to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for more classified documents and other materials he illegally removed from the White House at the end of his disastrous presidency. Predictably, all the right-wing talking heads, politicians, and their credulous followers are apoplectic, accusing the Justice Department and the FBI of having been “weaponized” against Trump and all his forces of good, and threatening biblical retribution on the Democratic forces of evil trying to shatter American democracy. As Adam Serwer of The Atlantic quotes various Republicans, they are all about law and order when Black Lives Matter protesters are in the streets or Democratic office-holders need investigating, but if law and order is applied to them, the FBI becomes “the gestapo.”
It used to be that bald-faced hypocrisy was disqualifying for government service; now, along with undermining democracy, it is one of the two defining characteristics of the GOP, even at its highest levels: witness Trump continuously claiming the Fifth at his recent deposition in Manhattan, after years of deriding anyone claiming the Fifth as obviously guilty; or former and possible future House Speaker Kevin McCarthy blaming Trump for January 6th immediately after the insurrection but a mere eight days later groveling at Mar-a-Lago and kissing the ring of the former president; or former and possibly future Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also angrily blaming Trump for the assault on the Capitol and the Constitution that day and not long after stating that he would “absolutely” vote for Trump if he is the 2024 nominee.
Or there’s the amazing gymnast cum contortionist Lindsey Graham, calling Trump (1) an “idiot” and “unfit for office” in 2016 (cited by Mark Leibovich in a brilliant takedown of Graham and McCarthy), then (2) squeezing himself back into the Dear Leader’s oozy embrace during Trump’s presidency, then (3) flipping again by declaiming to loud huzzahs on the senate floor the night of January 6th that “Today all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough,” and shortly after (4) flipping back to MAGA orthodoxy, having tested the wind yet again. In the wide, wide world of political gymnastics, Graham smiles in the warm glow of the spectators’ applause. He has just scored a perfect 10 on the (Senate) Floor Exercise event, performing what may be called a Lindsey Quadruple, or a Lindsey Quad as his friends might say. Apparently, in the Republican party of Trump, McCarthy, McConnell, and Graham, there is no longer any shame to be attached to hypocrisy—staying true to some moral standard, or even just to what you said last week, is a game for fools.
Have I mentioned that the country is in decline, albeit, one can only hope, not a permanent and irreversible one? While hypocrisy and authoritarianism define Trump’s party, truth is now its official enemy. There are a few honest (and brave) elected conservative Republicans—Liz Cheney foremost among them—but the party is still Trump’s, and is likely to continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Truth, like the truth about the 2020 election for starters, is anathema to the Trumpanistas. If truth wins, they lose—and they know it. Some, like Greene, Gosar, Boebert, Jordan, and their ilk are so rabid, so intellectually impoverished, that one is tempted to think that they truly believe their idiocies. Jewish space-lasers changing Trump votes to Biden? Secretive Italian operators doing the same? Well, if nothing else, we have established beyond question that jaw-dropping ignorance, head-spinning fantasies, and totalitarian instincts are no bars to being elected to congress—or to the presidency.
During the era of the Vietnam War, there was a saying among conservatives: “My country, right or wrong” (the original 1872 quote from Carl Schurz was “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right”). Now, that dubious half-quote is long gone. Now the unstated standard in the GOP is: My party, my clan, right or wrong—to hell with the country. And we can even see the next and final step: Me, my position, my power; all else—country, honor, courage, truth—is just the posturing I do to get elected and stay in office.
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