What Would Nellis Say?
What-about-isms - February 2023
Having no agenda, proposals, or plans to solve the problems our country is facing, current Republican leadership must resort to vengeance for their embarrassing losses. Their favorite tactic, in excusing the many crimes of Donald Trump and the complete failure of his administration to enact any meaningful legislation, is to vilify, denigrate, and accuse anyone who has the guts to tell the truth about their extremism, incompetence, and bigotry. The “official” response to any accusation is to ignore the truth and turn to “What about…” some minor infraction or invented crime by one of their perceived enemies. Majority leadership is ignoring and excusing George Santos’s endless lies and seating him on committees but they’re quick to attack the political opposition for trifles.
Kevin McCarthy has denied Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell seats on the House Intelligence Committee in an act of sheer political retribution for their part in leading TWO successful impeachments of disgraced former-president Donald Trump and their contributions to the January 6th committee investigations, which found overwhelming evidence of a broad conspiracy by hundreds of Republicans to overturn a legitimate election.
The new Speaker wagged his finger at the press, claiming, without presenting any evidence or examples, that they had “lied to the American people”, this from the man who condemned Trump’s sponsorship of the insurrection on the day after the riot and then hopped on a plane to Mar-a-Loco to beg forgiveness on bended knee for speaking the truth.
Republican propaganda ignores the fact that the criminal who holds the reins to McCarthy’s tenuous speakership, told more than 30,000 documented lies during his four years in office, including engaging his favorite hate network to repeat endless falsehoods about the covid virus, the vaccine, masking, and maintaining social distancing (oh, and suggesting that we should inject Clorox as a sure way to beat the disease) that resulted in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. Fox finally stopped regurgitating these lies when it was pointed out that every emergency room in the nation was full of terminally-ill Republican patients who believed their deceit.
Reports indicate that little Jimmy Jordan’s weaponized Judiciary Committee will “investigate” Anthony Fauci, claiming that he lied about the Covid virus escaping from a Chinese lab…despite multiple independent scientific investigations that concluded that there is no evidence that it was a man-made disease. Obviously, Jordan will ignore the fact that Fauci was one of the only people in the administration who told the truth about the dangers of the disease from the onset of the pandemic and Jordan certainly won’t scrutinize or revisit Trump’s pompous and deceptive lies.
Lest we forget, Trump started his 2016 campaign with a speech that demonized migrant families, who were trying to escape gang violence and extreme poverty in Central America, as “rapists and murderers”, banned Muslims from entering the country, labeled African nations “sh**hole” countries, made stealing babies out of their immigrant mother’s arms, with no intention of ever returning them, official policy (there are more than 600 who have never been reunited), and wondered why more white people from northern Europe were not emigrating to the United States. Despite Trump flagrantly promoting vicious racism, millions of Republicans voted for him - twice.
Radical representative Marjorie Taylor-Green was stripped of her committee assignments and relegated to obscurity for threatening to assassinate fellow members of Congress. More recently, she claimed that, if she had been in charge of the armed insurrectionists, they would have won the battle to overturn Trump’s humiliating loss. McCarthy’s new best friend wants to impeach Joe Biden and Merrick Garland. Following the Republican script, she has presented no evidence that either has done anything illegal or morally wrong but, if two years of Trey Gowdy and Jimmy Jordan’s moronic Benghazi hearings were any indication, you can count on months of screaming and yelling that will, once again, prove nothing.
The script for transforming Congressional hearings into a callous circus was honed by Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin who destroyed countless careers of innocent citizens through hearsay and unfounded accusations of communist subversion. Truth, facts, and evidence were ignored while the senator and his cohorts feigned fury and indignation in their performance of reckless and unsubstantiated attacks on the character and patriotism of prominent citizens and political rivals…until he was ultimately censured by the Senate.
Following his example, we can be assured that the next two years will provide a sad and expensive comedy of false accusations, ruthless interrogations, shrill voices, fist-pounding, and contentious over-the-top theatrical outrage by countless committees dedicated to nothing more than revenge and winning votes and soliciting campaign contributions from the extremist fringe in the next election.
Kevin McCarthy traded the legitimacy and integrity of the House of Representatives for a wooden gavel which, like the radical klan-of-twenty who actually control the agenda, makes a lot of noise but will never restore order or produce any legislation that benefits the American People.
Unless and until the silent centrists are willing to stand up and vote to oust these fraudulent insurgents who do not represent even a small fraction of our society, we will suffer their moral delinquency and the desecration of the institutions that are supposed to represent the best in all of us. This tiny cadre was elected through a well-funded flurry of lies and misinformation sculpted to appeal to the fears and racial insecurity of white nationalists who are hell-bent on returning our nation to 1860, when white men could own their women and their slaves without interference from government.
Which brings us back to “What about-isms?” What about…logic, facts, truth, honesty, respect, cooperation, inclusion, empathy and compassion, honor, and real patriotism? What about…taking the responsibility to resurrect the democracy that provides the freedom to be who we are, to disagree and dissent without fear of reprisal, to raise our children and build a secure future…before the extremists demolish the promise and sully the dream?
Stand up, speak out, and share this with your friends.