TWGB: Legitimate Political Discourse

 

The phrase "legitimate political discourse" sounds, in the phrasing of the Republican party, like a new and not-improved version of "the Aristocrats": there are a lot of ways to tell that joke, but the point of it is its filthiness. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have been censured by the gutless old party for bothering to look into a national security incident affecting the seat of our democracy, but the party chooses to see them as persecuting "ordinary citizens". 

Upon hearing that the party's words were being mentioned in the press, Ronna McDaniel is incensed that this turn of phrase was meant to be the RNC's own sort of "blanket pardon" for the violent offenders on that day.  She Tweeted:

to the effect that if the NYT didn't change their interpretation of the actual words used and repeated by McDaniel in her Tweets right there, they would be guilty of hackery most foul. Her specific language seems to exempt the violent people (the ones that certain members of the GOP caucus have been lying about, pretending that they have been, for example, detained without charge--a lie, or singled out for especial mistreatment) and indicates that there is a different group of ordinary citizens that she is referring to. 

Ah! The penny drops! She means the donor/activist class of people who are the lifeblood of the party, perhaps? The people who arranged the ellipse rally and were wild with enthusiasm at the Willard? And the handful of R. Congressmen who were supposed to be the friends who were going to help former President Trump with his alternate elector scheme? 

The investigation is uncovering whether these groups of people are really so segregated, and McDaniel, and anyone else with eyes, can tell they are not, but are actually inseparable. Without nonsense-spinners like the Kraken, who may have even been considered as a Special Counsel to investigate voter fraud claims, and other regular but highly wrong and legally dubious people--how are the mobs even so angry at the stolen election that was not actually stolen at all? 

Who stuffed their brains with the nonsense of German servers, Venezuelan voting machines, Chinese thermostats, and Italian satellites? And how are the people who perpetuated that level of absurd fraud, and a White House that not only tolerated but encouraged it, not anything but illegitimate? This isn't legitimate discourse, but weaponized bullshit. It was dangerous agitprop designed to produce a chaotic and violent result on the ground, and a disruption to the country's leadership at the top, and Ms. McDaniel wants to argue semantics? 

The interest of justice lies in the pursuit of truth with neither fear nor favor, and the oath to the Constitution deserves no less fervor. 

The truth, in the atmosphere of the current conservative movement, is so toxic that former Vice-President Mike Pence looks like a goddamn hero for bothering to say it, even if it is literally so little and so late. Of course, Trump was wrong to place the responsibility for overturning the election on the shoulders of his vice-president (and a shit-ton of the potential legal liability, also too). And yet Pence looks like he is juggling torches for the effort to say what everyone knows--Trump asked him to steal an election and he declined. His one great act was merely refusing to be Trump's patsy. And that so-called president really could have watched that man be hanged dead because it was a treason against the personality cult. 

It is easy to lionize Cheney, Kinzinger and Pence for bucking their party's expectations, but how did these expectations become so low that these people seem heroes for doing basic gut-checks and referencing shared realities? It becomes clear now that the GOP supports no platform because they literally cannot distinguish what it means to have a floor, a set of operating principles other than obstructing Democrats (even for necessary things relating to basic government) and protecting their investors. They wave a Trump flag because they have lost all other standards. 

This is shameful, and they for the most part seem to have even forgotten how to be ashamed. But the Republicans who have been kicked around understand (and I don't agree with them on everything) that we have no country worth speaking of without truth and the rule of law, and this is some kind of common ground. 

And the RNC considered it completely acceptable, "legitimate political discourse" to suggest such things were not necessary. No common ground.  Democrats need to take that lesson. There are few in that tribe with whom it is possible to speak.