Heads on a Pike, Anyone?

TONIGHT: White House impeachment defense surrogate Mark Meadows (R-NC), alongside three GOP members of Congress, tells @NorahODonnell that he believes Republican senators will face political repercussions if they break with Pres. Trump; watch more at 6:30 p.m. ET. pic.twitter.com/uke5VOCEgg

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 27, 2020

I'm reasonably sure that the artificial pearls of the GOP Senators who balked at Rep. Adam Schiff's reiteration of a CBS news story are at least durable enough to withstand this assault upon their wide-eyed cherubic vision of the benevolence of President Trump and their boundless appreciation that he has not politically poleaxed any or all of them yet, amen.

See also:

Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2020

Oh jeepers creepers, there's no vengefulness here, oh my gosh no. I mean, unless you look at everything Trump does ever including the time he denied health insurance to his dead brother's boy and the long-standing feuds he continues with people even after they have died.

The correct response to this of a co-equal branch of government might, and I am not holding out hope, just offering suggestions, be to say "Fuck you, now it's war." He's guilty. Manifestly, even self-confessedly so in some ways. Mulvaney copped to the quid pro quo, Bolton is fixing to publish it, and Sondland spilled his heart out in the House testimony that everyone was in the loop. The picture will never get better, and there are "tapes".

But here's my epistle to the Republicans:

I hate to do the Bible stuff myself as a nonbeliever, but what price the presidency (the world) if the cost is your integrity (immortal soul)? Dems might even try to forget how much Pence is entirely in the loop if you sold the MF out.

Who stands for the truth? There's no reward in it. It isn't going to save your seat. It isn't going to make you a hero. It just makes you actually good.

If there was any other reason to ever run for the Senate than to be honest and do the right thing, I am so sorry. That reason was wrong. Just give a shit about the truth. Just do the right thing. At the end of the day, not having a government of moral monsters might just mean something, and if you ever wanted civility to return, you have to start with siding, even sometimes, against madness. These fellow party-members are saying the calculus is, serve Trump or politically die. And if you go along, you are already some kind of dead. Because you went with the flow, and followed a multitude to do evil.

Feck. I don't think the GOP Senate listens to me, a D-list blogger of The Left. And the schmaltzy moral smack-downs have already been flying fast and furious to no avail.

So here's another way of looking at it--you're not locked in here with President Trump, so much as he's locked in here with you. If you found your unified voice, you could peel the bark off his support. Wrong is just wrong. There is only so much shit any reasonable person can take, let alone a party of reasonable commonsense people who have been asked one nonsense thing too far.

I am not rooting for the Republican party. The Republican party has been the party of Kissinger and Watergate and Iran-Contra and laughing at AIDS patients my whole life. The party of misrepresenting MLK while promoting Voter ID and Crosscheck, the party of Gingrich and Hastert, and the party where after 40 years of knowing what was up the reality of the October Surprise and El Mozote massacre are finally being proven history. (Vindicating many journalists and human rights activists reportage at the time.)

Look, I never wished your party well. If the US had a Liberal Democrat and a Socialist party as our main two, I'd be satisfied. The Republican party is too insular and anti-multicultural to even be competent at diplomacy. You actually had 47 should-have-known better people sign a letter against the "Obama" (multilateral) Iran nuclear deal. Tom Cotton is a life-support system for an adam's apple, not a plausible foreign policy hand, but older, wiser people signed on to effectively troll....Dems. Against an actual plausible multilateral enforceable Iran antinuclear deal. Bravo. This was how you got Trump. By watching Fox News and believing it or thinking your constituents believing it mattered instead of showing leadership and cancelling them!

Let me tell you about cancel-culture--it's great! When some fuckhead news shill or other asshole signifies assholery, you counter them with facts and say they can't exist unless they get right. That's how you dominate your party's discourse, instead of Tuna Lamprey being out there on a national news network for some reason ever. What is her expertise? Like, what?

We are different, you conservatives and me. But we live on the same landmasses. What about admitting "orange man" (we know it is tv makeup which actually makes it sorrier!) actually is bad because all the things he does looks bad, and then we move on to how we talk like human beings with sense together from here? Your heads don't have to be on a pike. We get honest. You recognize Trump is a racist obnoxious pig who isn't relevant to our shared future.


Leftists love asylum-seekers. Treat us like the sympathetic bitches we are. Ditch that zero and be the hero you want to be. We will support you. Maybe. But Trump in power means everybody will eventually get just a little fucked. Some a lot. Is that your king?