The Know Nothing Party
"I hear nothing! I see nothing! I know nothing!" - Sgt. Schultz
I have never liked conservative politicians - on either side of the aisle. They’re too uptight. They’re too single-minded. They’re too unimaginative.
They’re happy with a hands-off approach to governing unless it involves tax breaks for themselves and their major donors, or insinuating their opinions in your bedroom, or intervening in another country’s method of governing, or thinking of ways to make it even more odious to vote, or figuring out additional tax loopholes, or running up the nation’s deficit but only when it impacts people specifically targeted by them as a means of scratching their backs. . .
Conservatives govern like it’s 1850.
Women, like children, are better seen than heard. People of color should know better than to speak their mind, unless it’s an echo of the ‘masters’ and then they need to be careful not to raise their voices. Everybody ought to be ‘packing heat’ and there really shouldn’t be any public space off limits to guns. Manifest destiny is alive and well and there isn’t a corner of the earth that would not be grateful to be under the thumb of the American empire.
And wouldn’t it be nice if all our money was backed by ingots of gold?
Remember the ‘previous dudes’ statement about immigrants from Mexico? The one that really touched off all of the rest of the dumbass statements that emanated from his pie-hole?
When Mexico sends it people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And, some, I assume, are good people.
Man, he had a way with words.
That statement applies to the GOP for the past 40 years. You barely have to be aware of what’s going on in Washington, D.C., to know there are a slew of ignoramuses sent there to do the People’s Business in the name - mostly - of the Republican Party.
They haven’t been sending their best.
They’re not sending representatives reflective of the nation.
They’re sending characters with innumerable character flaws.
I don’t know about the drugs, but I know several of them are associated with the crimes surrounding the failed coup d’état on January 6th and, if it’s true the FBI has requested phone records relative to the insurrection, I suspect some of them are becoming acquainted with the term “squirm”.
Can’t speak to the rapist part either unless we’re talking about the previous dude himself. He’s been ordered to turn over a decade’s worth of tax records to the state of New York’s district attorney after the Supreme Court denied for the last time any way for him to kick the can down the road. Now, it is just a matter of time, before E. Jeanne Carroll and her lawyers get his DNA.
Of course, some, I assume, are good people.
All you have to do is watch, or catch brief snippets, of the current hearings, either the confirmation hearings for Secretary of the Interior or the Attorney General, or the investigative hearings on the January 6th insurrection, to realize the party of Lincoln is not sending its best. Wisconsin’s Republican senator, Ron Johnson, tried to peddle the notion that those who attacked the Capitol on the 6th were not loyalists to the previous dude.
He wants us to believe they were provocateurs.
Or maybe crisis actors, the GOP’s favorite conspiracy theory they trot out after every mass shooting. He tried to ‘rebrand’ the whole thing as a festive family affair while somehow ignoring the brute force used to enter the Capitol, the makeshift gallows on The Ellipse and the successful insurrectionists defecating inside the hallways. I guess he’s already forgotten the video shown to senators during the previous dude’s second impeachment trial of the blood-thirsty crowd beating a police officer to death with an American flag pole.
None of this is surprising.
The GOP has been angling in this direction for as long as I have been alive. Possibly always. They do not come to Washington to govern. They come to wreak havoc. They come to say, “No.” They come to throw sand into the gears. They come to wet their beaks in the government trough while haranguing those who want to govern.
They come to grandstand and blow smoke. They come to devise ways to keep minorities - of all kinds - in check. They come to fill space and kill ideas at the federal level.
I heard one of my favorite conservative whipping boys - Senator Tom Cotton (GQP-AR) - wants to weasel the minimum wage down to $10, from $15, in the current COVID-19 relief bill - this in spite of the fact his own state’s minimum wage is pegged at $11. That is completely par for the course for conservative Republican senators. His ‘guise’ is he’s protecting jobs, but I’ll wager the unexpected will happen and employment will rise if the minimum wage is doubled.
In any case, it’s another example of the stark divide between conservatives and progressives.
Conservatives go to Washington to kill dreams and hope.
Progressives go to Washington in the hopes of building on their dreams.
The thing is - you can be stupid and accomplish the former.
There was the well known Far Side cartoon that depicted cows ‘standing about’ smoking cigarettes and leaning against trees, when one of them, a “lookout”, yells “Car!” and they all resume your normal car stances and behavior. One of the many Far Side cartoons that always got a chuckle out of me.
Well, here is video evidence of just how clever cows can be.
Also * and * speaking of cows….