Piranha feeding frenzy
“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution… Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
Donald Trump on Truth Social, December 3rd.
A distant and vile scream in the dark? Trump may be fading, but his GOP MAGA extremists are, by a very slim margin, assuming control of the House. What will they do with this majority? The United States has myriad serious issues to deal with: Rising cost of living, student loans, homelessness and housing affordability, the war in Ukraine, mounting Chinese saber rattling under an unfettered strongman, fentanyl explosion, resurging COVID, immigration reform, Iranian protests mixed with that nation’s becoming both a major weapons supplier to Russia as well as possible nuclear power, Kim Jong-un’s obsession with ballistic missiles and nukes, a Supreme Court going off the rails without any ethical boundaries, voter suppression in its many forms and radical challenges to election results, domestic terrorism (including White supremacy), mass shootings with semiautomatic assault weapons, how to regulate social media within First Amendment parameters, healthcare, continued infrastructure upgrades and repairs and, most of all, containing climate change and its increasingly intensive and destructive “natural disasters.”
But what are not a particularly relevant sets of priorities include: elimination of “grooming” (predatory sexual efforts) and stopping the teaching of historical truths to our public-school children (there is no serious evidence anywhere of teachers’ distorting their lessons accordingly), fighting rising crime (not an issue, except for the rising homicide rate due to a lack of common sense gun control), eradicating “woke” sensibilities (like tolerance, kindness and supporting the disadvantaged), attacking elected officials trying to protect the United States from coups and sedition, investigating the FBI (a traditionally conservative agency) and the DOJ and its very productive search warrant of Mar-a-Lago for being leftist lackies, blocking any legislation proposed by or nominees from the Biden administration, fighting “creeping socialism” (since socialism requires the elimination of private property, that cannot be an issue), and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
In battling for getting sufficient GOP votes to generate a 50% majority to become Speaker, the frontrunner Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), is pledging plum committee chair posts to the Party’s most right-wing members and to pursue GOP witch hunt goals (remember the completely wasteful and interminable Benghazi inquiry against Hillary Clinton that produced nothing?). Despite the GOP’s beliefs that inflation would topple Democrats across the board, it didn’t, and Republicans have not promoted a single meaningful and likely effective plan to reduce our cost of living. They still cling to their inane and completely discredited “trickle down” notion that even more tax cuts for the rich will “float all boats” and are pushing their culture war for lack of any serious substantive measures that would actually solve problems.
Writing an OpEd for the November 30th Los Angeles Times, Robin Abcarian calls all this Republican “angertainment.” A lot of show, with only solutions proposed for problems that do not exist. But as we all know, it you say it enough, post it on social media consistently, discuss it on Fox “News,” and bolster your claims with unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and false statistics, people will believe it. Yet to listen to those right-wing extremists likely to chair House committees and subcommittees, they sound as they were about to indulge in the congressional equivalent of a piranha feeding frenzy. Nevertheless, as Abcarian points out, based on the Benghazi hearings, investigating your opponent… even if you ignore why you were elected… just might work:
“McCarthy even admitted on national television that the Benghazi hearings were meant to dirty Clinton up as she prepared her 2016 presidential bid. ‘Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?’ McCarthy bragged to [Fox’] Sean Hannity. ‘But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.’
“With no platform, and no apparent legislative agenda, the MAGA Republicans who make up the next House majority have set for themselves one task: weaken Democrats’ chances for the 2024 election by pecking the Biden administration to death with investigations… ‘For many, that was the point of the election,’ wrote Carl Hulse in the New York Times. ‘Their agenda is investigative, not legislative.’
“Without a doubt, some of the GOP’s efforts will be legitimate inquiries. I’d like to know more about the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and I think most of the American people would too. I have no problem with a hearing on what seems like a debacle. [Even though Biden stupidly followed Trump’s withdrawal plan!]
“If the recent past is prologue, however, most of what House Republicans have in store will be bad-faith efforts to score political points… On Nov. 2, [Jim] Jordan [R-OH], the presumed incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland alerting him to several potential topics of interest. The tone was accusatory.
“Jordan wrote that in his hands, Judiciary would be looking into the department’s ‘targeting of journalists with Project Veritas [an American far-right, extremist activist group],’ its ‘one-sided enforcement of the FACE [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances] Act’ and the FBI’s ‘unprecedented raid on President Trump’s residence.’”
That a 3-judge all-Republican-appointed panel (2 by Trump) of the 11th Federal Circuit threw out Trump’s attempt to use a special master to subvert the FBI investigation – based on that search warrant of the cache of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago – does not matter to Jordan. Abcarian adds: “Project Veritas [used] a variety of deceptions, including fake identities and secret recordings, to ‘investigate’ alleged wrongdoing by Democrats and the usual list of Republican cultural targets: teachers, doctors who work with trans kids, etc… Jordan is interested in what happened when Project Veritas became entangled in a federal investigation after purchasing first daughter Ashley Biden’s stolen diary for $40,000…
“On the other hand, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or the FACE Act… was signed into law during the Clinton administration to protect those receiving reproductive healthcare at heavily picketed locations such as Planned Parenthood clinics. As a sop to religious conservatives, houses of worship were included in the list of facilities protected by the law. MAGA Republicans now allege the law is being used to harass antiabortion demonstrators and is not enforced in cases of religious services being disrupted, though I could find no evidence of that.
“Jordan et al. are also trying to make a political martyr of Mark Houck, an antiabortion activist who was arrested by the FBI after shoving a 72-year-old clinic escort at a Philadelphia Planned Parenthood in October 2021. Houck has pleaded not guilty to two counts of violating the FACE Act…
“I assume that MAGA Republicans are particularly licking their chops over potential investigations of Hunter Biden and whatever information is contained on the laptop he seems to have abandoned in a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019. The former president’s henchmen are seeking — but unlikely to find — proof that Joe Biden was involved in son Hunter’s shady business dealings.”
In the end, ignoring what really needs to be done, proposing more tax cuts for the rich and perhaps cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits to American seniors, does not serve the interests of the vast majority of Americans. But as polarization has hardened too many Americans, thus allowing this useless congressional gridlock to continue, those unsolved problems are just getting worse.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I am deeply puzzled how any elected official – left, right or center – thinks ignoring real issues to enable “angertainment” is consistent with their oath of office and the expectations of their constituency.
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