Sticky Finger Politics
I went through my normal ritual of reading a recently written story to Kim. It’s my way of editing (I catch many, but not all, mistakes editing this way) and it helps me to read the story aloud so that I can determine if the story hangs together the way I intended. When I finished my reading I asked Kim what I should write about next. I have a ritual process for determining that and it almost always starts with a turn of phrase or idea that becomes a title. From there I start to write and travel where the muse takes me. I mentioned to Kim that it has been a long time since I’ve written about politics. For much of the last few years, the political shenanigans of Donald Trump used to keep me busy and I had to force myself NOT to write about politics each day. Now, under Joe Biden’s leadership, while politics continues to make headlines every day, the cable news shows needing to maintain their readership despite a more stable and “boring” administration, I feel less compelled to howl at the moon every morning. However, the recently published book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Peril has stayed with the news cycle for a full week so far as it details the machinations that Trump and his acolytes went through and continue to go through to rip democracy from its roots in the American way of life. I didn’t know how to characterize this story but then Kim said she found the whole thing a sticky mess.
It has amazed me for five years that people can actually want to follow Donald Trump wherever his whim of the moment leads him. I may not agree with much of Republican political thought, but I at least understand its meaning and foundations and can begrudgingly get why some people think that is a better set of ground rules than those which the liberal democracy line of reasoning takes. The nonsense that characterizes Trumpian politics is much harder to fathom. At first I believed it was being followed by disestablishmenttarianists (I’ve wanted to use that long word for many years and think I have finally found the perfect place to do so). These were people with fewer than 32 teeth in their heads and perhaps an even lower threshold of active grey matter. They are the “deplorables” that got Hilary CLinton into so much name-calling trouble. These people enjoy pulling the wings off flies for sport and treat the government as hillbillies treat visiting revenuers. But this small and embarrassing slice of Americana was just that, small. I satisfied myself with the thought that there are always outliers and outliers are people who enjoy being outliers and nonconformists just for the sake of being different. They tattoo their necks just to be in our faces with their differentness.
But somewhere during the four year administration horribilis, this group vastly expanded. It went from people who were deplorable to the vast majority of people that constitute what I consider the dark side of the political spectrum. It began with the excuse of the “bigger picture”, which was to say the tax cuts and less government model of governance that libertarians prefer. They were willing to put up with what they knew was boorishness and deceit for the simple reason that they were getting a set of policy modifications that suited their world view. Then things took a turn for the worse. At some point you either decide to leave that bullshit behind and join the Lincoln Project declaring Trump a rogue president, of you drink the entire cup of Trump Kool-Aide. And for every one who joined the Lincoln Project, there seemed to be nine that stuck their head in the Kool-Aide bucket. They remind me of the kid that puts his fingers in his ears and makes loud noises so he can’t hear what’s being said. He knows that the words are righteous and impossibly to deny, so he plugs his ears to keep from being forced to acknowledge the reality that they don’t want to be real. I think psychologists call that denial.
What the book Peril details are all the things that we all know full well that Trump and his band of misfits and broken toys have been doing and saying to try to still win at any cost. It strikes me, to carry the analogy to its logical extreme, like the parent who roughly grabs the wayward child with his fingers in his ears and shoves his nose into the pile of shit he is trying so hard to deny. And what is the defense by Republicans and right-wing media to all of this? They are following the Republican, Newt Gingrich playbook. They are trying to create a countervailing scandal to offset the reality of the pile of shit on the rug. In this case they are throwing everything and anything including the kitchen sink at the issue. Trump is bringing a lawsuit against Mary Trump, his rogue niece, and the New York Times for revealing his tax documents. What? That’s a year or more old story and its one he does not deny is accurate, he just wants to hassle them to make waves in the press for distraction. Meanwhile, Republicans are doing what Mitch McConnell does best, they are stonewalling and obstructing. This time they are doing it over the national debt ceiling. That is especially hilarious because it was these same Republicans, the ones who scream fiscal conservatism, that added 7.8 trillion to the national debt by cutting taxes for the rich and corporates without concomitant budget cuts.
You see, Republicans are getting hoisted on their own petard (another phrase I always wanted to use since Shakespeare first used it in Hamlet). They have courted and ridden on the backs of the deplorables that want very much for the government to put pennies in their pockets and are willing to let the billionaires stuff more billions in theirs if they can get that and have a gay old time dancing around the flames of the burning house they have ignited. That house is our democracy by the way and they came damn close to burning it down on January 6th. The problem for Republicans is that once you court the mob, the mob owns you and you have to keep feeding that beast. It usually all ends badly, but in the meantime we have a mess in the making. The Republicans can’t stomach the thought of the Democrats looking effective by letting them pass an infrastructure bill. They can’t countenance the thought of voting rights legislation that will allow more Democratically-minded people to vote against them. They hate the fact that they cannot simply destroy the welfare state they see as taking money out of their pockets rather than building the economic base and middle class that they have raped an pillaged for the last century.
And now, someone has written a book that lays bare their deepest darkest secrets of just how they are trying to manipulate American politics to get their way no matter what the cost and what the excuse they have to fabricate to do so. This situation is coming to a head it seems. The Congressional committees are building up a base of factual evidence that should be incontrovertible and that show the American people just how despicable and counter-productive these Republican tactics are to our way of life. These people don’t really want to undermine our way of life, they simply want more of it to go into their pocket than that of the other guy. And if they can have a party dancing around a bonfire while they are at it, that’s great too. The problem with tar babies like Donald Trump is that sooner or later their stickiness gets on your fingers when you play with them and eventually all you can think about it the sticky finger problem you are left with. Sticky finger politics eventually ends with a need to stop playing, burying the tar baby and cleaning your hands with a strong astringent.