Mitch McConnell and Trey Gowdy want to ride like white knights into the mess that America now finds itself in and pretend to lead the charge to assure that our democracy will survive the threat from all enemies whether they be foreign or domestic. Many Americans who do not already know it might be interested in knowing that Majority Leader McConnell and Representative Gowdy played no small part in leading us into the aforementioned mess that we are now in. So I will mention it for all to read (hear); BOTH OF THESE MEN PLAYED THEIR PART WELL IN LEADING US INTO THIS QUAGMIRE WHEN PRESIDENT OBAMA WAS IN OFFICE.
Leader McConnell played his part by, among many other actions or lack thereof, refusing to hold a vote on President Obama’s nominee to become a Supreme Court Justice long enough for Mr. Donald Trump to become the occupant of the White House, nominate Neil Gorsuch and place him on the bench of the highest court in America. Representative Gowdy did his part by relentlessly hounding Secretary Hillary Clinton regarding Benghazi and her emails while she was Secretary of State and beyond.
Time-and-time again he never came up with anything but, in the now infamous words of Senate Majority Leader McConnell that he addressed to the senate in his successful effort to prevent Senator Elizabeth Warren from completing her reading of a letter – which was already in the congressional records – from Ms. Coretta Scott King; yet he persisted (I took the liberty to replace the word ‘she’ with ‘he’). In the event that that you are not familiar with this letter, it was written by Ms. King to oppose then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama Jeff Sessions’ possible appointment to a federal judgeship. Senator Warren was reading it to augment her position opposing Mr. Sessions’ potential confirmation to become U.S. Attorney General and to encourage other senators to join her. Leader McConnell shut her down… Look where that got us.
Anyway, now that this mess is hitting the fan after a little more than a year of Mr. Trump’s leadership and is splattering all over Republicans in Washington and around the country, Leader McConnell and Representative Gowdy don’t like the way that they and their Republican colleagues smell. They can no longer stand the stench so they want to swing (or at least pretend to swing) into action again. They want to be perceived as the grownups in the room who are the badly needed catalyst to break down the endless partisan resistance, which Mitch McConnell helped to lead, and instigate the will of their fellow Republicans to do the right thing, somehow forge partisanship, and restore America’s image domestically and abroad so that the healing process can begin.
Sound like a load of political crap? It’s hard not to believe that it isn’t exactly that. After all, the 2018 and 2020 elections are barreling towards us and Leader McConnell surly wants to retain his seat as Majority Leader. As for Representative Gowdy, even if he keeps his word and does not run for congress again, I get the strong feeling that he would not turn down a seat on the bench as an Appellate Court judge… if someone forced him into it, of course. However, the question is, can a man with his now sullied reputation be trusted to be fair and adhere to enforcement of the law in a non-partisan way? Regardless of the answer to this rhetorical question, certainly he and Leader McConnell knew before the mess hit the fan that mess has a repulsive aroma. Why did they wait so long before riding (pretending to ride?) in? Go figure. But this could likely, and rightly, cause many Americans to have a low regard for each man and the horse that he rode in on; likely you get my drift.
As we Americans continue to struggle to get our political bearings I cannot help but continue to reflect daily on how divided we have become and question how much damage Mr. Trump is doing to America through his unorthodox leadership style. Will we be able to completely recover from this damage and if so, how long will it take? I still disagree with the Republicans on a lot of things but there was a time when I easily honestly believed that our Democratic and Republican statesmen could have reasonable discourse on the issues and always arrive at a reasonable, even if not amicable, agreement. I still honestly believe that our elected leaders can do that but that ‘easily’ adjective preceding ‘honestly’ is no longer there and the ‘statesmen’ noun has also long ago departed. It has now become hard for me to believe that these politicians are capable of even having reasonable discourse let alone be capable of arriving at a reasonable agreement. It seems to be becoming harder and harder every day for me to maintain any kind of faith in these so-called leaders and their ability to lead because they play endless politics.
As I was writing this blog I reflected upon how tired and sometimes confused I feel in dealing with what is happening in the world of politics and during that time, my mind wandered to and contemplated an article by Ezra Klein that I read in Vox.com. The Article was dated 2/9/18 and entitled “Donald Trump, Fox News, and the logic of alternative facts.” I highly recommend that you read this article.
Whether or not you decide to read Mr. Klein’s article, following is an excerpt from it that seems to perfectly describe what I was feeling and it helped me to understand why I might be feeling that way:
…What [Kellyanne] Conway and others understand is that if you’re just trying to activate your tribe, you don’t have to win the argument, you just need to have an argument; you need to give your side something to say, something to believe. Something like the Nunes memo or the various out-of-context texts aren’t part of a search for truth – they’re an ammo drop, or, to go back to the way [Molly] Ball put it, “a semi-plausible (if not entirely coherent) counternarrative.”
Charlie Sykes, a conservative talk radio host turned Trump critic, put it well. “The essence of propaganda is not necessarily to convince you of a certain set of facts. It is to overwhelm your critical sensibilities. It’s to make you doubt the existence of a knowable truth. The conservative media is a giant fog machine designed to confuse and disorient people.”
There is no doubt that the Nunes memo and the various texts have thickened the fog. If you were watching mainstream media outlets, you mostly saw the memo debunked, dismissed. If you were watching Fox News, you saw Tucker Carlson saying, “For the first time in generations Americans have reason to believe that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies gravely misuse the powers we have given them.” If you were watching Trump’s Twitter feed, you saw an all-caps alert of BOMBSHELL, alongside declarations of total victory:…
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave…” What kind of a web are we weaving under the leadership of Mr. Trump and his administration and this Republican Congress?! All of the lies and obfuscation, hubris and self-aggrandizement, and ‘alternative facts; where does it all end?! Four years of Mr. Trump under these kind of circumstances would be enough to drive anyone batty. And eight years? I don’t think that there would be a sane person left in America; well, maybe the Trumpists would survive. But surly they would also do something that Mr. Trump viewed as wrong somewhere along the way to displease him and he would turn on them too. Then finally, the only sane person that would be left would be Mr. Trump himself. American voters had better get busy and they had better do it soon!
So whether you are a Democrat, Republican, or Independent always remember, your vote is the most important one of all…unless you don’t use it!
Eulus Dennis – author, Operation Rubik’s Cube and Living Between The Line