Day 3: January 8, 2021
I thought at first that I would “write something” about the utterly shocking but wholly unsurprising events of the last few days, the unbelievable grotesqueries of this pitiful, bathetic, sordid denouement of what-I-am-sure-we-can-at-long-last-have-you-no-sense-of-decency-sir-agree is the worst presidency in American history. Three days in, I realize that will be just impossible—this “thing” is going to last long enough, and the daily outrages will run thick enough—that the best I can hope to do is keep a daily chronicle of my (and the nation’s!) ups and downs, small victories and hopefully avoided defeats, moments of blinding rage and levity, sadness and righteous triumph, spitting contempt and paralytic ennui. We are in for a lot of all of that, I’m afraid. So, to begin.
I began today watching a video with the assistant speaker of the House, Katherine Clark. She seemed quite resolute on the question of impeachment: good. She also seemed to think that they’d get around to a vote by the middle of next week, and that I should be impressed with that. I imagined whiny congresspersons in sunny California carping about getting a flight back; I imagined Judiciary Committee staffers being told of course they shouldn’t work any overtime; I imagined Jerry Nadler eating. I was trying to work out how you could squander five days writing up a short (could more than ten pages be required to describe what the whole world saw on TV, and why that’s a big no-no??!?) document and plowing through whatever truncated floor procedure the House rules would absolutely and non-negotiably require to get that document to the floor for a perfunctory (SURELY not more than a few hours; SURELY we will not be treated to more lame grandstanding while we’re putatively in such danger) debate and then the fait accompli vote and off to the Senate. Those of us a click or two to the left of the congressional leadership of the Democrats have for years been lectured that we should happily accede to a milquetoast limousine liberal from the 80s as speaker owing to her byzantine parliamentary wizardry. Well, now’d be the time for that, Madam Speaker. I said as much on her voicemail, but my tone was a bit sharp. Well, OK, I left off with: “Many of us have wondered for a few years now whether the speaker is up to the job. One wonders now whether she’s so full of shit that when she spoke of the danger the president poses, she said something true purely by accident.” I like Nancy Pelosi, but I’m pretty angry these days.
After I had thus unburdened myself, my mood lifted. Made coffee, washed up, puttered. Feeling better. Tuesday (which seems like a good while ago), starting in the evening, I was pretty into the Senate returns. Ended up being up pretty late waiting for some definitive turn, but fell off before any came, so I woke up Wednesday and was running around (doing some photos for T.T. MAHONY IS FRENCH PEOPLE) when the first word about The Bullshit came over the transom. It took me an hour or two to finally give myself over to this stupid thing, but since I have, I haven’t been able to escape it for more than about an hour at at a time. The thing is so palpably and absurdly historic, the dipshit lunacy of it so unutterably grave, the spellbinding incompetence and fecklessness so thick in my nostrils, that I just cannot look away. I am hopeful that I will settle into some real work tonight and break the spell and that this will become more like a job—generally just an hour or two a day to catch up. I guess I’ll have to watch the trial in the Senate. Lordy, that’s gonna be a good ol’ ragefest for your humble correspondent. There are a few people in that body who are generally quite untalented but who have a real gift for making the world skip a little in front of my eyes I’m so fucking mad. I don’t really get mad that much. And don’t worry; we’ll be covering them in some detail.
Anyway, it was almost disorienting to find myself enjoying this as much as I did. I’m not someone who has any trouble laughing at and enjoying the troubles of people I don’t like—not saying that’s a good thing, but it’s a thing. These are unambiguously bad people with the absolute worst intentions, and horrifically stupid, to boot. So I don’t feel sorry for them—at all. But I did feel—something. It wasn’t just sadistic glee. The closest I can come to describing this emotion would be to say that it was distantly akin to what you might feel looking at a small child wandering obviously alone in the street. That shock at the cuteness mingled with the acute and terrifying vulnerability. Of a child, a vision like that would make me feel something powerfully protective and I would spring into action. Here, I see adults, truly helpless in at least one very important sense. For reasons both cognitive and emotional, profoundly incapable of making sense of the world. In another way, helpless not to compulsively attempt to assign to events and ephemera a sense and an organization and a larger meaning that just isn’t there.
That compulsion puts me in mind of a friend who I saw post some meme today, can’t even remember what it was, but the gist was I MISS WHEN WE ALL HATED THE GOVERNMENT. I think of this guy’s easy footsie with conspiracy theory (mostly COVID denialism these days), married with his outré and often illegal lifestyle, which makes him a naturally anti-government type. His SoCal suburban upbringing, which puts a confused anarcho-libertarianish (I know, definitely no such thing) glaze on it. He’s over 30, and still that naïve. It’s the hunger for an easy narrative—cops and government bad, they don’t care about you, blaaahh blaaah blahh—instead of the adult and astringently unsatisfying activity of Politics, that makes them similar. Different conclusions, same problem.
Speaking of the world of Astringently Unsatisfying Politics and the Buttermilk Biscuits Who Do It for Fun & Profit (the first in a series): the Hon. Kevin McCarthy. Today the Majority Leader has sagely entreated the esteemed satanic pedophile cult on the other side of the aisle to “call on our better angels of our nature” just in time to spare his Senate colleagues the gotterdammerung of an up-or-down vote on Casino (the 45th president will henceforth be referred to only by my affectionate nickname for him) post-insurrection. Bad look for them, kind of either way. Either way, it’s pretty purple language for the skeezy blow-dried operator from California; one is less impressed that he reached for “better angels” than that this game-show host and simpering sycophant thinks he’s possessed of anything as substantial as a “nature.”
His maundering reminds me of the man I saw on Rachel Maddow last night. Timothy Snyder. He wrote a book called On Tyranny. One of his warnings is to avoid making concessions to fascists in an attempt to forestall not-yet-even-threatened violence. A form of abject bargaining. When McCarthy makes his more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger plea about sparing the country, he is (barely) implicitly threatening further violence if the Democrats rise to their constitutional duty. Plain as day. If the Democrats waver even slightly because of this absurd and contemptible zero’s “advice,” I will scream so loud Pelosi won’t need a phone to hear me.
Tomorrow in Buttermilk Biscuits: Cruz.