"OMG, look what the current Administration did!" Yeah, just take it as given: every day is a new spectacle of some sort, Federal workers abruptly fired and rehired, Constitutional or customary limits tested and retested, allies insulted, bombastic statements made and so on and so forth. It's management by chaos, government as reality TV.
And it is exhausting. That's a feature for authoritarians, not a bug: they want critics burnt out, worn down, going bug-eyed over an unending succession of small excursions and occasional large violations of norms. It's good theater: "Lookit 'em run!" "Guess they were 'triggered!'" "Cry harder!"
I'm not crying. I'm not triggered. I'm annoyed. This kind of behavior is the ruination of republics and the genesis of autocracies, and we have damned few politicians who will stand up to it. The ones on the inside are glorying in it (and suppressing the occasional wash of nausea) while many on the outside appear to be more envious than concerned.
There are signs the Administration may be going a little too far; there are signs that they're ignoring the warnings in those tea leaves. But that's a flimsy hope and naked, cynical opportunism is the dominant paradigm on both sides of the aisle.
I could poke fun at Indiana's Attorney General for attempting to language-police local news media* after his party has been telling us that scolding people for not using pronouns of choice is overbearing interference with freedom of speech. But hypocrisy's a widespread hobby these days and what's sauce for the goose is apparently no longer sauce for gander -- and vice versa.
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* A TV news station tweeted that Indiana's Governor had issued an Executive Order "banning trans women from women's sports at Indiana schools," and were promptly reproved by the AG, "Not correct. The order banned biological males...." I guess he wanted to make sure the Governor's preferred pronouns were honored, First Amendment bedamned?
Update
2 months ago
1 comment:
As they say in AA, sometimes someone has to hit rock bottom before they realize they have a problem. Right now, the Cope Huffers are still buzzed from November, and are still getting the political payout from the Ponzi scheme they've dumped their savings into. They're too hyped to want to hear anything bad, and there's nothing you can say otherwise that they won't find an excuse for.
Only time and increasing consequences will strip away the excuses, hopefully before we run aground because the captain thought the lighthouse was the star to follow, and fired the navigator for saying otherwise.
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