Lil·li·pu·tians
The Slightly Less Than August
Back in the days of Adm. Rickover’s Navy, we were taught the technical term CRUD for the radioactive metallic deposits found in the reactor’s coolant system, that the word stood for Chalk River Undetermined Deposits, Chalk River being a river in Canada with a Nuclear Lab named after it, which was mostly true excepting maybe the part about heavy water. This was long, long before the Republican Party started sending the likes of: Richard Shelby, Tommy Tuberville, Dan Sullivan, John Boozman, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, Mike Crapo, Jim Risch, Todd Young, Mike Braun, Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, Jerry Moran, Roger Marshall, Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, John Kennedy, Susan Collins, Roy Blunt, Josh Hawley, Steve Daines, Deb Fischer, Tom Tillis, John Hoeven, Kevin Cramer, Rob Portman, Jim Inhofe, James Lankford, Lindsey Graham, Tim Scott, John Thune, Mike Rounds, Marsha Blackburn, Bill Hagerty, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Shelley Moore Capito, Ron Johnson, John Barrasso, and Cynthia Lummis to the US Senate.
Crud sounds right, has that certain ring. This lot is also remindful of Swift’s Lilliputians, a small, mean people. Some of the synonyms for Lilliputian are: illiberal, insular, narrow, narrow-minded, petty, sectarian, small minded, … Speaking of sectarian, what does Trump have on Kevin McCarthy?
From the Idiots are Coming to The Idiots are Here. The invasion began with Gingrich’s War on America. Instead of capable representatives, some states began sending cultural representatives to deal with the governance of the Nation. Never mind that some of the cultures was suspect, nor that some of those sent weren’t genuine anything, excepting, maybe sorry. Their culture could be described as being Ignorant and Damned Proud of It. It has come to this; a majority of Republican Congress Members who are not of much account.
Yet, why would forty some US Senators vote to acquit a man they know full well to be guilty of inciting an insurrection against the US Congress? Never mind the CYA he’s out of office, it was settled early, constitutionally, by procedural vote; it is really only being used as cover. As in, cover me I’m going in? Hardly. These are neither people of good character, nor of bravery. These are those of the type who always think of themselves first. After all, their very careers were at stake. To hell with America.
Perhaps they were afraid of being primaried, of losing their job. The effectiveness with which the Tea Party, circa 2009, employed the art of Tyranny by Minority was not lost on one Donald J. Trump. With a small minority, one could crush a primary candidate. Trump saw that he could extort the whole of the Republican Party with such a threat; that neither the party nor a candidate could win without his minority of deplorables.
Twice now we have seen a Senate Trial of Donald Trump. Twice now we have seen almost half of a jury refuse to consider the evidence; needn’t bother, their minds were already made up. Believe is something you choose to do. Nothing hard about that; any child could manage. This was a task for statesmen, people of good character. This lot simply wasn’t up to the task.
Many of the candidates Trump supported didn’t get elected. Including himself, by a wide margin in the most recent election.More likely, it’s not that they fear being primaried by ex-president Trump, it’s that they want to inherit his voters, so they have to pose as his successors.
From Heather Cox Richardson 2/13 email
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
Insane stat via @atausanovitch: 34 GOP senators representing just 14.5% of population can block conviction of president who tried to violently overthrow American democracy. US Senate & American politics deeply broken
February 13th 2021
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
From Heather Cox Richardson 2/13 email
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
Ari Berman @AriBerman
Insane stat via @atausanovitch: 34 GOP senators representing just 14.5% of population can block conviction of president who tried to violently overthrow American democracy. US Senate & American politics deeply broken
i worry about the future of democracy when the good guys go on moaning about the unfair electoral college, as if they have no idea how elections would play out without the electoral college. do they suppose the R’s don’t have a plan how to win in the big cities if it comes to that. do they know that Roosevelt won with the rural vote. do they think the democrats might lose for another reason than the unfairness of the electora college. did they notice that the democrats won the most recent election, electoral college or not.
nor is winning everything. the house lost the impeachment trial but they manged to put into the record that Trump’s lawyer demands the trump supporters be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. think the democrats might use that fact to good purpose?
moreover, McConnell was right, much as i dislike his politics: impeaching a person out of office could be a dangerous precedent. but the good guys are incapable of imagining the shoe on the other foot. in passing… the fact that the senate voted to allow the trial to go ahead, did not morally or logically or legally prevent those who disagreed with the finding that that was constitutional to vote to acquit on those grounds. that’s the difference between a simple majority and a two-third’s majority.
the terrifying thing is that trumps lawyers spouted absolute trash and still won. which probably means that trump and fox news and even mainstream news can keep on feeding the people trash and they will eat it up.
coberly:
The EC is what it is. The chance of changing it is limited. It would be far easier to revoke the 1929 Reapportionment Act and allow the House to add the necessary Representatives using Wyoming as the smallest population to set for a Congressional Representative. Without the EC, higher population states would run roughshod over the lesser populated states. The 1929 act has caused the imbalance. Fix it.
The House did not lose anything. They successfully impeached trump. The trial in the Senate decided in majority Trump was guilty. It takes 2/3rds to punish trump. It does little good to prosecute trump sycophants’ while trump walks. Trump threw them on the fire.
McConnell knows when you have to hold them or when you have to fold them. And Dems knew it was time to walk away and not get caught up in the Repub tar baby of burning legislative days. We got bigger fish to fry with passing legislation while we have a majority for the next two years. It came close with some Repubs agreeing trump is guilty.
The trash you speak of is allowed by the Ted Cruzs, Rubios, Hawkins, etc. of the Senate. History will remember them for what they are.
Run
i got an email advising there was a comment on this thread addressed to me.
i don’t see either your comment or mine.
but after i wrote mine Nancy Pelosi reminded me that the reason Trump was a private citizen at the time the trial began is because McConnell refused to receive the article of impeachment before the inauguration of Biden.
Well, I always thougt McConnel was a creep. So I have to modify my comment… giving the congress the power to deny federal office to a private citizen would be very dangerous.. as McConnnell said, but apparently he only said it so someone else would have to punish Trump. getting him, McConnell, off the hook.
But yes, I agree with everything you said in your comment to me. Hope they are not lost in space.
Three round-abouts, three jumpin-jacks, and three shouted Angry Bears made it appear. It is here.
Run
your comment and mine appeared while i was writing my reply to you above.
cyberspace time is not like normal spacetime.
to be clear: i do not favor prosecuting the rioters. they were a mob and mobs are not like human beings. think i might want to watch some of them closely, because they are clearly dangerous people.
but Trump’s lawyer calling for punishing them to the fullest extent of the law should tell any future supporters Trump might get just how loyal he will be to them. not that fox news will let them hear about that.
coberly:
They have light sentences coming. Nothing higher than a level two prison which allows them to stand at a marked line on the floor and point at what item in a machine they wish to have while a visitor buys it for them. Standard Level 2 prison protocol.
Ken
of course politics is broken. everywhere in the world, throughout history.
the founders tried to design a system that would work to prevent tyranny. they did not trust one man one vote democracy because they knew something about the history of such democracies,
i am not ready to say American politics is broken forever. Whether Trump was convicted or not is an iffy matter. maybe it would have made a martyr of him and we could expect his troops to rise again. As it is we have a new President who seems to be trying his best to govern sanely.
according to your way of thinking, if a majority of Americans decided to re-enslave blacks that would be the right thing to do.
I am a little worried about the power of big money, and the insane or completely evil people in today’s Republican party…the ones at the top. the folks at the bottom are what people have always been: one of the reasons the founders feared your faith in the holy majority.
I wish I could say we are going to get through this, but it won’t be because we abolish the Electoral College (though there are some aspects of it I think could stand some rethinking in the light of recent events), and it won’t be because we have found a way to prevent a minority from ever preventing a majority from having its way with us.