Bullying
Sen. Lindsey Graham has been busy as a cat trying to cover up his saying, “And I’ll say this: If there is a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle … there will be riots in the street,” comment by saying several different things about what he was trying to say, when what he was really trying to do was bully the Justice Dept, the Democratic Party, the President, the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Nation into halting the investigation into former President Trump’s purloining of secret files (there is reason to believe that the Senator has good reason to want to halt the investigation). This is not the first time Sen. Graham, other persons, parties, or even countries have employed the tactic. Unfortunately, there have been too many times when it has worked.
By now, we should, must, know better than to let ourselves be bullied by anyone. Not by the Sen. Grahams, Jim Jordans, Marjorie Taylor-Greenes, Rudy Giulianis, Gregg Abbotts. Josh Hawleys, Ted Cruzs, …, nor the Sam Alitos, Neil Gorsuches, and Clarence Thomases of the world. Not by Republicans, Armed Right-Wing Militias, white supremacists, ideologue judges or justices, nor by self-centered, self-absorbed narcissists like Trump. Not by the overthrow the government second amendment crowd.
This is America. The America where, as children, many of us were taught to not allow anyone to bully us; that bullies are really cowards. Turns out, the part about bullies being cowards is most often true. Case in point: Sen. Graham, is a case of a bully being afraid of a bully who is himself a coward. Seems that Trump likes to gather dirt on someone, then use that dirt to bully them around (an old Robert Moses trick). Sen. Graham is very afraid of Trump. If only a few more republican politicians had stood up to Trump from the get go, hundreds of thousands of Americans would still be alive; January 6th would not have happened.
Now we hear from these same Republicans and a lot of media pundits, and Trump himself, that we should not even investigate, let alone prosecute the former president because to do so would further divide the nation. What message does that send to the next want to be dictator? For far too long now we have watched the likes of Gingrich, DeLay, Armey, Issa, Gowdy, and McConnell bully the nation; let them get by with it. That allowance in big part is how we got here. That allowance brought us Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Louis Gohmert, …, Donald Trump, a sorry Supreme Court, and a slew of Right-Wing Armed Militia.
For far too long we have watched and listened as Right-Wing Armed Militia strutted around talking about overthrowing the government. They not only didn’t go away, they multiplied like rabbits. And, on January 6th, 2021, they marched on the U.S. Capitol. What if after the first or second strutting, the effected state’s Governor had called in the National Guard; ordered the Guard to take away the Militia’s weapons, record their names and addresses, and then told them to go home and stay there; or else face trial for attempting to overthrow the government.
Given office, bullies like these use the power of that office to impose their (more likely others’) beliefs on the rest of us. In doing so, they would take, have taken, away our right of choice. From the first and always, we must stand up to bullies.
— Trump: “It would not. But I think if it happened, I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”
Ken:
I believe we are too polite when confronting these politicians. Yesterday, Cruz was being heckled on an airplane that just arrived at its destination. The younger man heckled Cruz over his stance on the Securing Our Schools Act, It is a great act to implement if you believe putting more security in schools is the way to go in place of greater gun control.
“The heckler criticized Cruz for voting against a gun legislation bill that passed through the House and Senate with bipartisan support and was signed by President Biden in June.
Cruz responded by pointing to his proposed school safety bill that was blocked Wednesday by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who accused Cruz of conducting ‘theater.’”
Why was the Cruz bill blocked???
The Cruz bills would have allotted $25 billion to place security officers and mental health workers in schools and tripled FEMA’s grant program for school security. Cruz’s bills would have also barred schools accused of teaching Repubs interpreted version of critical race theory or for claims of advocating for abortion.
The heckler did not bring that point up with Cruz. It would have been a 100 percent shut down of Cruz. The coward who acquiesced to trump.
Ken:
As one traveler on the plane said to the heckler, “Let the man travel in peace.”
Why should Cruz and others get a bye for supporting trump? Why should they go unnoticed for their stance? They are supposed to be there for the population instead of special interests and “trump.” Cruz, Graham, and the rest of them need to be peacefully called out for their stance.
Cruz knows what he did in the Senate when he proposed a bill to increase security, but only if schools do not approach what they claim to be CRT. Then he accuses a Dem Senator of deliberately blocking a bill meant to provide greater protection to children in school. Another ploy by Cruz and Republicans to cast Dems as evil because they will not support a bill to provide greater protection in place of limiting the ability of buying bullet-spewing-weapons willy-nilly without background checks and greater security involving the purchase. And now their interpretation of CRT is being used as a foil preventing funding for the same security if they do not agree with the interpretation.
Why aren’t more people angry with Cruz and the others? They deserve to be heckled and called out.
Run
they deserve more than that. they deserve to be laughed out of town.
but given that that is not going to happen. and given that “gun control” is not going to happen, we need to deal with the reality we have.
i am on record (here) as suggesting that lock the doors single entry is a good first step to protecting kids in schools. i did not know at the time that “lock the doors” also meant “cops in schools” and a general Fascist approack to “public safety.” Nevertheless, without the fascism, locked doors is a good first step until we have found a way to keep guns and knives out of the hands of crazy people…without locking all of us up all the time or alienating half the population who do believe (however erroneously) that owning a gun helps protect their family.
i am on your side as to goals, but i think your means, and especially your rhetoric (not “yours=Run’s” but the general leftish “your”) is self defeating.
i think maybe…maybe… the people that Ken Melvin properly names here are tolerated not because of cowardice–fear of bullies–(unless we all have something to hide)…but because they were elected, and since they were we need to deal with them, and that means relatively politely, while trying to defeat them without destroying the Constitution and the very rule of law we cite when it goes our way.
Coberly:
Like Cruz did, these elected officials do not take people like the heckler seriously. They believe they can tell you lies that the heckler, you, or I will not be able to rebut. We have spent far too long a time going along with the rhetoric. Un the sixties till the early seventies, 58,000 of us died in an unwinnable war whose foundation was laid upon supposition, conjecture, and innuendo. Short of nuking them which the French could have done if they took Dulles’s offer of a couple of bombs, we were not going to win. Afghanistan was another mistake.
The lies by the Cruzes, Grahams, Rubios, Abbotts, DeSantis’s, etc. will continue until they are confronted with the truth by people like you, I, and the heckler. Once they know, we know the truth, they will not lie. You can not let them have peace or continue the lies.
Coberly:
You have a comment in the trash. Do you want it or not?
Run
I was not advocatimg we not confront the liars. I was saying that it’s not that we are afraid of bullies. It is that we follow the norms of our democracy lest we descent into something like permanent civil war. This mostly applies to why we don’t beat them up on the floor of the Senate, and don’t drag them to jail without due process.
I am pretty sure they will keep lying when they know we know. They will still have 80 million followers who don’t know or don’t care that they are lying: they think they are in on the joke. What they want is the “freedom” to beat you up if they imagine you are in their way or just looking down on them.
I confronted the liars when their names were Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, and Hubert Humphrey.
Run
i have no idea what comment it is or why it is in the trash…can you send it to me?
okay. i can guess. yes i would like it to be published here if htat’s okay with you.
i think i had a computer error just as i posted it.
I think they’re selling wolf-tickets. I think they think there’s more of them than there are.
And I think when the offal makes contact with the atmospheric oscillator half of them will only stop running long enough to ditch the kakis’ and pretty polos.
Break out the firehoses, like they did me, wash that trash out to sea …
Ted Cruz has thrown in his lot with Trump.
Lindsey Graham has also thrown in his lot with Trump.
Marco Rubio has thrown in his lot with Trump.
About 99% of the GOP hierarchy has done so.
Now is the time for all good people to NOT do that.
True
Ken,
What does the “NC” stand for in your opening line phrase “Sen. Lindsey Graham, NC?” Graham has been one of the US Senators from SC since 2003. Graham appears to be a bit too effeminate and genteel for NC redneck tastes. He is a better fit for the more polite crowd in Charleston, Myrtle Beach, and Hilton Head, SC.
Thanks