Marie Antoinette’s infamous snark was probably never uttered, but it lingers nevertheless as one of the most fantastic instances of false empathy ever fabricated. To her starving subjects, bread and revolution were the cravings of the hour, and they would not be slaked by hollow and oblivious condescension. Thus to the guillotine she went…
Decapitation has since become distasteful, but if history does indeed recycle itself, equally unattractive fates surely await those bastardly Republican prigs who preen themselves as open-minded and moderate, yet do nothing save to doom the poor wretches they pander to. Of course by this I mean Jeff Flake, Susan Collins and other Republicans of that particularly nauseating breed—though, I admit, it is a dying one, as most no longer even bluff moderation or bipartisanship.
The baldest lie believed today is the notion that such Republicans are refreshing or worthy of special praise. Not one bit. Jeff Flake is a radical. Susan Collins is a radical. They talk a big game, sure; all frauds do. But when it matters most they can always be relied upon to betray all hope stupidly rested in them.
One typically reserves the term “hypocrite” for innocent personal contradictions. Far worse, this ilk knowingly and strategically abandons their own moralistic whimpering to sustain conservative support and extract sympathy from saner folk. Well they won’t get mine, nor should they get yours. Indeed, history will remember them as they are: evil charlatans complicit in Donald’s bulldozer to American democracy.
Simultaneously, they scold Trump’s tongue and kiss his bottom (one almost feels bad for them here). Both were unwavering in their criticism of his careless and callow tax-bill. That is, until they had to vote on it, at which point peer-pressure clouded the critical eye. Now swells both the deficit and distance between rich and poor and, in an instant, decades of Republican pontification about fiscal responsibility crumbled to dust—all to succor a psychotic con-man bankrupt in so many ways. (Ah, so much for the milquetoast caricature ascribed to liberals…)
And what of the Supreme Court? By overlooking Mitch McConnell’s unconstitutional rejection of Merrick Garland, and by elevating a plausible sex-predator in Brett Kavanaugh, these “moderate” and “high-minded” Republicans catalyzed the Supreme Court’s degeneration into a partisan power-racket.
Before this, it took being cornered in an elevator by survivors of sexual violence for Flake to feign empathy. This precipitated the limited FBI “investigation” that Flake himself lamented. Did this bring his vote into question? Of course not. It was a feint from the start.
What about Susan Collins, who proved a traitor not just to her own gender but to the principles espoused by St. Lawrence? It is popular even for liberals appalled by her decision to nonetheless take refuge in the “sincerity” and “thoughtfulness” of her remarks. Excuse me, what? Her long, unlettered oral spillage spoke like napkin scribblings. Even after one rescues the essence from its delivery, one finds a smarmy indifference for the sanctity of survivors as well as the Supreme Court.
For her and for Flake, it doesn’t matter whether there’s a chance Kavanaugh tortured and molested women, so long as there’s a chance that he didn’t. So excuse me if my nostrils shrivel whenever they ululate nostalgia for more serious and decent politics, or whenever credulous onlookers posture them as embodiments of such aspirations.
This latter tendency sickens me most. Why bedazzle something—nay, someone—so gross and dangerous? The excuses lobbed to preserve their simulacrum of a principled and dignified tenure are as disgusting as the sham itself. People want to believe that nobility exists on both sides. But it doesn’t—not anymore.
In the conservative camp, the cave-dwelling fanatics have become indistinguishable from the serious and the civilized. When literally zero Republicans are affected by Dr. Ford’s haunting testimony, or by Trump’s obscene assaults on the Constitution and integrity of the Office, or by the injection of alt-right conspiracies into the GOP bloodstream, or by Russian cyber-attacks on American democracy, the time has come to stop pretending that both sides shoulder blame for the fall of the Republic.
The time has also come to quit costuming ugly radicals as fair-minded moderates. Flake-ites preach but do not practice. By slimily pretending to care, they get away with never actually caring. They never have, and never will. To their angry and exasperated constituents, action and leadership are the needs of the hour, and windy sermonizing simply will not do.
Lucky for them, they’ll be pushed out before the palace is stormed. Nor are there any guillotines with which to show our appreciation for their false solace. But like the French with Marie Antoinette, it is from their ashes that, eventually, we will have our cake—and I dare say that we will eat it too.