Embryos, Fetuses and Babies

 

American exceptionality does not apply to a woman’s right to choose, except in the most negative of interpretations.  The Western Democracies have basically settled this issue, and for the last 50 years we thought we had overcome this contentious pinata. 

 

If one believes that life begins at conception, the basic argument of the pro-life lobby, then abortion is a sin, an evil, a killing of a potential human being having no choice in the matter.  This being will never exist, will never see the light of day, the first suckling of their mother’s breast, their first kiss, their first ball catch, their first love, the warmth of a fireplace, the gentle fall of rain from the heavens.  That life has been snuffed out for eternity. 

 

If you believe that life begins at viability, 28 weeks as delineated in Roe v. Wade, that a woman is entitled to her own choice concerning an unwanted pregnancy, or whose life is at stake, or that the social implications of back-alley abortions outweigh their moral opprobrium, then Roe should be upheld.  Poor and disadvantaged, mostly minority women, will be forced to carry a baby to term, even if she is raped, even if the father is absent, even if she cannot afford to put food on the table or milk in the bottle because enraged political tribes, advocating freedom from government, following a distorted social polemic, wish the government to impose carrying a child to term, unwanted, uncared for, and unfed. 

 

The magnitude of the political implications of the decision have been going round and round for 50 years.  Jurists agonize whether the constitution specifies a right to privacy, and whether that right is an “emanation from the penumbra” of it.  Valid legal arguments exist on both sides of the issue.   And the constitution really is what the Supreme Court of the United States says it is, evolving, textual, or original.  As I listened to the arguments advanced by both sides, I was happy that I was not going to decide.   No matter the decision, a large portion of the population will vociferously disagree, and like, Donald Trump, will stick around like some enraged toxic cement.  Analyzing federalism as a determinant of a woman being able to choose whether to abort early on seems like intellectual masturbation.  Both sides present valid legal arguments as we know that the decision will be based on the faux sanctimony of the justices own beliefs, just as it was in Plessy v. Ferguson or in Dred Scott depriving rights, rather than conferring them, as in Brown v. Board of Education, noting that “separate but equal being inherently unequal.” 

 

Clearly, the right answer is illusive and equally clear will be the consequences if Roe is overturned or eroded, or incrementally chipped away.  Poor people living in the former confederate states, for the most part will be deprived of the rights set forth in Roe; economically comfortable people will fly to a blue state to get an abortion. 

 

Ross Douthat, of the New York Times argues that laws preventing abortions have resulted in fewer abortions, buttressing his conventional arguments, that killing an embryo is the killing of a human organism and that women can still find work if they persevere despite childbearing, but mentions nothing about the state providing sustenance for unwanted babies.  This agrees with most GOP legislators, be they from Alabama, Mississippi, or Texas.  And do not forget our former president, although heaven knows how many abortions he financed. 

 

Meanwhile Republicans in Congress, still believe that children can carry guns, semi-automatic rifles and large ammo clips to shoot up their schools, kill their classmates, reaping the harvest of death that pro-life advocates decry, with no regard for the social consequences that the prohibitions will evoke. 

 

The rest of the world, except some authoritarian states in the Mid-East, laugh at the cognitive dissonance of our political class, including a supposedly apolitical Supreme Court of the United States. 

 

We need term limits of 18 years on Supreme Court Justices, and in that way, each President will get two choices for a new Justice, consequently the Stonewalling of a nominee will become more difficult. And Congress should codify national abortion rights, as most of the public favors those rights, despite what they think in Mississippi, Texas and Alabama. 

 

 

Running from Ennui

 

Passion seems to be bestowed as a blessing on few people but seeking it is a not inconsiderable chore conferred on the many.

 

I am not officially retired, but it seems that way.  The clients call less and the work I did as a trial lawyer has become less and less appetizing.    Business has diminished, not only because I am seventy-nine years of age, but because I have zero desire to market myself like a snake oil salesman.  I leave that particularly odious practice to well-funded and battle stationed Morgan and Morgan and others, whose legions of paralegals, investigators, paid experts and well-staffed soldiers battle with insurance companies, and “fight for you,” its overworked lawyers all the while complaining to their colleagues and family that they hate what they do.

Fifty years at the bar, and I do not mean Flanagan’s, is enough, so I leave the task of transferring wealth from one party to another and taking a piece of the action the alleged passion of the many. I do still consult with clients, if I can be of help them.

 

I wonder if I can achieve a modicum of mastery the piano, considering that when I took violin lessons as a youth, the bandleader working at my dad’s upstate New York hotel, a Catskill fiddler by the name of Billy Rogers (nee Rosenberg) who, admittedly, was not a music teacher, told my father, that I was the “dumbest, most tone-deaf child he had ever met.”   But then again, he was no Isaac Stern nor even a music teacher.  Music teachers do not scream at their beginning ten-year-old students. The sole reason Dad asked him to teach me was because a guest had left a violin in one of his hotel rooms.  Before my dad’s discovered violin aspirations for me, I had expressed neither the interest nor the inclination to play the most difficult, annoying instrument, or torturing everyone within hearing distance. “Press the strings until your fingers bleed and you develop callouses,” said Billy. I do not recall what happened to the violin or Billy, although he was aged in 1952.  Dad either sold the violin or most likely, gave it away.  Another serial disappointment from his son, I guess.

 

After becoming a lawyer, I decided I would learn to play tennis. And I loved it. I was addicted. I became reasonably competent, starting at the age of 35, and playing regularly until I hit 70 and had spine surgery laying me up a few years.  I was never the best, but I was pretty good, had a good serve and tried to play again a few years ago, losing to a younger fellow who had been playing just a few years. I had beaten him soundly before.  Never fast on my feet, my molasses-like movements said, time to hang up the sneakers.

 

Life is a series of things being taken from you.

 

At 55 I had taken up golf.  I think I have a pretty good swing, but athletically, I needed time to learn, ( a nice way to say I am a slow learner) and time is running out.  Although that would not stop me, if I had some agreeable companions with whom to play.  Many of the friends whose company I enjoyed have died or fallen away.  There is nothing worse than spending 18 holes with someone monumentally annoying. “Nice putt,” they said, as my ball sped past the hole.  Plus, most golfers do not share my politics and, inevitably, an afternoon of enjoyment turns into a dumpster fire.  Most players who are Republicans, cheat.   The shoe wedge or miscounting the score is a frequently insufferable habitude of the right-wing selfish, individualist, “let them eat cake” crowd.

 

Now, when my days are not consumed by interminably long doctor’s visits or some new ailment appears, I am seeking something to do with my spare time.  Going to the hospital or delivering goodies to the ill and infirm is too depressing, since I already am depressed about most people walking past me as though I did not exist.  I have become irrelevant and invisible, both not particularly enviable results of my wrinkles and weathered skin and increasingly whitening hair. A grey ghost.

 

I suppose I should take comfort that a geezer like Joe Biden could be president, gaining inspiration from him.   But he seems so delicate, so frail now, that a stiff breeze would blow him over or he might stumble coming down the stairs of Air Force One.  It is frightening to behold.

Still, Joe beats the alternative--the orange-colored crook who is still peddling the big lie.

 

The country is in the worst crisis since the great depression, and Joe is not FDR.

 

Which brings me back to the piano.  I asked a neighbor who is a music teacher at an exclusive private school, “Is learning the piano at 79 doable?”  He replied, “definitely, it will be good for your mind. Always keep two hands on the keyboard and learn musical notation.”   I replied that I had purchased a book that said I will be able to play a Bach prelude within six weeks if I practiced 45 minutes per day. Encouraging.  I guess I will find out if it can be my new passion.

 

David Wieder Nov. 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MV 2021

9.21.21

 

Martha’s Vineyard is lovely in mid-September. The evenings are cool, yet still comfortable outside, dining in a short-sleeved shirt.  We are staying at a house that occupies a prominence of land over the ocean, and the vegetation is still green, scruffy salt-resistant growths that do not resemble their Floridian cousins.  The plants do not grow high enough to obscure the view of the sea on this little tip of the western part of the island.  The roads are all two lane and there are no traffic lights anywhere.  Stop signs govern the passage of traffic, most of which must obey a speed limit of 30 miles per hour.  Cyclists further inhibit the time in which it takes to get to Edgartown, the largest village on the Vineyard 25 miles away. Part of our trip there includes a trek down a gravely, ungraded road that tortures the suspension of any car.   But it Is worth it.

 

Sitting out on the terrace of this house makes me contemplate the different culture here of the inhabitants, mostly affluent deserters of New York and Boston.  Edgartown is a Disneyfied collage of gingerbread houses, dating from the 17^th and 18^th centuries, carefully maintained, curated, and restored.   Some of it seems to be unreal in its reality, like some Hollywood set prepared for a screwball Katherine Hepburn-Cary Grant rom-com. The stores and restaurants exude a come hither feeling for crustacean-stuffed inside some super fattening butter rolls.

 

There are no streetlights on the roads, which host nearby trees that one slip of the wheel could kill.  Still, the charm although a bit over the top, beckons one to return.  With all its preserved authenticity, it seems surreal and almost disingenuous.  Even so, there is no crime to speak of, because thieves would have to take the ferry to escape.   Not very practical.

 

Being here helps to not consider all the problems of America.  A rogue who wishes to destroy the rule of law, his enablers in the House and Senate who support his maledictions, and state governors and legislators, who, mounting an outrageous attack upon the franchise of the poor and the uneducated by exploiting the ignorance of their base whose attention span and literacy have now vanished into a fetid sea of social media, populism and tribal feuds, a divisive porridge of animosity, exacerbated by demagoguery.  Here, on the Vineyard, it all seems so remote.

 

I am wondering how this all will end just as those who, in 1860, saw the Union, a house divided, tumbling into a sanguinary Civil war ripping the nation to shreds.  Nations are born and die on a rule of law, designed to temper the passions of tribally impulsive inclinations, many of which are genetically violent. Our history is replete with demagogues preying upon the people for their own benefit, enabled by economic hard times and changes in technology.

 

The old trope of being condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past, is verified by the numerous wars and adventures culminating in failure since the end of World War II. I am not sure that the American public any longer has the capacity to understand the world around them.  When so many can believe that suppressing the vote will make the Union better, will provide more democracy, will ensure a better life and keep America white, nationalist and tribal, then we are in for a rough ride indeed. If the Confederacy had won the “war between the states,” what would have been the result?  Two nations?  One red and one blue? Isn’t that what we have now? Would there have been a civil rights movement in the Confederacy? 

 

Was that bloody war killing 700,000 Americans necessary?  While our culture is evolving (for the better), some would argue, not that much.  Think about it.  A southern confederacy of states based upon slavery existed, at least longer than it should have, and a northern industrial behemoth, outstripping it, also based on divisive wealth and inequality prevailed over a southern agricultural economy, the industry of which was supplying cotton to the mills of the north and to Europe, the upper classes of which profited from slavery in the south and economic servitude in the north.  Would that have changed if the Confederacy had survived?

 

Alternative histories as much as what really happened, are  philosophical/political speculations, but they are instructive. 

 

Philip Roth, in his prescient novel, “The Plot Against America” speculates what would have happened if Charles Lindbergh, a Germanophilic, racist Nazi sympathizer had been elected president in 1940, defeating FDR.   Jewish boys are sent to work camps, and a rabbi who thinks that he will win personal and political advancement, mistakes patronization and manipulation by Lindberg to him, in order to convince the Jewish community to support Charles Lindbergh. An ironical rabbinic dupe, who through his gullibility misleads his kin into a maelstrom of deceit.  At least he was just stupid, not a sociopathic liar.   Well, that is for another time.

 

Now it is time to leave this splendid island and return to Miami Beach the other island in my life, it being filled with diversity, excitement, and at my stage of the game hopefully a better year than last.

 

 

 

A Universe of Chaos

 

This past week, my grandson’s close friend and fraternity brother at U Chicago was shot in the neck by a stray bullet, while riding the L from a summer internship in downtown Chicago.   A random bullet severed his cervical spinal column.  Rushed to the hospital, placed on a ventilator, his family asked him to blink if he wanted to remain on life support.  He was alert and his mother, herself a physician, told him he would not be able to eat, talk, or breathe off a ventilator.   He responded that if he had to live that way, pull the plug. A rising junior at a solid institution, died a meaningless death.

 

Recently, a condominium collapsed not far from my home burying alive around 150 people whist they slept.   Some of them were religious Jews who probably said a prayer to God before bedtime; some were secular or religious Christians who also said their nightly prayer.

Some of those people attended daily religious services, hoping their prayers would be answered.  A friend of mine, deeply religious said she would “pray for them.” 

 

The first hurricane of the season has passed by Miami; part of an insensitive, uncaring universe, surrounding us in a web of uncertainty.  The hurricane will do damage elsewhere, nature randomly choosing another unfortunate destination.  People will pray that it does not hit their location, that it goes elsewhere.  But aren’t they indirectly praying that other people suffer instead of themselves?

 

If you are a deist, you believe that a force greater than yourself has created a mountain of chaos—the universe where there is no predestination, no plan, only a random lottery that determines where we are born, where our supposed choices take us, what sort of government will govern us, how we do not really understand the choices we make.  Like the man who walks down the sidewalk, a plant pot drops from a window above, killing him, or just misses because he has passed by a moment earlier.  By some accident of biology, we are born, fortunately not in Afghanistan.  

 

Religion offers comfort to those who believe that prayer will cohere friends around them, and the habit of observing primitive dietary rules will cement their beliefs to a ritual that will strengthen their tribe.  Catholics eat fish on Friday and a biscuit that represents the body of Christ.  Jews will not eat pork or shrimp or mix meat and dairy, because of rules set forth in a Bronze age text of unknown authorship.  Muslims will not eat pork. People belonging to organized religious groups thank whatever god they pray to will answer their prayers which are essentially selfish desires to make them stronger, to be protected in war, for victory over the enemy, to survive disease, to have the courage to move on or to be charitable, to help others, to give them a sense of community.  Or does it create a parochialism that either anathematizes them to other communities, makes them different, or a likely scapegoat for people in other tribes?  When disaster strikes, they achieve solace in thanking God for sparing them. If they die, loved ones say prayers to strengthen their own resilience. 

 

Does this delusion really create order in a chaotic world?  

 

If one argues about the survival of Jews, one could conclude that Judaism survived as a result of extraneous hate which prevented them from owning property or land, caused them to become moneylenders because the Church prohibited Christians from charging interest on loans to other Christians.  Therefore, Jews were the only ones who could do so, ergo the perverse anti-Semitic trope that Jews were greedy merchants of finance.

 

 

I wonder how many people in the Champlain towers said prayers before going to sleep, how many Jewish children of the two million murdered during the Holocaust said “shema Yisrael,” before being gassed to death, incinerated by unspeakably evil people who had been indoctrinated to believe that those children were subhuman rodents--it was their duty to exterminate them. Those Nazis followed their own religion, that of a murderous cult.  They did not evolve quickly; their religious indoctrination having followed 2000 years of church liturgy that said Jews were Christ killers, using the blood of Christian children to bake Matzos on Passover.   Generations of Jews guilty of the death of Christ, himself born a Jew and dying a Jew. One cannot argue with the cult of Trump. It has become its own abandonment of reason, its own religion.  His adherents believe his lies and attend his rallies as though they were a religious service.  Jewish Zealots believe that God gave them the land of Judea and Samaria, when it was the British and French promising the and to two disparate peoples at the dissolution of the Ottoman empire which had ruled the land for centuries.  The Ottomans picked the wrong side in the First World War.  One cannot argue with religion.

 

Human moral codes historically evolved before religion; polytheistic religions were certainly more tolerant than monotheistic, the latter of which is responsible for the a priori negation of other faiths.  Organized religion only evolved in the last 5000 years, on the evolutionary scale, an instant, on a geologic scale, a millisecond.  The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.  Yet during those 5000 years, it provided the justification for war, pogroms, crusades, charlatans, false prophets, and flocks of lemmings abandoning their sense of reason to hate others.  

 

Granted, religion also aspires for people to be good, love thy neighbor, but has it succeeded?  Evangelicals made a Faustian deal with a scoundrel and grifter, because they believed he would appoint a Supreme Court that would enforce an abnegation of the Founder’s strictures of separation of church and state, and that more of the country would join their megachurches, hypnotizing their congregations, compelling the flock to give the preacher a bigger house and a Rolex.  Politicians fixated on these beliefs, unctuously cater to these fantasies so they can win elections. They do not understand the framer’s intent: Freedom from religion. Ergo, the thriving of religion in this nation, and aspirational tolerance of others.  No state religion.

 

Elites like the brilliant Alexander Hamilton, thought that the common people were not able to govern themselves or devise our financial system, so he did it himself.  He did not believe that some supernatural force would do it for him.  Nor did he believe that evil would be dispelled by prayer.

 

Thomas Jefferson said to keep the preachers away from politics.  Jefferson understood human frailty and, for his time, thought that the people should govern themselves, but God should be left to theologians, not politicians; the theologians would keep the illiterate masses quiet, including his slaves.

 

Abraham Lincoln never mentioned the trinity, and some people thought he was a Jew.  He was not, but he invoked God in many of his speeches; perhaps he understood that his countrymen were not yet ready to liberate themselves from superstition so biblical allusions provoked loyalty in constituents or contributed profundity to his utterances.  Or perhaps he was a deist as many at the time accused him.

 

Religion is an excellent germination point for hypocrisy; giving those who profess it the opportunity to manipulate the flock, to incite people not to think for themselves or develop their own philosophy of life.  That is--to think for themselves.  They demagogy of theology. 

 

As science advances exponentially, religion has become more and more irrelevant, more difficult to reconcile with reality.  A majority of young people today do not attend religious services.  They engage in the new religions of Sports, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tinder.  They seek meaning in a life that many find meaningless.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Runaway Train

 

Been wondering lately about all the haters, negativists, half-baked opinionators, talking heads of whom I have become wretchedly weary in these days of almost post pandemic and post Trumpian cauchemars.

 

Been thinking about the early days of the Republic when there were no restrictions on immigration.  Actually, immigration was uncontrolled until 1921.  Whoever wanted to come could.  They faced sweatshops, unrestricted child labor, and unremitting social Darwinism.  These immigrants, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Greek, German, and others all were white, and mostly able to read and write, enjoyed stable family structures upon which to build a semblance of a free life.  Let them come again, but they stood on the shoulders of those who came before.

 

They, and the backs of slaves built this country.  “Manifest destiny” was a euphemism for stealing land from native Americans and Mexicans. Although whites faced discrimination, they did not inherit the bones of Jim Crow as is manifested still by those who oppose the teaching of “critical race theory,” falsely claiming that it is teaching blacks to be racists, to hate whites.  This is simply a bold-faced lie as wretched as the lie that that the capitol insurrection was “just a small riot,” as averred by such “patriots” as Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, all of whom supported the big lie and charge Democrat racism based upon a rejection of historical fact.

 

African American immigrants arrived in slave ships, were sold into bondage, their families separated by slavers, who sold children, mothers, sons and fathers to different masters.  This stain on our history is comparable to the most unspeakable of human crimes. This grotesque history belies the premise that “all men are created equal.”

 

Now we are engaged in a possible transmogrification of our republic to a frightfully totalitarian dystopia, having a large portion of the population actually believing the ravings of a demented madman, that the election of 2020 was stolen from him, undermining the essential character of our Republic—free and fair elections.  GOP efforts abound in Republican legislatures to suppress the vote with restrictions aimed at minorities.

 

When President Biden met Mr. Putin this week in Geneva, Putin shamelessly argued the false equivalence that the insurrection at our capitol, killing 5, trying to send even lickspittle Mike Pence to be hanged, wounding others and threatening senators with death if they did not overturn the will of the people by returning Trump to the White House.  

 

Illustratively, Putin’s imprisonment of a political opponent he had poisoned unsuccessfully, successfully murdering other opponents, we see “How Democracies Die,” as the noted political historian Timothy Snyder of Yale has written.   The big lie is happening here, just as in Putin’s Russia.

 

It is not only the rule of law that protects us, but also the respect for the norms of democracy that bind us together.  Think about Weimar Germany and the rise of Hitler, who was democratically elected but incrementally turned the nation of Beethoven, Schiller, and Wagner to a nation of hate and murderous rage against helpless men, women and children.

 

Leadership matters, as Philip Roth documented in his monumental work, “The Plot Against America,” wherein a Nazi sympathizing Charles Lindbergh becomes President of the United States defeating Franklin Roosevelt, resulting in totalitarian overtones of fascism, sending Jewish children to workcamps.

 

The question that must be asked of all thinking people of whatever caste or persuasion, whatever socio-economic status, is what they would do to prevent an economic and political catastrophe or which policies would best serve our nation.  Certainly, Mitch McConnell sees none, his Machiavellian breast to argue in the next election that Biden “did nothing.”  Democrats must deliver, abolish the filibuster, before it is too late. Use the power now, because it is fleeting.

 

 “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln famously said.   

 

We fell into a bloody civil war.  Brother against brother, father against son, families torn asunder, a war killing more than 700,000 on the bloody battlefields of Antietam, Manassas, Gettysburg and Chattanooga, among others. 

 

And if we look back, this war took from 1787 until 1860 to develop.  The original three fifths compromise, the Missouri compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska act.  All attempts to place a band aid over gangrene.  We face far greater challenges than how states would be admitted to the Union; we face a changing climate, international competition, rising authoritarianism, and we are anxious, depressed.  Jim Crow is alive, still.

 

If, however, identity politics caused wars, it was the economic causes engendered by religion and prejudice that lit the fire.  This tribal notion of “others” stealing our homes, our dignity and our fortunes certainly caused more war than religious disputes alone.  These two shibboleths are inherent in the human psyche.  Identity politics is the bête noir of society.  Until we have overcome these demons there will be no peace.  But the bad news is that cultures change very slowly; we are in a culture infused war both internally and worldwide.

 

One thing for sure, stilted propaganda TV is not helpful.  And we are not even sure that education makes a difference.  People may not agree on policy, but if they cannot agree that the sun shines during the day, we are on a runaway train without Denzel Washington to put on the brakes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How did this happen?

               “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Public”

                      H. L. Mencken.

 

The end is near; Trump is exiting stage right in an ignominious testament to greed, narcissism, mendacity and ignorance.  The very idea of this Richard III presidency is something I have been trying to figure out for the past 4 years.  The enigma is a mystery, wrapped inside a riddle, as the Winston Churchill coinage goes.

 

Arguments range from Trump preying on the gullibility of the American public, to the intense rationalization that he was even able to convince intelligent people that he would “drain the swamp,” and clean up the fetid mess of corruption that is Washington, DC, a slog of lobbyists in Gucci loafers and congressmen in a never-ending rotating door, stuffing their pockets with cash in brown envelopes at the expense of the taxpayer.  Also, “job creating” plutocrats thinking Trump would improve their portfolios, keeping the stock market high and their taxes low.  Only 20% of Americans own stocks.

 

The grift continues, Trump having raised hundreds of millions of dollars, ostensibly for a 2024 run, but which will certainly be diverted to his legal defense as he is pursued by numerous district attorneys, the justice department, and attorneys general.  Not to mention his multitudinous oligarchical Deutche Bank creditors in Russia (Putin) and Saudi Arabia. And let’s not forget the rape and defamation suits by various women such as E. Jean Carol.

 

This week, a mob of insurrectionists invaded the Capitol, believing the lies promulgated by Trump, nakedly at a podium, lying to them, that he would march along with them toward the palace of our republic.  Instead, he got into his hermetically sealed limo and skulked back to the White House to view the spectacle he had created and delighted in viewing an enraged mob ransacking the place.   Trump probably entered nirvana when one of the invaders sat with his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, almost like his voyeuristic leering at the disrobed Miss Universe contestants in their dressing room.

 

While CNN pundits screeched outrage, “treason and sedition,” Laura Ingraham’s pallid, raspy imitation of Tallulah Bankhead’s voice discussed how the Democrats were trying to impeach Trump “never having given him the benefit of the doubt,” saying nothing about the desecration of the Capitol which Abraham Lincoln rushed to complete during the Civil War, emphasizing the strength of the Union.  Where Franklin D. Roosevelt requested a declaration of war upon Japan on December 8, 1941. Where Winston Churchill spoke during a joint session of congress in December 1941, shortly after the United States entered the war against Germany and Japan. Where Woodrow Wilson advocated for the League of Nations after the bloodletting of World War I. Where Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, John Lewis, and other great statesman had lain in state. Our historic Capitol, the seat of our government, the triumph of our democracy, where notables, and the framers enjoy memorialization and statuary, invaded by a mob of rabid rioters stoked by a deranged and deluded president, falsely alleging the election had been stolen.

 

Earlier, Ted Cruz, described as a “serpent covered in Vaseline,” and Josh Hawley, his fist held mob-high, disgraced themselves, turning a ceremonial procedure registering the electoral votes, to their own political benefit, sending fund raising emails.  History will not look kindly upon this sordid spectacle.   They should apologize and resign.

We saw Lindsey Graham, jumping over the side of the sinking Titanic, pushing women and children out of the way, securing his seat on the lifeboat.  This, after his demonstrated hypocrisy during the Merick Garland episode, the about face on Amy Barrett, and two switches from Trump denigrator to admirer.  Calling Graham a prostitute insults the world’s oldest profession.  The power-hungry Mitch McConnell, now minority leader, forgive the cliché, had also sowed the wind and now reaps the whirlwind.  His enablement of Trump over the last four years will not sit well with historians, excepting perhaps the example of how power corrupts.

 

Responsibility for this abounds.  Fox news hosts and Rupert Murdoch have contributed mightily to the lying and false narrative presented to the public.  News used to be a nonprofit enterprise of the major networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, presented as a public service, now transmogrified into a greedy crucible determined by marketers and audience demographics.  Ratings avarice on Tucker and Laura and Hannity clearly do not help our country.  Orwellian presentation of the news divides the public and shames its progenitors.

 

Republican house members now see their ranks riven with mutual accusations of who bears the burden for the nation’s disheartening catastrophe.    A split of Republicans of principle and those of amoral self-interest dwells on the horizon.   Elected acolytes of Trumpian amorality should know that their day of reckoning has arrived.