Index

Courage? Seriously?

Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner wrote on Substack (March 17) calling Adam Kinzinger’s Twitter mea culpa a possible Profile in Courage. In a nuanced piece, they said that they considered him courageous for his admission. They claimed this in spite of Kinzinger’s voting against other critical pro-democracy bills in Congress.

I appreciated the nuance and thought that went into the piece, but they wasted their energies. Kinzinger’s talking points came from public relations consultants, not real beliefs. If Kinzinger actually cared, he couldn’t still be a member of the party of fascists. Even the so-called “centrist” GOP are nothing but mouthpieces for corporate oligarchs.

My first thought was to compare Kinzinger to far-more-honest sorts like Amy McGrath and Charles Booker of Kentucky. They ran or are running for Senate against Moscow Mitch and Rand Paul. They had very little chance of winning against the well-financed GOP. They bared themselves, their children, their families, and their lives to the world’s best-paid liars and their smear campaigns. That needed far more courage than claiming mea culpa on a dead issue.

In the end, though, I am not sure. At times, it looks like Booker and McGrath are more foolish than brave. What they do looks like a political version of tilting at windmills, Don Quixote on the political stage. The corporate oligarchs and their billions are still kingmakers to the fascists. This leaves honest politicians very little chance. Excluding honest politicians from power leaves the oligarchy’s wholly-owned fascists there. This catch-22 has defined the politics of the United States federal government since at least Ronald Reagan.

We have had occasional side trips through some Democratic presidents. We have more than once had Democratic majorities in Congress. In spite of these, there has been no real change in the direction of governance–the Luddites (see here and here) have been and remain in control. For a British take on it, see here.

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought. - Simon Cameron

We now have a real president in the Whitehouse, kicking out the previous pretender. Unfortunately, “honest politicians” (see quote above) have stopped needed changes. The energy industry owns Manchin - he stopped global warming legislation. Big Pharma owns Synema - she stops any legislation that would relieve our corporate medical burden. When the fascists were still in control of the Senate, they rammed through a corrupt collection of false “justices” onto the Supreme Court. This has destroyed any credibility the court might have had.

We can only hope that at some point we can turn the ship of state around and start acting like a democracy of human beings again. I can’t say that I have much hope, though. Right now, it looks like the fascists of the former party of Lincoln will crush “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”