When the good ship Cheney sank into the Green River last night, and for a moment, I regretted someone of flexible integrity losing a primary, at the same time, I grinned broadly. Undeniably, history will call Rep. Elizabeth Cheney a patriot. I hope that history and Democrats also do not forget her tug boat line was tied to a garbage scow of warmongering, tax cuts for the rich, homophobia, denying voting rights, and taking away body autonomy from women. When I need a fix of torturous liberalism, I tune into MSNBC. Though their partisan bias feeds my political leanings, I am fully aware I watch to wash my palate of the phony both sides do it corporate pablum fed to me by CNN and the Sunday morning talks shows.
Former Rudy Giuliani aide Ken Frydman made a case for his old boss feeling “nervous” on CNN, “At this point in his life, his goal is to die a free man,”said Frydman. Reasonably, a range of opinions and ideas is needed to find the truth. Still, I want to gag when I see John Bolton continue his book tour on mainstream news outlets or a bevy of former Trump administration spokespeople rehabilitating their embarrassing choice of working for Trump. At those points, I read or find alternatives like Democracy Now. One must be cautious of living in a bottomless political vortex of cruelty, greed, and avarice. At the same time, one must be careful of living in a one-sided silo of information.
To her[Cheney] credit and to the credit of mainly women, who have spoken openly against the former President, men in the GOP have been either eerily silent or propped up their idol with disinformation or downright lies. Although it is an honor to serve the country in the White House, some of these people were staffers with a modicum of influence, such as Olivia Troye, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Stephanie Grisham. Griffin’s rehab has gotten her a job as a panelist on The View. Confusing influence with assistance seems to be a flaw in all their excuses. I struggled with what has become a blanket argument for members of Trump’s former entourage; I stayed because I tried to be a ‘check’ on what was happening in the administration. There is a sympathetic and admirable quality to those speaking out in the face of professional and physical threat but quietly watching the arsonist and then complaining of the heat later bears some weighty introspection. Some spoke out and disappeared from the scene; Rex Tillerson, Generals McMaster, James Mattis, and John Kelly—who may have disgraced himself most. I suspect McMaster, Mattis, and Kelly quietly departed the stage out of a sense of duty and loyalty. Tillerson sought clearer skies trying to purge his carbon footprint from a polluted presidency. Although some opine that Tillerson caused irreparable harm to the State Department, he reportedly said that Trump was a “moron.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence is the most cowardly of all those involved in the Trump administration. Mr. Pence had his life, and that of his family, threatened with death by a mob organized by the former President, yet Pence cowers and demurs, still, at the mention of Trump’s name. Pence was lauded for performing a Constitutional duty, hardly heroic. Mike Pence is no idiot, yet he watched hundreds of thousand succumb to a virus while incompetently following the mandates of a boss who sent him out day after day to deny and denigrate the advice of their own experts. Undoubtedly many would have died, but many died needlessly. Pence rolled over for a megalomaniac with compliance and collaboration—contributing to a mass casualty event.
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