Ah them Beatles, sell outs if you asked me. I was a Stones guy, Street Fighting Man, now there is the real stuff. Not that I ever did any street fighting, lest I got pounded in the noggin. Well I did get charged with assault with a deadly weapon during the Berkeley People's Park riots, but I just went out to see the sights and the cops decided let's pick up these two dingbats because why the fuck not.
In 1968, the first presidential election I was allowed to vote, I didn't want to vote for Humphrey against Nixon, because Humphrey was a sell out, dump the Hump, now there's the stuff. In Berkeley at the time The Revolution was a question of not if but when.
But in 1972 I had done my CO work and the draft was behind me and that great anti war guy George McGovern had won the nomination. Some of my more radical comrades (beer-drinking buddies that were into vandalism and looting) did not want to stain themselves by hanging with Democrats, but I wanted to give this guy a chance. He lost in a landslide but I have been a Democrat ever since.
Ford, Reagan, Carter, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2. two parties, two trains running down opposite tracks. I hated it when the reps won, those bastards, reveled when my party won because that meant the electorate had seen the light, though often they lost it at the next election, but all in all it was a system you know.
But then at the end of Bush 2's term the tea party reared its head. Oh the dems always had that lefty fringe and the reps their righty fringe, but both those fringes seemed interested mostly in pushing their parties to the left or the right, but there was something different about the tea partiers. They didn't want to reform the republicans they wanted to overthrow it. Even though the party had been there before them, they called the old guards RINOs. They were insurrectionists.
Oh it's not like they fired a cannon down Main Street, they mostly just brought those tri-cornered hats and knee bridges back into fashion. They claimed to be against politics AND big business but they were funded by big business. Disturbing rhetoric, but it was mostly rhetoric.
Eight years of Obama, my candidate if hope were followed by four years of The Beast.
somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
At first the old guard of the G.O.P. were thrilled, look at the votes, those crazed crowds, those dark thoughts from the back of their minds that they dare not speak lest it mean trouble, why he was bellowing them and his polls just went higher.
Here was a tiger that they could ride to get more tax cuts for the rich and pack the supreme court with young right wing Christians who would be there years into the future. But they couldn't control him at all. The barbarians they welcomed into their empire were beginning to take control of the empire. They were unapologetic Qanon-ers, out and out racists, nazis, paramilitary groups with strange names, they had no interest in institutions, principles, fairness. They were insurrectionists, the Grand Old Party was the party of insurrection.
Still Mitch and his crowd bailed him out of two impeachments, they had too, lest the hated dems returned to power. But they returned to power anyway. That whole insurrectionist thing so newly popular with the G.O.P, was not that popular with the rest of the country.
When they couldn't win by votes they attempted to take by force. They were insurrectionists just as me and my friends were so many years ago. But we were young and idealistic and they were much older and more enraged, we loved the press wanting to use it to spread our message of peace and love, they beat up reporters. We marched, they attacked.
After bailing them out on the two impeachments, the regular reps, RINOs if you will, stood up strong, this is not the kind of behavior the party of Lincoln does not condones. But within a few days they realized that the inmates were running the asylum and fell into line. Here is a little quote I got from reading an article on McCarthy:
Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist, told me, “The Dems’ extreme people are extreme on progressive policies. The Republicans’ extreme are extreme on the level of the insane taking over the asylum.”
My party swept the election, presidency, senate, house. We were poised on the edge of doing Great Things, but then we ran into Coal Joe Manchin. That bastard.
Meanwhile the party of insurrection seethed, became wilder in their accusations. Just wait till we win they sneered, we will investigate everybody we don't like from Faucci to Hunter and that guy at immigration whose name nobody can remember. They allowed Trump to name his own candidates for senator, so that instead of retaking the senate they lost one seat.
And the house, which they were assuming they would take by like forty seats, they took by four, and this takes us to the current situation.
Three days of it and by all sights many more to come. In this corner McCrazy, a longtime Trump toady, who will give up anything to be speaker. But in the other corner, The Nineteen who, remember that bastard Coal Joe, why he is a genial uncle with a heart in the right place compared to these guys. Insurrectionists. Twenty nuts out of four hundred, who are like the asshole in that joke.
One day the body parts got tired of being ordered around by the brain and decided to elect a new leader. The muscles thought that they should rule, because they were the strongest. The stomach thought it should rule because it provided the fuel. The heart thought it should rule because it brought the blood to every cell. And way down there the asshole thought it should rule.
Why you, the other body parts asked, what the hell do you do? I'll show you, said the asshole. And while for the next few days the other body parts argued, the asshole, well, did nothing. The shit piled up, and piled up, and piled up, and eventually the other body parts couldn't stand it and gave up and made the asshole the boss.
And this proves that if you want to be the boss you don't have to be the strongest, you don't have to provide fuel, you don't have to pump life-giving blood. You just have to be an asshole.
On the border kids are not being put into cages, Hunter Biden is skating, uninvestigated, and these guys don't care. Not a bit. They could spend of their lives sitting in that room making speeches about how important debating democracy is, and that would be just fine with them.
McCrazy has spent much of his life waiting to grasp that gavel, and even though it is obvious he can never win, he is more than willing to die trying. They are insurrecting.
The other republicans don't want to give up to The Nineteen because they want to prove that the asshole cannot rule the body, though clearly it can.
Nancy Pelosi, she just grins like that Cheshire cat.
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