Do you have an etsy or something adjacent?

just a redbubble!

I saw your post on the partisan lines drawn in the Trump impeachment case. Has congress always been this dysfunctional or is this a relatively new thing? Things feel very hopeless.

Aha. Aha. Ahaaaa. Hah.

I’ll tell you a tale of the bottomless blue, or in this case, American political dysfunction. As with many tales of recent American political dysfunction, this one starts with… Ronald Reagan!

(Man, Hilary, do you really hate Ronald Reagan that much? Answer: Yes, yes I do. Especially since public opinion has moved to ranking him as one of the greatest presidents ever, even Democrats tiptoe around criticizing him, and he is responsible for so much of the shit we are presently in! So much!)

For the younglings amongst us, Reagan was Trump before Trump was Trump: a popular actor who dodged out of service in WWII by making heroic propaganda films, found politics, ran as a Republican and almost swiped the nomination out from Ford in 1976, then ran again in 1980 and beat Jimmy Carter in a landslide. Reagan was, as we’ve discussed, a huge fan of voodoo economics, deregulation, ignoring the AIDS crisis, and massively pumping up the American military mythos and dangerously aggravating the Cold War. In the early 1980s, as the Soviet Union was collapsing from within and could barely feed its own citizens, Reagan was out there hyping it up as the most Terrible and Evil foe that America had ever faced anywhere, which therefore justified a giant surge in military spending and preparation for apparently imminent doomsday. Reagan was positive the commies were everywhere, especially in Central America, and had to be defeated. They were apparently particularly in Grenada (see the 1983 invasion of Grenada) and Nicaragua (the Sandinistas; remember them, they will be important.) The US/CIA has been absolutely shamefully imperialist and interventionist in Latin America for decades, but these were just a few of Ronald’s favorite things. All of this may sound like a diversion just to bag on him some more, because fuck that guy, but I promise, there’s a point.

See, the key difference between Reagan and Trump was that Reagan was nicknamed the “Great Communicator.” Unlike the barely literate Orange One, the Gipper sure could tell a great story, and by golly, he did not let the facts get in the way. He was also a huge advocate of untrammeled power for the executive branch. One thing that Reagan was not a fan of was informing Congress in any measure of what he was doing. The Iran-Contra scandal, which really should have destroyed Reagan’s administration in any just world and also gotten him impeached, was the revelation that he was running friggin’ illegal arms sales to Iran (in the name of freeing exactly seven American hostages who Iran never had any intention of releasing), arming right-wing anti-communist paramilitaries in Nicaragua with the proceeds, and had told Congress about exactly jack shit of any of this! Reagan was basically running his own private empire/byzantine weapons deals/fiefdom/whatever the goddamn hell he wanted, he was a big believer in the president never having to explain himself to anyone or ask permission for anything, while conducting illegal private wars, lying constantly, wrecking the economy, giving tax breaks to billionaires, constantly running off at the mouth about a mostly fictional enemy, and getting credit for ending the Cold War after he nearly single-handedly turned it hot. Sound familiar?

It may help to explain the extended nightmare of the last several Republican administrations if you remember that they were/are basically one mutated Frankenadministration. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,  and others – aka all the later major players under George Bushes Sr. and Jr. – were all high-level Cabinet members of Reagan’s administration. This was all just part of one policy put into place by the same people at every chance they got when they were in power, and that was focused on making the (Republican) president basically able to do whatever he wanted. That checks and balances stuff, man, who needs that? As a result, Congress was deliberately designed to be either totally minimized/outright ignored (if held by the opposing party) or a slavish organ of lockstep devotion (if held by the Republicans). This was not always the case. When the Republicans won it back under Reagan in the 1980s, the Senate had been under Democratic control for almost 30 years. There were bumps, obviously, but there was still some sense that the legislative and the executive branches were both vital for government and should work together.

…yeah, so. Reagan junked all that, basically. When W. got to the White House, he then had 9/11 barely 9 months into his presidency, which meant that for a while, he also could do pretty much whatever and no one in either the House or Senate, regardless of party, really dared to oppose him for fear of looking anti-American. This was concurrent with the Republican Party abandoning even a pretense that they were interested in anyone besides rich white (nominally) Christian men. (The religious right also acquired its modern connotations/voting force under, you guessed it, Reagan!) Hence, they were absolutely furious when a brown Democrat with the middle name Hussein won the election in 2008. Mitch McConnell then decided before Obama was even sworn in that the congressional Republicans just flat-out weren’t going to cooperate with anything he did. Didn’t matter what. They were going to obstruct anything and everything, so Obama wouldn’t be able to deliver on his flagship campaign promises and the blame would fall on him. The Republicans were dead-set on making Obama a one-term president, again, before he had even set foot in the White House. Democrats also controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of Obama’s presidency, so this didn’t immediately matter. But then came 2010 and the Tea Party wave, and now the Republicans had a majority, and they did exactly as promised. They blocked everything. Consistently. No matter what.

We mentioned Merrick Garland before. I’m still mad about Merrick Garland. Mitch McConnell outright refused to hold any hearings to confirm Obama’s perfectly legitimate Supreme Court pick for almost eighteen months, betting on a Republican to win the 2016 election and do so instead, and he got away with it. That is why we have Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavarapist on the court right now. The Republicans have proven that they don’t give a damn about public welfare or any pretense of public morality or…. well, anything whatsoever except making themselves richer and more powerful. As bad as Trump is, he could still be out if the congressional GOP had any morals, backbone, willingness to go against their toxic lockstep ideology for the good of the country, or anything. Except… they don’t. They have voted time and again to enable him, shield him from prosecution, and support his plans, because as long as he’s in office, they’re doing well off the gravy train. I really cannot overstate how sociopathic and cowardly these people are. And half the country is still willing to vote for them!

So…. yes. The answer is, Congress, especially the Republican Congress, has been deliberately designed to act exactly like this since the 1980s, and it’s doing exactly what it means to. As to whether that is going to change, you, me, and the rest of America are the only ones who can decide that, and do that, you absolutely must, MUST vote, and not for them.