Just when, one wonders, did United States political discourse become the juvenile embarrassment that it is? Today, of course, we are in an environment when the president immediately responds to any criticism, usually using personal attack or insults to do so. One current brouhaha is instructive.
On December 11, Democratic New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand called on the illustrious President Trump to resign, due to the many, many allegations of sexual harassment and assault with which he’s been accused. This, of course, didn’t sit well with the president. In his response via ‘Tweet’, he called her a lightweight and a flunky, and said she would do anything for campaign contributions.
Rising to the bait, Gillibrand ‘bravely’ proclaimed that she would not be silenced. She again called for his resignation.
The current darling of whatever passes these days for the liberal establishment, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who Trump, in his mature, statesman-like way refers to as ‘Pocahontas’, felt compelled to support her New York counterpart, weighing in with yet another ‘Tweet’, one more applicable to the playground than the halls of Congress. Said she: “Are you really trying to bully, intimidate and slut-shame @SenGillibrand? Do you know who you’re picking a fight with? Good luck with that.” Fight on the schoolyard! Don’t let any grown-ups catch you!
But the combative Trump, and the elected officials who take delight in baiting him, are just the current manifestations, showing that things have gotten totally out of hand. Looking back at the pre-2016 election primary season, there were more taunts, with Trump insulting the appearance of his female competitor, and himself being ‘accused’ of having small hands. Things got even more childish when the size of his anatomy was questioned. These were the words of people seeking the highest office in the land, the worst of whom actually found his way there.
We will turn our attention now to Alabama, where a judge who was twice removed from the bench for defying Federal orders was narrowly defeated this week in his bid for senate. The first time he was removed was in 2003, when ordered to remove a statue of the Ten Commandments that he’d had installed in the lobby of the Alabama Judicial Building. He refused to do so. Sadly for him, his defiance, like that of any unruly child, gave way to the authorities in control.
Thirteen years later, after he’d been elected again (what is wrong with the people of Alabama?) the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was deemed unconstitutional. Now, one would think that it’s the responsibility of federal judges to uphold federal law. But Moore didn’t like that new law! He instructed Alabama’s probate judges to continue to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The bad boy hadn’t learned his lesson from a decade earlier, and he was once again sent to his room, and told he couldn’t be a judge anymore.
During the last week of his campaign for U.S. Senate, it seemed that someone must have grounded him, since he was unavailable for interviews, and was not spotted on the campaign trail. This might be a result of a desperate attempt to prevent people from talking about his penchant for dating girls as young as 14, when he was in his thirties. The GOP must be breathing a major sigh of relief today, since the party wasn’t looking forward to the fun and games they would have had, trying to deal with that particular overgrown juvenile delinquent.
Trump responded to the defeat of the candidate he’d endorsed in his own, childish manner, when he ‘Tweeted’ this: “The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right!” I told you so! Nah! Nah!
Other examples abound in recent history. One recalls former GOP candidate Mitt Romney dismissing 47% of the electorate (not the popular kids, obviously), and bossing around the staff at the restaurant where that infamous quotation was filmed, like some schoolyard bully. Four years earlier, John McCain shocked the Republican establishment when he suspended his campaign activities to deal with a financial crisis, not having the maturity to handle more than one issue at a time.
And what of his loose-cannon running-mate? Sarah Palin’s inability to form a coherent sentence did nothing to raise the esteem in which U.S. officials would like to bask, among the hapless citizenry. When she resigned as governor of Alaska, she said she was making her own way, because “only dead fish go with the flow”. Her sophistication and eloquence astound!
The media, which, other than a few far-right outlets, has no fondness for Trump, seems to be gloating collectively at Moore’s defeat, calling it a ‘stinging loss’ for the president, and seeing an increasing possibility of the Democrats retaking the senate next year. While one supposes there is some benefit in that, the Democrats are hardly riding in like the Calvary in a bad movie, to rescue the damsel in distress, or in this case, the sinking pseudo-democracy known as the United States. Under the Democrats, there may be some diminution of overt racism, but Blacks will still be disproportionally incarcerated for minor drug crimes, as wealthy white criminal bankers go free. Muslims may be allowed freer entry to the U.S., but any ‘terrorist’ acts by anyone purporting to support Islam will be met with demands that all ‘law-abiding’ Muslims reject terrorism. Israel will still be able to oppress, humiliate and murder innocent, unarmed and defenseless Palestinian men, women and children with complete impunity, as that apartheid nation defies international law and basic human decency.
But what is any of that? We are back on the schoolyard, and the clique that ran the show last year, and was so popular with so many of the kids, isn’t doing so well this year, and so the rival clique is going to try even harder.
The grown-ups have all gone home; a most unfortunate situation for the U.S. and the world.
Originally published by Counterpunch.