In the nine days since Joe Biden took the oath of office, not only hasn't the temperature in Washington and across the country gone down, things seem to be heating up. Forty-five Republican senators voted that it would be unconstitutional to convict an ex-president; a defense that can at best be described as lame and at worst cowardly.
Republican Congresswoman, and QAnon loon, Marjorie Taylor Greene was condemned for 1) a video in which she called a survivor of the Parkland school shooting a coward and 2) a Facebook post in which she threatened acts of violence against Democrats, including putting "a bullet to the head" of the Speaker of the House.
The Department of Homeland Security has issued a warning to the general public regarding increasing threats of domestic terrorism ever since Inauguration Day, the first such warning in a year. Members of Congress, especially those who voted to impeach Trump, in fear of their safety, and are asking for extra protection when they travel back to their home districts. The pipe bombs that were found in the Capitol building on January 6 were placed there the night before. And the acting U.S. Capitol police chief is calling for a permanent fence to be erected around the Capitol building after a man was arrested in his car with a gun, twenty rounds of ammunition and "stop the steal" literature on him.
In Arizona, the state Republican Party voted to censure former senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, wife of John McCain, for the high crime and misdemeanor of supporting Joe Biden, and current governor Doug Ducey for not overturning the election results in which Trump lost. I wish I was making that up; sadly, I'm not.
And while this was going on, old Captain Courageous himself, Kevin McCarthy, crawled on his belly all the way to Florida to kiss the ring of the man who was responsible for almost getting several members of his conference killed; a man, by the way, whose hold over this party is now absolute. Behold the GOP: a collection of spineless jellyfish that entered into a Faustian bargain with a demigod and wound up losing their souls in the process. This isn't a civil war, it's a capitulation.
It may be tempting to think this nightmare began in November when the networks called the election for Biden, but in fact it dates back years. The refusal of Republican leadership to denounce Trump's rhetoric early in his presidency only enabled him and emboldened his supporters. The "good people on both sides" comment after Charlottesville was a wink and a nod to the most extremist elements in the country. His "stand back and stand by" exhortation to the Proud Boys during the first presidential debate added fuel to the fire and helped set the stage for what happened on January 6. And all the while, there were crickets coming from the GOP.
So now the party that for the last four years saw and heard no evil is facing the consequences of its own evil. Complicity is defined as "the state of being involved with others in an illegal activity or wrongdoing: i.e., they were accused of complicity in the attempt to overthrow the government." That describes the GOP to a T. These aren't innocent bystanders we're talking about, they're co-conspirators.
If you thought this would all be over the day Trump left office, you thought wrong. Twitter may have given him the boot, but Republicans can't say no to him, which is ironic given how many times they said no to Obama. Nancy Pelosi is right. The enemy is within. Even the 9/11 attacks didn't inflict the level of damage that we're witnessing now.
If you're expecting the Senate to do the right thing and convict Trump, my advice to you would be to stay away from Vegas for the foreseeable future; you'll lose your shirt. The GOP is nothing more than a cult, and Trump is its leader. Yes, there are a few brave souls left, but soon even they will be gone. Rob Portman is the latest Republican to announce he will not seek another term in office. He joins a list that includes Pat Toomey and Richard Burr who have decided they've had enough of this shit show.
The long-term prospects for the United States are not promising. The pandemic is still raging, the economy will take months, if not years, to recover and a third of the population is convinced the last election was fraudulent. If we somehow manage to get out of this nightmare it will be the greatest miracle since Moses parted the Red Sea.
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