There Are Dead Children, and Then You Segue to What
A West Wing quote that has been bouncing around my head these past few weeks.
For more than two weeks the House of Representatives has been without a Speaker of the House. After Kevin McCarthy was ousted by his own party on October 5, 2023 (the first Speaker to ever face such a fate), no single member of the Republican party has been able to get the requisite 217 votes. First they tried to elect Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise, who once reportedly described himself as “David Duke without the baggage.” David Duke, for those who don’t know, is a former grand wizard of the KKK. When that failed, the moved onto Jim Jordan, congressman from Ohio, who infamously turned a blind-eye to sexual abuse allegations while he was coach of the Ohio State wrestling team. After losing votes on each of three public ballots as well as several private ones, Jordan finally withdrew his candidacy. The House recessed for the weekend, leaving just the scent of the rank incompetence and crushing humiliation wafting through the empty Capitol.
It’s honestly pretty funny, and also deeply troubling, much like a lot of domestic politics over the past ten years.
On the one hand, after countless news cycles of Dems in Disarray content exaggerating divisions amongst Democrats it’s nice to see the chaos of House Republicans get its day in the sun. In the past few months, they’ve launched a failed impeachment inquiry and a failed Weaponization of Government committee, in addition to several failed Speaker votes. On their own they couldn’t raise the debt ceiling or keep the government open. Representative Hakeem Jeffries has won 14 of the 18 or so roll call votes for Speaker there have been this year, with Democrats uniting behind him again and again and again. Dems seem to be very much in array, and Republicans seem to be deeply divided between those who want the government to be an instrument of oppression against their political and cultural enemies and those who want it to be an instrument of economic oppression by way of tax cuts to the rich and funding cuts to programs that serve the rest of us. Given those choices, forgive us for pointing and laughing a little while they eat each other.
But perhaps more like one of those laugh or you’ll scream moments.
Republicans have paralyzed a third of our government with petty squabbles, while nuclear powers menace their neighbors and terrorists kidnap and murder children. The runaway favorite for their party’s nominee for president is facing 91 felony indictments in cases covering hush money payments, corruption and concealment of classified documents, and trying to overturn the 2020 election. That most likely Republican presidential candidate is a former president who spent as much of his presidency watching cable news and playing golf as he did exacerbating global tensions, kissing up to dictators, and trying to stay rich at our expense. And his opponents in this primary are clawing at each other for second place by bashing unions, inflaming bigotry against trans people, and squabbling on Twitter.
I have absolutely no qualms about laughing at Republicans as they flail around their House majority, unable to do the basic work of governing. Watching Elise Stefanik post sycophantic photo after sycophantic photo of her gazing adoringly at whomever is up for the Speakership next is delicious schadenfreude, especially after her turn from so-called Republican moderate to Trump loyalist. But beneath that is the darker nihilism of a party that is not only uninterested in governing, but fully intent on burning the government to the ground. It’s not that they disagree with Democrats on how to govern, but that they disagree on the project of government entirely. As Republicans gerrymander themselves in redder and redder districts, they make themselves immune to challenges from Democrats and even so-called moderates by electing more and more extreme right wing arsonists. We have real crises on our hands, from the immediate, like war between Israel and Hamas with millions of innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, to the urgent but longer term climate crisis, an economy geared towards further enriching the super wealthy, and ongoing global instability driven by rising right wing extremism.
Meanwhile, from indigenous peoples to Black Americans and people of color to Muslims to queer people, we keep asking those who are most harmed by our government and our history to come to the polls to save it. And it keeps needing to be saved. And while I believe in the version of the United States built and sustained by protest movements, by those of us with an unfailing commitment to fulfill that as of yet unfulfilled promise of freedom and equality, that promise is a cold comfort to those constantly menaced by the institutions and people dedicated to upholding the power structures that empower them at the expense of everyone else.
I started this newsletter because I believe in democracy, and I believe that putting the best people we can in government is a key part of building a more just and better world. But faced with this roiling abyss, I very often find myself paralyzed and afraid, and more often than not anxiously scrolling for the one tweet that’s going to somehow make everything okay.
I don’t know how to save democracy, believe it or not. In fact, I know very little. But I do think that Virginians will be better off if Glenn Youngkin doesn’t have a chance to ban abortion, legislate against trans and queer people, or radically overhaul Virginia schools. So I’ll keep phone banking. I do think it’s my responsibility to do what I can when I can even in the face of global conflict, so I’ll keep calling my Senators and my Representative to press them to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. I don’t know what to do in the face of all this, but I do know there’s an active mutual aid organization in my neighborhood that could maybe use another set of hands.
There is no segue. Just day after day somehow finding things to laugh at when things are so dark, finding actions to take even when you’re overwhelmed, staying awake when it would be so much easier to stick your head in the sand. Here we go.