My Blog Week: November 17 to November 23

A Word on the Week

Hearings and Seeings

Republicans seem to have picked up a couple of offensive strategies via the brain trust that brought us, this week, the Adult Playground. 

We don’t know whether, if someone has grown up among louts, if the women in his family, private school, etc., are submissive to louts, or louts themselves, he will find it normal to admire loutishness, to want to emulate it… We don’t know how many of the socially functional have inner selves that are boorish, low-humored, dirty-minded, egocentric; hair-triggered in temperament, trigger-fingered in sympathies…

And, whether, when able to separate themselves from the world at large, to join a group that encourages them, they inevitably begin to spring uncloseted. Certainly facades are stripped most effectively in enclaves, and the ethical stances their members adhere to, at the last, represent the truth of their characters.

It’s still a lot to pass off as happenstance, such a bumper crop of born louts gathered in one place. But the phenomenon may be Stupid Loyalty, or ordinary peer pressure: “The one who breaks with us first, gets hated most.”

Then again, the idea may be more Meh… chiavellian. A notion such as camouflaging the president among a forest of louts, with a view to normalizing his own loutishness; that the audience at home might say to themselves, “Oh, I guess being a jerk is the thing, these days”, is conceivably plausible to people who only talk to each other. And to oligarchs.

But there is an audience at home. Their eyes can see contrast. They can see the Democrats’ lawyer, Daniel Goldman, and they can see the Republicans’ lawyer, Steve Castor, the competing facial expressions and tones of voice. They can see the Democratic House members’ level of respect as they ask their questions, and the Republican members’, as they ask theirs. They can see the non-partisan witnesses answering these questions persuasively and coherently. They can see President Trump’s tweets. They can see Face-of-Doom Devin Nunes, who has just come under threat of an ethics investigation for his personal Ukraine dealings, entering his pathetic speeches into the record.

Of course, they’ve seen TV shows and movies, and, if not culturally blind, recognize signifiers of behavior that delineate bad guy from good guy. Republicans on holiday break ought to try this at home…if any channel is showing It’s a Wonderful Life… (And you know one is.)

Or, more simply, we are all human beings, living among human beings, and we know what makes us feel kindly treated, listened to; otherwise belittled, dismissed.

When the impeachment trial opens in the senate, will Republicans put holders of high value seats—having seen how fundraising soars when Republican House members are particularly obnoxious on TV…for their opponents—front and center, just to maximize party damage in swing states?