Politics and society in chaos, which some call a "good place"

 

Now what? The MAGA meltdown in the U.S. House of Representatives or the Russell Brand story in the UK? Neither can wait and both are emblematic of a society in chaos. 

First the disaster in the  House, where even a recent Fox News poll showed has a 19 percent approval rating. We saw the spineless speaker Kevin McCarthy—knowing he didn’t have the votes to approve an impeachment investigation—caved in to threats from the likes of Matt Gaetz, which caused Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to comment on X that "So let me get this straight: Republicans are threatening to remove their own Speaker, impeach the President, and shut down the government on September 30th - disrupting everyday people’s paychecks and general public operations. For what? I don’t think even they know. Chaos vibes.”  

Despite the Fox News poll suggesting the opposite, the diehards think the country is in a “good place.” Or so that is what Republican Rep, Elise Stefanik told Fox’s Shannon Bream, who suggested that Republicans were in “paralyzed chaos” after failing for the second time this week to even vote to begin debate on a DOD spending bill, usually the “easiest” one to pass. 

The human jellyfish McCarthy has lost all control because of his lack of principle and character, and no one—not even his allies—trust him. Biden certainly can’t help him from squirming after making a deal with him to freeze expenditures for the rest of the year, only to see five “conservatives” suddenly discover “principle” and demanding even deeper cuts before they vote on anything with a government shutdown looming.

The helpless McCarthy lamented after the second failed vote “It’s frustrating in the sense that I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate, and then you got all the amendments and if you don’t like the bill. This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. It doesn’t work.”

One of those arsonists is Jim Jordan (when he isn't being a "legislative terrorist"), who is still busy with his "weaponization" of government hearings that turned (again) chaotic today when, taking Trump’s cue of waving his magic wand over classified documents and declaring them unclassified, he suddenly claimed a witness already determined to be unreliably partisan was a “whistleblower” after being challenged why he didn’t provide Democrats with the witness’s testimony for examination. Elsewhere, it is being reported that “evidence” for Biden’s impeachment is already falling apart as if it ever existed in the first place.

I’ve always said that Republicans are for the most part motivated by power and destruction with no real sense of governance, and now we are seeing it once again with their latest threat to shut down the government because they can’t get their act together in the face of no chance that their largely white nationalist agenda will get past the Senate. Republicans have always been hypocrites about their “principles”; somehow, they always find a way in their minds to justify why they can see their way clear to avoid spending cuts when a Republican is in the White House to avoid voter backlash, but fight amongst each other about how best to “prove” that they actually have any budget “principles” when a Democrat is in office.

Thus we see the five “fiscal” conservative Republicans vote along with Democrats to sink the proposed defense bill twice, which frankly Democrats are correct in saying is loaded with culture war provisions that have no chance of passing the Senate, along with slashing aid to Ukraine. Those five Republicans voting against the defense bill claim they are merely trying to make a “point” about their new-found desire to slash the budget and try to hang it on Biden. 

But it is hard to make that argument when their budget cuts are principally targeted at programs that help the poor (thus charges of “racism”). Republican inability to form a coherent program of governance that is not based simply on scapegoating vulnerable targets (Hispanic immigrants) is emblematic of the ideological chaos and corruption within the party since far-right elements went from the barely tolerated fringe to a force in a party that failed to heed the fact that the last mid-term elections should have been recognized as distrust in their brand of governance.

Of course even if those five Republicans got what they wanted, it wouldn’t have passed muster in the Senate, and so it is a completely pointless gesture. Of course it was easier to please the MAGA maniacs in the Freedom Caucus with their demands because racism and moral and ethical corruption “unites” the party. Instead of passing a comprehensive immigration bill that at least gives Hispanic immigrants an idea that there is a way to do things “legally,” the MAGAmaniacal racists in the Republican party merely want to continue the “we don’t want you” policy of the past 60 years, by approving the Secure the Border Act that essentially closes off all legal entry into the country from Latin American countries.

The authoritarian, anti-democratic impulses of the MAGAmaniacs is also inherent in its apparently pro-Russia opposition to aid to Ukraine. Further, the moral and ethical corruption of the far-right seems a “logical” reason why the far-right also seeks to defund the Justice Department and the FBI for allegedly “weaponizing” law enforcement. 

We might remember the Iran-Contra scandal, when the Reagan Justice Department asserted its independence and immediately announced an investigation of the participants. But that was a different time. Republicans were the first to “weaponize’ government by its "investigations" of Bill Clinton that turned out to be nothing but wastes of taxpayer money, and with the Durham investigation which was a multi-million dollar con job that also found mostly “nothing.”

This is what we have come to expect from Republicans; they are not interested in “fixing” what needs to be fixed; they are only interested in breaking things, and that includes the “border crisis” that people seem completely insensible to why it happened in the first place, meaning decades of failure to understand the dynamics of cross-boarder activities, driving a permanent “illegal” presence before the 1965 immigration law from near zero to where it is today. Like radical gender activists who don't really want men "fixed," because then they would have nothing to "complain' about that justifies their warped sense of existence, Republicans need illegal immigration to continue so that their supporters will have a vulnerable group to hate on.

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Now, the Brand story I would have preferred to leave to YouTubers, but when you have someone like far-right mouthpiece Megyn Kelly in freak-out mode coming down on the side of the accusers, it is useful to remember  that despite what she calls a "years long investigation," all that they could come up with in that Brand documentary was text messages altered to remove "context," and four out of a thousand or so women who apparently felt "disrespected" enough to provide the ammunition that the makers needed for what their hit-piece wanted to accomplish---which was to silence Brand just as we saw a similar attack on Dan Wootton, who although I am no fan of, it is “curious” that both have become known for taking on the present establishment in their commentary.

Kelly and others like her just don't "get it." They do have a right to their "opinion" about information provided by an actor reciting from a script in a documentary, but opinions are not "facts." In the same vein people can have an opinion about allegations provided by "anonymous sources," because (at least in this country) the accused have the right to face their accuser in a court of law. If the accuser doesn't want to do that (for fear of being exposed as a liar, for example), then their allegations should not be treated as "fact," just allegations. Furthermore, too often we find accusers who didn't believe something was "wrong" at the time it occurred, but then change their minds years later because the political climate changed; why should we assume the "new" story is more "credible"?

This is not about defending people like Brand or Marilyn Manson, this is about defending due process and the presumption of innocence which gender activists have been actively trying to undermine with the MeToo movement and cancel culture. At least former Fox News conspiracy theorist Kelly—who was essentially “canceled” from network television for poor ratings and commentary that questioned her judgment—got her $69 million golden parachute from NBC; Brand, on the other hand, is being “canceled” by everyone who owes him a dime before even an actual “investigation” into the claims made by his present accusers—claims which should remind us how Amber Heard “grossed-up” her stories during the trial in the belief that sensible people would actually believe them.

Unfortunately for Brand, no other woman to date has accused Johnny Depp of abuse, and there is evidence that Heard abused at least one other partner besides Depp,  Tasya van Ree and Elon Musk (a Mexican soap opera star, Valentino Lanus, who  had a 10-month relationship with Heard in 2006 which he described as “abusive” to both himself and his mother). But then again, Depp wasn’t a sexoholic like everyone knew Brand was and who apparently flaunted it out in the open, with most people seeing it as part of his “show.”

In the U.S. it apparently takes longer for people to “mature,” but in Britain the age of consent is 16; a female that age and her own mother apparently thought that a relationship with a celebrity like Brand was their ticket to the “big time,” but it seems it didn’t work out that way and that “girl” is now one of the accusers, and people like Kelly profess to be “sickened” by the thought of it.  

But is that the only thing to be "sickened" with? Wasn't “everyone” complicit, but it is only Brand who is to serve as a “proxy’ figure for all men to be punished after the fact, even when it wasn't deemed "wrong" then? It could also be argued that Danny Masterson’s unusually lengthy sentence for sexual assault (despite the possibility of the verdict being thrown out because the charging him violated the statute of limitations) could be seen as he being a “proxy” to punish the “cult” of Scientology as well, as an unindicted “co-conspirator.”

Brand has recently become more “conservative,” settling down to a monogamous relationship, toned-down his “act” and promoted self-help programs. But not so fast: Brand has to pay for past sins because he just looks like a “hypocrite” now. Women control the narrative in the English-speaking world; if they say you are “guilty,” you are guilty. On other hand, the "narrative" sufficed to provide cover for Cardi B after she bragged about drugging men and stealing their money when she worked as a stripper.

If you want to defend yourself if you are a man, you better have the money to pay for the best lawyers and get a fair judge to hear your case—and even if you are exonerated and your accuser a proven liar and abuser, don’t expect an “apology” from those who made money off of you but joined the lynch mob anyways because they were cowards in the face of the lynch leaders out for blood—anyone’s “blood” as long as it is the next man on the hit list.

We saw in Germany how due process is supposed to work, regardless of the nature of the accusation; the accused are assumed innocent until proven guilty. That of course doesn’t apply to the mainstream media even in Germany, which promoted the stories of accusers who didn’t even claim that the front man for the band Rammstein, Till Lindemann, ever touched them sexually; they claimed he just put them in “uncomfortable situations.” 

Despite the efforts of supporters of the accusers—who took their cues from their American and British “cousins” like cyberstalker Rebekah Jones and the proudly “feminazi” Charlotte Proudman, and only looked ridiculous doing so—Lindemann and his band were not “cancelled.” As it turned out, that would have been a gross injustice, since prosecutors dropped their investigation of Lindemann because trial-by-media was insufficient as “evidence” of a “crime.”

Chaos and destruction in politics and society is now a way of life; not everyone is aware exactly of the extent of it, since it is like a leaky roof that isn’t fixed: it begins as “unnoticeable” drips; but left unchecked, it eventually rots the entire structure. A "good place" to be in? Well, Republicans don't want to do anything about climate change or the wealth gap except make them worse, while on the other side we have even feminist Camille Paglia admitting, "If civilization was left in women's hands, we'd still be living in grass huts."