I’m beyond weary of the Republican Party, or whatever party shelters the likes of Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy, the wacko lady from Georgia, and who can forget Governor Ron Desantis?

January 6 has now dropped off their radar, and we’re back to everyone waxing nostalgic for T****. I’m glad the Democrats have control of everything, but there’s such a lack of goodwill that the future does not look bright for us as a nation that debates ideas rather than wanting to kill people over them. Yes, it’s been this way before, but 620,000 people died over those differences of opinion. And it’s obvious that, since the Civl War, a gaping wound has been weeping all along the way.

When a House rep can very publicly sympathize with violent, homicidal language directed at Democrats and suffer no consequences, this is an indication of a descent into a bad place. Sure, there are cries for her removal, but nothing will come of it! There is little outrage from her Republican colleagues, and the Democrats have better things to do than spend their time censuring and policing supposed adults.

When have we seen so many people so willing to drink the Kool-Aid? How can our views of what is right and proper and helpful be so polarized in a time of such obvious and overwhelming need? Is this really how things go when enough angry, fearful white people feel threatened by a changing complexion? 

We have to find a way to be OK with sharing power. And we can’t frame this nastiness in terms of liberal and conservative. These are tired, over-used labels anymore. We have monumental problems crying out for solutions, yet only one party seems willing to address them at the moment.

Meanwhile, the other is trying to devour itself.

Wow.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican House rep from Georgia, is taking a page out of Trump’s “shoot-someone-in-the-middle-of-Fifth-Avenue” playbook, making no attempt at self-restraint while proclaiming boldly, in what clearly includes homicidal imagery and language, her disdain for Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic figures.

Media outlets other than Fox News, etc. are taking exception to such language, though I have to wonder if Greene isn’t just pushing the boundaries of what is tasteful and proper because she knows it gets the mainstream media in a dither, and nothing will come of it, anyway. Like everything else lately, there will be no consequences for her language or her ugly demeanor.

It appears to be an increasingly prevalent character trait of the party formerly know as Republican.

There is no long-term way forward if only one of the two current political parties in this country has a sincere interest in rational, real world governance. Unfortunately, if only one party has its heart in the right place and wants to pass legislation that will ease peoples’ burdens and address legitimate need, then the effort must be made to do so unilaterally, as often as possible. It sounds like Chuck Schumer and his caucus are ready to do that.

As much as I’ve tried to understand the Republican ethos, it remains difficult to do. Not because it is a mystery, but because it seems so wrong-headed, tone deaf, and in some ways evil. If 90% of the current Republican membership in the Senate is still unsure about election results or Trump’s complicity in the events of January 6, then there is probably little chance of bipartisan goodwill developing anytime soon.

How did past landmark legislation make it to passage and signing? Has it always been a slog, or are we currently looking at something anomalous and genuinely sinister? 

There was never going to be just a switch we could flip. Nothing as simple as a turn of the page to a new chapter. Of course the Trump travesty is going to linger!

What makes things worse is that the five minutes of goodwill that might have existed on January 20 is long dissipated, and now we’re back to the reality of a tooth and nail fight over everything. It’s not like no one could predict this. It’s just that there was a glimmer of hope that, without Trump physically looming over the proceedings, there might be a shift away from the ugly rhetoric and lemming-like buy-in by so many Senators we might assume would possess at least a smidge of keen judgment and moral uprightness.

Too much to expect, as it turns out. It’s looking like a sizeable majority of Republican Senators are willing to forget everything that happened on January 6, sweep it under the rug, at least with regard to Trump’s role. Whatever revulsion or condemnation existed three weeks ago is now confined to four or five people. Forty-five are apparently ready to defend Trump and say, basically, “It really wasn’t as bad as it’s been made out to be. It’s ancient history now. Time to move on. The guy’s not even in office anymore!”

The Republican Party is all in on a deal with the devil. The rudderless, irrational, and misinformed Base rules. And most of Mitch’s minions are ok with that.

The Democrats have the slightest of majorities in the Senate. They should use it for all it’s worth whenever they can. The Republicans have stonewalled and ignored needs for long enough. From all appearances, they don’t stand for anything except obstruction, and trying to keep things white. They’ve been hijacked by a debilitating self-interest and heartlessness, and just plain lunacy, which apparently includes an openness to violence.

You gotta have a heart. It’s not all about fiscal conservatism and small government and tax breaks for the influence peddlers, and whatever else they’re into now.

There is a role for government to play. Especially lately. Especially now.

One can sum up the post-election, post-POTUS Donald Trump in two familiar words: double down. He’s never admitted to anything, he’ll deny every accusation. And when he floats an idea that most reasonable people would poke holes in, he instead runs with it.

For example, he’s started talking about a Patriot Party (which apparently exists already? No matter.) to compete with the elephants and donkeys.

It’s too easy to suggest a jackass as its symbol. How about a sparrow? They invade the nests of other birds and push their eggs out in an effort to claim an abode they had no hand in making. They just come in and take over. Sounds like the kind of behavior Trump could relate to.

So TB v. KC.

I think the magic will run out, the team playing in its home stadium will lose, and the G.O.A.T. is going to end up looking more like an old goat against Mahomes and Co.

KC handled Buffalo pretty easily, and they have two weeks to prepare now. I’d say the chances of a repeat are good.

And I’ll probably be totally wrong.

Is it not a natural longing of our species to want to be able to express what’s on our minds and in our hearts without fear of censure and reprisal and bodily harm? Why do people like Putin and Lukashenko and Trump keep showing up? Why are there always those who would prefer to silence peoples’ voices, look down on the masses?

From a strongman’s point of view, I assume things are easier that way, at least for a time. The current rumblings in Russia, in response to the detaining and arrest of Alexei Navalny, are evidence that such oppression has a shelf life. According to the NY Times, people are tired of the “stagnant, corruption-plagued political order that Vladimir Putin has presided over for more than two decades.” People grow angry and frustrated and reach a point, I imagine, where they decide things just aren’t working. And they won’t take it anymore.

The tragedy lies in a government’s response to such unrest. There are north of 3000 arrests so far, all across Russia, probably many more to come. Putin will do his utter best to quash the uprising before it gains too much traction. The prospect, though, of him continuing in power until 2036 probably doesn’t appeal to many. Maybe there is a sense of urgency, along with a more basic revulsion directed toward any one person daring to lay claim to such control for so long.

Maybe this is what happens when corruption is so widespread that it is viewed at some level as “normal.” It’s not nor ever will be normal. It is always about a power grab, a power hoard, and money changing hands and greasing palms, all under the guise of some misplaced appeal to stability and preservation, to patriotism and nationalism, to “the way things need to be.” Perhaps it is commentary on a whole system of governance that needs to be more responsive to the needs of the citizenry, that needs to look and function in markedly different ways than it does now.

There is pain involved in such transformation.

As much as anyone, I want to bask in the glow of a new day and a seemingly competent group of people in the Biden-Harris administration. But turning the corner on the Trump show is going to be more difficult than perhaps hoped for. He’s gone from office, and this is a great thing. But before he left– and really all along the way–he did his best to sabotage the next administration, hamstring it.

Turns out that, to probably no one’s surprise, there was no vaccine distribution plan to speak of. No Covid-19 plan, overall. Other than a travel ban early on.

Robert Redfield took exception yesterday to news outlet claims that next to nothing had been done with regard to the vaccine roll-out. He pointed to the fact that there were a couple recent days where over a million people had received the vaccine, which I suppose says something. But it still doesn’t get at the larger issue of there being millions of doses not being where they need to be, and not nearly enough doses currently being produced to sustain Biden’s ambitious plan of one million vaccinations a day for a hundred days.

What continues to bother me, as we exhale now and sift through the wreckage, is why the Trump administration decided to take the hands-off approach to dealing with the worst public health crisis in over a century. Was it pure ideology—the classic Republican talking point in support of minimal Fed involvement in the lives of everyday Americans? As in “leave it to the states?”

Unlikely. It seems more likely that there was simply a lack of will to act. Ineptitude, laziness, a dearth of expertise when it came to the development of a plan in the first place. That and the fact that the pandemic was viewed as a political liability that had to be downplayed and treated as if it wasn’t happening.

Anyone who had a bad feeling about the outcome of the election held November 8, 2016, should know now that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, their feelings were entirely justified.

Ford Motor Company has a lot of nerve—claiming under cover of a slick commercial that they are not afraid of change, and offering up the rather laughable boast of moving totally away from fossil fuels by… 2035.

2035? That’s 14 years from now!

You can boast all you want about a number that, for all we know, you pulled out of a hat, that allows you to ease into the “changes,” allows you to diminish and downplay the real urgency we as a nation and planet need to be feeling right now.

You have to do better than 2035. You need to go back to your ad agency and come up with a number that isn’t so obviously convenient– still far enough off that you don’t feel compelled to do anything yet.

We don’t have fourteen years. Get serious and try setting a more ambitious goal, and example.

How about 2025?