Why does President Donald Jemima Trump look like the “Before” picture in an ad for … anything?
Category Archives: The Contrarian
The Wit(ness)less Path
Evidentialism isn’t much on karma, but it fully embraces the concerto of circumstance. And today’s was a doozy.
On the same day at the witness-less impeachment of Donald Trump whimpered to its inevitable euthanasia, the Iowa Caucuses kicked off a year of primaries, presidential puffery and, eventually, an actual vote to do something Nov. 3. Oh, and Rush Limbaugh has lung cancer (apparently that 30 years of hot air Rush spewed was carcinogenic). 
Now that’s a confluence of events: One party will acquit its leader while another will appoint a new prosecutor. All while the war’s most inaccurate reporter rots from the inside. Say this for the upcoming presidential election: It will be the most honest in modern political history.
Doubt it? Love him or loathe him, does anyone truly feel like they don’t know who Donald Trump is? Are his supporters hard to distinguish? Are there really any on-the-fencers left in America? If so, what the fuck have you been doing for four years? Read something.
The Left, meanwhile, is harder to read; is Bernie a socialist? Will Warren really stick it to the .01%? Could the billionaire sniping between Michael Bloomberg and Trump get any better? (Trump accused Bloomberg of demanding boxes for debates. “The president is lying,” Bloomberg responded in a release. “He is a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan.”)
Despite the differences on the Left, they do all share a through-line: All promise to have the spine to bitch-slap Trump. Democratic voters also have a singular though-line: Someone who will bitch-slap Trump.
Which is why Democrats should actually celebrate the vote the Senate took last week to bar any witnesses in the impeachment trial.
Consider, for a moment, the firmament the GOP would have claimed if it had allowed witnesses. Senators could have argued (however speciously) that the trial was a fair proceeding, complete with evidence and witnesses. Neither, however, amounted to enough to warrant removing the president, they would argue. Soak it in enough politispeak, and it may even sound legitimate.
Now, however, Republican Senators have to sell America on the impartiality of a witness-less trial. A much harder stretch, even when playing to dimwits. Like the jurors in the O.J. verdict and the lawmakers who voted to invade Iraq, there are names listed specifically behind these actions. We can decide if there will be a day of reckoning.
A day after the Senate vote to ban witnesses, a wily hacker, presumably Democrat, massaged the Wikipedia entry on The United States Senate to read this:
The United States Senate was formerly the upper chamber of the United States Congress, which, along with the United States House of Representatives ― the lower chamber ― comprised the legislature of the United States. It died on January 31, 2020, when senators from the Republican Party refused to stand up to a corrupt autocrat calling himself the president of the United States, refusing to hear testimony that said individual blackmailed Ukraine in order to cheat in the 2020 presidential election.
After the hack, Wikipedia quickly took down the entry and restored the original, perhaps one of the first times Wiki has publicly made an entry inaccurate.
But the point was made. For three years, we have lied to ourselves about what would move the political needle: The Muller report? Nope. Ukraine? Next. Political assassinations? You’ll have to do better than that. The only thing that’s going to remove Trump is an overwhelming electoral loss. And even that may be disputed (the guys contested an election he won, for god’s sake).
The results in Iowa will do more than pick a first-round winner. When it and 49 others states have run their preliminary 5ks, they will give us a clearer picture of who we are as Americans. Are half of us flat-Earthers? Anti-vaxers? Half of us believe you’re in a cult. The other half think you’re too hard on the Kool-Aid. We’ll see in less than a year.
If we choose it, impeachment starts now. But make no mistake: We will sleep in beds we made.
Why You Should Hope Roe v. Wade Is Overturned. Today.
Before you send me a mailbomb or drop an envelope laced with risin my way, hear me out. I am strongly in support of the right to choose. Shit, our president is the living argument that some births should be abandoned.
But it’s time for the Left to be aware of tidal shifts, including this last, desperate jag to the right that will see the reversal of Roe v. Wade. And we should welcome it. Not for the actions it will take. But for the actions we will.
On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court ruled 7 – 2 that the ability to terminate a pregnancy was a constitutional right. I’m old enough to remember a time when politicians thought it unthinkable that the legality would ever come into question.
Now, less than five decades later, with a number of lower-court abortion decisions advancing and the most conservative Supreme Court since the 1930s, abortion opponents are close to getting what they have wanted ever since Roe v. Wade: the decision’s reversal.
And let’s be honest: RvW‘s death will come any moment now. 
Consider:
- This week, Trump vowed to stand with anti-abortion activists as he became the first sitting president to speak at the March for Life, an annual gathering that is one of the movement’s highest profile and most symbolic events.
- More than 200 Republican members of Congress asked the Supreme Court last week to consider overturning Roe v. Wade, in a brief urging the justices to uphold a Louisiana law that severely restricts access to the procedure.
- As of 2014, five states had only only abortion provider, making access for minorities and the impoverished nearly impossible in Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
As a political issue, abortion isn’t technically dead. But the life support machine barely beeps. Currently, there are more than 20 cases in line at the Supreme Court that could fundamentally alter abortion rights as enshrined in Roe. And some are tired of waiting: Last week, Texas’ 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the most conservative in the country, appeared to try to force the Supreme Court to take up abortion rights next term by refusing to issue a decision on an abortion-related lawsuit until the Supreme Court resolved a different abortion case.
Given the inevitability of a reversal, why delay it? In fact, why not let loose the hounds of outrage as soon as possible? At its most reductive, the abortion issue is a matter of timing. Do we want to rail against a jerry-rigged system before the November elections, or after them?
Because nothing has jolted us awake yet. Somehow, we have yet to admit that we’ve got metastasizing political cancer. We’ve brushed by nuclear war; glossed over our ecological war crimes; even accepted Russians as valid political actors among the electorates. All while being spoon-fed Tweeted reassurances that the blood in our stool is nothing to worry about./cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58836477/691906346.jpg.0.jpg)
But if Roe v. Wade’s fate really comes before the Supreme Court, then for the first time in decades, the abortion rights movement will understand that the threat it is facing is not theoretical, and supporters will stop fighting like it is. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the decision will finally force the ideological zeal typical of a political opposition—the force that has long powered the anti-abortion movement — onto an abortion rights movement. And liberal complacency on the issue of abortion could end for good.
These are all pie-in-the-sky forecasts. But there’s a reason to invite adversity. Women showed what a galvanizing force they can be when they brought the #MeToo movement to state houses nationwide. The Blue Wave in 2018 came primarily thanks to women and minorities who said, en masse, enough.
Time for a similar mindset come November. While the process of choosing a Democratic presidential candidate still has months to go, the race has yet to establish a Young (or Old) Turk who can scrap with Donnie Dimwit. Trump was borne of reality TV, so out-dancing him in the Minstrel Show of American Politics is no small ask.
We need something bigger. Like a cause.
You did it with #MeeToo. You did it in 2018.
Do it again. Take it from us.
