Politics in These United States
Excuse me while I puke this out.
Phew, writing in anyway sensibly about what goes for American politics is impossible. Writing nonsensically, well that is American politics. Case and point is the new Speaker of the House of Representatives. If you remember, it was only a couple of weeks ago, 208 Democrats and only 8 Republicans voted to oust the incumbent Speaker McCarthy. This was spun by the media and Democrats as radical Republicans running wild in the House, another January 6th.
For me the question was, “What were the Democrats thinking?” How could all those hack Democrats turn against fellow hack McCarthy? If nothing else, the first ever dumped Speaker was a quintessential political hack. After all, just the day before, McCarthy cut the deal with Democrats on funding. If you're a Democrat voting out McCarthy, who is going to replace him? What sort of strategy is this?
First you think, well, American politics is overwhelmingly controlled by money, both in giving and collecting, and money in no way correlates with political smarts. I tell you brother and sisters, over the years I heard some of the stupidest politics out of the mouths of those with the most money. What were the money people, most give bipartisanly, thinking?
Now the best answer, not best in good, but just as some sort of bad reasoning, is the bipartisan establishment got Old Joe elected based on the perception of Trumpian chaos. So, it's good to show the House in disarray. After all, American elections are overwhelmingly won not on what I will do, but my opponent sucks, best when you can stoke fear about your opponent’s ascension to power. If you think this sounds a lot like the politics of the National Security State, you'd be right.
In ousting McCarthy, the coastal Democrats in place got, straight out of the backwoods of Louisiana, Mike Johnson. The Brennan Center states Johnson “was the congressional architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election.”
Today, the FT adds,
“Johnson, a Louisiana congressman who has accepted more funding from oil and gas companies than any other sector, has a history of questioning the scientific evidence on climate change — and almost overnight has gone from relative obscurity to become one of the Republican party’s most visible leaders.
“(He) recently passed legislation aimed at rolling back some of the subsidies passed as part of President Joe Biden’s flagship climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act.”
All part of the master plan.