Here, Piggy Piggy

Years ago, I asked a prominent political journalist what percentage of a politician’s votes are made from conviction versus self-interest. In general, he answered, he figured it to be about 1/3 vs. 2/3. He’s not a cynical man, nor do I think his answer was given with cynicism. Instead, I think he was simply saying that Washington is less a town of public service and more a town of private enrichment. In other words, politics is a business like any other business.

But politics is not a business like any other. Other businesses create products or perform services that people may choose to purchase. Politicians create legislation which we, the citizenry, are obligated to obey. Legislation almost always involves the transfer of money in some shape or form, perhaps in the form of taxes or regulation or competitive advantage or disadvantage. At base, in other words, politics is about the allocation of resources. Resources = money. Money = power. Power = politics. Politics = resources. And the circle goes round and round.

Your once and possibly future president.

It has always been, and will always be, so. Perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky that our politicians still manage to vote out of principal as much as 1/3 of the time. But I don’t consider myself lucky. Instead, when I look towards the bizarre antics in our capital, I feel like a chump.

So I wasn’t surprised this weekend when Republican after Republican trotted onto the Sunday shows this past weekend to declare their loyalty to the man just ordered to pay over 80 million dollars in restitution to the woman he raped.

“It was sexual assault, not rape,” declared Rudy Giuliani, currently facing his own ten-million-dollar lawsuit from a former employee alleging sexual harassment and abuse.

On ABC, Martha Radditz asked Senator Tim Scott if the settlement gave him any pause in his support of the Republican front runner.

“Myself and all the voters that support Donald Trump supports a return to normalcy as it relates to what affects their kitchen table,” replied Scott, who once nailed the Ten Commandments onto the walls of the Charleston city council and who, in 2020, told students at Bob Jones University that “I see myself first as a biblical leader and not as a Republican or conservative leader.”

On CBS, Margaret Brennan asked Senator James Lankford whether the settlement gave him “any pause about [Trump] returning to office.”

“It does not,” the senator replied, whose website describes the senator as “a strong conservative and servant leader committed to God, family, and the Constitution.”

Pointing out political hypocrisy is a bit like pointing out a cloud in the sky; nobody is surprised to find it there. Even so, I cannot help but find my spirits slackened in the face of such obvious bootlickery and moral fuckedness.

Can we not do better? Can we not set the bar higher for the presidency than parsing the semantic difference between sexual assault and rape? Can our elected leaders not stand up and state the obvious: a man found liable for such a crime should not be elevated to the position of Commander In Chief?

No, we cannot. Because the political paradigm will not allow it. I remember the outrage Republicans expressed when Bill Clinton got caught canoodling with a White House intern. Clinton was impeached, not for the affair, they said, but for false testimony, perjury, and obstruction of justice. (It was for the affair.) If false testimony, perjury, and obstruction of justice are impeachable offenses, then why do they not now oppose a candidate who continuously lies, perjures, and obstructs justice?

The answer is obvious.

Consider the fates of those few Republicans who spoke the truth about Trump the first time around. Liz Cheney lost her seat and became a pariah. Senator Ben Sasse decided not to seek re-election. Justin Amash, Will Hurd, Denver Riggleman, Francis Rooney, and John Shimkus were all sitting congressmen who opposed Trump’s 2020 re-election bid. None of them are currently serving. Among the most pious in today’s Republican party, faith is subservient to fealty. Which shows you exactly how much that faith was worth to begin with.

I may be a naif, but I understand that political geometry sometimes requires attempting to square a circle. This isn’t that. When the leading Republican candidate for president has been ordered to pay over 80 million dollars for raping a woman, on top of the other millions he’s already paid in restitution for various frauds, and when that same person also faces 91 criminal counts for, among other things, obstruction of justice, election interference on both the state and federal levels, bribery (hush money), and hoarding classified documents, we’ve moved past the point of absurdity and into the territory of farce.

Nobody needs our political leaders to be perfect. We don’t even need them to be any better than us. But must we accept when they are so much worse? Or is Trump simply an avatar for the kind of person many Americans would be if they felt they could get away with it? After almost a decade of him in political life, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion. When given the choice between person and pig, they choose pig.

I still hope there’s enough good people out there to prevent the pig from once again beshitting the Oval Office, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Not when so many people are cool with our national degradation and diminishment just as long as they get theirs. This is something we’ve never seen before. This is cashing in even the paltry 1/3 conscience under which politicians normally operate. This is chasing the golden calf right off a cliff of our design. This is the unmasking of America.