Att'n Fischbach, take lesson from the "Eloi"

I'm wondering what I was doing at this time last year. The weather did not have me so down last year. Yes it was a snowless winter. And that's not necessarily a joy. But this winter has not brought a great deal of snow either. We see patches of snow out and about. And it has become much like "snirt" which we usually see in early spring. 

We have been absolutely blasted by cold temperatures. The wind leading up to Christmas was heartless. That feature has not gone away. Taking walks has seemed off the table. Maybe in the coming days it will become doable. We all need fresh air now and then. We're inside listening to the wind howl and rumble on this Friday, while overhead the sky is gray. So I have to work at keeping my mood bright. 

Maybe it's the national news adding to the despondent frame of mind? There's no point in anyone writing a "News of the Weird" column because the standard front page news suffices for that. 

I do not understand these people who call themselves "Republicans" now. This isn't a standard partisan statement from me because through my life, I have been able to criticize Republicans while still respecting their underlying philosophy. In other words, conservatism once meant something. I could echo Lawrence O'Donnell of the left-leaning MSNBC who has said "conservatives play an important role in our political process." 

We mean it, those of us who tend toward the other side, at least we used to mean it. "Conservatism" has become bastardized now, has been turned on its head. I dare say it's meaningless. There has been a virtual parade of headlines in the past few days affirming nothing short of astonishment at what the Republican Party has devolved into. 

Remember when Mitt Romney ran for president? Remember the dignified race between him and Barack Obama? The Jimmy Carter funeral reminded us of when he and Gerald Ford ran the most dignified political race. 

Is there anything more disgusting than the headlines we're seeing right now? I could have asked this question on the day after inauguration, the inauguration of the notorious soul who is president. It is worse today, Friday. Can we expect our congressperson, a woman, to speak out about this? Of course not. Our congressperson is all-in with the DJT cult. They spin anything to try to make their party look heroic. It's just like listening to talk radio and all the callers-in to those shows that just drone on and on. 

Michelle Fischbach

Were Fischbach really weighing things in the normal rational way, like any college graduate would be expected to do, she as a woman would have to be revulsed by a top news story. Can't she just say it? Or couldn't she react to the story of a couple days ago about the Pentagon chief nominee reportedly having once said that women should not be allowed to vote or even to work? And yet the nominee's standing appears solid because he has the know-nothing party behind him, the spineless party shaped like silly putty by Donald Trump. 

After all these years, the orange man mesmerizes so many of us. Tune in talk radio. For sure they are gushing in the usual way, reciting from the common playbook, demonizing anything seen as left-of-center because that's all that matters. Be like Scott Jennings of CNN and construct any argument you can to cloak DJT in heroic stature. 

It is the Christian faith that has lifted up this whole movement across America. So powerful, though I'm sure many adherents privately think a lot of it is crazy. Because I'm sure so many of these people, like some personal friends of mine, have the intelligence to feel real concern about what is happening. They'd have to. 

Scott Jennings deep in his soul must wonder "what the heck is going on, this is crazy." But he's hired in a commentary role to play a part as if he's on some TV drama. So how else could he comment on this Cassidy Hutchinson matter? Hutchinson is at center for a story on this Friday that stretches what we already know about the totally disgusting nature of the Trump cult and Republican Party. 

I have a hard time getting that out, I really do, because for most of my life I have had a basic respect for conservatism. I really discovered the conservative philosophy by reading a paperback by William F. Buckley not long after college. I attended a state college in the 1970s when we were guaranteed to be bowled over by the liberal side. That really was the nature of college, state colleges especially I've been told, in the '70s. That's when Carter ran against Ford. 

The "fall of Saigon" happened in 1975. Please check that out through archived news reports on YouTube, so you might understand why my generation became hardened with cynicism. I studied mass communications in the '70s. So I became a Watergate era journalist, instinctively skeptical of the party line. I must admit, that outlook did not apply well to the "micro" world as with the community press. But I forged ahead. 

So today I bring my cynical mindset to the clown show of our national politics in which the Republicans are the clowns. These are not the amusing type of clowns. Let me know if Fischbach says anything to show that she is breaking away from her shackles. Well, I'm not holding my breath. But I would love to be pleasantly surprised. 

I'll use again my analogy from the 1960 movie "The Time Machine." It's based on where the "Eloi" finally learns to fight back against the "Morlocks." So he clenches his fist. Then he lets fly against the stunned Morlock. That would be Fischbach condemning her Republican Party and Donald Trump. What do you suppose the odds are of that happening? Again I'd love to be surprised. 

So today's shocker in the news? It's almost painful to write about. Is it worse than learning of Pete Hegseth's belief that women should not be allowed to vote or to work? What's next? Lynchings coming back in the Deep South? Jim Crow's return? Would Fischbach be good with that? This is the way in which "conservatives" lean now, to my incredulous response. 

 

Cassidy Hutchinson

Hard to report this

So what's today's story? Well. . . "Mike Johnson's office urged Republicans against subpoenaing a key Jan. 6 Committee witness so 'sexually explicit' texts GOP lawmakers sent her would remain under wrap." 

Congressmen are older men. So they're drooling over this woman in her late 20s as if they're feeling an erection in their pants? And wouldn't these gestures be intended as transactional? And we cannot summon immediate moral outrage over this? Sheer incredulity? 

I am a normal person, not a member of any cult, and I am disgusted. Fischbach as a woman should speak out openly. If she does, let me know. In the meantime we have so much on our plate with DJT in power again, and I haven't even gotten to the subject of Trump wanting to take over the Federal Reserve to push interest rates way down to help make billionaires far richer. The rest of us? Do we matter? Rhetorical question. 

We have such lecherous, disgusting male congresspeople. As for Jan. 6, wasn't it all on TV in real time?

 

Addendum: Re. the movie "The Time Machine," I was a little kid susceptible to having to keep the light on in the bedroom after seeing scenes like with the "Morlocks."

 

Here's a comment I posted to Yahoo! News yesterday:

Yesterday we got word that Hegseth reportedly once said women shouldn't have the right to vote. Can it get any worse than that? Should we just start making this stuff up?

 

"Bepi" responded:

Women do have the right to the vote. However, we have never done an actual examination on the effect on our society with women voting. While I want women to vote, I will say that how they handle political power is far different than men, that their instincts are to take care of the home and the family and to share equally among family members, but family economics does not translate into defending a civilization from a crime or rewarding those who merit it versus spreading everything out. And as to ability to wield global power, as a man I'm certain you signed up for selective service and in the back of your mind is the thought that you will go to war when called, yet women do not have that in the back of their minds. And thus are incomplete in their thinking. They will choose war to prove themselves in a position where you should have nothing to prove. There are exceptions like Tulsi Gabbard.

(end of quoted response)

Well, what to you think of "Bepi's" thoughts?

 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com