No Quarter

There is a wannabe redeemer quality at the heart of the Democratic Party that is the equivalent of a suicide pact.

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

by Rich Herschlag

As always, my overwhelmed brain has been resorting to old movies to lend order to current chaos. In 1991’s New Jack City, Ice-T’s undercover detective character beats Wesley Snipes’ polished savage drug kingpin character to within an inch of his life before Mario Van Peebles and Judd Nelson play Ice-T’s better angels. Of course, it’s easy to play the role of conscience when it wasn’t your mother who was murdered by said drug kingpin. As Snipes spits out blood he is unrepentant, smiling a mile wide and promising he’ll be back out on the streets in a week, warning Ice-T he’s a dead man.

American movies are full of forgiveness failures and better angel suckers, as are modern American politics. The current crop of Republicans spent eight years trying to cancel Barack Obama and another four trying to bury American democracy. They stole moderate Merrick Garland’s legitimate seat on the Supreme Court then later turned their own precedent on its head to shove Amy Coney Barrett onto the bench before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s corpse was cold. They stood by and fundraised while their version of Kim Jong-un signed executive orders dehumanizing Muslims and immigrant children. They worked tirelessly to suppress voting while their leader worked tirelessly to suppress decency, morality, honesty, accountability, constitutionality, rationality, and every good thing ending in a y you can name. And finally, they co-sponsored a real life violent coup against the very government they swore to protect.

And now they want the benefit of a couple more powerful words ending in y—mercy and unity. This while they eat their young in the form of Liz Cheney, promote bottle blonde Brownshirts like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and triple down on still newer and more twisted voter suppression strategies for 2022. The Rand Pauls, Lindsey Grahams, and Kevin McCarthys of 2021 make the Wesley Snipes of 1991 look like a tearful Liam Neeson at the end of Schindler’s List.

There is a wannabe redeemer quality at the heart of the Democratic Party that is the equivalent of a suicide pact. While the charlatans across the aisle long ago seduced the so-called evangelical vote, it is the Democrats who keep deluding themselves they can play Jesus of Nazareth to the Roman Empire. Lord only knows what concrete examples of contrition the donkey party can offer. I suppose there is former Alabama governor George Wallace who at the twilight of a lifetime of 180 proof racism hedged his bets with the Man Upstairs. And there is always good ol’ boy Lee Atwater, who after tipping the scales of the 1988 presidential race by using every tool in the shed to paint Black men as rapists issued a cautionary tale minutes before a brain tumor took him to that great country club in the sky.

Problem is, Ted Cruz isn’t about to die. The deathbed confessions of a Devin Nunes are decades away and even then will likely be smarmy calculated political supplications to get St. Peter to send money to his PAC.

If there is even a single morsel of blue leniency heading into Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, every last Democrat must understand where he or she would be today if the shoe were on the other foot. Trump would be president for life. The Capitol would be permanently secured by the Duck Dynasty Gestapo. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would have been assaulted and dismembered. Nancy Pelosi would have a bullet in her brain. There are no jokes, analogies or movie comparisons in this paragraph. This is literally what the Republican Party had in mind. A month after the fact it’s still hard to wrap our heads around.

The impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump is for all the marbles. It may be the closest we ever get to a well deserved Nuremberg. We cannot waste the opportunity with a censure or any other such nonsense. The Republicans can’t shoot straight, manage to hit a new low water mark almost every day, and are incapable of saving themselves. If they survive the blinding sunlight hopefully beaming their way, perhaps there will have been some small purification of their rotted excuses for souls. If not, consider it a mercy killing.

If there is any constructive political ambition governing the proceedings, it should be this—the Republican Party has to be broken up into two entities--a legitimate Conservative party and a party of profligate Trumpers. Other than pass critical legislation with a barebones majority, everything the Democrats do in the coming weeks needs to be focused on that goal. Unity is fine for neighbors coming together in the street to shovel snow or hashing out lunchroom protocols for kids returning to school. For Congress, it is delusional and counterproductive.

The Democrats must force those who promoted or supported violent insurrection to stand up and be counted under bright lights and declare their undying allegiance to their discredited Leader and to what he demonstrated in no uncertain terms he stands for--destruction of the United States of America as we know it. Anything short of this will be a denial, an evasion, a gross dereliction of duty, and ultimately a certain road to a much bloodier reprise of January 6.

The Democrats must compel every last Republican to choose a side in full view. The process must be extremely uncomfortable and unsettling for everyone involved. If it feels fraternal or collegial for even a moment we have lost course. The Democrats must be willing to spend all of their temporary political capital on this one critical task--to save the nation.

Read the latest for Banter Members:

Fox News And The American Republic Can’t Coexist

Fox News prime time is the centerpiece of everything that’s toxic about our politics.

Feb 42Edit post

image source: Getty Images

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC -- In the midst of yet another dark chapter in our nation’s history, Officer Brian Sicknick died defending the Article I powers enshrined in the Constitution. He died defending what the framers of our republic considered to be the most important one-third of the federal government. He died in defense of Congress, but he was killed because too many Americans have been badly deceived by the most successful scam in American history.

The scam and the chief scammer are one and the same: Donald Trump. But he wasn’t the sole villain in all of this. We’ll circle back to that point momentarily. Even after five years of Trump, it continues to confound reason how 74 million Americans were suckered into believing that not only is Trump capable of being a national leader but that he’s a deity worthy of Olympus. To the brainwashed Red Hats, he’s a god. A savior. An all screeching, all farting Pied Piper leading them to the promised land where Black people, trans people, anyone who’s not white people simply don’t exist.

At some point, we as a nation need to come to terms with the fact that so many of our fellow citizens have completely snapped the tether to reality -- that so many of us, including some friends and family, could be so profoundly tricked by such an obvious con. It’s like we’re all at a carnival enjoying ourselves, yet half of us can’t stop shoveling our cash into the hands of the sideshow geek who insists he’s got a half-yak woman inside the tent. We simply can’t continue to successfully function as a republic when half of us are soon easily duped.

Brian Sicknick was murdered by the disciples of a sideshow geek…

This is an excerpt from today’s Members Only article. Get a 50% discount on a Banter Membership and read the full article here.