Dear America,
Yesterday, Mitch McConnell characterized President Biden's demand for passage of two voting rights bills as "a rant." And I have to say that I was glad to hear it. For once a prominent Democrat could be heard over the Republican hypocrisy that flows like the Mississippi through our country. The President even said during his speech that he was tired of being quiet, so the characterization of his plaints by the main object of them as a rant was a gratifying relief from the constant drone of subdued conservative dissemblance and outright deceit in which the Republican Party indulges constantly. On the other hand, notably missing from McConnell's speech on the senate floor with its feigned southern gentleman's tone was any rational excuse for his party's refusal to even debate two bills that secure the rights of voters nationwide. Of course, there's not much he could have said without admitting that Republicans are not in favor of universal suffrage. After all, how can there be too many guarantees of the right to vote or for that matter, too many measures meant to make it easier to do so? How could McConnell have defended such a position without exposing the fact that his claims that voting is a states' rights issue rather than an underpinning of democracy in this country is nothing but subterfuge. At last, we are hearing a loud voice from a prominent Democrat, and in the past week we have heard it twice in Biden's two speeches on the subject of the voting rights bills.
McConnell's demurely delivered, audaciously preposterous claim that it was his ox that had been gored...that our president had reneged on his commitment to bi-partisanship...was palpably absurd after what he and his party did to the Supreme Court in consortium with our previous miscreant of a president, Donald Trump. After pretending that the voters should choose who fills the next vacancy on that court because the end of the Obama administration was imminent, McConnell and his party refused to even meet with Merrick Garland, Obama's candidate for the seat Scalia's death opened, a whole year before the 2016 election. But they put a justice on the court within the last couple of months of the Trump administration, in fact less than two weeks before the 2020 election loss of their depraved candidate without compunction or even acknowledgment of the principle by which they had denied Garland his place on the bench. And all three Trump justices were confirmed along party lines. None of that was not bipartisan. And then there's the "Build Back Better" bill. The Republicans have taken a univocal silent stand against the bill, presumably because they believe that if the Democrats do this for the people they will win in November at least, and in 2024 possibly as well. But they shed crocodile tears over the death of bi-partisanship purportedly at the Democrats' hands because the Democrats presume to try to guaranty sovereignty to all of the American people, not just the ones the Republicans want to have vote.
When I hear McConnell say these things, I always wonder how he has the gall to say them with his bare face hanging out. I've always thought of people who can do such things as pathological, and maybe he is. After all, he was Trump's enabler until the January 6th last straw turned McConnell away from blatant partisan loyalty and toward the welfare of the nation in its stead. But that one moment of Republican apostasy doesn't make him sane, and the overtly dishonest puling he is doing now certainly suggests pathology to me. I mean, how can he stand there and say that the other side is doing something bad when everybody saw him do far worse on the television news week after week in the recent past. Is he so deluded as to think that no one noticed? The Republican Party, the "conservative" wing of it at least, will do anything to get their way since they are in the electoral minority and have been for much of the last thirty years, and they can't achieve it in any legitimate way. But even they must blanch at McConnell's naked deviations from the truth. Albeit Kentucky has sent two such senators to Washington, Rand Paul the other, to join two Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both being of McConnell's ilk, every other state, I would think, would crave some integrity in their candidates, so all of their prevarications, McConnell's in particular, can't possibly serve his party's political interests...can they?
Well, it's going to be several months until we know about the state of the nation when it comes to our electorate's position on truth. I'm sure that all of you, America have noticed that to some of us, falsehood is not just acceptable, it's a source of pride like Trump's self-professed satisfaction over getting away with cheating on his taxes; he's actually said in public that it just means he's smart. Let's just hope that President Biden stays loud. Maybe then the majority of the American people will show how smart they are.
Your friend,
Mike
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