By Robert Illes
King Arthur: Now stand aside, worthy adversary.
Black
Knight: 'Tis but a scratch.
King
Arthur: A scratch? Your arm's
off.
Black
Knight: No it isn't.
King
Arthur: What's that, then?
Black
Knight: [after a pause] I've had worse.
King
Arthur: You liar.
Black
Knight: Come on ya pansy
November
7th, 2012
– What a relief – in fact, a great pleasure – it is now to watch and/or listen
to Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh, John Boehner and Fox News. After all this was
the day after November 6, 2012 – the date of what was about as crushing a
victory for Democrats as could have only been fantasized on November 5th
via pre-legal pot (in certain states). In fact for a party of the right, it is
ironic how wrong the Republicans and their flacks could be. There was no Dick
Morris/George Will/Karl Rove predicted Romney landslide, there was no recapture
of the Senate. Mitch McConnell’s silly
determination to make Obama a one term President (and 300 filibusters in
support of same) ultimately floundered like a turtle on its back. Trump birtherism was just stupid hairism.
Now,
the day after their mighty and sweeping fail, these once fearsome and forever disgusting
sociopaths elicited no fear. The junk
yard dog has lost his teeth. The mean
nun had her knuckles rapped by the Archbishop. Mighty Casey had struck out and
languished weeping at his locker. Gandhi was prime minister, and the British
Empire was sent home. There was justice
in the world. Shane had gunned down Jack
Wilson and the Rykers. There would be peace in the valley.
They
were instantly irrelevant and silly. Karl Rove’s blown $300 million dollars,
and stunning melt down on network TV when it was clear the computer network
that was supposed to flip the Ohio vote didn’t were awesome to watch. Whatever attempts ten Republican governors and
their crony secretaries of state in ten “battleground” states made to suppress
the vote, or flip the vote, or rig the outcome, all failed dismally.
The
Koch Brothers, Dick Armey, Foster Friese (please, with that name!), Morty S. (aka
Sheldon) Adelson were not, after all, a league of supermen, and Citizens United
was not the invincible Mr. Corporation; he may be human but he was human after
all.
So
let O’Reilly blab, and Hannity shriek about the war on Christmas. It’s over. Go home and talk to your family.
At
least that was the thinking on November 7th. Surely they would take this all in, and
seriously reflect on how far from reality the Tea Party and Norquist balloons
had taken them.
But
as the weeks unfolded since 11/6, it was clear defeat was hard to swallow. And
that’s to be understood. Well, understood up to a point.
Indeed,
initially there was some concession only of their “tone” being reason for
defeat, not their policy – how stupid was it that Murdock and Akin blabbed
about their feelings about rape and abortion (the very same policy as Paul Ryan
– but he was wise enough to count that among his lies by not even mentioning
it, rather than lying about it). Clint
Eastwood and the chair was no help. And
it was ceded, nobody liked that guy Romney anyway or his wicked wife anyway. But for those things, the Republican Party
was alive and well. Obama caught a few lucky breaks. Denial. And hey, what
mandate? Boehner, failed vice presidential candidate and Ayn Rand denier Paul
Ryan and Republican flacks floated a freshly concocted Frank Luntz explanation:
no mandate for Obama because, after all, the American public returned the
Republican house to power (minus a dozen seats or so, of course) – proof they
want divided government! Denial. And, of course, disingenuous since
gerrymandering in 2011 had a lot to do with protecting Republican districts.
And
before the inkavote ink had dried, there was Romney doubling down on his meme
of the Obama having sewed up the freeloaders and takers. (The sweet irony would come later, when, after
straggling precincts had finally tallied their votes, Romney’s popular vote
total will stand, in history, at no less than 47%). Denial.
Okay,
I’m an empathetic liberal. Sure there’ll be a period of denial, and then that
would be followed by anger. Check. Negotiation. Check. And acceptance… no. No
acceptance. Back to anger. Back to denial.
Remember
the Black Knight bit from Monty Python
and the Holy Grail. “Just a scratch!” There is obviously something beyond
denial which that knight possessed, and now seems to have overtaken the
Republicans at least in this lame duck period. It could be called many things, but we all
recognize it: delusion.
[King Arthur has just cut the Black Knight's
last leg off]
Black
Knight: All right, we'll call
it a draw.
King
Arthur: [Preparing to leave] Come, Patsy.
[King
Arthur and Patsy ride off]
Black
Knight: [calling after King Arthur] Oh, oh, I
see! Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's
coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!
There
is a meme in some religions and 12 step groups that says “act as if…” Usually,
it’s for the goodness of well being and self esteem, and grounded in reality.
Act as if you are brave. Act as if you are happy.
But
it’s difficult in an election to act as if you won, when you got shellacked.
And
so the headless, legless Republican knight trudges on. Boehner demands
concessions from a President in this so-called “fiscal cliff” debate,
“concessions” for stuff roundly rejected by the voting public. John McCain and three luckless sidekicks
decided to go after Susan Rice, the well respected Ambassador to the United
Nations, because her name was floated to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary
of State. Rice was blasted as being, basically, stupid for her dumb ass
comments on Meet the Press and other
“Sunday shows” – as if these shows are sanctioned by some government agency –
about the attacks on the Benghazi consulate on September 11. They took the baseless attacks on Rice a step
further – not only should she be kicked to the curb, but instead, the newly
re-elected President was advised by this committee of losers - even before he
nominated anybody - to pick Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts (the same guy
these same folks allowed to be “swift boated” in 2004 during his failed
Presidential run).
The
curious side effect of Kerry’s resignation, of course, would be that his
Massachusetts senate seat would become vacant and perhaps would almost
certainly be an opening for a comeback of Scott Brown who had been handed his
butt in the recent election by Elizabeth Warren. Could it be that Machiavellian?
Well, oddly, three of the four Senators who trashed Rice – McCain, Kelly Ayotte
of New Hampshire and Susan Collins of Maine – actively campaigned for Brown.
Hmmm.
They
lost, remember, and yet deign to call the shots. Denial or delusion? Do they
look pathetic, stupid, weird, crazy? Yes, but as G. Gordon Liddy once said,
“The trick is not minding.”
And
so, regardless of the way America is “trending”, the Republican governors in
the aforementioned “swing states” are feverishly concocting anti-abortion,
pro-gun, anti-union stripping bills in the dead of night. As we debate the fiscal cliff and murders in
Connecticut, they are quietly knitting in the basement as it were (these people
do not sleep), trying, in the case of Pennsylvania and Ohio, to weave a new way
of counting electoral votes, based on congressional districts won, so that
their states are no longer “winner take all”. Thumbing their nose, as they have all year, at
the bloody battle for voting rights, young punk secretaries of state like John
Husted of Ohio desperately connive to stop the wrong people from voting – not
with firebombs or beatings, but with bureaucratic morass and long lines. And since the wrong people succeeded in
voting anyway, on November 6, he and others like him will see what he can do
about blunting the full force of those damn votes.
The
Republicans seem to have an issue with “majority rule”. In the Senate, they routinely filibuster to
stop the majority from ruling. In the general electorate, they must plot to
enable their victories even with fewer votes than the other guy gets. They have their sociopathy covered: Democratic
victory didn’t count anyway, it was stolen, you know, by Acorn. Or there was de facto bribery – so many
giveaways were offered up to brown people, naturally they would happily stand
in line for 10 hours. Curses! Foiled!
All that Citizens United money down the drain!
For
now.
And
so there is a quest for Holy Grail of winning by other means. Bush did ascend to the Presidency despite
losing popular AND electorate votes via the Supreme Court in 2000, but that
well cannot be expected to quench ever again.
But as their patriotic duty, they must find other ways - so convinced
are they of the value of their policies that they must not allow the electorate
to hurt itself, lest those policies don’t get enacted? Certainly the simplest
thing to do is to act as if, and hope wimpy Dems cave. Declare victory, and DON’T depart the field.
And
then there are the methods of cheating.
But till they take hold, they flail and hope enough are convinced that
they DIDN’T really lose. That they are still relevant, dammit. It’s Obama who’s
doing nothing about the “fiscal cliff”. He’ll have to try harder because even
though he won, big, he’s out of touch with the American people, he doesn’t have
a mandate, he’s still a Muslim communist, we really won and we hold all the
cards.
The
Republicans have truly become the vaunted Black Knight in Monty Python and the
Holy Grail. They have lost a stunning
election, and declaring it was “just a scratch!” The knight’s other arm went. Then
his legs. But he remained breathtakingly defiant. In denial. deluded. Here is full Monty Python clip:
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