Who Brought the Gun to the Pillow Fight?

I’ve been focused on other work of late, kinda figuring that the politics will heat up in 2022. Right now, so much of what is happening will be dust come November that it’s not worth the effort. Still, as I listened to the House Numbnut Caucus whinge on about the January 6 Committee’s tactics over the past few days, I felt I had to jump in.

By and large, their complaints were as well-considered and targeted as primate ejaculation. As we have come to expect, there were the Strangelovean cries of Communism! and Fluoridation! and Honey Get Yer Gunny!

Mark Meadows, for his part, puffed up like a frill-necked lizard while Jim Jordan tripped over a few adjectives on his way to a mixed metaphor. It was, as we have come to expect, a complete clown-car train wreck on a banana peel.

But then there was one GOP Representative — I honestly don’t remember which one, but it was a midwestern, middle-aged, Christian white guy in a blue suit if that helps narrow it down — who earnestly warned about the Democrats against working to “put their political enemies in jail,” and that deserves a response.

Let’s pause for a moment to remember which team first brought the gun to the political pillow fight — and I’m not talking about the “Lock Her Up!” chants. What I mean is this: Imagine what would have happened if they were successful in overturning the election.

Really, truly, think it through.

Do you think, for a minute, that had the Republican Party and the Trump Administration successfully thwarted the Electoral College from ratifying Joe Biden’s win, that all would have been forgotten with an amnesty declared of “No-harm, no foul?”

It is even remotely possible that after reinstalling Donald Trump by claiming “massive voter fraud,” and “foreign influence in our elections,” and “deep state conspiracy,” that the GOP would have had any choice at all but to jail or EXECUTE the perpetrators of those supposed “crimes?”

If they successfully uncovered “treason,” is it even possible to imagine that they’d not have gone after the “traitors in our midst” with every single power in a fascist autocrat’s arsenal?

Look, had they pulled this off — had the Big Lie actually worked — Joe Biden himself would have been carted off to a secure and undisclosed location for “public safety,” on that you can bet your sweet and darling bippy.

There is a very frightening truth about where we are as a nation, but it is a truth we neeeeeed to recognize if we are to survive this nightmare:

We have absolutely and undeniably reached the point where political enemies will go to jail. That is baked into the cake. They will either go to jail for trying to thwart democracy, or WE will go to jail for defending it in a losing cause.

Democrats — crucially, Merrick Garland — had better get that through their damn thick skulls, or else it’s gonna be their own heads on the entirely unmetaphorical block.

Good Christ, I hope they understand that hard, cold reality — but I’m not sure if they do.

We SUCK so very severely at political street fighting. Thank god Liz Cheney is, at least temporarily, on our side. That woman has her father’s killer instinct. We need that now in spades.

Dukes up and swing hard for the danglers.