![]() Republican dysfunction did not end with a collective sigh of relief and the election of a House speaker whose credentials are threadbare or nonexistent. He was talking about our relationship with a Pacific ally, but reading between the lines there was no doubt that he was talking to the clowns down the street who were making a mockery of American democracy in Congress. Wednesday dawned with Joe Biden on the South Lawn talking about imagination and “working together,” standing next to the Australian prime minister. Subscribe today to support Brian Karem's weekly column American politics should be more than an endless argument among pre-pubescent swimmers at a private country club pool or, perhaps more accurately, a “Lord of the Flies” reality show starring Mike Johnson as Piggy. The level of our political debate has to be higher than that. You have to govern your own bad behavior before you try to govern others. That’s like saying that even if you drink a gallon of bourbon, you’re still sober. In that answer there’s an implied admission of an absence of self-control, but also the suggestion that being out of control is part of the democratic process. The answer I hear most often to that question is some variety of, “This is the way it works. Here’s a relevant question: If you can’t govern yourselves, why would you expect the rest of the country to believe you can govern us? The average sixth grader understands the basics of government - at least until the GOP passes more cuts to public education. Maybe an attempt at a sarcastic reply.īut I ask the question sincerely. If the Republican Party was in elementary school, what grade would it be in? This is his spirit writ large, trying and failing on another grand scale. The party is racist, misogynistic, anti-poor, elitist, delusional and greedy for power at all costs. It is narrow-minded, cynical and overtly misanthropic, in the truest sense of that word. It can’t acknowledge the needs of others. More than anything else, that party has come to resemble its lord and master Donald Trump. All politicians suffer from this affliction, but no group of alleged human beings on the planet suffer it more acutely than what remains of the Republican Party. We aren’t currently threatened by asteroids, comets or alien invasion just by our own hubris. Wars are raging, and according to the president of the United States, our country is at an “inflection point.” ![]() Our world is divided, our country is distraught. Now I can only wonder how many of the possible civilizations out there destroyed themselves out of greed, lust, stupidity and self-absorption, the depths of which have lately been reached in the House of Representatives. I’d stare into the night sky and wonder how many planets revolved around the infinite number of stars in the universe, and whether anyone was staring back at me wondering the same thing. I collected every newspaper clipping I could about the Gemini and Apollo missions (I was too young for the Mercury missions). ![]() Biden slams "extreme MAGA takeover" after House Republicans finally settle on a new speaker
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