Rising Hegemon
This week, DeMint announced that he would employ his senatorial privileges to put a hold on virtually all legislation until after the midterm elections. After which, he anticipates giddily, the clown car will stop at the steps of the Capitol and disgorge its contents, all of whom will have the propellers on their beanies spinning in the same direction as his. This is what democratic self-government has come down to in the 21st Century — a coup DeMint.
He doesn't really have a grip on the etiquette, though. Usually, when you seize control of the government, the first thing you do is grab the radio station, so you can explain why you did it, and then you blockade the airports to make sure you have an audience. Of course, Jim DeMint hasn't had to bother with all that. He has the Senate Rules, and he has the will to use them, and he is, after all, from South Carolina, which has always considered its membership in the United States of America to be largely honorary.
This attitude began with John C. Calhoun, who was, hands down, more brilliantly wrong than any other person in American history. Calhoun dedicated his life to developing the doctrine of nullification, which cheesed off Andrew Jackson and, ultimately, was the philosophical basis for one side of the Civil War. (Calhoun based a lot of his thinking on the work of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison during the crisis over the Alien and Sedition Acts. However, what he was doing with it made Madison so queasy that, in an 1832 letter, aging Jemmy referred to nullification as "...so monstrous that it would seem impossible that it should be sustained by any of the most sympathizing States." Madison saw where this was heading.)
Later, South Carolina gave us Strom Thurmond and his bold stand against treating black people like actual Americans; an evil, hypocritically miscegenatious mountebank who wrecked the Democratic party morally for decades. (Thurmond's now considered so loathsome by the rest of the country that he managed to ruin Trent Lott's career by proxy.)
Do read it all.
8 comments:
"...the first thing you do is grab the radio station"
Pierce is wrong on this one. Why do you have to grab what you already control?
A.J.
I love a good takedown by an impassioned good writer. Smokin'.
[Oh, and the Fez is back! Yay!]
I have a little crush on Charlie Pierce.
DeMental must be destroyed. as a 'family' member, surely he has some peccadilloes that is gnews worthy.
Its a joy to see reality-based material published. Great prose too.
cepting Cobourn has already done beat Deminted to the pole by putting his anonymous holds on all that matters, dammit I can't remember what, but he done got to it. Being a Sooner and a crazed medicine man to boot. vox
that healthcare flowchart the right kept hawking was so misleading. the flowchart of the existing system is much more complex.
at the time the comment was made, most of the focus went to the word "waterloo" and the suggestion that the right wanted to see obama fail. that's within the normal bounds of political bickering.
demint stating that he wanted to break obama (as was the practice by slaveowners who brought slaves to heel by beating them down,) was much, much worse. focus on that part of the statement was avoided. was that done out of distaste, ignorance or in deference to demint?
demint didn't pay a price for uttering such a sickening prospect. he wasn't even pressured to apologize.
imagine if michael moore had said he wanted to see george w. bush punished by horsewhipping him down into to a frothy pulp.
all that was missing from the demint coup was an alexander haig-esque flourish declaring he was in control. even though in the minority, the lunatics are in charge.
I'm beginning to think that Republicans might not fully support the interests of African Americans!
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