Kevin McCarthy Just Wants to Watch the World Burn
ALFRED: A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.
BRUCE: So why steal them?
ALFRED: Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
In The Dark Knight (2008), the best of Christopher Nolan’s three Batman films, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) puzzles over the motive of The Joker (Heath Ledger), who has committed s series of seemingly random crimes. Bruce turns to his trusted confidante, Alfred (Michael Caine), who relates the story above. It’s Alfred’s way of suggesting that perhaps The Joker doesn’t really have a motive; he’s just reveling in chaos.
That’s a pretty good summation of the GOP’s response to what is, on its face, a clear-cut, albeit unprecedented situation. On Monday, August 8, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate of former president Donald J. Trump, an incident we didn’t know about until Trump himself posted about it on his Truth Social account:
The reasons for the raid aren’t complicated. Trump, who’s been asked numerous times to return the toys he “borrowed” from his White House playpen, refused to put them back. By “toys,” of course, I mean “classified documents” and other docs subject to the Presidential Records Act. (For all we know, the documents don’t exist, given Trump‘s penchant for flushing things.) And this was no fly by night operation. As Ian Millhiser reported in Vox, “There are constitutional rules regarding what law enforcement must do to justify searching private property, and the Justice Department has institutional norms on top of those about the treatment of political figures that could influence elections. It’s unlikely the decision to search Mar-a-Lago was taken lightly.”
For people who believe in facts and understand the way justice works, the reasoning behind the raid (which, it should be noted, was authorized by Trump appointee Chris Wray) is justified. The GOP, not known for their belief in facts or justice, wasted no time in reframing the operation into a political stunt meant to debilitate Trump two years and two months before the next presidential election. Republican operatives reiterated near-identical talking points, most having to do with “weaponizing” the FBI and the Department of Justice, with a certain odious rep from Colorado going so far as to compare the raid to “Gestapo crap.”
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was especially pissed off at the miscarriage of justice.
Oh, look, here’s another reference to Nazis.
Even Mike Pence, who fled to an underground bunker to avoid being hung by Trump’s army on January 6, 2021, chimed in.
These talking points come from Trump, of course, but I suspect the majority of indignation poured forth thanks to this tweet, from Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who was on the case before any of his minions.
First of all, would I be correct in surmising that McCarthy tweeted a screenshot of his Notes app, because apparently you can’t fit that much vitriol in 240 characters? What was the phrase that put him over the limit? Was it the one he helpfully tweeted in the text area above the screenshot? Or was it, simply, the words “I’ve seen enough”? In any case, Kevin was here to put Merrick Garland on notice, to threaten a sitting Attorney General with possible prosecution for… wait for it… doing his job.
And the effect was pretty immediate. When the potential next Speaker of the House declares “weaponization,” it opens the door. It gives shelter to those who may normally held back their opinions, or at least modulate them. Wingnuts will be wingnuts, but when the rest pile on, it’s no coincidence. (And yes, I realize there’s a fine line when it comes to the GOP.)
But then, this is the GOP playbook: the old ‘deny, obfuscate, and pivot’ trick. The one in which anything that looks bad for the Rs is just a political stunt by the Ds to win elections and curry favor with the American public. An attempt to discredit, smear, and distract from whatever the hell is on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Or perhaps it’s something more nefarious. Reporting for Vox, Zack Beauchamp said, “The Republican attacks on the Mar-a-Lago raid result not from reasonable skepticism of law enforcement, but something darker: a belief on the right that the government’s functions must necessarily be partisan, either wielded for Republicans’ benefit or against them.”
And let us not forget: this is the Kevin McCarthy who, in the wake of the January 6 riot, decried what he called an “unacceptable, undemocratic, and unAmerican” act, who later claimed Trump “bears responsibility” for the insurrection, and who, two weeks later, was at Mar-a-Lago kissing Trump’s ass.
But this is par for the course in today’s Republican party. Why else would so many GOP reps and senators repeat the Big Lie, almost two years out from the 2020 election, except out of sheer terror that Trump might turn on them and support a primary challenger? Why tell the truth when repeating a falsehood means you may get to keep your job? Why say two plus two equals four when saying five means the undying love of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and QAnon mouth-breathers? Why say the sky is blue when saying it’s green means your supporters get to wait in the rain for hours for Trump to maybe show up at your rally?
Lest you think the GOP isn’t serious about fucking everything up: this past week, they had Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán speak at their annual prom/freakshow, CPAC, where he extolled the virtues of authoritarianism to raucous applause. Viktor Orbán. A guy who recently gave a speech in which he declared, “We do not want to become peoples of mixed-race.” What does this say about the right? That they’re willing to lie, cheat, steal, and brutalize their way to victory? Or at least pretend they are, to please the Mad King?
Look. We all know how politics works. We know it’s a perception game. You’ve got to thrust and parry to stay in the good graces of your constituents. That one’s as old as the hills. But the game has changed. We’re talking about the knowing denial of truth here. We’re talking about politicians turning a situation on its head so thoroughly that they are accusing the FBI and DOJ of the corruption that enveloped Trump during his regime. The irony couldn’t be richer, given that moment in 2016 when Jim Comey decided to check on Hillary Clinton’s emails a week before the election, and the GOP went apeshit over the alleged breach of classified information.
Hillary Clinton didn’t “attack” the FBI, but that’s beside the point. The Republicans don’t care if I have that tweet, or even this one:
They don’t care because they’re banking on the stupidity and short memories of their supporters, because it adds up to their desired effect: chaos. Fomenting doubt in the very system on which our country was founded — if not in the population as a whole, then in enough of it to swing the midterms, maybe even 2024. Without even knowing why the raid happened, or what its outcome will be, the right has cried “overreach” and started cashing in, raising money off misguided souls tricked into thinking that the future of the Republic is at stake. For all we know, it might be. The potential for violence is already being realized in threats to judges and lawmakers, our cold civil war once again turning hot.
I can almost hear the historians now, looking back on this time:
They thought it was good sport. Because some politicians aren’t looking for anything logical, like a chance to lead or legislate. They can’t be reasoned or negotiated with. Some politicians just want to watch the world burn.
