I haven't watched the news since Election Day.
I'm getting a lot done around the house.
January 4, 2025
For the last four years, the TV in our kitchen was on all day in the background, a constant blur of CNN chyrons and MSNBC talking heads recounting all of the ways that candidate Trump had transgressed acceptable behavior in the last 24 hours. Every hour the moderator and some of the talking heads would change, but nothing else—the same stories, the same transgressions, all announced as “Breaking News”. Rinse, repeat, rinse. At 4 o’clock we would dutifully watch Nicole Wallace interview a rotating cast of likeminded #NeverTrumpers who assured the audience that November 5th would be our vindication. And then it wasn’t.
My wife and I have not watched any TV news since election day. Apparently, we are part of a very large group of disappointed voters who just can’t bring themselves to watch the spoils being divided amongst the victors. We do try and keep current by reading our usual sources online but very deliberately try to avoid the politics. As I am scrolling, I do see the headlines and the topics at the top of the posts in my new BlueSky feed. For those of us who list to port, BlueSky has become the safe haven and new digital Woodstock. Even here, I try to avoid reading stories that will remind me of what happened, or someone’s opinions of why it happened, how so and so’s forensic analysis of the Democratic party’s campaign strategy concluded that… blah, blah, blah. Some of these posts do show the first few sentences from the story and, truth be told, I have peeked a few times. One particularly galling post linked to a Washington Post story about everyone’s new favorite ex-Congressional representative, Matt Gaetz, enticed me to click through to the story. The Post recounted the litany of infractions from the bad boy, but—under the heading of “normalizing” more abnormal behavior—the writer suggested that a boundary of bad behavior had actually been breached. I needed some clarification for “boundary”.
The Washington Post quoted the House Committee Report:
The bipartisan committee concluded in the document that Gaetz “violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress. Facing opposition from fellow Republicans in the Senate, Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration for the job in late November, drawing a boundary of what’s tolerated in the second Trump administration amid a cluster of controversial nominees.”
I would love to have been a fly on the wall at Mar-a-Lago to hear what, exactly, crossed the “boundary” that supposedly has been drawn by Trump and his advisors. Surely it could not have been Gaetz’s promiscuous, ecstasy infused social circle, photos of whom he reportedly shared regularly with his colleagues on the floor of the House. What new information had surfaced in this report that was beyond the pale? Was he upset about the tens of thousands of dollars that Gaetz had paid for sex—perhaps threatening to surpass the amount that Trump had paid to silence Stormy Daniels? We all know that the Big Guy does not like to be shown up. Accepting free plane rides to exotic locations like a Supreme Court Justice? That does not seem likely to move the needle. I am old enough to remember when Gary Hart, the leading Democratic Presidential candidate in the 1988 race, was forced to withdraw because he had been photographed on his friend’s boat with a young lady who was not his wife sitting on his lap. Granted, the friend’s boat was named “Monkey Business”, but still……
I have to admit that the nomination of Gaetz for the Attorney General’s post really did surprise me, and there’s very little that Trump could do at this point that I would find surprising. Presidents are entitled to surround themselves with counsel that they trust, and they are also expected to repay some political favors—everybody does it—but appointing your ex-almost-daughter-in-law as Ambassador to Greece is a little different than nominating someone as manifestly unfit and unqualified as Matt Gaetz to run the Justice Department. Was Giuliani not available? I wonder if some of these appointments are predicated on and can be explained solely as vindictive “own the libs” opportunities—let’s just put this out there to piss them off and watch them try and stop us! How about George Santos for Fed Chair, just to see Steve Liesman’s head explode live on CNBC? Sure, why not?
Trump can’t run for office again, and he knows he will not be impeached by a Republican House and a Republican Senate. The Trump/McConnell stacked Supreme Court has also advised us that he actually can shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue without any repercussions.
Liberals are screaming that the media is “normalizing” this behavior, that reporting on this coming presidency and describing this current transition process as just another incoming administration is making it look like there is nothing wrong, or threatening, or at least highly unusual. I think that they are wrong. This is now normal. I have every expectation that we will look back on this administration as catastrophic, but this is the new normal. An entire Republican party has accepted, no, embraced, this behavior. I can’t wrap my brain around that. These are not stupid people. 30% of the House and the majority (51%) of the Senate are lawyers, so at the very least they have passed the bar exam which is no easy feat. How can they possibly accept this behavior, or at least not be extremely concerned by it? I blame the usual suspects, money and power, but even this explanation leaves too much unexplained. We now must listen to longtime Republican Senators like Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham singing Trump’s praises and offering allegiance and support for him, but four years ago, when they thought he was political history, they were rightly accusing him of fomenting insurrection and orchestrating the mob attack that ransacked the Capitol. Do these people not know that there is video of them from four years ago? Of course they do. Do they think our YouTube access has been revoked? But they all do it, sycophants all, over and over, every day, as if January 6th and Trump’s other attempts to overturn the 2020 election never happened. They were there.
Numerous media platforms have reported that as part of the vetting process, candidates for a position in the incoming administration are being asked if they believe that the 2020 election was fairly decided, i.e., do you support “The Big Lie”? Failing to do so is reportedly disqualifying, so the situation is this: after four years of failed attempts by Trump and his lawyers to show one single, solitary instance where an illegally or improperly processed ballot in any district anywhere in the entire country changed the outcome of the election, everyone working in the upcoming administration will have attested that they believe the 2020 election was stolen. Importantly, the lawyers that argued exactly this in court, that the election was stolen, that The Big Lie was not a lie—are no longer practicing law. Their licenses to do so have been suspended or revoked, but—nobody seems to care. Nobody even mentions it. It is the new normal.
“Power tends to corrupt but absolute power corrupts absolutely” ~ John Dahlberg Acton
Proximity to the absolute power of the presidency is, for me, the root cause of this seeming mass delusion. Witness what is happening right now up in New York’s 21st Congressional District, where Elise Stefanik has served as our Representative. Many of us had watched in horror, or at least disbelief, as Stefanik, who had been highlighted as one of the more moderate members, transformed into a full blown MAGA acolyte. That about-face paid off in spades when she was chosen by the President-elect to serve as UN Ambassador. The seat that she vacates in the House to assume that new position will be up for grabs. Aspirants are lining up, including local State Senator Dan Stec, whose State Senate District overlaps much of Stefanik’s Congressional District. Up in the north country of upstate New York, where party registrations lean decidedly Republican, winning that primary usually assures winning the general election. Stec, who has been in public service for decades, most recently in the New York State Senate, has been considered a moderate during his Assembly days, and willing to reach across the aisle. Republicans in New York government have to learn to reach across the aisle because the folks usually in power—the Democrats—are sitting there. We were all wondering if Stec would be more of a moderate than the firebrand, Stefanik, a pretty low bar by any measure. We did not have to wait too long. With thanks to our Substack neighbors at The Front Page - Upstate New York, who brought this to my attention, Stec appears to be suiting up:
For me, the most telling (and hilarious) part of this photo is the date—November 6th, the day after the election. Hey, why put on the costume unless you have to? Proximity to power.
All this behavior is solely to appease a self-absorbed narcissist who cannot face reality and admit that he lost, or has ever lost at anything. That man just got elected president with 49.9% of the votes cast, and of course he believes that it was a landslide, and that he was elected with a historic mandate. The sad reality is that according to Pew Research, 38% of eligible voters don’t even bother to vote in presidential elections, which means that approximately 31% of eligible voters actually voted for the next president. Some mandate.
In my book, if we are looking for someone to blame for this outcome, the 38% that did not even show up to vote are just as responsible as anyone who did. Shame on us all.
Comments and suggestions are always welcome, as are Shares (!) If you like what you have read, and you would like to receive a Saturday morning email with the current week’s Adirondack Diary update, please consider subscribing.
All posts are public and available for free.