Digest, for the week ending 6 Jan 2023
The Crisis in Leadership Grows.
Dearest friend,
I hope this reaches you in a time of comfortable readjustment, as your hands seem to write or type “2022” even if you consciously think, “2023.” I’ve had to make excuses to get out in the sunlight, when it would peek through the dreary clouds, this past week; I can only hope you and yours have been safe and warm as that winter storm pressed down upon us all.
The world of politics is such an ugly place, and it showed its true colours this week; twenty Republicans have stood for change in the face of deadlock or despicable deals, Trump has cast a(n un-)surprisingly ineffectual endorsement into the public space, Biden took a golf trip to the US Virgin Islands just in time to see their Attorney General fired, and more. We find ourselves in a crisis of leadership, but the problem is there at the top — and the decentralisation that exists beneath it is, despite the political chaos, secure in most of its assured supply lines after two years of the worst logistical conditions. With obvious exceptions, your business probably has a bright future after another six months to a year of belt-tightening; the already-dismal approval ratings of Congress, however, do not.
Before I get into that, though, I would like to make a clarification to last week’s newsletter: the person who reported that it was the pizza box which led to the locating and arrest of Andrew Tate was a person of which I was aware before, but only barely, and did not make the connection at the time — this was later reported as false by the Romanian authorities. It is not my intent to deceive; I still hold both Tate and Thunberg in quite low regard, but I do not want to be remiss in my letters. I will need to show more patience, and likely do one more editing pass right before sealing the envelope. Thank you likewise for your patience, as I work out how best to do this, and please keep that in mind as we get into the nitties and the gritties.
The biggest mistake most politicians have made, this week, is assuming what is bad for the gander, is good for the goose — the gander, in this case, being the next person to stand before America and declare to have “earned” one of the highest elected positions in the land, the Representative from Bakersfield, CA: Kevin McCarthy. In 2015 his leadership was repudiated once, and this week it has been repudiated eleven (and counting!) more times as approximately 20 members from the Freedom and MAGA caucuses voted for alternate candidates and leaving no one with enough votes to become Speaker of the House. This leaves the House of Representatives deadlocked, as no Congressional session can begin without a Speaker to begin it.
What began as rumours and whispers about five Representatives potentially voting “Present” in the vote for Speaker on Tuesday quickly grew into a spectacle from which every chainik is trying to garner political points, and no one is succeeding. Representatives from the Democratic Party cannot convince anyone on the Right to vote for the gentleman from Brooklyn & Queens, Hakeem Jeffries, and likewise the opposition caucus members have had no luck convincing anyone to their Left in supporting alternatives presented, including Jim Jordan of Ohio’s “duck district” and Byron Donalds of Florida’s 19th. Powerless to intervene in the most important vote in what is supposedly the most important Congressional House, both citizens and the media watch on, rapt by the drama of McCarthy’s Groundhog Day. And yet, much like the winner of a Presidential election, it doesn’t quite matter who gets to be the sad little king, when all that will be left is a sad little Hill.
Wednesday night concluded with a prima-facia corrupt vote to adjourn (as meaningless as it would be), with the Yea’s (led by the Republicans) only winning by running past the end of the clock by an additional three minutes of intense yelling which tipped the vote in favour of the Yea’s by two votes. Tired and exhausted, with no end in sight, the un-convened 118th House of Representatives return to the shadows of their offices and DC homes, to re-group before the 7th groundhog’s vote. Thursday would start with false hope in an agreement which then fell through, continuing the stalemate and giving way to the eighth and ninth rejections. Matt Gaetz, the Representative for West Palm Beach, threw in Donald Trump as a wildcard vote, but by the end of Thursday we again found ourselves without a Speaker of the House.
The greater Democratic party has the same fault of pride that it has always had; it will not be until too late that they see their voters have begun to turn against them, despite all they had done, because you can only lie to them about what it means to be American so much before the cognitive dissonance of their nonconformist neighbors drives them mad, or nudges them to thinking for themselves. The Establishment Right, on the other hand, has never even paid lip-service to representing the people from whom they collect votes — the threat of a Democrat is enough to keep the Grand Ol’ Party Members comfortably in their seats, with constituents that don’t ask for much and businesses that give what seems to be far more than for what they ask. Neither party comes out of this smelling of roses, and only individuals will have scored any points — but are frequent flyer miles worth much, when all the planes are grounded? It is to say, this doesn’t look to be the only deadlock which the House will face this year, and I for one look forward to the chaos of legislative terrorists and lame ducks.
You said that “accountability is coming,” Mr. McCarthy, and you could not have been more right.
Trump, however, has lost too much credit inside and outside of his core supporters to be making statements like this and expecting the response he once received. Halcyon days, they were, when the man stood there on live television and said, “Because you’d be in jail” (And you can fat-check that). The power of that statement, and the proverbial victory-fingers flagged at the Establishment through it, echoed for years — but the echo is never as loud as the original, and eventually there’s nary a vibration. Endorsing McCarthy? It brings to mind the appointments of John Bolton and Anthony Fauci, and the question that you’re not supposed to ask: for all the lies they’ve told about the man so far, what is the real kompromat they have on him?
I’m reminded of a quote from CGP Grey’s seminal video, Rules for Rulers:
Take the throne to act, and the throne acts on you.
If you were to sum up The Machiavellians, The Dictator’s Handbook, and Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook in as few words as possible, that would be it. All the hair dye and tanning sessions money can buy, however, cannot hide the lower energy found in Trump’s voice, and the wordier, less punchy posts on TruthSocial. It most certainly cannot tan over the debacle of Trump’s NFTs (which, nonetheless, did far better than expected), and it cannot plug the bald supplications to the Republican Establishment everyone keeps on seeing.
However the throne may have acted on Trump, it’s hard to watch and even harder to support; though the man gave name to the feeling the disillusioned right-wing voters had felt since the Tea Party movement, Make America Great Again was never about the God-Emperor. It was about the country being sold out to maintain a global hegemony through trade deficits and outsourcing, leaving fewer and fewer dignified jobs for common Americans. It was about the corruption of the government, being used to audit the voters of political opponents and to make war more abstract and yet more cruel and imprecise. Would Trump now sell out those who believe in him the most, to those very warmongers and aristocratic legislators he sought to fight against not so long ago?
One can only hope not, but this game of political baseball score-keeping only serves himself, and not the America so many still wish to make Great. But perhaps the lesson we should learn from this crisis of leadership is: even if we must stand alone, stand we must.
However, while the world focuses upon and mocks the so-called disunity of the House of Representatives, another story seems to have tried to go unnoticed: a curious correlation between Joe Biden’s holiday flight itinerary and the firing of a US Virgin Islands Attorney General who, it just so happens, filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan for their part in the financial management of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operations. Though speculative, to be sure, it never ceases to amaze how the coincidences might stack up. Joe Biden, for all his appearances of foolishness and age, is somehow exactly where he needs to be when he needs to be, regardless of who needs to be fired, and I see no reason why anyone should give him any benefit of the doubt given the videos of him admitting to blackmailing another country to fire the person investigating a company at which his son was given an executive position.
The lawsuit filed by former Attorney General Denise George was meant as a follow-up to the successful suit against the Epstein Estate, asserting that JP Morgan Chase was instrumental to the operation and concealment of Epstein’s enterprise. But following Joe Biden’s trip to St. Croix to lose a golf ball, Ms. George was removed from office by Governor Albert Bryan, who anonymous sources described as already fed up with Ms. George’s time as Attorney General, and the case was folded into a larger class-action lawsuits of Doe v. Deutsche Bank and Doe v. JPMorgan.
Even if Biden’s visit to the Virgin Islands had nothing to do with this case, it is so representative of the disconnect between how those who hold power see themselves, and how half of the country, give or take, see them. The corruption of the Presidency is seen in the foreign businesses from which they benefit, and the corruption of the House and Senate are seen in the domestic businesses from which they benefit — and even when everyone is squeaky-clean in one situation, the memory of their malodorous presence brings a visceral reaction.
So, like so many other things connected to Epstein and Maxwell’s sex trafficking ring, I must admit I do not know for sure, and to know for sure would demand far more than just a different person in the Oval Office or the Speaker’s Chair. What is it you think? Did Biden travel to the Virgin Islands to flex his well-hidden and well-maintained power, or did he even have to, given all of the pressure from the Southern District of New York, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, and even Ms. George’s own Governor?
And to bring us to a close, I would like to share with you a difficult, yet uplifting, video I found only after the previous newsletter went out; the impressive story of Waffle House Girl. Following an altercation with a customer while trying to find the owner of a lost wallet, the young woman who came to be known as “Waffle House Girl” saw her restaurant grow more and more chaotic, as plates of food were flung at her and the rowdy customers began to climb up on the table. She defended herself with skill, fighting back when the customers climbed over the counters and attacked her and her co-workers, as well as when a chair was thrown at her only to be deflected in the manner demonstrated in the artwork shown above. A video of the incident can be found here:
She would later leave Waffle House of her own accord, stating she wanted to be closer with her boyfriend, contrary to reports indicating she had been “blacklisted.”
The ferocity and courage she showed in that very American restaurant resonated with a lot of people in the world. She stood alone, and she came out with her head held high in the fight. Artwork was made in her honour, almost as immediately as the video made it to the internet, and even now people speak with hope, because they saw a short, blond Texan Zoomer stand her ground and not give way to those who would do her harm.
Raise a glass to the indomitable spirit that pervades these lands, and to the future of the best of us: Waffle House Girl.
Other than that, it has been a relatively slow news week; something indicative of the dependence pop culture has on politics in this current era. This year began with a deep desire for leadership, where none sufficient could be found — and perhaps we should instead be looking for leaders more local, if we’re looking for leaders at all. The system, for all of its chaos right now, is working exactly as intended; if not for the Republicans’ failure to achieve a “red wave,” we would not have even seen this opportunity for the legislative terrorists to stand against the Establishment. I see it as ultimately good, that the government has been confronted with a chaos it cannot delegate away.
Thank you again for taking the time to read another newsletter; it was a bit of a ride putting it together this week, having C-SPAN open the entire time and yet seeing nothing happen, over, and over again. Remain strong, and stand for yourself; it’s clear now just how few will stand for you.
love, sevvie.
PS. If you appreciated this newsletter, and have not already, please consider subscribing! Though I’m just getting started, I am already building larger pieces to share on the subject of geopolitics, and I’d love to share it with you right when it’s ready to be released.