The Silence of the Lames

By James J Devine

Behold the valiant resistance, the firewall of democracy, the courageous opposition to the rising tide of American fascism: the do-nothing Democrats of Congress.

Don’t mistake my scorn as rage directed only at the Capitulation Caucus, because the eight senators who surrendered, like the ten spineless Senate Democrats who stood with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in March, will encounter no retribution or recrimination over their betrayal.

The do-nothing Democrats stand united as sentinels at the gates, not with swords drawn, but with fingers delicately poised over the “Tweet” button, ready to unleash a sternly worded thread in the face of a conflagration.

They are the grandmasters of grandstanding, the sultans of silence, the lamest of the lame.

While the MAGA machine, a grotesque hybrid of kleptocracy and kakistocracy, engages in an unprecedented, illegal, and dramatic maelstrom of destruction, the most common reaction from the Democratic opposition is a furrowed brow, a somber press release, and a fundraising email.

With the exception of Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they have slept through the corporate coup d’etat of Trump’s tyranny.

They claimed to be waging a valiant fight to save the soul of the nation, but one must ask: what, in George Washington’s name, have they actually done? Where is the evidence of this epic resistance we keep hearing about in their carefully focus-group tested speeches?

Let us not mince words about the crimes unfolding in plain sight.

We have an administration that conducts unprovoked assassinations of foreign nationals, triggering potential wars without congressional consent. It dispatched naval warships to murder Venezuelan boaters in international waters. It unleashed masked ICE agents to roam American cities like a latter-day Gestapo, snatching people off the streets and, in a grotesque perversion of justice, even deporting American citizens.

It brazenly steals funds appropriated by the people’s representatives, dismantles federal agencies established by law, and treats judicial orders as unwanted suggestions.

All while its figurehead and his enablers openly accept bribes—without congressional recognition of the constitutional prohibition on emoluments—from foreign powers. This is not a policy disagreement; this is a tyrannical spree, a daily carnival of impeachable offenses.

And the response from the self-proclaimed warriors of the people? A symphony of quiet clucking. A masterpiece of milquetoast.

These are the same lawmakers who wouldn’t dare show up in the states of their Republican colleagues to challenge the bald-faced lies used to excuse draconian cuts to healthcare or the maliciously brutal abduction of children from their parents.

They wouldn’t dream of confronting the corruption on its home turf, for fear of upsetting a donor class that profits from the chaos or breaking the sacrosanct, unspoken rules of the D.C. country club. They are content to perform their outrage for the C-SPAN cameras, to deliver eloquent eulogies for a democracy they are too timid to actually defend.

We are witnessing the Silence of the Lames. They are cripled by a pathological addiction to process and decorum in the face of an enemy that has set fire to the rulebook.

Or perhaps they are merely addicted to the financial support of plutocratic parasites who fund the Republicans whose transgressions go unimpeded…

They seem paralyzed by a cowardice that mistakes caution for strategy and inaction for wisdom.

Their motive notwithstanding, they remain on the sidelines of history, polishing their credentials and waiting for a return to normalcy, while the republic is looted and the foundations of our democracy are sold for parts.

They are not a resistance; they are a concession speech delivered in slow motion, a passive audience to their own political irrelevance and the nation’s unraveling.

Martin Luther King Jr famously said, “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

The gravest threat to America is not just the villainy of the GOP, but the stunning, deafening, and utterly lame silence from those do-nothing Democrats who promised to fight it.

Common sense requires a revolutionary response from voters, who must nominate a new Democratic Party in the next primary election.

With the aforementioned exception of Bernie and AOC, virtually no Democratic incumbent deserves to return to the Capitol after next year’s election.

Only when our votes end this nightmare might Americans have a chance to save democracy and restore the American Dream.