Yesterday, before the House vote, Bernie tried to focus his supporters on what's really important, wroting that “Washington DC, with its lobbyists, campaign contributors, and powerful special interests, is the last place in the world to know what’s going on in the lives of working families or to bring about the structural reforms our society needs. If we want to bring about real change in this country, and get ordinary people to stand up and fight for justice, we’ve got to hit the road and take the fight to working class communities. Staying within the ‘beltway’ won’t do it. And that’s what I’ll be doing on June 1st, June 2nd, and June 3rd as I head to Durham, NC, Nashville, TN, and Charleston, SC to hold rallies on the need to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage of $17 an hour. I will be joined at those rallies by Rev. William Barber— one of the great social justice leaders in the country— trade unionists, and local workers. If you live near any of these communities, we’d love for you to join us. Congress can no longer ignore the needs of the working class of this country. At a time of massive and growing income and wealth inequality and record-breaking corporate profits, we must stand up for low-income workers— many of whom are struggling every day to provide a minimal standard of living for their families. One important way to do that is to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage. In the year 2023, nobody in America should be forced to work for starvation wages. It should be a basic truism that in the United States, the richest country on earth, if you work 40 hours a week you do not live in poverty. Raising the minimum wage is not only the right thing to do morally. It is also good economics. Putting money into the hands of people who will spend it on basic needs is a strong economic stimulant.”
On the other hand, this was crackpot wingnut Chip Roy (R-TX), at the Freedom Caucus press conference Tuesday: “The Republican conference right now has been torn asunder and we are working hard trying to put it back together again by making sure that this bill gets stopped.” Few people ever took Roy seriously to begin with; now no one does. Once Thomas Massie (R-KY) sold out his Freedom Caucus brothers on the Rules Committee a few hours later, there was no way to stop passage of the turd sandwich. The far right spent Tuesday evening howling at the moon like mad dogs and feeling sorry for themselves. Listen to Rep Ken Buck (R-CO), who is also the head of the Colorado Republican Party, explain why he was “a very strong no,” but how he was giving up the fight before the vote. Still, he indicated he could vote to kick McCarthy out of the speakership. Once the neo-fascist/nihilist wing of the GOP was told that the New Dems, Blue Dogs and Problem Solvers were on board, the extremists on the right understood opposition was pointless.
With $1.5 trillion in cuts, no new taxes on the rich— not even any closed loopholes— it passed last night, 314 to 117. In the end, only 71 far right Republicans voted no, giving McCarthy his much-needed minimum 112 majority of the majority. (For all her caterwauling, Boebert ducked out on the final vote.) 165 Democrats voted for it. 46 Dems held the line. McCarthy needed Democratic votes to pass the procedural rule on floor. After McCarthy failed to pass it, 52 Dems switched their votes giving McCarthy a comfortable margin for the GOP rule. It passed 241-187 (with 29 hard right nihilst Republicans voting no). I hope— but doubt— Hakeem Jeffries got some kind of future concession out of McCarthy for that. The Democrats who voted NO included Jamaal, Cori, AOC, Pramila, Ro, Rashida, Ayanna, Delia, Summer... everyone we know by one name (like Madonna, Prince Oprah, Seal, Bono, Beyoncé, Drake, Eminem, Cher, Sting...)
Had McCarthy failed to get the majority of the majority, the Freedom Caucus— which turns out to be more of a toothless tiger than anyone expected— would have introduced a vacate the chair motion to take away the speakership from him immediately. It ain't over 'til it's over and when this goes to the Senate, Rand Paul has pledged to force a vote that Republicans dread— a 5% across the board spending cut for the next 2 years. Sounds like what conservatives love? Well, it is… but it includes Social Security and Medicare, third rails that most of them are afraid to vote to cut. If they vote no, it means they’re no conservative enough; if they vote yes, it means seniors will hate them. Needless to see, Mike Lee (R-UT)— who has publicly admitted he wants to get rid of Social Security outright and privatize Medicare— is with Paul on this.
A few days ago, Alabama evangelical, on-again-off-again homophobic psychopath and NY Times columnist David French used his column to write that “There is a certain irony in discussions of masculinity. The group that is most convinced of a crisis of masculinity, the American right, is also busy emasculating itself before our eyes. It correctly perceives that young men are facing an identity crisis, yet it is modeling precisely the wrong response.” He pointed right to the absurd new book on “manhood” by Missouri reactionary— and pussy— Josh Hawley. “If there’s anything that’s well established in American social science,” wrote French, “it’s that men are falling behind women in higher education, suffer disproportionately from drug overdoses and are far more likely to commit suicide. Indeed, the very definition of ‘masculinity’ is up for grabs. In 2019, the American Psychological Association published guidelines that took direct aim at what it called ‘traditional masculinity— marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression’— declaring it to be, ‘on the whole, harmful.’”
Last month, my friend Jonah Goldberg wrote an important piece cataloging the sheer pettiness of the young online right. “Everywhere I look these days,” he wrote, “I see young conservatives believing they should behave like jerks.” As Jonah noted, there are those who now believe it shows “courage and strength to be coarse or bigoted.”
No one should think that this hysteria is confined to online spaces or that it ultimately remains merely petty or cruel. Hysteria plus cruelty is a recipe for violence. And that brings us back to Hawley. For all of its faults when taken to excess, the traditional masculinity of which he claims to be a champion would demand that he stand firm against a howling mob. Rather, he saluted it with a raised fist— and then ran from it when it got too close and too unruly.
If the right is going to claim it defends traditional masculinity— through its books, its viral Jordan Peterson videos and its Tucker Carlson documentaries— should it not at least attempt to exhibit the best virtues of traditional masculinity? Yet rather than model the traits of Kipling’s If—, the right mimics the attitudes of the countercultural 1968 film “If…,” which offered a sardonic inversion of Kipling’s virtues in its tale of a violent, schoolboy-led insurrection at a British boarding school.
I share many of the right’s concerns about young men. As I argued in one of my first pieces for The Times, American men are in desperate need of virtuous purpose. I reject the idea that traditional masculinity, properly understood, is, “on the whole, harmful.” I recognize that it can be abused, but it is good to confront life with a sense of proportion, with calm courage and conviction.
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received reflects that wisdom. Early in my legal career, a retired federal judge read a brief that I’d drafted and admonished me to “write with regret, not outrage.”
Outrage is cheap, he told me. And he doubted that I, as a young lawyer, had even begun to understand what true legal outrage looked like. Husband your anger, he told me. Have patience. Gain perspective. So then, when something truly is terrible, your outrage will mean something. It was the legal admonition against crying wolf.
I worry for the young right. As Jonah wrote, all too many of them “have no frame of reference, no meaningful political experience or memory of politics prior to this shabby era; they think being shabby is normal and smart.” But there is a better way. It includes paying close attention to the very masculine values they claim to uphold, and it can start with remembering a singular admonition: “Keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs.” It’s a step toward reason, a step away from the emotional brink and a key to understanding what it truly takes to be a good man.
This guy was always a hateful, self-serving asshole. He still is. Here’s the No Labels ad they just started running in Maine to throw the 2024 presidential election to Trump.