AN ATMOSPHERE OF FERVENT MALICE AND HUMORLESS IMBECILITY

Writing in “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life” 70 years ago, Richard Hofstadter observed that the committee hearings carried on by Joe McCarthy quickly generated “...an atmosphere of fervent malice and humorless imbecility.”

What a perfect description of McCarthy’s overly-inbred descendants.

The House GOP’s hilarious-if-it-weren’t-so-corrupt Subcommittee to Attack the Federal Law Enforcement Apparatus Investigating Many House Republicans and Donald Trump kicked off its first hearing today, titled “Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”

This is a full-frontal attack on the rule of law masquerading as an investigation. Period. End of sentence.

The witness list included:

PANEL I:

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, Iowa

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, Wisconsin

U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin, Maryland

Former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii

PANEL II:

Mr. Thomas Baker, Former FBI Agent

Professor Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law Center

Mr. Elliot Williams, Principal, the Raben Group

Ms. Nicole Parker, Former FBI Agent

House Republicans could run the Barnum & Bailey Circus in a Capitol Hill hearing room and the political reportersof the D.C. Press Corpse would still cover it as a hearing because … it’s in a hearing room, duh... what are you, stupid? There will be a lot of news coverage of this hearing that will serve to amplify and legitimize it.

When watching or reading such “reportage,” remember what’s been recently revealed in the past two weeks regarding Bill Barr’s “management”: the Justice Department under Donald Trump was more politicized - the extent of which is still only starting to be known - than at any time since John Mitchell was Nixon’s Attorney General as revealed in the Senate Watergate Hearings.

As we know well by now, the Trump Strategy is to accuse your opponents of exactly the wrongdoing you’re committing. Given their lack of intellectual capacity, it’s no surprise that this has been adopted in full by the the feral children in the House Republican Kaw-kuss, since it’s such an obvious and easy-to-follow playbook.

Don’t be fooled.

The Gargoyle Party has an ideological commitment to portraying the government as irredeemably incompetent or corrupt, so the the Subcommittee to Attack the Federal Law Enforcement Apparatus Investigating Many House Republicans and Donald Trump isn’t really a departure, as can be seen by applying a 70-year old description to the proceedings.

But there is something new in how personal their plans are.

This is an effort to portray years of law enforcement investigations as politically motivated, the product of a government that the committee casts as corrupt in cartoonish ways.

While Congress has a long history of conducted needed oversight of law enforcement, in this case, the investigations in question concern the allies of many of those sitting on and directing the panel.

In many cases, the investigations they wish to sandbag concern the panel members themselves.

The witnesses are mostly Republican politicians.

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), have both become famous in recent years for their wholehearted embrace of the wackier fringes of GOP conspiracy-mongering.

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard demonstrated how wacky the daughter of a crazy cult leader can be after all her preparation for the role with her appearances on Faux Snooze., testifying that “The idea that we must just blindly accept whatever the government or those in power tell us is true goes against our Bill of Rights.”

The “voice of reality” will be played by Jamie Raskin.

A second panel will veer away from career politicians and towards the world of legal punditry.

Jonathan Turley, the conservative movement attorney, appeared, as did Nicole Parker, a former FBI Special Agent. Since most outside of WingerWorld haven’t heard of Ms. Parker, she is known among the loonies for writing a column for Fox News in January in which she cited a photo of FBI agents kneeling as part of the 2020 George Floyd protests as an example of the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement. She wrote, “On top of that, there was no reprimand for any of the agents who knelt that day. In fact, many ended up getting highly sought-after promotions and were offered $100 gift cards by the FBI Agents Association.”

Elliot Williams, a CNN legal analyst, appeared as a witness for the Democrats.

Former FBI agent Thomas Baker wrote a book contending that the agency’s post-9/11 shift into counterintelligence opened the door to politicized investigations, citing Trump-Russia as an example.

What makes 2023’s McCarthy Investigation Revisited Committee different is that several Republican members have faced or or facing investigations from the agencies that they will spotlight.

Their fury toward the agencies and events in question is not ideological, its personal.

Fraternity booby Matt Gaetz, who faced a high-profile investigation into allegations of sex trafficking in 2021 that did not result in his being formally accused of any wrongdoing, was secretly put on the panel earlier this week in place of Certified Loon Chip Roy.

Committee Chairman Gym Jordan, still suffering the aftereffects of being dropped on his head a time or two too many in his ‘rasslin’ days when he was busy not paying attention to the sexual abuse of the athletes he was responsible for when he worked for convicted sexual abuser Jerry Sandusky, was subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee regarding his activities in support of the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

Cruella deVille, er, I mean Marjorie Traitor Goon, was present at the meetings in the White House in December 2020 when the plans were finalized for the attempted coup.

There’s also convicted car thief Darryl Issa, who proves that if you have enough retired military morons and religious morons, er, I mean Mormons, in your congressional district, you too can be re-elected to Congress.

The committee includes professional stooge Elise Stafanik, who proves you too can graduate from Harvard without developing a conscience (it’s probably easier that way).

Fortunately, the Democrats on the committee are led by Virgin Islands Delegate Stacy Plaskett, a former top prosecutor in the New York District Attorney’s office who was also a law student of Jamie Raskin. She has with her former Trump First Impeachment prosecutor now Representative Dan Goldman, who spent yesterday spearing Oversight Committee Chairman Comer in his ginormous posterior. The other Democrats include veterans like John Garamendi and Texas attorney Colin Allred, who has had plenty of experience before entering congress in dealing with the lower forms of Republican one finds in Texas.

Goldman described the appearance of Senators Grassley and Johnson, saying he hoped to question them about “how they used their Senate committees to weaponize Russian propaganda and disinformation in 2020.” Ouch.

This morning, the White House issued a memo calling the subcommittee “a Fox News reboot of the House Un-American Activities Committee.” That’s got it about right.

Basically, the Subcommittee to Attack the Federal Law Enforcement Apparatus Investigating Many House Republicans and Donald Trump is a craven propaganda ploy.

The question is, like with so many things in this political hellscape: will it work with voters?

The good news there is that the 2022 election showed the majority of voters didn’t buy this kind of bullshit.

In the end, the “testimony” could be described by Shakespeare: “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

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