Governor Kristi Noem (R-SD), who I’ve suggested on at least one occasion should resign in shame, has written a remarkable piece for The Federalist.
No, she neither takes responsibility nor offers to resign.
Rather, she manages to write a piece in which just about every paragraph contains a falsehood (whether she thinks it or not) or glosses a fact. It’s the sort of thing where you can shake your finger at each prevarication or misleading statement, but you’ll end up with a sprained finger. Here’s one that really embodies the problems of the Republican Party these days:
Republicans got our butts kicked in Georgia on Tuesday. A 33-year-old with no accomplishments and a smooth-talking preacher wiped the floor with us. The idea that Georgia, of all places, could elect two communists to the United States Senate was ridiculous.
Communists? That pair? With regards to Pastor Warnock, surely Governor Noem has not forgotten the terrible hatred communist governments traditionally show towards religion, which they rightly see as competitors in the field of country domination. No? You don’t remember?
Go learn some history, Governor.
And how is Ossoff, a guy with a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and an investigative journalist, how is he someone with no accomplishments and a communist? He just beat a sitting Senator. Hell, a free press is another institution hated by communists.
And do you know why? It’s because the communists believed truth was not a factor in being successful. To them, much like President Trump, the truth value of a fact wasn’t important. It only mattered how it played to its, or his, supporters.
But that belief that truth and honesty didn’t matter turned out to be the Soviet’s Achilles’ heal, because they believed it internally as well, and after a while, with their supermarket shelves bare of all but lies, and citizens, for so long loyal yet despairing, finally rising up and peacefully telling their rulers that they were finished. The little lies, the political correctness, the commissars, the listening for what you want to hear rather than truth: those were a major factor in the collapse of the Soviets.
This little missive of Noem’s embodies all that’s wrong with the Republican Party, why their endpoint seems to be coming into view. If, in some alternative universe, they had the guts to ask how to begin to fix themselves, the best approach would be to look back to our parents and grandparents.
Stop the lies. A lie here, a lie there, and soon you don’t know if that important fact is true or not. And everyone’s doing it because you’re doing it. Now you’re so fucked you don’t even understand it. Like fish and water, you don’t realize how deeply you’re in the toxic pool. Dedicate yourself to Truth. Not the Party, not God. Truth and truth only.
Stop the ad hominen. Demonizing your opponent legitimizes any and all urges to hate your fellow Americans for smaller and smaller differences, and each person is a model for everyone around them. I’m an agnostic, but even I know your Bible doesn’t encourage you to engender hate against fellow humans. Or did you get a special edition? Warnock and Ossoff are not communists, and you know it. Show some respect, and maybe you’ll get some respect, if only as an American.
Stop misleading for political advantage. You write about Covid-19:
COVID didn’t crush the economy. Government crushed the economy. And then, just as quickly, government turned around and held itself out as the savior. Frankly, the Treasury Department can’t print money fast enough to keep up with Congress’ Christmas list.
What is so troubling is that by April, we knew that there was a specific vulnerable population that we needed to protect from COVID-19. But we also knew that the vast majority of people would recover from this virus with no serious difficulty. Despite this, very few changed course.
And how many mentions of overwhelmed hospitals and medical systems did I see? None. That is shameful, Governor. You’ve intentionally omitted the key fact in that entire debate, that we’re, in part, trying to avoid destroying our health system, and I think you’ve done that since February. If for no other reason, this is why you should resign in shame.
There’s more I could write about, but I’ll stop addressing the governor now. It’s really, for the informed, skeptical reader, a missive that is a horror in that it misleads, strips context, omits inconvenient facts, and no doubt there are more sins that I’m too sleepy to discern. I’ve just glanced at it again and the gall to quote President Eisenhower’s remarks about mortgaging the future, from a member of the Republican Party, is just stunning – and I just know she’ll recommend lowering taxes as the key to the deficit problem! Such drivel.
So long as “thinkers” such as this governor dominate the Republican Party, they may win elections, but they’ll be failures at governing. They don’t dare go near the truth, because it didn’t help them get elected in the first place. But it’s only adherence to truth, facts, and experts (which, I’ll grant, can be dangerous in this world of charlatans) that makes good governance a possibility.
