There is an episode of “Night Court” where the characters believe that one of their colleagues had died. The hold an impromptu memorial service for him and all of them try really hard to say something nice about him. One by one they all get up and one by one they all fail to produce anything. Luckily for him, they only thought he was dead. He was in the back soaking all of this.

One wonders whether that will be Majorie Taylor Greene someday. In her latest statements I have to wonder if her goal is to sit in back of that court room and watch her colleagues to fail to come up with anything. Apparently, she questioned why anyone would want to join the military. According to her they are just throwing their life away.

It’s a remarkable turn of events that somehow echoes the former president. So, are her comments an extraordinary example of someone trying to curry favor the leader of the abyss. Lemmings will follow each other off the cliff. Salmon will swim upstream only to die in the end. Republicans will echo the words of a sadist until they cease to be what they once were.

It doesn’t take much to remember a time when conservatives were the ones that loved the military. They would spend on them with reckless abandon. They would heap love on them with every opportunity and would accuse the other side of a failure to love them. Whether their love was true or not, they certainly wanted you to believe it was.

In its place is some kind of cultural nihilism. Nothing is sacred. Nothing outside of self is paramount. There is no high honor. We instead focus on invisible sex traffickers while we ignore the sex traffickers sitting right next to them in Congress. These are all empty pursuits in the name of owning the liberals and maintaining power.

Keith Olbermann used to have his “worst person in the world” segment on his old MSNBC show. Even then it seemed that the moniker was temporary. Someone else would hold that honor the next day. I’m not sure anyone can at this point. MTG is stealing good oxygen from the rest of us. It’s high time that she went away never to be heard from again.

If we could spare a moment for Kevin McCarthy. In many respects, he is like the manager at the fast food place on the night shift. The teenagers have gotten out of school and have taken over the shift. He’s not incredibly talented, have any real natural authority, but he’s the adult in the room.

Some men are born great. Others have greatness thrust upon them. Still others ride the magic coattails of mediocrity and are the last ones left standing. McCarthy was never distinguishable at any point in his Congressional tenure. Yet, when Paul Ryan decided that he had had enough and the kooks decided Liz Cheney was unworthy, he was the only one left. Congratulations.

Madison Cawthorn is not a remarkable character in this tale. He’s young. The fact that he sits in a wheelchair is the only thing that distinguishes him from a frat boy looking for his former glory. Cawthorn was on a video/podcast telling a captive host that the GOP is full of orgies and cocaine parties.

We’ve all had leaders like McCarthy before. Their leadership style can best be described as hands off and hoping for the best. I suppose that works when you are surrounded by other adults. That isn’t McCarthy. He finds himself surrounded by idiots making idiotic comments and embarrassing the caucus left and right. Of course, when you do nothing to inspire discipline you aren’t going to get it.

The rest of us get to imagine who Cawthorn may be talking about. Some in the GOP want him to name names. As satisfying as that might be, I think most of us could be spared the mental images involved. Consenting adults can do what they want in their own time. Most of us don’t want to know anything about it.

Yet, McCarthy is playing the politics of reaction. He talks to Cawthorn and tells him if he does something like this again then he will be compelled to warn him again. He’s done the same with Greene and Boebert. Maybe he could round all of them up along with Matt Gaetz (honestly, we know he’s the one Cawthorn is talking about) and put them in time out. On second thought, maybe that’s how this all got started in the first place.

The bottomless pit that is Matt Gaetz managed to reach another low this week when he brought his performance art to another sad level. For those that really don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, Gaetz cancelled his membership to conservative hot spot “The Capital Hill Club.” Seems they got under the Congressman’s skin when they started requiring patrons to be vaccinated.

Like just about anyone else, I was enjoying Twitter just for the comments. Dozens retorted back with some making mention of the fact that Gaetz could be enjoying three meals a day at Club Fed in the near future. That of course was a veiled reference to his possible sex trafficking charges that could come some time this year. This story isn’t really about Gaetz. We could go off the deep end as it pertains to leadership. We can talk about moving cheese, personality profiling, communication models and other such nonsense and really talk about nothing.

True leadership is nearly as much about sacrifice and service as it is about any of those other buzz words or phrases. Gaetz happens to be hitting upon pandemic issues and like any crisis, the pandemic has revealed who the leaders are and who the pretenders are. From the get go there have been two effective strategies that have helped deal with the pandemic: vaccines and masks. While not perfect, they have allowed business to continue. If the vast majority would do both we wouldn’t see our hospitals clogged with idiots.

Our beloved governor in Texas has barred us from requiring masks. He’s barred public places and private places from such a requirement. A political philosophy that prides itself in allowing businesses and private entities to run themselves as they see fit is not allowing them to do it. They’ve essentially reduced themselves to governing by temper tantrum.

So, in our schools we are left to simply highly encourage that administrators, teachers, and students wear masks. In a world where you cannot require compliance, you are left to hope that adults will act like leaders and students will be inclined to follow their example. On my campus the administrators can’t be bothered to wear masks. Some of the teachers can’t either. You can’t make them do it and suggesting it would trample on their precious rights.

It’s all a failure of leadership. Really it’s a foundational failure of adulting. Most parents understand that they have to do things they don’t want to do. Most adults understand that we have to do things we don’t want to do. We may think it’s stupid or that it doesn’t really apply to us. We may think it’s a waste of time. Somewhere deep in the recesses of our psyche we know it really isn’t meant for us. Leaders understand this. Those who like to play leader do not.

Those who like to play leader will go to any lengths to avoid the simplest of things. They avoid the simplest of things because they are afraid it will make them look weak. So, they’ll drink their own urine. They’ll take medicine meant for barnyard animals. They may even resort to bleach or shooting sunlight up their butt. They’ll try all of these mind-numbingly stupid remedies and more just to avoid a simple shot and a simple mask. Good leaders lead by example. Good leaders subjugate their wants and needs for the good of the group. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough good leaders.

Nobody goes to Washington completely selfless. Oh sure, everyone loves to talk about how they want to be a service to the people. Some will put on the humble pie act. Others will speak longingly about how they want to do the people’s business and make the lives of their constituents better. I’m sure a large part of them actually believes that.

At some point, they realize they have to gain more power to do the things they want to do. There are multiple ways to do this. The less ambitious bide their time. They actually work day to day for their constituents. They figure it will get them reelected and with every passing election they will gain more power. Such thoughts are so quaint.

A second kind comes in with big ideas. They gain notoriety quickly with those big ideas and it can be somewhat difficult to distinguish them from the glory hounds. Obviously, most people immediately think of AOC, but Bernie Sanders fits under that category as well. They usually don’t get what they want but they help steer the conversation in a productive way.

Then, there are the Thomas Massie’s of the world. John Pavlovitz already covered serious ground on the picture above. I’ve enjoyed his writing for some time, but I suspect he knows he has been used in this instance. Underneath the picture read the caption, “Santa, please bring ammo.” I suppose Massie could love his guns that much, but I suspect that John knows perfectly well that a love of guns wasn’t the point of this Christmas card.

This picture was about performative politics. It was about the fact that Matt Gaetz, Majorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert are getting all the headlines. How do you get yourself in there? Well, you take a picture days after a school shooting with timing so crass you can’t help but get your fifteen minutes of fame. Or should we say infamy? As Martin Short’s character in the Three Amigos said, “infamous means more than famous.” Well, Massie certainly qualifies. Except he’s bringing a butter knife to a gun fight. Greene, Gaetz, and Boebert are pros at this. They’ve made a living of getting people to know who they are without actually accomplishing anything.

That’s the difference between performative politics and what people like AOC do. They become famous and powerful and yet no one can name a single thing they’ve actually done or actually proposed. The idea is to own the liberals. Massie certainly won this round. He’s provoked outrage. He’s inspired a number of writers to condemn his stupidity. He’s dumb, but he’s not so dumb.

The latest from the Lincoln Project.

It’s all so clear, now, ain’t it?

Matt Gaetz has been the loyalist of the Trump loyalists. No matter how low Trump went, Gaetz stood there with a grin on his face and a shovel in his hand to help dig a deeper hole. It all makes sense now that we know the latest accusations about Gaetz and his inability to keep it in his pants.

Here is what they have in common:

Daddy’s money

Don Gaetz made his fortune by convincing the government to allow Medicare and Medicaid to cover hospice services – that his non-profit provided. Once the government started covering these hospice services, he switched the company to for-profit and built the largest hospice company in the country. He made millions using government health care. He then used those millions to buy his son a seat in Congress, which the son is now using to rail against government-run health care. Now he’s using those millions on getting his son a lawyer.

We all know, of course, how Donald Trump’s daddy made his money. Real estate, including government-subsidized housing, like this building in Brooklyn that still nets the Trumps $5 million a year.

Being a Giant Windbag on Twitter

The night before Michael Cohen testified before Congress, Gaetz sent this tweet, meant to intimidate a federal witness:

“Hey @MichaelCohen212 – Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…,”

There are about a million other examples of Gaetz being a horses ass on Twitter for you to read if you’re a masochist, and I certainly don’t need to prove that Trump is a giant windbag.

Multiple Accusations of Sexual Impropriety

This Wikipedia page lists 26 credible accusations against Trump, most of which you’re already aware, no doubt.

The best proof on this Earth of a devil is that Donald Trump gets away with literally everything he does with no repercussions ever, and the only way that this is possible is that he sold his soul to El Diablo.

Of course, it is this week that the Gaetzgate scandal began to unfold. In my estimation, he just finally pissed off the wrong person. Mr. or Mrs. pissed off leaked the investigation that had been secret from the media for half a year. For six months, the Justice Department has been investigating whether Gaetz flew a 17-year-old child across state lines and paid her for statutory rape. Within hours of the story breaking, GOP Congressmen and women lined up to give the media anonymous accounts of Gaetz sharing naked photos of women on the floor of the U. S. House of Representatives.

He is accused of having a sex contest when he was in the Florida state legislature involving . . . Harry Potter. Lawmakers got points for sleeping with married women, sorority girls, and virgins. The ultimate prize of this contest was one specific woman who they nicknamed “The Snitch” – as in Quiddich, whoever got her to sleep with them won the game outright.
Alright, alright, the Daily Mail reported the last bit there but it’s too damn juicy not to talk about at the beauty salon.

They each have a Creepy Predator Wingmen

Trump’s long documented and often photographed friendship with Jeffrey Epstein allowed him free and full access to many of these women who later accused him of sexual assault. Epstein died in prison after being indicted for running a sex-trafficking ring wherein he abused dozens of underage girls, flying them on his private plane to his private island where they could be abused without the fear of authorities coming to the aid of the children.

Gaetz’s Epstein is named Joel Greenberg. Joel Greenberg is under indictment for a whole host of unbelievably nasty crimes, from posing as a student and writing a letter that he hoped would disgrace his political rival, to using Florida state government offices to print Fake IDs for the underage girls he was sleeping with so he could fly them across state lines. That sounds familiar.

There sure is an awful lot of smoke around these folks.

Alright, jury, I’ve presented my case. Gaetz is Trump’s biggest defender because they’re the same guy. Given every advantage in life, able to purchase anything they’d ever want from women to political office, they openly flaunt their crimes and laugh at the dummies around them that play by the rules and don’t have nearly as many followers on social media as they do. They’re both full of horse shit. We can only hope that the Feds take down Gaetz before he becomes the next President Trump.