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Not too terribly long ago, there was an attitude of statesmanship that went along with public service.
No matter whether you agreed with a politician’s votes and biases, you could be relatively assured that, a handful of exceptions aside, that they believed and behaved as if that they were serving a higher purpose – a duty to country, the constitution and law. Seriously, go back and watch old video of debates – on the presidential stage and on the floors of the U.S. House, U.S. Senate and various state house chambers.
Those people aspired to intelligence and were embarrassed by failures and erroneous statements.
I’m not talking about ages ago, in some black-and-white-TV world. In 2000, for example, during one of the presidential debates between Al Gore and George W. Bush, Gore apologized at one point for getting a couple of facts wrong in the previous debate, and Bush apologized for briefly interrupting Gore. During a town hall in 2008, late-Sen. John McCain defended his opponent, Barack Obama, when a voter attacked Obama. Later during that campaign, Obama publicly praised McCain for his service and decency.
Compare that to recent debates and interactions between our lawmakers at every level. It’s like another world.
A world in which those involved aspire to stupidity.
Because attention from stupidity is still attention. And in today’s social media-driven world, attention is all that seems to matter.
The past couple of weeks have been a complete and utter inundation of ignorance – performative ignorance – on every level of government. It started, and has been most recognizable, at the presidential level, where the guy currently occupying the White House literally stated that he has the power to break the law if he thinks he’s “saving the country.”
That came after he sat quietly as the co-president gave a press conference, in one of the most surreal and frightening scenes in American history. Seriously, apocalyptic films have started less ominously than with an egomaniacal bill ionaire holding court in the Oval Office to explain his sometimes-illegal, sometimes-illogical, almost always-ridiculous work dismantling every portion of American governance. (Well, not all of it – not the parts that still pay the billionaires their government contracts.)
But make no mistake about it, as bad as the Musk-Trump presidency and illegal actions – including stating out loud that they don’t have to follow laws or the directives of judges – those actions have not stood alone. Instead, the idiocy and lunacy and corruption at the top of the political food chain has seemed to aspire those down it to aspire to even dumber heights.
And they have answered the call.
From a bill to buy and rename Greenland as “Red, White and Blueland,” to a bill to make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday to a bill to rename a West Virginia mountain for Trump, we’re dead in the center of LOOK AT ME season in Congress.
Well, except over in the Senate, where the Republicans would really, really like for you not to look at who they’re approving for various important government positions. Like a tv host who’s never led an agency being approved to lead the entire Department of Defense. Or the guy with brain worms who did some really weird stuff with a dead bear being in charge of our Department of Health. Or the guy with a “hit list” still being pushed to lead the FBI.
But it goes well beyond the federal level.
At the state level, as Louisiana was vying for the dumbest, with its surgeon general announcing that the state would no longer promote mass vaccinations, Alabama was determined not to play second fiddle to anyone.
Things started with Alabama AG Steve Marshall declining to join a multi-state lawsuit over Trump-Musk’s cuts to NIH funding – a decision that will cost Alabama institutions billions and hamper research of, among other things, childhood cancer – and deciding to instead join a lawsuit that seeks to end protections of students with special needs.
Then there was the anti-trans bill claiming to define “what is a woman” – a bill that was so incredibly stupid that the person sponsoring it and the governor signing it couldn’t answer basic questions about the facts it sought to address. That led to a very telling exchange in a committee hearing on the bill, when a Democratic representative asked bill sponsor Susan Dubose how children born with both sets of sex organs should be defined. Dubose’s response: “They would make that choice.” What a novel concept.
Then there’s the bill mandating that we call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” because one day a month ago Trump thought it would be a clever line during a meeting and now we all have to convince the naked emperor that his new clothes are awesome. Such a change is going to cost us millions in taxpayer dollars over the coming years. But who cares if it appeases the cult leader?
And yet, somehow, all of that is still not the dumbest, most aspirationally stupid legislative act this week. That honor goes to Alabama House members Mack Butler, Chris Sells, Scott Stadthagen, Ernie Yarbrough, Mark Gidley and Ben Harrison. These astute gentlemen have sponsored and co-sponsored HB 248, which prevents the “dispersion of items into the atmosphere with the intention of affecting the weather.”
It’s an honest-to-God “Dems are controlling the weather” bill.
This nonsense has to stop. It has to. Because it’s literally killing us. This performative stupidity in the interest of getting attention is destroying the respect that people should have for the very important, very impactful jobs that lawmakers do.
It is wiping away decades of men and women striving to be honorable public servants and bring dignity and honor to the job. And it is replacing it with clowns in suits who bop themselves on the head repeatedly for attention – only with somehow less dignity than that.
These jobs matter. It’s time all of us started acting like it.
