Cruelty for cruelty's sake has found home in the MAGA party.
Matt Gaetz, we hardly knew you, but we knew enough. And your excuse for withdrawing your name from a Cabinet appointment because you're a distraction to Trump's plans—no one is buying that. Nobody distracts Trump—he's still "weaving." But that ethics report—I've never seen such a confidential document that more people can quote from memory.
Go goodbye, Matt, and on your way out, can you take a colleague with you? I refer to South Carolina representative Nancy Mace, the woman who, after voting to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speaker's role last year, suffered some blowback and wore a scarlet A on her t-shirt to lament her persecution.
Removing Kevin McCarthy from anything is an irrefutably good idea—no one lies with more nonchalance and adeptness than he does—but rather than owning her choice, she sought sympathy: "I'm wearing the scarlet letter after the week I just had," she said, "being a woman up here, and being demonized for my vote and for my voice. I will do the right thing every single time, no matter the consequences."
Well, apparently not every single time, because demonizing others is still on her to-do list, one she has apparently begun to whittle down. Her opening post-election salvo centers on a crusade to bar transgender women from using toilets on Capitol Hill. Since Delaware's Sarah McBride is the first and only transgender woman elected to Congress, and since both Mace and McBride have private bathrooms in their office, it seems likely that, as many have noted, the whole scheme underscores (1) Mace's eagerness to get her face on Fox, and (2) an almost unthinkable pettiness and cruelty.
The response from many of her Republican allies has been predictably supportive; of course, it is—their anointed leader is savoring the deportation of a couple of million human beings. Compared to such large-scale barbarism, Mace's work is that of a mere novice, but she remains in lockstep with her MAGA allies who have doubled down on the marginalization of minorities, both ethnic and gender-related. It's a continuation and expansion of the ongoing attack on wokeness—which used to be called empathy before the MAGA folks learned that hatred garnered more votes.
No one needs to point out the irony of Nancy Mace weeping over being demonized but having no qualms about demonizing a colleague. Representatove McBride herself has tried to remain above the fray. "Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully," she tweeted. "I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness.
Mace, however, is not interested in kindness or people with other journeys, and she certainly isn't interested in protecting women; otherwise, she would have been leading the charge to run Trump and Gaetz out of town on the same rail. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who seems to cut through the BS better than most, posted this:
Women know that men don't scheme to "dress like girls" to assault them.
They do it every day in broad daylight. And the ones in power protect each other to keep it quiet.
Just ask the House Ethics Committee. Or the President-elect of the United States.
Leave women alone.
As disappointing as I found the recent election results, this particular attack on another colleague is infinitely more depressing. Even the most vacuous Trumpian should be able to muster up some compassion.
And Mace is even wrong about the Scarlet Letter and its heroine, Hester Prynne, the woman sentenced to wear the "A." Prynne chose to wear it long after she was compelled to, then spent the final years of her life doing charitable work among the poor and sick. She became so revered that townspeople often claimed that maybe the A stood not for adulterer but for angel.
There's a shade of gray in the Scarlet Letter. That shade is in short supply in the MAGA world.
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