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The sixth of January, 2021, has already gone down in American history as a day of infamy. This is, of course, the same phrase Franklin Roosevelt used to describe the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and it certainly seems appropriate right now.
You'll have to forgive me, but I'm going to wait until tomorrow to write about the yesterday's momentous events at the United States Capitol. Personally, I am still processing what happened, so I'm going to save that rant for Friday. Instead, I'd like to spotlight another momentous event yesterday; one that was seriously overshadowed by the riotous assembly at the Capitol, but will likely have much more long-lasting consequences for the next two years. I speak, of course, of the victories of both Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in the two Senate runoff elections held Tuesday in Georgia. Because with these two wins, the Democrats will wrest control of the chamber away from Mitch "The Grim Reaper" McConnell. It'll be the smallest of majority margins -- 51-50 (with the addition of Kamala Harris to cast the tie-breaking vote). But the margin doesn't really matter, what does is being able to set the Senate's agenda -- and confirm Biden nominees, as well.
Our title today is (of course) the core belief of Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The entire book hinges on this concept, in fact. The end of the book comes after the totalitarian, personality-cult government reprograms Smith into not just repeating as the party line but actually believing that two plus two really equals five, not four. His belief in this falsehood is total at the end -- the party tells him it must be so, and so he believes it to be true.
First of all, I hope everyone had a happy new year. In the political world, the new year isn't really going to start for another 16 days, of course.
President Donald Trump is, in a word, delusional. He keeps proving it, over and over again, beyond any shadow of a doubt. In the past, some have wondered whether Trump really believes some of the wilder things he says, or whether he's just a consummate showman, giving his intended audience exactly what they want (kind of like a right-wing radio personality who knows full well how much he's exaggerating and bloviating, but not caring because it brings in the ratings and the money). But the phone call just released of Trump begging and threatening Georgia's secretary of state should end such hair-splitting, because (if you either read the full transcript or listen to the whole call) it is patently obvious that this is no schtick for Trump -- it's truly what he believes. He has apparently surrounded himself with people even more fervent than he in their belief in all the falsehoods, and he has banished most of those around him who still have even a tenuous connection to
Welcome back to the second part of our annual year-end awards column series! If you missed it, you can check out last week's installment too. But a warning -- for both this column and last week's -- they're long. Incredibly long. Monstrously long. It's been that kind of year, what can we say?
What a year. Seriously, that was a tough one for us all, wasn't it?
Before we begin with the awards, I would just like to thank all the people -- both online and in person -- who helped out by giving me their suggestions and nominations for all of these awards. I have tried to credit individuals where appropriate, but I probably forgot to do so here and there too, so I apologize in advance.
Once again, it's been a momentous week in American presidential history. Right as we were writing last week's column, the Supreme Court laughed President Donald Trump's last-ditch legal effort to overturn the will of the voters of multiple states right out of court. They were entirely correct in unanimously turning the case down, because it was so very laughable a concept to begin with. Texas was essentially arguing that it should be able to have a veto over any other state's election, because they didn't approve of that state's election process (in reality, what they really didn't approve of was who won those states). Coincidentally enough, they only complained about the states which, if their votes had been denied, would have handed the election to Trump -- even though several other states (including some red ones) had done exactly what Texas was complaining about in the four states they tried to sue. It was all nakedly transparent, and not based in any legal or constitutional foundation whatsoever. Which, again, is why it got unanimously laughed out of the highest court in the land.
What will the political landscape look like after Donald Trump leaves office? That question is on a lot of people's mind right now, for obvious reasons. Everyone who voted for Joe Biden wants the entire country to move on and move forward, obviously. But even a lot of Republicans truly hope that the post-Trump world arrives sooner rather than later. What's standing in the way, however, is Trump himself, who shows no signs of fading into the background any time soon.
One particularly apt metaphor was making the rounds yesterday, to describe two very different events. It was, we were told, "D-Day." The significance of this is that D-Day wasn't the actual end of World War II -- not by a long shot. What it was, however, was just as important: it marked the real beginning of the end.
I just spent a few hours watching the Electoral College vote. Now, admittedly I am a pretty wonky political guy, but I have never before paid even the slightest attention to the formality of each state's electors meeting to cast their official ballots to elect the next president. It was always an afterthought, a mere formality. Something you'd hear about maybe a day or so after it happened, because it was of no real consequence. Even in the midst of the 2000 Bush v. Gore fight, nobody really paid much attention to the Electoral College, because it simply wasn't all that relevant to the legal fight.