A poet for our times:
From Charlie Pierce:
"Romney stood out among his fellows as someone who at least took the whole business seriously. Mitch McConnell gave a meretricious speech that was slimy even by his standards. Lamar Alexander spent the weekend explaining that the president* had done a bad thing and that he would be chastened by the experience. (Alexander also brought his dog, Rufus, into the discussion, and I think Rufus has a better grasp on reality than his owner.) Young Ben Sasse was of similar mind, as was Susan Collins who, in one last, desperate grasp at influence, corrected what she’d said on Face The Nation on Sunday. Now, Collins said, she merely “hopes” the president* has learned his lessons. What a pack of timorous jackals they are."
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a30784344/trump-impeachment-trial-senate-acquits/
"There is a reason why Dante consigned to the vestibule of hell those people who maintain neutrality in times of moral crisis. They neither enter hell nor deserve heaven, as Virgil explains to the poet he is guiding.
'These have no longer any hope of death;
And this blind life of theirs is so debased,
They envious are of every other fate.
No fame of them the world permits to be;
Misericord and Justice both disdain them.
Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass.'
After the past month, hell’s going to need a bigger vestibule."
