Republicans Still Don't Get It
One of the persistent mysteries of the past week is what leads Republican House memberssome of whom had to crouch on the floor of the chamber as the Capitol was being attacked, while others were whisked into unidentified locations for their own safetyto refuse to accept who was to blame for the insurrection. With the exception of the 10 Republican House members who voted alongside the Democrats to impeach the president, and a smattering of Republicans who acknowledged that the events of last week could easily have ended their lives but wanted to convene a commission to investigate matters, a nontrivial number of Republicans took to the floor on Wednesday to insist the real injury of Jan. 6, 2021 was to their own free speech rights. This was perhaps best embodied in the galactically stupid visual of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon-supporting representative from Georgiawho falsely tweeted that Trump would stay in office after Inauguration Daywearing a mask that read CENSORED as she spoke freely on the House floor, as captured on national television.
There was also Rep Jim Jordans inexplicable claim that one cannot have a functioning First Amendment when cancel culture only allows one side to talk. (Again, he was saying this freely on the floor of the House of Representatives.) Democrats are really out to cancel the president and anyone who disagrees with them, Jordan said, before warning that cancel culture will come for us all. There was also the fractionally less coherent Rep. Glen Grothman from Wisconsin claiming, of the rioters in D.C., that theyre scared to death that nobody else will fight the cancel culture as we head toward an era when some things cant be said.
It is, quite frankly, beyond belief that the very same people who could have died in the United States Capitol just last week have somehow persuaded themselves that theyve in fact experienced a more acute First Amendment injury than even insurrection itselfand that any effort to impose liability for the property destruction, terror, and death that resulted from the storming of the government is a monstrous encroachment on their right to talk. They make this point, to be clear, as they are talking and talking and talking about the pain of First Amendment encroachments, on the House floor. The real threat is to them, they say, as they point to the long and careening tour of Free Speech casualties of January 2021, from Donald Trumps Twitter feed, to an armed mobs vaunted free assembly rights, to their own wholly imaginary right to talk endlesslywhich they are, to be clear, doing, even as they whine about it. That it is all performed even when what they say is happening is plainly not happening is eminently incendiary and insane. And herein lies the problem. We have come to a moment in which one half of the country is fighting to be free of crippling, life-ending acts of stochastic terror, while another half of the same country is chillingly preoccupied with their right to just talk shit.
These harms are not the same.
More at:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/republicans-impeachment-speeches-first-amendment.html
RKP5637
(67,030 posts)voted in by similar people.
Bradshaw3
(7,454 posts)They, and their terrorist supporters, want to hurt those they hate and destroy our democracy. We better start believing them when they make calls for war.
Pantagruel
(2,580 posts)claim that one cannot have a functioning First Amendment when cancel culture only allows one side to talk.
Gym forgets when the Senate GOP refused to allow witnesses to be called during Impeachment number One.
Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,760 posts)a coordinated campaign of lies & propaganda.
TheRealNorth
(9,435 posts)If they can force the media to play all their lying B.S., they can force the media to not give airtime to the Democrats and the left.
thucythucy
(7,983 posts)Maybe they knew or thought they knew that if the mob got to them they would be spared.
I can't help but wonder: maybe they would have gleefully pointed out their Democratic colleagues to the designated assassins, and cheered as their Democratic "colleagues" were being lynched.
Ferrets are Cool
(21,059 posts)exceptionally, strong.
modrepub
(3,467 posts)become protected speech. That's essential what the orange menace did along with everyone else who believes and supports the Big Lie.
Irish_Dem
(45,619 posts)Pretends victim status.
Uses double talk and world salad to confuse others.
Projects own crimes onto others.