She Got What She Deserved--and That's What's Wrong

Make no mistake: Liz Cheney got what she deserved. About that, there can be no question.

Read that again. You know that's correct. That's what's wrong.

She stood up to the truth about the election, the truth which should be far behind us now, but an incredible number of people have cancelled that out of their minds--people with power, people who can enhance or reduce identity. They have made up a different reality, one that's far more comfortable, one they think they can continue to foist on us all.

I have no great liking for her. Her political views are pretty far from mine. But she does appreciate democracy, the give and take of ideas and the hashing out of them in the appropriate arena of the electorate. Under normal circumstances, this would be no big deal. We are not in normal circumstances.

Ideas are malleable, flexible, adjustable, discussible. Facts don't fit. Facts are established truth.

All she did was keep stating facts. In the twisted, absurd world of Republicans who are emotionally, not rationally, tied to our ex-president, she got one pass at telling the truth. Then she was supposed to shut up, become absorbed by their alternative reality, and ride out the lying for effect.

She was supposed to get behind the titular and phony party leader, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a slippery charlatan if there ever was one, for the sake of 'unity.' There is no room for deviation there now, no room for alternative discussion.

It's pretty scary. It's scary not only because of the way she was voted out--voice vote with loudmouths typically shouting, like followers of our ex- normally do, instead of a counted vote in which people go on record, a far more cowardly act--but of the way her narrative quickly became discounted, then condemned. She was thrown to the floor, then swept up and put into the trashcan. And millions think that's a good idea.

She says she will continue her narrative and try to persuade fellow party members of the errors of their ways. That ship has sailed, Liz. You are so, so late with that one.

I wonder what she'll do when that clear and decisive fact hits her. She's devoted to the truth, but some truths are harder to absorb.

She's being replaced with Elise Stefanik, a professional golddigger who has conveniently morphed herself into being another sycophant. Her grandstanding during the first impeachment trial of ex- paved the way. She's not a leader, she's a follower, and like the rest, she will be complimented only as long as she now kneels at his feet.

She cannot stay within the party, at least not the elected members of it. A group of a hundred or so party members, apparently, are going to issue a statement soon, condemning the absurdity of a continually contested election. Many of them are former officeholders. Not one of them are current officeholders. They have watched Liz Cheney get grilled on a spit, and they'd rather not, thank you very much.

They've learned. They're in with everyone else now--putting their heads down, avoiding interviews, and running into their group to hide from the rest of the world: sheepishly, ridiculously, but knowing that that's the only place they can operate now.

They're solid. They're protected by the Big Lie that's getting even bigger. From that base, they can tell even more--such as, for instance, that January 6 wasn't much more than typical tourism. Yes. Some are now saying that. In their world, time doesn't shrink falsehood: It expands it.

Liz Cheney would do well to join the objectors, at the very least so she isn't hanging out there by herself. She needs to belong to something now. But she cannot be in the Republican Party any longer. Once that voice-vote happened, they moved on without her. She's already in another solar system.

Maybe she'll catch on with a think-tank. There are several conservative-leaning ones that are well-established credentials. Now she'll have time to choose one that's rational, see the writing on the wall, and announce that she isn't running for re-election.

Because she's going to get buried back in Wyoming. The polling will tell her so. She will, momentarily, believe that her name will continue to get her into the front doors of county and local party cadres. And maybe, for a while, she'll be right. But those crowds will diminish. Wyoming's one of those places where people watch One America News and think it's reality.

It will take a while for all that to hit home. The Republican Party is not part of reality any longer. At least, the part of reality that the rest of us have accepted. And their commentary doesn't advance policy; it's still hung up on Dr. Seuss, which most of the rest of us have long since discarded and was falsely attached to Democrats anyhow. It doesn't have a point, it doesn't have a goal. It just opposes, well, something, anything, everything. No discussions or debates that make any sense.

They lock down on objecting to the "cancel culture," when in fact they have established their own--rigid, self-enforcing, final. Step out of line, and you are gone. You have to be very quiet to continue to belong to this group now; very quiet, very scared, and very loyal to a terrible person.

Liz Cheney will soon be dismissed as a victim of a dangerous movement of a whole political party which has thrown itself at the feet of a naturally dishonest, loud-mouthed, irrational liar due to his absurd hold on millions of people who don't really care enough about politics to see the damage he's doing. How this will end is anybody's guess now. It's become a form of mass hysteria, Salem writ large.

But from this point, there will be less said within their ranks, not more. The silence will be telling.

Liz Cheney got what she deserved. Will we?

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask indoors for now. With luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark