A word to some Republicans out there…
This is for some of you MAGA Republicans out there. But I hasten to add, I’m not interested in addressing all of you. I’m not interested in talking to the glassy-eyed Trump idolaters among you. You all can stand back and stand by, to borrow a phrase. No, I’m referring to those among you who are smart enough and cynical enough to know exactly what you’re doing, but you do it anyway. You know who you are.
My goal is neither to ridicule you for your beliefs nor shame you into changing your minds. I’ve lived long enough to know better than that. I’ve lived long enough to know that won’t happen. My goal is just to compare notes and, to those of you who are at least reasonably self-critical and honest, get you at least to acknowledge that what I’m saying is true.
Not out loud, of course. No, I would never expect you to admit it out loud. I would just like you to consider what I’m saying and, within the quietude of your very own personhood, agree. You don’t ever have to admit what I’m saying is true to anyone but yourselves. What happens in a Harrington article stays in a Harrington article.
But just admit it. Don’t you sometimes wish that Joe Biden would screw up just once the way Donald Trump screws up practically every single day? For instance, don’t you wish Joe Biden would get on the phone and try to, oh, I dunno, blackmail Volodymyr Zelenskyy into announcing an investigation into one of Biden’s political enemies? Don’t you wish Biden actually HAD political enemies?
Or, don’t you wish just one person was suing Biden for rape? Don’t you wish Biden would play golf at least once a week, or tweet something vicious and hateful about innocent poll workers (putting their lives in danger from lethal mobs), or brag incessantly about how great and smart he is, or cheat on his taxes, or promise to release his tax returns then fight like hell in court to keep us from finding out what they are?
Don’t you wish Biden had started a bogus university then got successfully sued by former students who paid good money for a series of stupid and worthless classes and a diploma no one respects? Or here’s a good one: don’t you wish Biden had started a charity for kids with cancer then shifted the money that was supposed to go to help those kids to his own business instead?
I mean think about it. Don’t you wish Biden and Jeffrey Epstein had been pals? Dont you wish Biden had credibly been accused of child rape? Don’t you wish Biden, in a long career of crooked business dealings, had left a trail of ruined family businesses behind him, ruined because he engaged those family businesses in expensive contracts and then refused to pay them? Don’t you wish Biden were known for cheating the little guy? Don’t you wish Biden had owned at least one apartment building where he tried to keep people of colour out?
Come on, admit it, don’t you wish that, instead of successfully rolling out 200 million doses of Covid vaccines to red and blue states alike, Biden instead only helped blue states while all the while planting doubts about the vaccine’s efficacy? Don’t you wish that Biden was still fighting the 2020 election, insisting that his inauguration crowd was way bigger than anyone else’s and that he won the election by fourteen million votes and not the measly seven million being reported by the fake news press? What fun that would be for you, huh?
Admit it, wouldn’t life be a lot easier for you if Biden constantly favourably compared himself with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, or constantly insulted reporters and called them fake news and enemies of the people, or alienated America’s allies to the point where he was a laughingstock overseas? Don’t you wish Biden was a foul mouthed, ignorant, adderall-snorting, hate-tweeting braggart who made fun of disabled people and referred to Mexicans as murderers and rapists?
Above all, don’t you really hate the fact that, if Biden was all the things Donald Trump is, we Democrats would stand side by side and shoulder to shoulder with you to get rid of him? Doesn’t it bother you that when there is a Democrat unfit for office, like former governor Andrew Cuomo, Democrats join Republicans in ousting them? Don’t you hate the certainty that if Democrats had a piece of lying, cheating, animal-charity swindling crap like George Santos we’d break both our legs rushing him out the door?
Doesn’t all that bug you? Don’t you wish you had our embarrassment of riches when it comes to Republican wrongdoing? Imagine for a minute just how much fun that would be!
For example, don’t you wish that when it was learned that Joe Biden had accidentally kept classified documents in his home, instead of immediately turning them over to the National Archives, he instead stonewalled them for 18 months, accused the FBI of planting them, claimed he’d declassified them with his mind and then turned over some of them and claimed that was everything when he still had more? Wouldn’t that make things so much easier for you?
Admit it, you positively drool over the idea of catching Joe Biden with just one or two things that Donald Trump does routinely, every single day. Instead, all you’ve got are fantasies about the “Deep State” and Rudy-induced delusions about Hunter Biden’s laptop and dreadful nothing burgers like that.
I wouldn’t blame you in the least if you wished that, instead of providing student loan debt relief for working and middle class Americans, protecting marriage equality, revitalising American manufacturing, signing into law the Inflation Reduction Act, improving health care for veterans, enacting historic legislation to address the gun violence epidemic and presiding over the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, enacting the first comprehensive infrastructure bill in decades, Biden had instead just played golf, bitched about the election and given millionaires and billionaires massive, deficit-encumbering tax breaks. I’ll bet that would make things a lot easier for you!
Well, at least take some solace from this. A lot of your fellow MAGA clowns don’t know any of this stuff. All they know is the tripe they’re fed by Fox so-called News. So your secret, as they say, is safe with me.
Anyway, I know how you must feel. Hell, I feel your pain. It really must suck to be you, with such a toxic clown as Trump to live with. Anyway, thanks for hearing me out. You may now go back to being vicious and irresponsible.
But just one more thing before you go. I can’t help but leave you with one more thing because I’m a moral-of-the-story kind of guy. This comes from the dreadful Holocaust at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. As far as I know it really happened, and it’s a very sad story.
One day as guards were marching some Jews to the gas chamber, one of the Jews started saying to the guards, “shame, shame, shame,” like an incantation. It was picked up in a chorus by the other prisoners. Soon everyone in that doleful death march was saying it to the guards. “Shame, shame, shame.” The guards hung their heads in shame, of course. It didn’t do any good, of course. The guards did their duty — as they saw it. But history nevertheless remembers their shame. Trust me when I tell you this, my friend. History is going to remember your shame as well.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.