A Truth and Reconciliation Fairy Tale

Since the Liberal Superpower is memory, I thought I'd take mine out for a spin and remind my readers of the last time people of good will decided that the depravity of the GOP could be best handled with genteel half-measures.

This is a video from February 2009 of Senator Patrick Leahy proposing an American version of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee as a reasonable middle ground between doing absolutely nothing about eight years of  Bush Administration crimes and criminal-incompetence, and spending a decade doing nothing but picking through the ruins the Reign of Dumbses and prosecuting the shit out of its every mastermind, middleman and stooge.

It was a fairy tale because Senator Leahy made the colossal misjudgment of presuming that a substantial number of leaders in the GOP and a  large number of Republican party base voters were interested in Truth or Reconciliation.

They weren't.

They were exclusively interested in running the hell away from the disasters they had created as fast as their Medicare-funded Hoverounds could carry them.  They were interested in burning their Bush/Cheney laws signs and merch and pretending they has never heard of Dubya and had never troubled their beautiful minds with thoughts of politics or parties.  They were interested in putting on funny hats, calling themselves "independents" and gathering in public parks to scream about how the Kenyan Usurper was gonna take all their guns, Death Panel granny and make their kids gay.

And so, nine years after far too many misguided, well-intentioned souls still believed that the solution to the GOP's 50-year-long march into madness was clemency and forbearance, here we are (from Brother Charlie Pierce):

The American Republic Is Fighting for Its Life

Trump has set in motion a constitutional crisis, having sold American foreign policy to the highest bidder.

The time for kidding ourselves about who these people really are and what they and their enablers in the media are willing to do to destroy our country and remake it into something alien and monstrous is over.

You see, it's not that I have given up on the idea of sort of Truth and Reconciliation Committee eventually.

It's just that I also believe that, en route to that commission, Republicans and their media enablers must first have their heads shaved and be marched though the streets wearing signs that say "I Collaborated".

Behold, a Tip Jar!