The Real Victory

Back in the days before clowns on unicycles juggling Molotov cocktails were in charge of the government, Dick Cheney’s death would have dominated the news for days. Sure, Cheney was among those who decided that attacking Iraq was an appropriate response to a terrorist attack that involved no Iraqis, but at least he didn’t attack Portland or Chicago or lay waste to an entire wing of the White House. I’m not saying that he was the most compassionate conservative, but at least he wasn’t a clown. If the Dick Cheneys of the world destroyed our democracy, we could at least know that we had been bested by serious professionals. If the current administration and Congress wreck the republic, it will feel like coming in third on Jeopardy! behind a golden retriever and a ground squirrel.

Cheney’s death got me thinking about 9/11 and its aftermath. The thing about the 9/11 attacks is that they killed just under three thousand people while our response to them cost nearly eight thousand American lives and killed at least 900,000 people in all, including nearly 400,000 civilians. The United States cut taxes and went to war, exploding the federal budget deficit. Department of Defense overseas contingency operations alone costed $2.1 trillion, and that doesn’t include over $800 billion in increases to DoD’s base budget. We know from video recordings that Osama bin Laden was pleased with the immediate results of the 9/11 attacks, but over time he had to be even more pleased with the price the United States paid in money, lives, and international good will.

The MAGA response to Tuesday’s election results has not been to invade a Middle Eastern country, but it has been just as dismissive of evidence on the ground. Thursday’s House Republican press conference (embedded at the end of this column) showed that Mike Johnson and friends believe the election results mean nothing except that Republicans haven’t been shouting “Marxism!” and “communism!” loudly or often enough to keep their base sufficiently traumatized. They need a new bogeyman, and they seem to have settled on Zohran Mamdani. He’s brown, he’s Muslim, his mother is a filmmaker and his father is an ACADEMIC! Sure, he calls himself a democratic socialist, but every good House Republican knows that’s just code for Marxist. Speaker Johnson seems convinced that the best tack for Republicans is to paint “Marxist” Zohran Mamdani as the new face of the Democratic party. That may not be Johnson’s best idea ever.

The horror! The horror!

Donald Trump believes that the only two reasons Democrats won were because he was not on the ballot (of course) and because of the government shutdown. He’s a little bit right on the second point. People really don’t like how he has handled the shutdown. The shutdown has also caused many Americans to notice how much their health insurance premiums are increasing next year. That’s big, and not at all beautiful.

The Trump administration and Congressional Republicans seem convinced that everything they are doing is wildly popular. Operation What Epstein Files? off the coast of Venezuela is a huge hit. Who doesn’t like to see grainy video of boats and the people on them blown to bits? It’s so cool! And that video of ICE agents ramming a young woman’s car and then dragging her out of both her car and her shoes before tossing her into a van was totally boss! Sure, she was a U.S. citizen, but she was also brown. And what was she doing in that part of town wearing that skin tone? The ICE agents couldn’t help themselves; they’re the real victims here.

Help Punching Up keep punching!

Everyone loves the Republican tariff scheme and our big, beautiful trade war with China, right? Bailing out Argentina to the tune of $40 billion and importing more Argentinian beef has to be popular with ranchers and soybean farmers like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The big four meat packers think those beef imports are a swell idea, and those packers can contribute more to political campaigns than U.S. beef producers can.

Most Americans saw or heard about the AI-generated video Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on October 19th—the one where he dropped excrement on protesters from a jet labeled “King Trump.” Two days later they saw demolition begin on the east wind of the White House. Those are the kinds of things that reach voters who might not otherwise be paying attention, and those two images help them form a picture of and a metaphor for the Trump administration as a tiresome crew of people breaking things and shitting on people.

Mike Johnson said of Trump’s presidential poop video, “He is using satire to make a point.” The thing is, Mike, we can all tell shit from satire. Also, you should swear in Representative Adelita Grijalva and let the Epstein files fall where they may. In the meantime, you just keep believing that everybody loves you and everything that you do. We’ll see you this time next year.