Thread by @SethCotlar

Mike Pompeo was one of the leaders of the bullsh*t Benghazi investigation that was drummed up to harass the state department he now leads and to feed the Fox fever swamp. foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/11/pom…

This is why he assumes all congressional inquiries are pointless political grandstanding, because that’s how he treated them. As always, GOP accusations are 100% projection.

The GOP has stumbled on a real winning strategy here.
a) When in control of Congress during a Democratic administration (2010-16), use Congressional power to engage in cynical, frivolous oversight to pointlessly harass the executive and undermine the reputation of Congress.

b) When in control of the executive but not the Congress (2018-present), say that Congressional oversight is cynical and frivolous, and is just a pointless harassment of the executive because, as we know, the reputation of Congress is garbage.

This works for the GOP because it is a party that largely regards the federal government as an illegitimate nuisance (other than when it's making war or providing corporate welfare).

This is why the GOP thrives on cynicism & doubt. They don't need the public to like them, they just need the public to think the governance carried out in the name of the citizenry is pointless, or self-serving, or corrupt...anything but in their interest and to their benefit.

A healthy, democratic political culture needs healthy doses of both skepticism and idealism. This is why I think it's essential that our political leaders, regardless of their party, start refilling our national reservoirs of idealism.

The GOP over the past decade has pumped an overabundance of cynicism into our political culture, a cynicism based not on good faith argumentation but on the sort of Know Nothing idiocy we see in GOP climate denialism & crass power hunger seen in gerrymandering & voter suppression

Political culture matters. Institutions and elections matter too, but they rest upon the bedrock of a political culture committed to basic norms of truthfulness, respect for procedures, and good faith argumentation.

As evidenced by what we see on Fox News on a daily basis, the GOP has abandoned a belief in a democratic political culture and embraced a cynical, alternative-fact authoritarianism that determines truth solely by what the President says or what serves the party's interests.

The actions of many GOP actors these last few weeks have reeked of desperation. I mean, you don't threaten a Civil War if you don't think you're in serious political jeopardy. You don't call constitutional investigations "a coup" if you're not scared out of your wits.

What this minority party is scared of--this party of almost entirely white, almost entirely straight, disproportionately wealthy, and overwhelmingly male citizens in a rapidly diversifying country--is us, the people.

They're scared of the government whose power is derived from we the people. They know they've been able to barely hang on thanks to the electoral college and gerrymandering and low voter turnout...but 2018 scared them and the future looks bleak.

They knew this in 2012 when Reince Priebus wrote the autopsy that said the GOP couldn't be the party of angry white people anymore and hope to win national elections. And now they've doubled down on anti-intellectual angry whiteness and they're even more f*cked in the long term.

They will try to use propaganda and cynicism and anti-immigrant cruelty and anti-socialism scare tactics and anti-Muslim hysteria to retain power...they will go on TV and lie shamelessly like Jordan and Miller and McCarthy and Graham did this weekend.

But the majority of the American population, especially those who are younger, those who are women, and those who are not white, can see right through them and they know it. That's why they're scared, and why they're trying to scare their base into protecting them.

The great irony is that the people who have appropriated the name of "patriot" are the ones who have stopped believing in America's democratic experiment in self-governance. It's time for those who do believe in the project of democracy to start rebuilding what's been destroyed.

Did not mean to go to church like this...but there you go. Must be all of that time I spent reading Tom Paine back in the day.