After 15 tries, Kevin McCarthy was given the gavel as Speaker of the House. After a week of concessions with his far-right republicans, he expressed jubilation. In the photo above, Kevin can be seen hugging Steve Scalise. However, let’s see how long he smiles with the gavel in hand. His smiling face may be very short-lived, depending on how much power he acquiesced to the “freedom and liberty” caucuses owned by Koch’s dark money network.
Also, why didn’t the progressives within the Democratic Party bail out Kevin McCarthy early on and make a deal with establishment Republicans for something a progressive issue?
That would have been a clever political play, but it would have sabotaged the script they were given.
How much “power” was relinquished by McCarthy?
The concessions McCarthy offered during the course of negotiations included making it easier to oust the speaker, an agreement to institute a 72-hour window for members to read bills before they get a vote, and a pledge to vote on legislation to institute term limits for members of Congress.
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/06/1147470516/kevin-mccarthy-speaker-of-the-house-vote?
NPR failed to mention that the “right-wing freedom caucus” wants to cut the military budget by $75 billion and wants to be able to fire the speaker at will. Firing Kevin McCarthy at-will will create complete dysfunction over the next two years (Ask John Boehner). It’s an excellent script for the media. It’s a reality show straight from Hollywood.
One political party under capitalism
Those who still point at Republicans as the only culprit aren’t watching close enough. Progressives are supposed to be anti-establishment, so why didn’t they bail out McCarthy long before letting 20+ “right-wing rebels” control Congress?
It’s all a show in Washington…why didn’t the Democrat-controlled Justice Department arrest Trump under the Espionage Act for inciting an insurrection on 1/6/2020? Also, why didn’t they arrest Koch and his dark network for funding the GOP lawmakers who protested the 2020 election?
Because Koch is an oligarch and Trump needs to play his part in combating the Democrats and the GOP in Washington, both Biden and Pelosi leaked the truth when asked by reporters – “We need a strong Republican Party.”
The oligarch-controlled media plays up all the hype to sell citizens/voters that we have plenty of political “choices” to make.
We have the illusion of choice. Albert Einstein spotted this blatant fraud back in the 40s, writing:
The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
Albert Einstein’s, Why Socialism, 1949
Summary
Chris Hedges nailed my intended summary:
Our political class does not govern. It entertains. It plays its assigned role in our fictitious democracy, howling with outrage to constituents and selling them out. The Squad and the Progressive Caucus have no more intention of fighting for universal health care, workers’ rights or defying the war machine than the Freedom Caucus fights for freedom. These political hacks are modern versions of Sinclair Lewis’s slick con artist Elmer Gantry, cynically betraying a gullible public to amass personal power and wealth. This moral vacuity provides the spectacle, as H.G. Wells wrote, of “a great material civilization, halted, paralyzed.” It happened in Ancient Rome. It happened in Weimar Germany. It is happening here.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/americas-theater-of-the-absurd?
