JANUARY 23, 2025 – When I heard Republican Senators respond to the president’s blanket pardon of the J6 violent offenders, I experienced a bizarre physiological reaction over which I had no control. It ambushed me as I stood in our kitchen, rinsing dishes headed for the dishwasher. Fortunately, I was standing over the sink, and better yet, the water was running when the segment played on the television perched on the wall to my side.
To spare you a more graphic account, let’s call my reaction a “nuclear barf ball.” If you can imagine a cat harking up a giant fur ball, you’ve got a good slow-motion clue of what I’m talking about. As the compact chunk of GI content flew out of my mouth with no warning whatsoever, I watched in frozen astonishment as the barf ball bounced around the metal sink like a penny circling the big yellow funnel just outside the giftshop at the local zoo. Eventually, like the penny into the hopper, the barf ball disappeared down the sink hole. When I turned on the garbage disposal, I heard a Ka-THUG followed by the even sound of running water.
What caused this strange incident? Res ipsa loquitur:
Senator Tommy Tuberville (AL):
“100 percent, I’m for the pardon of everyone. They’ve been there long enough. Most of them hadn’t been charged with anything.” (emphasis added) Asked if he thought the violence on J6 was acceptable, the senator said “No, that’s not acceptable,. but I didn’t see it. I don’t believe it because I didn’t see it Now, if I see it, I would believe it, but I didn’t see it in that video.” (emphasis added)
Senator John Cornyn (TX):
“That’s [whether he thought the pardon was okay], not the question. The question is who has the authority, and the president has the authority.” [Editorial comment: no, senator, that is not the question.]
Senator Ron Johnson (WI):
“I think [the pardons] were absolutely justified. Again, I don’t know all the cases. I certainly don’t want to pardon any violent actors, but there’s a real miscarriage of justice, so I’m totally supportive.” When the reporter told the senator that Trump had pardoned violent offenders, Johnson said, “I haven’t seen the details, but I think a lot of those pardons are definitely well deserved.” [Editorial comment: Huh?!]
Not surprisingly in this era of the personality cult, those three senators and their Republican colleagues (Senators Murkowski (AK) and Collins (ME) excepted) had read “the memo” and stuck to the script.
Once my barf ball had been washed into the municipal sewer system, I flipped off the switch to the garbage disposal, shut off the water and slowly shook my head.
How stupid do they think we are? I asked myself. Or, in Senator Cornyn’s words, maybe “that’s not the question.” Maybe the question is how stupid are we? Or perhaps it’s . . . “How stupid are those Republican senators?” If I worry about “mean” and “nasty,” now I’m thinking, maybe the bigger threat to our democracy is stupidity. Yes, just plain inexplicable dumbness and it’s close relative, abject ignorance.
I can handle debate and disagreement. In fact, I welcome it. Throughout my life, people have revealed—much to my ultimate benefit, if also to my chagrin—errors in my judgment or assumptions. In many cases, a conclusion that I’ve adopted and advanced with certitude must be amended or jettisoned altogether because of an invalid premise; a missing fact or a fact that in whole or part turns out to be a falsehood. But when someone takes a position, urges an action, or worse, plunges a dagger into the rule of law and into the heart of law and order based on an invalid assumption and can’t understand why the assumption is invalid even in the eye-witness face of blatant thuggery, I worry greatly. “Mean” and “nasty” are easy to confront and far easier to foil than “stupid.”
What we’ve seen in the Dodgemeister’s “Rule by Fiat” thus far are “mean” shots fueled by “stupid.” This is an especially troubling combination of sticks and dynamite, which make for sticks of dynamite. Move too close to an open flame with this manner of governance and Mr. MAGA Man could blow the whole business to smithereens.
Now is the time for war on stupid. At every turn, on every platform, upon every opportunity, “stupid” has to be called out. We can win back our future, but the turnaround requires a modicum of smarts to overcome stupid.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
