Opinion

Midterms are coming. In case that phrase doesn't already inspire enough dread, it looks like this particular round will be defined by an escalation of the already gross "woke wars" going on in the Democratic ranks.

A chorus of increasingly loud voices in the Democratic Party aren't focused on the threat of gerrymandering, voter suppression, or that whole thing where Republicans plan to simply void elections when they don't like the results. Dealing with that problem is hard and requires serious actions like ending the Senate filibuster. So instead, the ire is being turned on a soft and easy target to blame: the small number of people in the Democratic caucus who use politically correct terms like "Latinx" and "pregnant people."

Last week, a conservative Colorado podcaster said Gov. Jared Polis should be hanged. He was not discreet about the matter. He felt no need to employ suggestive language. He named Polis, called him a traitor, and said he should go to the gallows.

Joe Oltmann, the perpetrator of this outrage, in many respects is a caricature of the unhinged right. For him there is no conspiracy too bonkers to believe, no lie too bald-faced to tell, no threat too cowardly to make.

Using the disingenuous label of Critical Race Theory, conservative parents and pundits have worked to stifle African American and other minority voices in the school curriculum and to minimize the teaching of race and slavery in America’s past. Coming of age in another time of division – the late 1960s and early 1970s – I had a very different experience.

I grew up just outside a conservative small town in western Ohio. The population was overwhelmingly white with only a few black residents. Goldwater did very well there in the 1964 presidential vote, as did Nixon four years later. Residents usually took a conventional line on the issues of the day, whether it be the Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War. Life – and change – moved slowly. But I underwent change because of educational exposure to the history and culture of those who had a different skin color and life experience.

The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell is underway. She’s accused of taking part in the most serious crimes with Jeffrey Epstein. Given the wide ranging implications of all of those potentially embroiled, the supremely powerful and wealthy, you'd think the episode might be generating more headlines. At the moment, though, it’s not.

And the fact that it's being treated almost like any other news story is a poignant reminder that there is one rule for the most influential and another rule for everyone else. The way in which the entire scandal has so far played out clearly reflects how the dynamics of privilege, power and race operate in today's society.

Congress yesterday announced they had reached a debt ceiling deal: a one-time rejiggering of the filibuster rules so Democrats can raise the ceiling with only 51 votes in the Senate. It’s a short-term victory for Congressional leadership, and for the country, which now won’t be plunged into a pointless, brutal recession in the middle of an ongoing public health crisis.

The federal government uses a mix of tax revenue and borrowing to pay its outstanding obligations – federal employee salaries, social security checks, Medicare reimbursements, payments to defense contractors. The debt ceiling prevents further borrowing, which means the government no longer has access to the money it needs to pay its bills. It’s like saying you’re going to eliminate your credit card debt by quitting your job.

The January 6 Committee is poised to hold former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt after he failed to show up to testify on Wednesday. In a letter to his lawyer, Committee Chair Bennie Thompson recapped some eyebrow-raising documents Meadows had provided to the committee, but now refuses to testify about.

Meadows is invoking vague and sweeping claims of privilege to defend his no-show. He has filed a lawsuit in a last-ditch attempt to avoid testifying. But as Thompson noted in his letter, Meadows didn’t think the following items were privileged when he handed them over to the committee. So he has no legal basis to refuse to testify about them:

Let’s say it straight:

Every Georgia Republican who votes for former Sen. David Perdue in next year’s gubernatorial primary is voting to strangle American democracy and replace it with an arrangement in which elections can be overturned on a whim, just because somebody says so. There is no other rationale for Perdue’s candidacy, no other reason for him to have launched a campaign against an incumbent governor of his own party.

Donald Trump — the most corrupt president in our history — is getting better press right now (and has for 6 years) than Joe Biden, who is working to restore democracy and sanity to our country. Where the hell did this come from?

The fact is that our media, particularly our broadcast media, is a business that profits when its viewership and listenership goes up. And Donald Trump, who NBC paid millions to train as a reality TV star, is walking, talking clickbait.

After oral arguments in Dobbs last week, it seems a lot of white cis male journalists finally realized the attacks against abortion were kind of a big deal. Sure, a lot of women had been sounding the alarm about it for decades but who can hear over such high-pitched screeching?

Besides its not like the attacks against abortion are really going to affect these men, right? I mean they don’t need to get abortions and they mostly live in states that have their own laws protecting abortion or can even afford to send their girlfriends abroad if things get really bad. Except … there might be a tiny problem for them if Roe is overturned.

In the nearly four months since I became the Kansas Reflector’s opinion editor, we’ve had a grand old time chuckling at the antics of Kansas politicians. I wrote about Derek Schmidt playing footsie with fascism, a modern-day medicine show promoting COVID-19 quackery, an anti-vaccine frat party at the Statehouse, and fears that critical race theory will turn your children into card-carrying members of the rainbow mafia. Everyone enjoyed themselves.

We’ve seen enough ridiculous antics now, though, that you and I should pause for a moment. We should ask ourselves an important question.

You have to give it to Axios: They know how to throw out some tasty bait. Their latest is irresistible for conservatives, who love any story that frames them as victims, and gives them the chance to blame the left for "incivility." Never mind obvious counter-examples such as the storming of the Capitol, gun-waving Christmas cards, and the entire person of Donald Trump.

"Young Dems more likely to despise the other party," blares Tuesday's Axios headline, noting in the article that "5% of Republicans said they wouldn't be friends with someone from the opposite party, compared to 37% of Democrats," and "71% of Democrats wouldn't go on a date with someone with opposing views, versus 31% of Republicans."

A year after the election of 2020, Donald Trump flirts with the idea of running for president, claiming that the election was “stolen” by President Joe Biden. Trump has refused for the past year to do what every contender for the presidency who has lost has done: accept defeat graciously. Instead, Trump has promoted what is called “The Big Lie.” Despite the participation of two Republicans, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, on the House committee investigating January 6, most Republicans in Congress and in Republican states have been unwilling to criticize or challenge him. This includes Kevin McCarthy of California, who stands to become the Speaker of the House if the Republicans were to gain control of Congress in the midterm elections a year from now.

If he ends up running, Trump would be the 8th former president to attempt to return to the office. Only one, Grover Cleveland, was successful. Three others---Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, and Theodore Roosevelt----ran as third party candidates. Three others—Ulysses S. Grant, Herbert Hoover, and Gerald Ford--- attempted to run after leaving the Presidency, but failed to accomplish that goal.

Former President Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows was terrible at his job. Nothing in his life prepared him for such a high-level assignment and the only thing he brought to the position was excessive, obsequious loyalty to the boss — which Trump always misconstrued as competence. But the problem is that he's not the sharpest tool and even when he's trying to be a steadfast soldier, he tends to screw the pooch. With his new book "The Chief's Chief," Meadows made the worst mistake of all when he unwittingly betrayed his former boss by telling the world about what is arguably the worst thing Trump did while he was president. Now Trump is reportedly hopping mad about it.

Meadows no doubt thought he was writing a great tribute to a man he clearly worships. The book is a nauseating collection of treacly anecdotes that are enough to make your teeth hurt. In Meadows' telling, Trump is a saint who never thinks of himself and a superman who literally saved the nation from ruin. He is as delusional as the most ecstatic rallygoer and his all-consuming devotion has blinded him.