Disapproving Doormat

Susan Collins is How It Happens Here, folks.

She’s supposed to be the rational centrist. The one who stands up to the increasingly-rabid gaggle of turd-spewing hyenas known as the Republican Party when they go too far. That’s whole point of Susan Collins. It’s the brand she’s been selling the people of Maine for years.

As we teeter on the edge of fascism, let me just say it’s a shame that all turned out to be bullshit.

Conventional wisdom says, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” but that doesn’t get it quite right, does it? Lotta good folks have been working their asses off for almost four years now, and we’re all still up to our nipples in evil.

Turns out evil gets to do a fuckton of triumphing if just a handful of allegedly-good people stand around yappin’ about how goshdarn disappointed they are with evil, while actually doing fuck all, if those people happen to be U.S. Senators.

Of course, the Kavanaugh confirmation pulled the curtain back on Collins: The Great and Moderate once and for all. We weren’t asking for much, just for the Republicans to go back to the wingnut well and pick someone who wasn’t quite so rapey and perjury-y to sit on the highest court in the land. By the end of her interminable, self-aggrandizing floor speech, she’d really rubbed America’s nose in our misguided belief that she was ever anything better than a partisan hack.

Your job, Senator, and it was a really, really important job, was to be the first domino. To knock over a few of your semi-sane colleagues, to start the bipartisan cascade that would demolish Hairplug Himmler’s entire fascist enterprise before it had a chance to take root.

You are your batshit party’s moderate flank. You, specifically. That has been your role in American politics for some time now, and don’t act like you don’t know it. And if you refused to act, if SUSAN COLLINS wouldn’t draw a line in the sand, how could anyone expect any Republican to step up?

But you only stood there, brow furrowed, wobbling but never committing, cowering behind your hollow proclamations of disapproval, as Donald Trump tore through norm after norm, broke law after law. It’s literally the sickest joke in this entire living nightmare, Senator Collins: your famous, feckless, self-righteous concern. You can set a goddamn watch by it.

Concentration camps full of traumatized children? CONCERN. Extorting vulnerable allies to fabricate dirt on a political rival? TSK TSK, MISTER. Jack-booted police state thugs gassing peaceful protesters down the street from the very People’s House? PEARLS CLUTCHED TO POWDER.

America needed you SO much, Senator. We needed you to be that first domino. Courage was required of you. Frankly, since you’ve put yourself forward as one of our elected leaders, it was expected of you. And God knows, we all fail from time to time, but you’ve failed every test, every day, and at a certain point, if you’re not up to the job, stand the fuck aside and let better, braver people save the country.

Do you remember, Senator, just before you and the other servile enablers in your caucus betrayed your oaths, how you smugly proclaimed, “Oh, I certainly think the naughty lad has learned his lesson!” like a kindly aunt who caught the boys with a porno mag?

Does something, like, pop in one’s brain when one achieves perfect self-parody like that? Yeah, the cancerous fuck learned a lesson, alright. He learned that Senate Republicans, and Maine’s Susan Collins in particular, would not, when it finally came time to take the field, fight to protect the United States from enemies foreign or domestic. He learned you’d let him get away with absolutely anything.

I’m writing this 187,000 deaths into the coronavirus pandemic, for what it’s worth. On the very day the authoritarian thug you’ve enabled and enabled refused to condemn his 17-year old terrorist fan, who murdered two Americans. He’s sabotaging the entire motherfucking Postal Service, hurting God knows how many people, in an attempt to undermine our very right to vote. He’s harmed the United States more than any of us imagined one man could.

And that’s your whole legacy, Senator. It’s what you’ll be remembered for. For standing by, saying much but DOING NOTHING, while evil triumphed.

In conclusion, vote Sara Gideon. Obviously.