January 25, 2020

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

The Impeachment Charade and Monty Python

Friends,

Most of us…at least most of us of a certain age…will remember Monty Python and their series of televised sketches and then films (e.g., Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975; Life of Brian, 1979; The Meaning of Life, 1983). I will admit that when they were in vogue their brand of surreal, over-the-top comedy, did not for the most part attract me. My preferences were for, say, a Peter Sellers/Inspector Clouseau movie, or, even better, some good ole’ bare-bones humor, the type you could find on that classic and long-running “country” television series, Hee Haw (e.g., Archie Campbell, Junior Sample, Roy Clark) or maybe the Carol Burnett Show (or its spin-off, Mama’s Family), and earlier with Abbott & Costello or Laurel & Hardy: true classics of the genre.

But watching snippets—that is all I could stomach without retching—of Representatives Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler lecturing the United States Senate this past week, reminded me of Monty Python at its most mad… incredibly ridiculous, almost insanely wild…but at the same time, severely and eerily serious. Serious, in the sense that those House impeachment managers take themselves so very one-dimensionally, so solemnly. They do not or cannot see or understand what others see and understand about them and their supposed “case against the president.”

For them even a funny jibe or joke proffered by Donald Trump at a public rally before tens of thousands of people (e.g., “Russia, if you hear me, can you help us find the thousands of emails that Hillary Clinton ‘lost’,” or, “I could walk down 5^th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I’d still have support”) is terribly ominous. The resemblance to Monty Python comes specifically because they take such eminently silly, throwaway lines meant to be funny, and hold them up in the utmost seriousness and solemnity, in what are monumental deliberations about the very future of the American nation.

I sat in front of my television set, with a bored cocker spaniel beside me, and imagined Schiff intoning: “if it floats, it must be a witch,” or some such line from Monty Python and the Search for Holy Grail.

CNN and MSNBC literally oozed with praise and encomia for Schiff’s “incredibly brilliant” and “boffo” “performance.” 

Was this real? Were these men and ladies people that citizens of our country actually elected to be our representatives? Were we that stupid, were we that mesmerized by insanity? Here was Adam Schiff telling us all that “the Russians are getting ready to invade America,” that if we don’t defend poor little Ukraine, well, then not only is our “democracy” down the tubes, but we will have lost the “new” war with those vile and vicious Russkies! Oh, my! It all sent shivers down my spine, and I clasped my defenseless spaniel close to me: need I prepare for bloodthirsty Cossacks at my door? Would my little community out here in rural eastern Wake County resist those sword-wielding hordes when they came, as Schiff predicted if Donald Trump is not impeached?

But that stalwart champion of madness from Burbank, California, then added: elections are not the answer. You see, you can’t trust’em. Any election where a Donald Trump is elected is bound to be bogus and—the word he and others like him use—“illegitimate.” Ah, now we know! Schiff’s understanding of that much-abused term “democracy” has room for only his desired ballot box result. For him and the vast masses of “woke” progressivists, Millennials, Black-Lives-Matter types, Hollywood flakes, Never- and anti-Trumpers, and indoctrinated, brain dead Zombiefied students churned out by our education establishments each year—for these folks 2016 was illegitimate, somehow a “rigged” election. The lumpen proletariat—we deplorables—did not follow orders, did not listen to our “betters,” rejected the instructions of those who fancy themselves the managerial and administrative class enthroned by God (whom they mostly don’t believe exists). We did not follow their implicit directions.

And since President Trump’s inauguration they have mused, dreamed, conspired, and feverishly worked to rid themselves of him. Nineteen minutes after the president was sworn in, the infamous “whistle-blower” Eric Ciaramela (a hold-over CIA analyst from Obama) “was overheard in the White House discussing with another staffer how to remove the newly elected president from office, according to former colleagues...."

Sources told RealClearInvestigations the staffer with whom Ciaramella was speaking was Sean Misko. Both were Obama administration holdovers working in the Trump White House on foreign policy and national security issues. And both expressed anger over Trump’s new “America First” foreign policy, a sea change from President Obama’s approach to international affairs.

Ciaramela later went to “work” for Adam Schiff and House Democrats.

The faked FISA applications enabling surveillance of the Trump campaign, the rogue FBI attempts to entrap low level Trump staffers, the spate of manufactured indictments, the totally unsupported charges of Russian interference in the 2016 elections—thus was born the “Russia Hoax,” an utter fabrication which even Robert Mueller with a battery of Hillary Clinton-supporting attorneys could not affirm.

Then came the Michael Avenatti affair; the Kavanaugh caper; Michael Cohen and his “revelations”; accusations aired on both MSNBC and CNN that the president was “mentally unfit” and should be removed (replete with titled psychologists speculating on his mental state); and now the present charade. And the progressivists have now “produced” perjured witness Lev Parnas. No doubt, this succession of revelations and accusations will continue on until November…and probably afterwards if Trump is re-elected.

Of course, the more unleashed of those “woke” progressivists have descended into vicious character assassination, fraudulent “news” creation, censorship and harassment of those with opposing views (especially on college campuses), and physical violence and threats against anyone who would dare dissent from their narrative.  It is a campaign of intimidation and shaming, insults and defamation abetted by the zealous friends of Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler in most of the media, aimed at silencing our voices.

Tragically, fifty plus years of media indoctrination, ideological educational abuse, and the collaboration, active or implicit, of the dominant Neoconservatives—the supposed opposition to what has happened and is happening to our society—have had results. The explicit rebellion against what is natural—against the laws of nature—against what is and has always been considered “normal,” has had its deleterious effects.  As late as 1972 a large majority of American voters would have rejected out of hand, scornfully and with disdain, Adam Schiff’s foul and inane rhetoric, indeed, laughed him off his decorous stage. 

Not so in 2020. And that says a lot about the country we inhabit today, about our academic establishments, our media and entertainment, and our politics. And most infuriatingly about those so-called Neocon “defenders” of our culture and our way of life. Where have they been as our colleges and schools were infiltrated progressively by Marxist revolutionaries? Where have they been, what have they done, to thwart the infiltration of our entertainment industry, or the domination of political correctness in everything from our speech to what we are supposed to think?

A few conservative pundits—given the idiocy and ridiculousness of the Impeachment “insaniacs”—believe the president will win a landslide come November. If we were dealing with “normal” people and not a nation filled with “insaniacs,” I would concur. It might happen. But consider: those insaniacs have had fifty-plus years to put their template in place and to establish their narrative as dominant.

Thus, the extreme necessity that those not touched by this madness act forcefully and resolutely, starting with the ballot box and by extreme vigilance regarding voting and who has the right to vote (already a recent report declares that two of North Carolina’s most liberal counties have more registered voters than voting aged citizens). The elections this November will be perhaps the most important in our history. “Normals” may still outnumber the insaniacs, but this year may see the last real opportunity to deter the contagion.

Or, to quote Monty Python once again:  "There are a great many people in the country today, who through no fault of their own, are sane."