On 4/4/23, the left-leaning moderate Janet Protasiewicz freely and fairly won a seat on Wisconsin’s supreme court. There, since her swearing in, the party/cult of Donald Trump has been relegated to minority status. To anyone this side of Roger Stone or Alex Jones, that should come as wonderful news.
But wait. The fabled Washington Post begs to differ. Ergo, prima facie, I must be wrong.
Or not. Online, the Post’s 2300-word, 8/28 lollapalooza “Wis. court’s flip to left roils state’s politics” is badged “Wisconsin Supreme Court flips liberal, creating a seismic shift.”
Whoa. “[S]eismic,” as in earthquake wreaking- i.e., disaster causing. (My! Aren’t we- a priori and sans evidence- pejorative!)
Not to mention the sweepingly negative, baldly unempirical term “roils.” According to the American Heritage Dictionary (2006), “roil” means “to make a liquid cloudy or muddy by stirring up sediment.” (In the present context, clearly enough, it denotes harmful political flux supposedly being stirred up by the “left.”)
Conversely, let’s face it. Feeling the earth move (in a bad way) and the sludge roil (ditto) connotes and supports the grim fairy tale that the hard right’s 15-year sway on the court was as pellucid and unmuddied as a glacial lake.
Voila. Like it or not, report it or not, the Big Lie has metastasized to Madison. As part of an ongoing, undead, pervasive coup (in which the GOP OFFICIALLY calls J6 “legitimate political discourse”), some officials there have the gall to paint Protasiewicz’s win as a “coup.” TWICE (in “Wis. court’s flip...” alone) the Post parrots (and arguably megaphones) that vile, vicious, starkly narrative-inverting smear.
A “coup,” huh? Gosh. Where- in real life, now- have we seen such a thing?
Oh! I know! It was at the Capitol- where Trump’s faithful strove to fulfill his express wish (circa 9/23/2020) to “get rid of the ballots!”
Whew. Penned by WAPO “democracy expert”/coup guru Patrick Marley, “Wis. court’s flip...” leaves all but unrebutted (let alone undebunked) the Badger State losers’ sour gripes and silly smears.
“Democracy” maven? Sage/bulwark of/by/for the people? Truly? (Not to ask too much here, but hey. If you’re a bullfighter, shouldn’t you be able to hold a cape?)
Ole. At our peril does such a paper of legend as the Post turn blind eyes to our body politic’s mortal danger. (To wit, as a study in contrast: when President Richard “Not A Crook” Nixon [R] blamed his own myriad evils on some “sinister force,” the Post did not buy it for a nanosecond.)
Sigh. A half-century later, it’s sinister, indeed, to normalize the GOP’s effective legitimization of ‘win or coup.’ At this writing, Mike Huckabee hounds Trump’s troop to react to due process potentially hamstringing the self-styled “Chosen One” to the point he loses at the polls next year with bullets, not ballots (in perpetuity!). Granted, the ravening reverend’s loser-take-all approach may sharply escalate the Wisconsin caterwauling that looks to be so dear to the Post’s heart. But hey. It’s cut from the same foul, bloody, un-American cloth.
Which could lead any reasonable person to sadly-but-truly conclude: with friends like the Post, who needs enemies?