It was transparently obvious at the beginning of the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings that a good chunk of the Senate Republicans attending would be using those hearings purely as means of getting more television time. There were a handful of pundit suggestions that, by golly, the same amoral cretins who attempted to overturn a U.S. election would probably tone things down a bit rather than risk looking like absolute monsters on the teevee screens. That’s a theory that could only be suggested by people who still think a Republican Party that tried to overthrow U.S. democracy, immunized a Trump scheme to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless Ukraine's government agreed to make false claims against his election opponent, and has devoted its efforts to overturning any civil right the nation has agreed to since the end of the Civil War could "tone things down" even if it tried.
You could trap Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton in a room containing only three baseball bats and a massive wasp nest, and the outcome would be the same 100 out of 100 times. Put a television camera in the same room, however, and you'd be lucky if even one of the three survived.
Here is why Cruz, Hawley, and Cotton performatively flipped the entire fk out during hearings to determine if a Black American woman was "qualified" to sit with the Republican-ensconced amateurs that have recently cluttered the Supreme Court: So they would be on television.
All of the weird questions suggesting a Black American represents some vague sexual threat to "our children"? Those were asked because a very large swath of the Republican base has heard that same language all their crusty racist lives, and they eat it up. Ted Cruz nearly standing on a table as he harangued Judge Jackson, belittled her, lied about her? An attempt to goad a Black woman into being “uppity” in the face of white Republican men.
If you're wondering about that last part, Charlie Kirk—the spokescritter for full-on fascism, the one who partnered with Jerry Falwell Jr. to spew disinformation—went with that very framing ... despite it never actually happening.
For those of you keeping track: Ted Cruz can do whatever Exorcist-style projectile-vomiting racist cabaret routine he wants during an official confirmation hearing for a new Supreme Court justice, and it won't be considered “attitude.” A Black woman raising an eyebrow in confused response? Now that's attitude.
Do you want your children to have to "take orders from people like her," asks Kirk. From "people like her?" Is this what you want the country to "look like?"
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So yes, the reason Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton ranted and raved about all manner of bizarre things, from the QAnon theories to the "critical race theory" intonations, was not that they believed any of them. Ted Cruz, especially, was acting solely to get a rise out of the nominee—something that could be used in video clips to show the Fox News crowd that the Black woman was extremely scary, would be giving people attitude, and was being appointed to the court as a plan to let other Black Americans give white conservatives attitude in your town, on your street.
There is no better way to get on television if you are a Republican senator with more spit than brains, and it worked out very well for them. As Talking Points Memo points out, top bellowers Cruz, Hawley, Cotton, and the eternal emotional car wreck that is Lindsey Graham were all rewarded with Fox News television appearances afterward. Wednesday became "meet the shouty assholes who insulted Ketanji Brown Jackson on your behalf" night on Fox, and every one of the four beamed with pride at their own antics.
Just to make sure we're clear that Ted Cruz is always the worst person in the room no matter what room he might end up in, it was Ted who apparently dived into his smartphone to check what Twitter was saying about him the moment his performance was over. It's an act. All the emotions? An act. The reference to QAnon-themed child pornography charges, featuring Republican senators lavishly describing that pornography with an eagerness that felt extremely damn off? Meant to provoke emotion, not probe a record.
We remain mired in a propaganda game, with each Republican senator devoted exclusively to harming all things non-Republican, inside and outside government, while doing their best to sabotage actual government workings at every opportunity House and Senate procedures allow.
It's all a propaganda game for the television channels. The message being delivered is that the Black American is a threat to your white conservative children, because the Black American might go easy on Republican pedophiles like Dennis Hastert, etc. When faced with a fountain of racist diarrhea, the Black woman continued to breathe—surely a sign of attitude.
It was meant to be racist. Everyone involved knows very, very well that their attacks were meant to poke the long-standing grievances of white supremacist assholes, and everyone involved knew that success would lead to Fox News publicizing their performances to give their sweaty white supremacist audience some good clips of white racists sticking it to a Black woman at a venue in which the Black woman was explicitly required to not talk back.
It was very gross, but say it with me again: Republicanism is a fascist movement. It is a white nationalism-based, authoritarian-based movement of Americans who do not even believe in having elections if elections threaten to dilute their power. Republicanism now eagerly jumps on false claims and manufactured propaganda about anything and everything, all of it intended to portray Republicanism's enemies not just as "liberal" or "globalist" or any of the other buzzwords, but as a threat so dire that we must sharply limit democracy itself rather than abide it.
This is nothing, for them. This is how Ted Cruz and the others will be behaving in every hearing from here on. There will be conservative nominees who cannot explain what the First Amendment protects, and Republican senators will weep tears of joy when faced with such Americanness; there will be conservative nominees who are caught lying brazenly to the Senate about sexual assaults, and Republican senators will erupt with fury at the audacity of questioners to even bring that up.
The only fix for this would be to somehow infuse a teaspoon of shame into any of these hacks, and that will not be happening. Some of the people Republicans have been trying to put in the Senate this time around make Ted Cruz look positively refined; we'll be lucky next time around if Republican senators refrain from pulling down their pants and crapping on the hearing room floor, in their attempts to provoke an attitude that the fascist base can then work themselves into a fever over.
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