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Charles P Pierce does have a way with words, especially so when he calls out the - shall I say, dickish behaviour of certain politicians.
One of the more under-examined facets of the modern American conservative movement is the tactic of being a colossal dick simply for the sake of being a colossal dick. (Some experts trace this phenomenon back to former Senator Rick Santorum.) The energy behind this tactic is very often the inherent structural racism that has charged American conservative politics ever since it allied itself with the remnants of American apartheid in the mid-1960s. It has been a long march, but recent events have made clear that the time of those remnants has come around at last. So American conservatives can be colossal dicks just to be colossal dicks.
On Tuesday, a proposal seemed to be sailing through the House of Representatives that would name a Florida federal courthouse after Joseph Hatchett, the first Black man to serve on that state’s supreme court. The measure was supported by the entire Florida congressional delegation, and it is the kind of legislation that House members don’t even have to be fully awake to support. But this is 2022, and there is absolutely nothing normal about the House Republican caucus. From the New York Times:
When You're a Colossal Dick for the Sake of Being a Colossal Dick
House Republicans torpedoed a measure to honor a trailblazing Black judge in Florida because he once enforced the First Amendment.One of the more under-examined facets of the modern American conservative movement is the tactic of being a colossal dick simply for the sake of being a colossal dick. (Some experts trace this phenomenon back to former Senator Rick Santorum.) The energy behind this tactic is very often the inherent structural racism that has charged American conservative politics ever since it allied itself with the remnants of American apartheid in the mid-1960s. It has been a long march, but recent events have made clear that the time of those remnants has come around at last. So American conservatives can be colossal dicks just to be colossal dicks.
On Tuesday, a proposal seemed to be sailing through the House of Representatives that would name a Florida federal courthouse after Joseph Hatchett, the first Black man to serve on that state’s supreme court. The measure was supported by the entire Florida congressional delegation, and it is the kind of legislation that House members don’t even have to be fully awake to support. But this is 2022, and there is absolutely nothing normal about the House Republican caucus. From the New York Times:
But in a last-minute flurry, Republicans abruptly pulled their backing with no explanation and ultimately killed the measure, leaving its fate unclear, many of its champions livid and some of its newfound opponents professing ignorance about what had happened.
Asked what made him vote against a measure that he had co-sponsored, Representative Vern Buchanan, Republican of Florida, was brief and blunt: “I don’t know,” he said. [. . .] In other words, the Republicans in the House killed a bill that would honor a true pathfinder because, as a judge, he enforced the First Amendment. They did so in order to mollify the same idiot rookie who referred to the January 6 insurrectionists as an “ordinary tourist group.”