I think this is pretty strongly mistaken, in a way that is surprising from you. In particular, it isn't right to say that the 20 holdouts want to govern. None of the Republicans in the House have any governing ambitions, partly because the Senate and Presidency make that impossible right now, but more so because they don't have any ideas about Federal policy that they want to enact. But that's _more_ true of the rebels; what they want is the sham investigations and TV hits that McCarthy is planning on, but in a personalized and independent way, rather than as a unified party as McCarthy offers.
Perhaps it is better put that what the rebels want is to be sovereign--to be government. They have no ambitions about governing in the conventional sense of making policy or administering the nation.
One of the strangest myths to come out of the 20th Century was the idea that fascism was about efficiency, about "making the trains run on time". Fascists had no ideas about or interest in ordinary administrative authority. The Nazi state in particular was notoriously shambolic: Hitler's ministers begged for a moment of his time because if they got to see him, they'd likely walk out with an assurance of funds for whatever ideas, however crackpot they were, about what they wanted to do. But if they had the bad luck to have a rival minister get access not long afterwards, they'd generally hear that their fiat had been withdrawn in favor of the rival's crackpot idea. It was all mostly about the theatricals, about staging power, which was a major reason Hitler pushed towards military rearmament and action--it was the only substantive kind of governing action he could imagine.
The rebels are little different. They long to be the only show in town--but all of what they have in mind is a show.
I agree that they view everyone else in government as illegitimate. But that's of course the problem -- they don't have any public policy goals other than themselves at the head of the nation, which is why the most radical democrats, like Omar, are not destructive in the same way.
I think this is pretty strongly mistaken, in a way that is surprising from you. In particular, it isn't right to say that the 20 holdouts want to govern. None of the Republicans in the House have any governing ambitions, partly because the Senate and Presidency make that impossible right now, but more so because they don't have any ideas about Federal policy that they want to enact. But that's _more_ true of the rebels; what they want is the sham investigations and TV hits that McCarthy is planning on, but in a personalized and independent way, rather than as a unified party as McCarthy offers.
Perhaps it is better put that what the rebels want is to be sovereign--to be government. They have no ambitions about governing in the conventional sense of making policy or administering the nation.
One of the strangest myths to come out of the 20th Century was the idea that fascism was about efficiency, about "making the trains run on time". Fascists had no ideas about or interest in ordinary administrative authority. The Nazi state in particular was notoriously shambolic: Hitler's ministers begged for a moment of his time because if they got to see him, they'd likely walk out with an assurance of funds for whatever ideas, however crackpot they were, about what they wanted to do. But if they had the bad luck to have a rival minister get access not long afterwards, they'd generally hear that their fiat had been withdrawn in favor of the rival's crackpot idea. It was all mostly about the theatricals, about staging power, which was a major reason Hitler pushed towards military rearmament and action--it was the only substantive kind of governing action he could imagine.
The rebels are little different. They long to be the only show in town--but all of what they have in mind is a show.
I agree that they view everyone else in government as illegitimate. But that's of course the problem -- they don't have any public policy goals other than themselves at the head of the nation, which is why the most radical democrats, like Omar, are not destructive in the same way.
Ok, that was righteous, Tim. The referees used to have referees (maybe) in editors and the public, but lately—not so much.