It’s time for Democrats to get nasty

After Nancy Pelosi tore up Donald Trump’s speech in the three separate bundles that she tossed on the Speaker’s podium with the same insouciance that Donald Trump tore up the United States Constitution, the reaction of feigned outrage from the pearl-clutching Republicans was predictable. Newt Gingrich, for example, tweeted:

As Speaker of the House for four State of the Unions by a President of the other party I am disgusted and insulted by the viciously partisan action of Nancy Pelosi tearing up the speech. She isn’t clever or cute her childishness insults our American traditions -should be censured.

As a veteran of 84 ethics charges and the first Speaker of the House of Representatives in American history to be disciplined by his peers, Gingrich has been given a rare opportunity to demonstrate just how truly definitive Repbulican hypocrisy can get. It was he who eventually resigned his speakership in disgrace after enduring a huge loss in prestige thanks to his headlong pursuit of the impeachment of Bill Clinton. (Gingrich is quite the champion of impeachment when the target has a “D” next to his name.)

Anyway, my instinctive reaction when I saw the Speaker tear up Trump’s speech was that it was ill-advised. Whenever my instincts come into conflict with Nancy Pelosi’s it is I, as I soon realized, who is usually wrong, and this time was no exception. When asked why she tore it up she said, it was “the courteous thing to do given the alternative.” The alternative, of course, was to throw the thing in Trump’s face. Even so, tearing it up was nasty and it’s time for Democrats to get nasty. How do I know this? Nancy Pelosi says so, that’s how.

I’m not saying it’s time to get illegal. We on the left have traditionally ceded lawbreaking to the Republicans. They are, after all, so good at it. No, what I mean here is it’s time to take the gloves of civility off and start hitting back, to stop politely letting these criminals get away with their crimes and start loudly protesting it through words and gestures, like tearing up speeches, shouting down lies and demanding an end to the farcical rule of this Republican pirate ship.

It’s time to call Donald Trump what he is and keep repeating it until it penetrates the dimly-lit, thick-skulled mental midgetry of Trump’s low-information drooling tribe of monotooth cretins: Trump is a child-raping criminal, a liar, a buffoon, a traitor, an admirer of foreign dictators and a man who wants to win at everyone’s expense. He isn’t just a bad president, he is evil, indolent, incompetent and stupid. And he’s very dangerous. We need to stop speaking about the “president” in polite terms of the politically conforming past and recognize this malignancy in the Oval Office for what it is, a peril that threatens our very continued existence as a species.

Nancy Pelosi has signaled at last that she has had it with this man. The United States Senate is about to imbue Donald Trump with the Congressional fiat to break the law at will and cheat in the next election with impunity. The time for polite discourse is at an end. This is now total war.