Springtime For Toadys, Sycophants And Bootlickers
If a tree falls in the forest and everybody hears it, Kevin McCarthy says it probably never fell.
Oh my god, say it ain’t so, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., actually lied as he brazenly lobbies and lines up support in hopes to be named House Speaker and third in line for the presidency should the president and vice president be unable to govern in what McCarthy hopes to be a GOP House majority next year.
The fact that McCarthy lied about what he said after the Jan. 6 insurrection is dog bites man news. The man bites dog news would be if McCarthy was found to have told the truth. Remember this is a man who ordered his staff to buy a ton of Starburst candy for trump and to separate out the red and pink candy because those are trump’s favorites.
The latest incident involved a N.Y. Times preview of an upcoming book by its journalists Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns. They report that McCarthy had privately told colleagues he planned to advise trump to resign after the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters. Learning of the report, McCarthy erupted in righteous indignation, claiming that the account was “totally false and wrong.” Then it turns out there’s a tape recording of a call with other Republican leaders four days after the Capitol riot.
Despite McCarthy’s mighty protestations to the contrary, this is what the tape revealed. “The only discussion I would have with him (trump) is that I think this [impeachment resolution] will pass and it would be my recommendation that you should resign. Um, I mean that would be my take.” More audio surfaced Friday, including a clip in which McCarthy declared that he had “had it with this guy.”
And that has made McCarthy quake with fear that he will no longer have the support of trump and with that his dreams of being house speaker may go down the proverbial crapper, along with the documents that trump famously flushed down the White House toilet.
Toady, sycophant, liar, hypocrite, apostate, bootlicker, ass-kisser, flunkey, Uriah Heep, brown nose, mealy mouthed, grovel, spineless all words to describe the likes of McCarthy and those are his good qualities. I should note that in these trumpian times, McCarthy is just one of many politicians who genuflect to the great and merciless trump.
Let’s look at a few of the words that so aptly describe McCarthy et al.
Apostate
An apostate is a person who renounces a religious or political belief or principle for political expediency. The word “apostasy” comes from the Greek apostasia, which is translated “falling away” and is closely related to the Greek word for “divorce.” Apostates fall away from the true faith, abandoning what they formerly professed to believe.
Hypocrisy
According to Merriam-Webster, hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform. Political hypocrisy is “the conscious use of a mask to fool the public and gain political benefit.”
Uriah Heep
Uriah Heep is a fictional character created by Charles Dickens in his 1850 novel David Copperfield. Heep’s character is notable for his cloying humility, unctuousness, obsequiousness, and insincerity, making frequent references to his own “umbleness.”
Bootlicker
Bootlicker is a figurative speech of someone actually bending down and licking the boots a superior person. It is inspired by the historical tendency of servants and peasants to lower themselves down to foot level — and sometimes kiss the feet — of kings and other people in power, as to show respect and gain mercy from them.
Sycophancy
In modern English, sycophant denotes an “insincere flatterer” and is used to refer to someone who uses insincere flattery to gain advantage. The word has its origin in the legal system of Classical Athens when individuals privately accused others of wrongdoing as there was no police force and only a limited number of officially appointed public prosecutors. By the fifth century BC, the litigants who brought unjustified prosecutions were called “sycophants.”
Toady
A toady was described in the 1620s as someone who ate a toad believed to be poisonous to enable his master to display his skill in expelling the poison. The quality was first referred to as a “servile parasite and later “fawning flatterer” and then toady.
In the historical context, McCarthy will be forgotten in the bowels of history. When people talk of sycophants, they will remember such top shelf flunkies as Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda whose groveling praise of the fuhrer was unmatched. Goebbels came up with the “Heil Hitler” salute and insisted that Hitler be referred to as “Der Fuhrer.”
And who can forget a commoner who vowed publicly to give his own life if Roman Emperor Caligula recovered from an illness. The commoner hoped to be rewarded when the emperor recovered but instead Caligula ordered his execution.
The former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was an ass kisser extraordinaire to President Nixon. The premier example came in comments Kissinger made to Nixon after meeting with then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Meier had begged Nixon to ask the Russian government to allow more Soviet Jews to emigrate. But Nixon’s primary goal was to maintain detente with the USSR and Kissinger advised him, “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
McCarthy must know that Trump collects sycophants like kids collect baseball cards and that McCarthy could become a trumpian persona non grata in the blink of an eye. The difference between past presidential sycophants is that trump, the egomaniac and smartest person on earth, often didn’t even follow the jaded advice of his toadys. And toadys who objected were quickly shown the door, as with former Defense Secretary James Mattis, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The list of trumpian sycophants has to begin with Attorney General William Barr who showed his absolute lack of professional conduct when he called the Mueller Report totally vindicated trump of any collusion with Russia in the 2016 election. Contrary to the fantasy trump world, Mueller presented tons of evidence that trump undermined the Russia investigation.
Next, there is that alien excuse for a human, Kellyanne Conway. Trump could always count on her to provide key advice, as when she coined the Orwellian phrase “alternative facts” to refer to trumpian lies.
And I would be remiss not to mention the man who sweats brown fluid, Rudy Giuliani, the trump loyalist par excellence. Serving as trump’s personal attorney, Giuliani has been a key orchestrator of the fictional conspiracy belief that voter fraud cost trump the 2020 election. There’s an old joke about a guy named Ben Dover and it fits Giuliani who was prone to bend over on trumpian command.
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham was up to the challenge to defend trump’s most outrageous comments and his most blatant lies. For example, trump claimed Alabama was in the path of Hurricane Dorian. The National Weather Service, however, said Alabama was fine and Grisham answered by attacking CNN.
Finally, there is Vice President Mike Pence, who would never have even considered veering from the trumpian world until he refused to toss the 2020 electoral college results and proclaim trump the president. Pence quickly became an angry target of the man with bad hair and small hands, the potentate of Mar-a-Lago.
As they say, you play with fire, you are going to get burned. Too bad for McCarthy.
And from here I segue to Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin,one of the most rabid, wannabe sycophants. McGeachin is running for governor and will be on the dais with Stew Davis at a political rally on May 4 in Meridian, Idaho. Davis is a far right, radio commentator, white supremacist, COVID-19 vaccine opponent and a virulent supporter of trump’s conspiracy theory that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud.
Davis was a speaker at the 2022 America First Political Action Conference, where he called for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on COVID-19, to be lynched by hanging. Davis also has given air to the the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 is actually a synthetic form of snake venom. Davis’s radio program, the Stew Peters Show, is sponsored by Mike Lindell, the discredited Republican provocateur who has led the voter conspiracy campaign to get trump back in office. Peters also has voiced support for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
McGeachin was a guest on the April 20 edition of The Stew Peters Show and promoted the rally and her campaign.
“We’re really excited and happy that you’re coming to Idaho. Every time I mention the lineup and mention your name, that you’re going to be here, there’s a lot of enthusiasm for you being here. You have a growing presence here in Idaho, and so we’re really excited and anxious to get you here.”
Peters told McGeachin that he is “going to do whatever I can” to get her elected, adding, “We support you a hundred thousand percent.”