On agreement: The lessons of George Santos

 George Santos.  With all of the darkness in the world, let us take a moment to appreciate the levity of a Member of Congress who was little more than the Jon Lovitz character from Saturday Night Live, Tommy Flanagan, of the Pathological Liars' Anonymous.  In fact, he's the president of that organization!  George Santos was a cartoon character come to life, and I wish I could say that I have never dealt with anyone like him, but then I'd be him, so yes, there are just people like that.  His lies were absurd, over the top, and if we're honest, funny, until they got to the point of scamming veterans, for example.  The House of Representatives has finally expelled Rep. Flanagan, giving him more time to spend with his wife, Morgan Fairchild.  Or rather, Santos is gay, so I guess he'll say his husband, um... who's a movie star right now?  Is it still the Brat Pack?  Rob Lowe.  His husband, Rob Lowe.  (Go watch the Lovitz sketches, kids.  No, I'm not updating my references, time can go fuck itself.)

Anywho, in order for the House to give Santos the boot (he did not pay for it, he never pays for anything), Congress had to do something it never does.  Agree, across party lines.  Behold, a Festivus miracle!

Agreement does not come easily.  Disagreement, or the extent of disagreement is sometimes illusory.  There is more agreement within the populace than one might imagine because we only discuss that on which we disagree.  Santos, for example, was expelled from the House of Representatives, to which he was elected as an openly gay man, rather than executed by being thrown off the roof of a building for being gay, which is precisely what would have happened to him in Gaza, where there is complete consensus on the execution of gay people.  We do not debate the question of throwing gay people off the roofs of buildings, or anything of the sort.  We do not debate the method of executing them, we do not even really debate gay marriage anymore!  We do not debate that on which we collectively agree.  We only debate that on which we disagree.  That means measuring total agreement and disagreement is actually difficult because what you observe is the disagreement and what you do not observe is the agreement, most of the time.  We just observed the agreement.

What is frustrating for those of the sane, rational and moral disposition, is where we fail to observe agreement when we should.  I consider the vast majority of American political debate on policy to be within the realm of reasonable dispute.  I teach on political ideology, I study ideology, economics, and a wide array of subjects, and there are reasonable disputes.  Yet some topics should yield agreement to those of reason.

As an example, who else lies about everything?  I have referred to Donald Trump as, "the lying-est liar who ever lied a lie," and I suppose I might question whether or not Santos took the title from Trump, but on the scale of lying, Trump's lies are a) more transparently obvious, and b) more damaging to the country.  As a simple example, he announced before the 2020 election that he would not accept the results of the election if he lost.  Amazingly then, he responded to a loss with batshit conspiracy theories, getting ever-battier to deny having lost.  To anyone operating in the fact-based universe, that makes his statements after the election somewhere between insane and clearly dishonest, but in no way reasonable.

Yet half the country must avert its eyes from truth.

With respect to Santos's orientation, we, including the left, can note that a Republican can be elected as an openly gay man in this country, and say something about that.  Yet the left must avert its eyes from basic truths about what would happen to Santos in certain other parts of the world.

Santos, ironically, claimed a certain heritage, and then did a hyphen dance ("Jew-ish"!), but actually, being a goy means he wouldn't get gassed by the gas-the-Jews crowd and the gaslighters who want to pretend that nobody is yelling "gas the Jews" because if they were, they'd be the bad guys.  Instead, he'd just get thrown off the roof of a building for being gay.

But the side that acknowledges Trump's constant lying demands that we ignore that.

What does it take for us to agree?  Apparently, it takes a buffoonish figure like George Santos, who has brought us all together, so let us give thanks for George Santos!

I am reminded, then, of Roy Moore.  Roy Moore was a prominent figure in Alabama politics.  He made national fame on the Alabama Supreme Court as a religious conservative, and then tried to get elected to the US Senate, but during the campaign, certain allegations became public.  Basically, he likes 'em young.  Below the age of consent.  Most of the GOP continued to back him in a closely contested Senate, but Doug Jones managed to scrape out a victory because holy shit.

Santos is different from Moore in many ways.  He is not nearly is creepy because there is nothing creepier than going after the young.  He is also just... funny.  Unintentionally funny, but he is a national laughingstock.  Every revelation of every ludicrous lie is actually just... funny.  With Roy Moore, I kinda just wanted to throw him in prison, general population, and tell the other inmates about his fondness for the underaged, and also that he's an ex-judge.  They'd know what to do.

Santos?  I want this guy on tv, non-stop.  I haven't watched tv in years, but I'd watch a George Santos tv show!  He's like if Donald Trump told lies that were just comical instead of tearing at the fabric of democracy.

The consequence is to lower the stakes.  One guy, one seat, one joke.  And then we can agree.

We should be able to agree that Biden won.  Yet because of the cognitive incentives of the Republican electorate, no matter how insane the 2020 conspiracy theories got, we cannot.  We should be able to agree that a terrorist attack murdering over 1K civilians, including rape as a weapon of war, by people who uniformly support executing gay people, and then chant "gas the Jews," is to be condemned.  We cannot.

But when the stakes are sufficiently low, yay us.  A Festivus miracle.

Steve Bailey & Victor Wooten, "Eye of the Beholder," from Bass Extremes: Cookbook.