The roosters are ruining the barnyard
Congress is being pecked to death by showy crowing and strutting
Is it just me, or does this look like Donald Trump’s mugshot? (Photo by Arib Neko on Unsplash)
My neighbor’s rooster is outspoken. He struts about in what seems to be a display of self-importance, quite frequently interrupting his circuit to crow about whatever it is that a cocky chicken might have on his mind. In all of this, he resembles nothing so much as a politician on the stump.
Now, I understand that comparing a rooster to a member of Congress, say, may unfairly malign the fowl’s good intent, not to mention overstate the minimal dedication of many elected representatives to their constitutional obligations. It’s like this: The House chamber is packed with politicians whose ambitions seem limited to strutting and crowing their way to attention, but a yard full of chickens actually accomplishes something.
If only we could say the same for the House Freedom Caucus and the reckless leaders empowered by Republican control of the House. What a bunch of banty roosters they are! (Here we mean no gender-specific disrespect to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Disrespect based on their job performance? Absolutely intended, and richly deserved.)
Roosters, as any farmer can tell you, are far from worthless. But their tasks are limited. If you’re keeping a flock of chickens only to produce eggs, a rooster is mostly superfluous, because that job is handled quite happily by hens alone. Roosters’ services are needed only when you want to grow the flock. Beyond that, about all you get from a rooster is the crowing. Maybe that’s to warn the flock of danger, or maybe to announce that there is no danger, or maybe just to brag that this is his damn roost. Exactly why the cock crows isn’t entirely clear. Maybe he just likes the way it feels.1
And that’s exactly what seems to underlie a lot of what’s going on in the House these days. There’s plenty of cockadoodle-doing while the thoughtful work Americans need and expect Congress to be doing is shoved aside like so much chicken manure.
There is a lot that ought to worry Americans, and thus our representatives in Congress. But what we get on Capitol Hill is mostly politics as performance art, not statesmanship.
For instance: The United States is engaged in both direct combat and fighting by proxy in the Mideast, as our airstrikes on Houthi fighters in Yemen this week made clear, and as Israel continues its relentless assault on targets in Gaza. We are at a dangerous point of expanded military engagement abroad that would, in another era, call out for congressional review and action. But this Republican-run House is distracted by its own bickering, like nothing so much as chickens pecking at each other. This has led the Republican conference to repeatedly oust its own leaders when they try to act responsibly to meet the minimal task of keeping our government running. Do you think for a moment that this group is capable of a thoughtful inquiry into matters of life and death around the globe?
Or consider this issue: No less vital an American interest than the preservation of the Western alliance from brutal Russian expansionism is at stake in Ukraine. But the Trump-dominated Republicans in Congress are willing to let the Trump-friendly Russian ruler Vladimir Putin have his way if Joe Biden doesn’t resume Trump-like policies along America’s border with Mexico. Do we see a theme here, folks?
Rather than engaging with these two momentous matters of war and peace – which, quite appropriately, the White House is confronting with risky but carefully crafted strategies – let us consider what Republicans are crowing about.
At the insistence of its most extreme right-wing members, the House is moving forward with frivolous impeachments of both President Biden (despite the absence of any evidence of presidential wrongdoing) and Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, the latter because they don’t like how he is doing his job. Key Republican legal scholars are warning Congress that the Constitution does not allow impeachment over policy disagreement, but that seems unlikely to dissuade the radicals who virtually run the House. 2
Some of the same House members pushing impeachment are also engaged in investigating the president’s son, Hunter Biden, for allegedly trading on his father’s good name to enrich himself (and, they darkly suggest, Joe Biden, too, before he came to the White House). Yet they remain uninterested in the Trump family’s blatant grifting, including son-in-law Jared Kushner’s remarkable draw of a $2 billion Saudi investment to his private firm just six months after he left a White House job that involved negotiating with the Saudis.
Meanwhile, in exchange for even considering their prior commitments on federal spending levels, House Republicans are demanding a cutback in staffing at the Internal Revenue Service, the better to protect high-income tax cheats who subsidize the campaigns of Republican officeholders.
And, of course, there’s this: Virtually every Republican who holds federal office now backs Donald Trump’s baseless claim that he was cheated from winning re-election in 2020, and increasingly they’re defending the people who violently attacked the Capitol at Trump’s urging on Jan. 6, 2021. The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, calls that attack, which injured at least 140 police officers, “the largest single-day mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history.”3 But U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of Upstate New York, who sheltered in terror that day, now echoes Trump’s reference to those imprisoned after being convicted of crimes connected to the attack as “hostages.” There’s widespread speculation that Stefanik is auditioning to be Trump’s running mate. Whether or not that’s true, her behavior is a tragic reminder that for some politicians, the motivation of integrity is no match for the pull of ambition.
Strut, strut. Caw, caw, caw.
The world desperately needs American leadership. Ian Bremmer, the brilliant founder of The Eurasia Group, a political risk research and assessment firm, wrote this week of his fears for the year ahead. “From a global political risk perspective, this is the most dangerous and uncertain year I’ve covered in my lifetime,” wrote Bremmer, who is 54. He cited three wars: Russia versus Ukraine, Israel versus Hamas, and the United States versus itself. The latter threat looms despite our nation’s powerful military and strong economy because, Bremmer wrote, “its political system is more dysfunctional than that of any other advanced industrial democracy.”4
And what has created such astonishing dysfunction in what was viewed worldwide until recently as history’s most exceptional democracy? It is the yielding of principled conservatism to the radical opportunism of the far right, encouraged by such cynical media outlets as Fox News and by the most disreputable politician to ever achieve high office in our country, Donald Trump. Pardon, please, this extension of the metaphor nearly beyond reason, but it’s hard not to view Trump as anything but the most flamboyant fowl in the barnyard. Tragically, the success of his outrageous prevarications have spawned imitators in public life across the country.
It’s hard not to believe that the Trump acolytes and wannabes know full well what they’re doing — that is, that they’re taking advantage of what are often called “low-information voters” to achieve notice. The great British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who won the Nobel Prize in literature for championing “humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought,” saw the cynical nature of so much political posturing. “Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man,” Russell wrote, “and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.”5
So the crowing in Congress and on the campaign trail drowns out more reasonable and useful information. Of course, that’s true of the rooster, too, at least potentially. Scientists have measured the crowing of a rooster at close range at about 142 decibels, which is more deafening than the 120 decibels or so produced by a chain saw. Fortunately for the rooster, when he opens his beak to crow, his ear canals partly close, thus protecting him from the sound.
It makes you nearly envy the rooster, doesn’t it?
https://www.almanac.com/why-do-roosters-crow-10-riveting-facts-about-roosters#:~:text=They%20will%20crow%20to%20indicate,many%20urban%20neighborhoods%20prohibit%20roosters.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/homeland-security-chief-alejandro-mayorkas-failures-are-not-impeachable
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4391205-prosecutor-says-many-more-police-officers-likely-injured-on-jan-6-than-reported/
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#search/zero/WhctKKZPJXBMjHqXjdCljrqTSdZWrQnGFpxSBPTPVPDcJrnvCPbNZrRvSthJTBCcwwWQhFv
Russell, Bertrand. New Hopes for a Changing World. London: George Allen & Unwin (1951)
NEWSCLIPS FROM THE UPSTATES
Dispatches from our common ground *
Wherein each week we look around what we call the nation’s Upstates — those places just a bit removed from the center of things — to find illuminating news and intriguing viewpoints, which you might not otherwise see.
This week, we share reporting published here:
Bremerton, Wash. (Kitsap Sun, kitsapsuncom)
Worcester, Mass. (Worcester Telegram & Gazette, telegram.com)
Zanesville, Ohio (Times Recorder, zanesvilletimesrecorder.com)
Abilene, Texas (Abilene Reporter News, reporternews.com)
NOTE: The complete “Newsclips from the Upstates” section, and The Upstate American Midweek Extra Edition, which is sent to email boxes most Wednesdays, are available only to paid subscribers. Thanks for your support!
WASHINGTON
Police want to contract out interactions with homeless
The police chief in Bremerton, Wash. (population 44,000), wants the city to hire a Seattle-based organization to coordinate the city’s response to people living on the streets, reports Kai Uyehara in the Kitsap Sun. The firm’s social workers would manage and regularly report homeless camp and camper locations, conduct site visits and connect unhoused individuals with services, and would manage, reclaim, maintain and clean sites of former encampments, as well as document trespasses and coordinate police response, identify private property and advise owners who are dealing with encampments there. “They're social workers, they're compassion based, they're not law enforcement based,” Chief Tom Wolfe said. “They can do things that a police officer can't do – they can get compliance where we can't.”
MASSACHUSETTS
Advice to municipalities: Don’t fly those flags
At the end of 2022, the mayor of a little Massachusetts city created controversy when he went to a municipal park to join in the raising of a “Nuclear Family Flag” — a black-and-white banner associated with anti-gay activists. He claimed to be acting in the name of equality, since the city had flown a Pride Flag earlier in the year. Now, according to reporting by Kinga Borondy in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, municipalities are being advised to avoid raising any flags other than those of national, state or local governments — or else dedicate a specific flagpole to community groups and allow them to raise their own flags. The issue has gained prominence as a result of a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision finding that Boston had discriminated against a Christian organization on the basis of religion by denying the group access to a municipally controlled flagpole for its banner in 2017. But there is another approach: Worcester has five flagpoles in front of City Hall, flying the U.S. flag, Massachusetts flag, Worcester flag and an Indigenous Peoples flag, with the fifth pole reserved for requests from community members, with flags rotated based upon requests. On that fifth pole, Worcester recently raised an Israeli flag and then a banner representing Palestine.
OHIO
Gender dysphoria? It’s like thinking you’re a bird
Maybe Bertrand Russell was wrong; perhaps politicians are, in fact, as stupid as they sometimes seem. (See essay above.) Haley BeMiller reports from the Ohio state legislature that a Republican state representative, Beth Lear of Galena, described gender dysphoria as being similar to a person thinking they’re a bird. "If I had a child who thought he was a bird, am I going to take him to a doctor who tells him the best thing to do is to let him explore being a bird?" she asked, during a committee hearing where she had insisted that there are two distinct genders and no such thing as gender dysphoria — notwithstanding scientists’ consensus about its existence. Ohio state government is enmeshed in conversation about gender identity, including an effort by the Republican-run legislature to override the Republican governor’s veto of a bill to restrict medical care for transgender minors and block transgender girls from female sports. There’s also a so-called bathroom bill, House Bill 183, that would require K-12 and college students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their sex assigned at birth.
TEXAS
State — yes, even Texas! — moves to restrict water injection by oil industry
In what is often viewed as the most extraction-friendly state in the nation, regulators in Texas suspended two dozen permits that allowed the injection of saltwater into the ground during oil and gas extraction. Carlos Nugueros Ramos of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit newsroom, reports that regulators acted on evidence that the practice has contributed to the rising frequency and magnitude of earthquakes in West Texas — which the oil industry has long denied. The Railroad Commission of Texas told major oil companies that they couldn’t use the standard industry practice in two counties after seven earthquakes occurred in Reeves and Culberson counties in 2023. In November, the U.S. Geological Survey recorded a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in the region, which tied for the fourth strongest seismic event in Texas history. The process of injecting saltwater back into the ground “is likely contributing to recent seismic activity,” the Railroad Commission has said.
DOWNLOAD OR LISTEN NOW: MORE FROM THE UPSTATE AMERICAN
IF YOU’RE A READER who wants to hear more of Rex Smith’s views, check www.wamc.org for his weekly on-air commentary aired by Northeast Public Radio. Here’s a link to the latest essay. And if your interest is specific to American media, you can download the podcast of The Media Project, the 30-minute nationally-syndicated discussion that Rex leads each week on current issues in journalism. In the states where Northeast Public Radio is heard, the program airs at 3 p.m. each Friday, and is rebroadcast at 6 p.m. Sunday. You can tune in live, too, at www.wamc.org. It has been called “a half-hour of talk about finding and telling the truth.” It’s often worth your time!
Thanks for reading The Upstate American, and for supporting this work that explores *our common ground, this great land.” And if you’d like to learn how to write opinion essays — for newspapers, audio or digital platforms — check out the live class Rex co-teaches, that is offered by The Memoir Project. Click below for information. Our first class of 2024 is coming up on Wednesday evening, Jan. 17. Eastern. Lots of our students have been well published — and you can be, too.
-REX SMITH
As they say down east, "This was wicked goo-ud!