"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted."

Double standards were on full display last night [February 8, 2017] in the Senate when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Elizabeth Warren to shut up and sit down. No doubt this sent racist and misogynistic deplorables into a frothy orgy of gloating. At last, McConnell had emerged as his true self — a spiteful excuse for a man who can not still for an outspoken woman. It was repulsive to witness but Mitch didn't care. Now that Republicans have full control of the government, he's been emboldened to let the world see what he is: One white supremacist defending another. He sat there smug and self-satisfied, throwing the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s widow under a bus to protect the truth about Jeff Sessions, a man Steve Bannon has called the "leader of the alt-right movement."

But it's worth noting that while Mitch McConnell disgraced himself by standing up for white racists everywhere, he was joined by the majority in the senate who voted along party lines to silence Senator Warren. That tells us who they are, as if we didn't know already. It tells us about the level of vengeful malice their party has in store for the American people, as if we didn't know already.

We know who they are. We have always known. Now we have definitive proof. Even if some may have disagreed with McConnell's overstep, none of them could summon up courage to disagree. That tells us that they're not only craven, they are weak. They are without any moral character whatsoever. Their pathetic behavior last night tells us they lack the common human decency to stand up any boorish barbarian in power. Not to Steve Bannon, nor to Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell. They will certainly never stand up to the petty vindictive tyrant in the Oval Office. They will all fall in line because they recognize the Trump regime for what it is: the same cancerous manifestation of white nationalism that put them office.

Here are the senators who voted to silence Elizabeth Warren, whose offense, in the middle of Black History Month, was to quote from a letter written 20 years ago by Coretta Scott King, revered civil rights icon and widow of slain Martin Luther King, Jr.

Lamar Alexander — Tennessee [email]
John Barrasso — Wyoming [email]
Roy Blunt — Montana [email]
John Boozman — Arkansas [email]
Richard Burr — North Carolina [email]
Shelley Moore Capito — West Virginia [email]

Lamar Alexander — Tennessee [email]
John Barrasso — Wyoming [email]
Roy Blunt — Montana [email]
John Boozman — Arkansas [email]
Richard Burr — North Carolina [email]
Shelley Moore Capito — West Virginia [email]
Bill Cassidy — Louisiana [email]
Thad Cochran — Missouri [email]
Susan Collins — Maine [email]
Bob Corker — Tennessee [email]
John Cornyn — Texas [email]
Tom Cotton — Arkansas [email]
Mike Crapo — Idaho [email]
Steve Daines — Montana [email]
Michale Enzi — Wyoming [email]
Joni Ernst — Iowa [email]
Deb Fischer — Nebraska [email]
Jeff Flake — Arizona [email]
Cory Gardner — Colorado [email]
Lindsey Graham — South Carolina [email]
Chuck Grassley — Iowa [email]
Orin Hatch — Utah [email]
Dean Heller — Nevada [email]
John Hoeven — North Dakota [email]
James Inhofe — Oklahoma [email]
Johnny Isakson — Georgia [email]
Ron Johnson — Wisconsin [email]
John Kennedy — Louisiana [email]
James Lankford — Oklahoma [email]
Mike Lee — Utah [email]
John McCain-Arizona [email]
Mitch McConnell — Kentucky [email]
Jerry Moran — Kansas [email]
Lisa Murkowski — Arkansas [email]
Rand Paul — Kentucky [email]
David Perdue — Georgia [email]
Rob Portman — Ohio [email]
James Risch — Idaho [email]
Pat Roberts — Kansas [email]
Mike Rounds — South Dakota [email]
Marco Rubio — Florida [email]
Ben Sasse — Nebraska [email]
Tim Scott — South Carolina [email]
Richard Shelby — Alabama [email]
Dan Sullivan — Arkansas [email]
John Thune — South Dakota [email]
Thom Tillis — North Carolina [email]
Patrick Toomey — Pennsylvania [email]
Roger Wicker — Minnesota [email]
Todd Young — Indiana [email]

How have we allowed this happen? There are more of us compassionate American citizens than the hateful and fearful people on the right, but they showed up to vote in unexpected numbers and we didn't. Never mind that three million more of us did vote. We see now that's not enough. We can no longer expect to win close elections as long as the other side uses every slimy trick in the playbook to obstruct millions of liberals from voting and dividing those of us who do. We have allowed those forces to create a rift of discontent with a small but significant faction on the far left. The idealists saw themselves as rebels and were determined to have their revolution. What they got instead was a revolution on the right, and the far left made it happen. They wanted an anti-establishment candidate and they got one. They enabled the most misinformed voters in America to install this anti-establishment horror show in Washington, staffed at the highest levels by incompetent sycophants with no clue about how democracy works.

The consequences have been swift and the damage already incurred is inconceivable. Progressives need to understand what they have done. Now, before we can ever move the country farther left, the Democratic party must spend years trying to restore American ideals back to the moderate middle, as we try to retain whatever we can after decades of progress. Abhorrent right-wing extremist policies are being enacted and inflicted on our nation as we speak. That's what Elizabeth Warren was trying to prevent before Mitch McConnell shot her down.

But America was watching, and what we saw last night has only galvanized us to fight harder. It isn't going to be easy. The Republican majority in Congress is daunting, and they intend to hold onto it tightly:

• Systemic voter suppression,
• entrenched gerrymandering, and
• sinister new tools of targeted propaganda

are part of their arsenal.

Republicans have long been telling us who they are and what they plan to do, each and every day. Now that they feel victorious, they've become all the more arrogant. What they announced last night [February 8, 2017] was blatant: they have hitched the GOP to uneducated white voters. The sickest part of their plan is to make sure the gene pool of ignorance stays ignorant — and that includes trying to silence the wisdom of people like Coretta Scott King. Then they intend to strip away every part of the American Dream that Democrats have patiently and honorably built from FDR to Obama. We already suffered the obstructionist effects of these pathetic senators. Last night they showed their faces.

History will remember their names.

Rprinted from Medium, an article published by Sasha Stone on February 9, 2017.

###

February 12, 2017, to honor Abe Lincoln on his birthday. Do you remember when The Republican Party honored honesty?

Addendum. On February 10, 2017 The New York Times published a fine article, What Happened To Elizabeth Warren Has Its Roots in Racism, on the History of the "Gag Rule."

Here is a key paragraph:

The closest precedent for this kind of censorious misuse of congressional rules was the House of Representatives' use of the so-called Gag Rule, between 1836 and 1844. The Gag Rule was the House's response to a rising tide of antislavery petitions. It adopted a rule in 1836 that the petitions would be automatically tabled. Any discussion of them was prohibited.

Way to go, GOP, 2017 Party of Bigots.

Cover Tweet, Courtesy of someone who knows a bit about how to persist.