There’s a great line from “Raiders Of The Lost Ark” about Americans “…always overdressed and for the wrong occasions”. That’s your basic Republican yahoo. Wearing masks as they storm the capitol because they’re hiding their criminality. Meanwhile, in Naples, Florida, white privilege will NOT be masked! Republicans are what happens when greed convinces you that freedom equals “you’re not the boss of me”. It’s what happens when you’ve committed yourself lock, stock and barrel to denying the future by force-marching the entire culture (the overwhelming majority of Americans) literally at gun point into the past. Donald Trump didn’t change the Republican Party. He didn’t force them down a road they would never have travelled otherwise. Trump was a catalyst. He was the charisma the GOP needed to get people to look past their deplorable plans for America to a jingly-jangly set of MAGA keys. But, even as the Republican Party accepted Trump as their standard bearer back in 2016, they did it KNOWING he was a traitor.

Let’s get this straight — this is about Russia. It has always been about Russia. Russia, Russia, RUSSIA.

Every bit of obstruction of justice the Trumps, their enablers, their party played, was meant to cover up a secret that everyone already knows (but, apparently, not enough of us refuse to accept still): Donald Trump is a fully owned asset of Russian Military Intelligence. He has been for years. Everything he did upon entering the White House diminished America to Russia’s advantage. Who knows if we have any secrets left. There is a monster reveal coming at us: the entire Trump presidency from its swearing in onward was a massive crime scene and an act of treason.

Conspiracy works like this: “See something, SAY something; see something, say NOTHING?” We have to ask “why?” A month before nominating Trump their 2016 candidate for POTUS, current GOP Leader and mega-coward Kevin McCarthy walked into a GOP leadership meeting and said out loud (it was recorded): “There’s two people I think Putin pays, Rohrbacher and Trump… swear to God!” A discussion broke out amongst those there which then Speaker Of The House Paul Ryan ended by insisting that knowledge of this fact — that their likely candidate for president was COMPROMISED by a hostile foreign power (in addition to one of their colleagues, California representative Dana Rohrbacher who everyone understood was a useful idiot) — was not going to leave the room. As Ryan put it: “That’s how we know we’re a family”.

Omerta in place of patriotism.

Conspiracy spreads easily. The meeting was recorded. There’s no arguing about what was said. The question is: who in the room already knew “Russia pays Rohrbacher and Trump?” Did any of them also know that Putin paid quite a few other Republicans, too? Did they suspect — even just a “soupcon”? If they did — and they didn’t tell someone — they committed a crime. It’s that simple. How many Republicans KNEW the truth about Trump? How many suspected — even in a small, seemingly insignificant way? With conspiracy, ownership is easy. Plenty of co-conspirators don’t actually know that that’s what they are — a co-conspirator in a crime — until it’s too late.

With conspiracy, you don’t have to know anything about the crime itself to be held criminally responsible for it. You don’t even have to suspect there was criminality involved. Conspiracy moves between people like a virus, sometimes spreading silently. Tacit understanding of a thing is still understanding that it “is”. So, why didn’t YOU pick up the damned phone and call the damned FBI?

You can flea bathe a dog. Stick a flea collar on a cat or (if you’re brave) stick a pill down its throat and voila! No fleas. Now you can lie down said dog (or cat) problem-free! Not so easy with a Republican however. There’s no way to rinse off the stink of corruption. We may have caught what the Republicans have just from thinking about them — that’s how deep the rot is.

Even among themselves, Republicans are so corrupt — and so afraid of each others’ corruption that they took a secret vote on whether or not to kick Lynn Cheney from power. The Republicans said one thing out loud (she has to go!) but something different when anonymous. That, right there, is the very essence of modern republicanism: duplicity, dishonesty and dickishness.

To stand with Marjorie Taylor Greene is to stand — proudly — with racism, anti-Semitism, authoritarianism, sedition, treason, lunacy and bullshit (not necessarily in that order). Silence is tacit approval. You might as well get in the shot. Smile pretty for the camera!

The photo Republicans like Taylor Greene will be posing for shortly will be a booking photo. That’s the answer to the question — what you’ll get if you lie down with Republicans: you will get booked.

Now, lawyer up…