By Professor Gonzalo Santos, Exclusive for “El Magonista” – January 19, 2021
The spectacle of watching the crumbling of Kevin McCarthy’s political leadership in Congress after having served as president Donald Trump’s most loyal instrument – a deeply sycophantic and mendacious role he embraced without reservations over the last five years – feels like he’s just been handed his departing lines as a Shakespearean character, caught by the unraveling of the whole treacherous, murderous plot - a scoundrel that we all knew was doomed from the very start by his own unbound ambition and perfidy.
McCarthy’s latest contortions were revolting to watch. First, he loyally tried to reverse president Trump’s clear defeat by going along with the “Stop the Steal” Big Lie, including joining that spurious lawsuit thrown out by the Supreme Court; then, in the wake of the January 6 Trump-incited mob assault on the Capitol, we saw him feigning shock, shock, only to lead over 130 Republicans in opposing certifying Arizona’s and Pennsylvania’s election results, all in a vain, contemptible attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
And finally, after these anti-democratic efforts failed and the elections were certified, we saw him opposing impeaching the president by insincerely calling for “investigations” and a lame “censure,” piously pleading for “unity” and “reconciliation” as he and his fellow Republican accomplices sheathed their daggers still dripping blood from that most foul deed.
McCarthy and many of his Republican co-conspirators have now been exposed for what they are, enemies of our constitutional democracy and duplicitous inciters of mob violence. They stand condemned to be forever associated with the only president who has been impeached twice. He, of course, will not resign in disgrace of his own accord – he’ll try to weasel himself out of it. He should be expelled from Congress for having aided and abetted an insurrection against the peaceful transfer of power after a free and fair election.
And I say that as one of his constituents who long forewarned him.
For years, McCarthy chose to blithely ignore the urgent demand for immigration reform that his constituents in the Central Valley had raised through dozens of marches and petitions. He simply refused to meet with us, and for years adopted a stonewalling posture. He seldom had a town hall meeting, and then he quit having them altogether. His office in Bakersfield was routinely locked.
In late summer 2013, though, thousands of residents from all over the Central Valley came to Bakersfield to protest – peacefully - his duck & hiding, foot-dragging, and obstructionism. It made a big splash in the news. We went right up to his office, locked as usual, and left hundreds of messages taped. Not a petal in his front yard was damaged, not a window shattered.
The media covered the story, including the congressman’s ducking & hiding. Upon feeling pressured, McCarthy finally agreed to meet with a delegation. We had a tense, brief meeting, where I took it upon myself to go beyond pleasantries and raise a few inconvenient truths; which led him, upon ending the meeting, to run to the Bakersfield Californian and claim that he and his family had been “physically threatened!”... oh, and by none other than me! That is, he cynically tried to turn that meeting into an opportunity to defame and smear our movement as violent and dangerous.
Classic Kevin. He did not take into account, though, that I am a university professor, able to forcefully expose his mendacity in the media, both English- and Spanish-language, which I did.
Among the Latino and other communities of color in his district he’s already a pariah, and he knows it – he assiduously avoids any contact with them. Saddest of all is that while his white constituents have bought into his lies, he has infallibly betrayed them as well - on things like affordable healthcare, living wages, clean air and water, emergency pandemic relief, even veteran services (all talk and no action).
Look up his voting record.
That’s how his Apartheid brand of politics has divided and hurt most of his constituents, white and otherwise.
Among the inconvenient truths I raised to McCarthy in our 2013 meeting was that if he and his party kept sowing racial discord and xenophobia to gain the political support of white voters, they would soon reap the whirlwind of political chaos and social conflict. But he and his party did not listen. They doubled down by embracing Donald Trump and enabling his stoking of virulent white nationalism. We are all now witnessing what they reaped. I told him so.
The circle of ignominy is now complete: if Republicans like McCarthy set American democracy on fire by going along with Trump’s last Big Lie – the preposterous, false claim he had won by a landslide –, it is very clear to me that it was their going along with his first Big Lie – that immigrants and refugees represented an existential threat to, rather than the enduring promise of America – that undermined American democratic values the most, and unleashed the hydra of extremist rightwing violence upon us all.
It’s time we in Kevin McCarthy’s congressional district joined the rest of California and embraced a more inclusive brand of multiracial democratic politics. Let’s begin by holding this seditious, unscrupulous politician accountable for his treason.
No reconciliation before accountability. Bakersfield, the Central Valley, and the House of Representatives deserve better.
Dr. Gonzalo Santos teaches Sociology at CSU Bakersfield and can be reached by phone at (661) 330-7374 or by email at: gsantos@csub.edu.
