The Scapegoat That Is Senator Jeff Flake

If you don’t know the origin of an actual scapegoat, it’s this:

In ANCIENT TIMES, they’d take a goat. Not sure how they chose it. A lottery? Did the goat choose itself? Doesn’t matter. Upon the goat they would heap their sins — a metaphorical act, as sins do not necessarily create physical baggage. The goat was now a vessel for the moral stains put forth by the individuals and by the community. They would say, “Fuck you, goat. Look at all those ugly sins, you shitty, shitty goat.” Then they’d punt the goat in the ass and force it into the desert, as an outcast. An exile. Carrying their sins away from town, buh-bye.

Later, the goat would return, a gunslinger here to bring revolvers and redemption.

I might be making that last part up.

More seriously, sometimes they wouldn’t push the goat out into the desert.

Instead, they’d just fucking kill it. Regardless of whether the goat wandered away or was bled out, the emotional result was the same:

We are cleansed of our sins.

The taint of our poor choices is gone.

We may start anew.

It’s bullshit, of course. It’s a supremely lazy way of negotiating your own errors, either as a single person or as a community of people. Instead of taking responsibility and performing actions of accountability and recompense, you just make up some fancy nonsense about goats being a receptacle for sins, and then you’re free and clear, brah.

Thing is, it’s transparent to us when I put it this way, but keep in mind, this is still sometimes the way of the world. Sometimes the sins of a community are piled onto a single sinner and then, when that sinner is dealt with, we pretend the culture that spawned him has been mystically cleansed of his rot and his ruin, and surely it will never happen again (they say as it keeps on happening again and again). It’s a performative act designed to make us feel better, not actually to fix a single fucking thing. Honestly, it’s a wonder that the Harvey Weinstein situation has not yet been performed similarly — though it’s far from played-out, presently he has not served as the lone goat emblematic of the grotesque sins mired in Hollywood, but rather, has been more a cork unpopping on a bottle of demons. It’s spraying everywhere, but at least we’re starting to see — and name — the demons, rather than assuming they all entered one lone pig that could be driven into the sea.

Enter Senator Jeff Flake, from Arizona.

Recently, as most of you well know, the good senator from Arizona — a Republican, unsurprisingly — stepped away from the comforting firelight of the Grand Old Party to announce not only that he would not seek re-election, but also that he had some strong words (if softly spoken) for the Narcissist-In-Chief. On the Senate floor, Flake delivered a speech that reads better than it listens, as he’s not precisely a gifted orator, and you can read it here.

(Note that his comments to “Mr. President” are not necessarily to Trump himself, but rather, to the president of the Senate, currently Orrin Hatch.)

Here are some snippets from the speech —

“It must also be said that I rise today with no small measure of regret — regret because of the state of our disunion, regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics, regret because of the indecency of our discourse, regret because of the coarseness of our leadership, regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by “our,” I mean all of our complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and accommodation of the unacceptable to end.”

And

“In this century, a new phrase has entered the language to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order, that phrase being the “new normal.” That we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue, with the tone set at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve.”

And

“What happens if ambition fails to counteract ambition, what happens if ambition fails to assert itself in the face of chaos and instability, if decency fails to call out indecency? Were the shoe on the other foot, would we Republicans meekly accept such behavior on display from dominant Democrats? Of course, we wouldn’t and we would be wrong if we did.

When we remain silent and fail to act, when we know that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because “ad finitum, ad nauseam” when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of our institutions and liberty, we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.”

And finally

“Despotism loves a vacuum and our allies are now looking elsewhere for leadership. Why are they doing this? None of this is normal. And what do we as United States senators have to say about it? The principles that underlie our politics, the values of our founding are too vital to our identity and to our survival to allow them to be compromised by the requirements of politics because politics can make us silent when we should speak. And silence can equal complicity. I have children and grandchildren to answer to.”

It’s a good speech.

It is a clear, bold indictment of where we’re at, and ultimately, of the entire Republican Party — spoken with some honor and some craft, and more than a hefty dose of authenticity and earnestness.

And we’re all applauding him for taking a stand.

Even though I’m pretty sure he’s still sitting down.

Let’s unpack this a little, because what exactly has Jeff Flake done? He’s announced no bid for re-election, which is itself an action, though one could argue that the braver action would not be to abandon the post but rather, to attempt to hold onto it where he can continue to affect policy beyond 2018, where he can shape the party from the inside, where he can vote with conscience and principle rather than paving the way for another Roy Moore (or Donald Trump) to fill his shoes. He’s also stood up and said a lot of very fine, very pretty words and ideas.

And then he got up the other night and voted to dismantle the recent rule that would allow customers to not be forced into arbitration to deal with the crimes and scams of big banks and other financial institutions (cough cough Equifax, cough cough Wells Fargo).

The gist of this rule is that put power in the hands of the consumers by taking the power out of the hands of big companies.

Flake voted to gut that rule. Bye-bye, consumer protections. High-five, big corporations.

Now, the common refrain response to this is:

“Well, he is still a Republican,” said as if that explains it.

And there begins the disconnect.

The GOP indicted Hillary Clinton because she would be cozy with Wall Street. They wined-and-dined on opposing her corporate connections — and by proxy, her supposed corruption in that realm — and sided with the common man. Main Street, they might say, versus Wall Street. Hillary, that venomous bat-witch, would surely stock her cabinet with the vintage of Goldman-Sachs, would vote to protect Big Banks, would vote against Middle Class Americans and Small Businesses and also she’d probably take out a loan to pay some stockbrokers to kill puppies on the market floor, that monster.

And yet, demonstrably, they do the opposite.

They are what they claim to combat.

Flake voted against consumers.

Flake voted to confirm Mnuchin.

Flake voted 92% in line with Trump.

And when asked about impeachment or the 25th Amendment, Flake — despite claiming Trump is a danger to our democracy — bunts, saying, ennh, no, I don’t think actions like that are really necessary.

But — he made a speech! He said some things. Applause. Hooray. And you can feel just a little shift — a lot of his speech is one that attacks the tone and tenor of affairs in 2017, if not just the politics. You get the sense he thinks that Trump is not the GOP, not really, not really for really real, that the two are separate, that the despotism of our president does not represent the party to which he belongs. It is a speech of subtle reformation and redemption, attempting to disentangle the GOP from Trump. And you can almost feel it working.

Flake is a scapegoat. He will take the sins of his party and wander into exile, if we let him. But we mustn’t allow that. The GOP is not separate from Trump. Trump is the Pokemon evolution of that party — you can’t separate a tree from the ground in which it grows, even if that tree bulges with rotten orange fruit and seeds the ground with more sexism and racism and intolerance. It is not enough to simply say these things and then sashay off the fucking boat as it sinks in the harbor. There must be accountability. We must ask for responsibility. Flake says these things but owns none of them, placing himself as more a victim and a vessel rather than an actor and craftsman of the politics in which we presently swim. He talks a good game, then goes and votes against our interests anyway, and votes for Trump’s interests — even when he could’ve been the deciding vote, even when he could’ve demonstrated that his words held intent and power, not just hollow rhetoric.

Remain dubious about attempts to rehabilitate the party.

Beware any efforts to separate Trump from the GOP.

Resist the idea that one is not the other. Because they are tangled together on purpose. The denial of Merrick Garland did not come under Trump, but under Obama. The GOP has long been working itself into a froth against climate change, health care, and the welfare of the middle class. They’ve long fed on the bread-and-butter of oh shit, a black Democrat is in the highest office of the land, we better stoke some racism to get shit done.

I admire Flake’s words.

I hope he does more to back them up.

But for now, let’s not applaud him as if he’s standing up when he’s still sitting down. Right now, his words are more a balm for his own party than part of a larger effort to fix what’s really gone wrong — an error that is as much Flake’s fault as any in his party, an error that must be corrected with effort, not words, with action, not speeches. Hold him accountable.

Hold them all accountable.

No rehabilitation without reconciliation.

Don’t let the goat get away with all their sins.