Dick Cheney And Liz Cheney Voting For Kamala Harris, Triggering Great Disturbance In The Force
Dick Cheney And Liz Cheney Voting For Kamala Harris, Triggering Great Disturbance In The Force
Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
We weren’t terribly surprised the other day when former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) announced that not only would she not vote for GOP nominee Donald Trump, she would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris — and she said it in North Carolina, which has now become a swing state again.
But on Friday, Cheney, speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, went a step further, endorsing Democrat Colin Allred in his bid to replace podcaster and sometime Senator Ted Cruz. Then she said something really remarkable, which for the sake of storytelling convention we’re pretending you’ll be surprised by even after our headline and snazzy photoshopped illustration: She said her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, would be voting for Harris as well. And he followed that up with a statement confirming it.
Well bullseye us with a womp rat! That’s the gol-durndest thing we’ve heard since Beggar’s Canyon voted for Mon Mothma after the Hutt Syndicate was dispossessed!
Here’s the straight dope from the Texas Tribune, since it was their festival and all:
“Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” she said of her father, who served as vice president under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. “If you think about the moment we’re in, and you think about how serious this moment is, my dad believes — and he said publicly — there has never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is.”
And if anybody knows a grave threat to our democracy, it’d have to be the guy who did the most, before Trump and his Council of Cretins, to advance the notion that presidential power is nigh-absolute, especially when it comes to bloody foreign adventurism. Team Trump just added a little Divine Right of Presidents to what Cheney and the neocons started, didn’t it?
Here’s his statement:
So, dang, ain’t THAT something! The old war-crimer is on board with Kamala, and that’s certainly a measure of just how weird American politics has become. We’ll certainly be glad if this news gives non-Trumpy conservatives the permission they need to vote for a (*shudder*!) Democrat, for the good of the nation. (Wonkette rather famously believes in forgiveness and atonement, and you can still loathe the Cheneys but recognize when bad people do good things, and encourage them to do that more and further. Do you want bad people to stay bad? Or do you want the possibility of redemption?)
But we also feel compelled to add that by order of Yr Editrix, our headline for the day of Dick’s demise will remain “God Shoots Dick Cheney In Face,” with the subhed “And Now We Dance!”
And we will, beloveds, we will.
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A very strong case why MAGA voters are stupid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrU6F-S8VMo
Let's recall the Darth Vader Redemption Arc as presented starting in "The Empire Strikes Back" and concluding in "Return of the Jedi."
Only the naive Luke believes that there is still "Good" in Darth Vader. Luke's actions are driven, in part, to bring his father back from the Dark Side. Luke is successful; at the end of all things in "Jedi" as the Emperor is Force-killing Luke in front of him, Vader throws the Emperor over rail into the abyssal core of the Death Star, presumably (fuck you, JJ Abrams, you retconning fuck) to his death.
That act saves the Galaxy from the continued horrors of a Dark Side-driven Emperor. But that result is a side-effect and was not Luke's intention, which was only to save -- redeem -- his father.
But what does Vader do to deserve redemption? Other than tossing the Emperor overboard out of his own self-interest, absolutely nothing. Does Vader apologize for killing billions of people during his reign as the Emperor's top enforcer with the most power weapon ever imagined? Does he apologize for killing countless Imperial functionaries who "fail" him because he sets impossible goals (seriously, the worst boss ever)? Does he apologize for sending Imperial troops to occupied planets to control them, strip them of their resources and enslaving their populations?
He does not.
He does not even _acknowledge_ his lead role in bringing terror the Galaxy. Luke doesn't mention it at all, even as they are at the heart of the main instrument of that terror, as the ragtag fleet of rebels are fighting and dying to end that terror.
No. All of that terror is forgotten in the instant he saves Luke's life by killing* (again, fuck you, JJ Abrams) the Emperor. "The Force" accepts him back to the Light Side where he becomes a Force Ghost like Obi-Wan and Yoda, no questions asked.
This is the shittiest redemption arc ever.
Post Script: Killing* (FYJJA) the Emperor and "redeeming" Darth Vader for valuable prizes does not end the evil. The evil is everywhere and the fight continues. It is why the First Order returns so easily after a short period of "peace" (and "The Mandalorian" shows us the fragility of that peace).
"Andor" shows us that many people join the Empire not in a fighting/stormtrooper role but in an administrative role. It is a job, nothing more, as banal as can be. At some point the functionaries we see don't even realize they are driven by raw evil. They have no idea the effects of their actions on actual people. They see the rebels as outlaws fighting against law and order, not as people fighting for their freedom from the Empire's neverending demand for resources. "Andor" is so powerful because the whole Jedi/Force/Emperor mythos is off-stage. It is not important to the story. It points out that as long as people (and did you notice that the Empire's functionaries are all human?) are willing to do bad things out of their own self interest, evil festers without so much as lifting a finger.
"Andor" also shows us the grim reality of fighting that evil: at some point, those on the "good" side must use the tools of their enemy against them. Evil drags everyone down to its level and the only salvation, in a sense, is that the good people using those tools remain aware of what they are doing. The evil by nature simply don't care.
All of that said, if Dick Cheney can get those functionaries to look into their own hearts and vote for their actual self-interest, we move forward. We cannot and should not forget the actions of Dick Cheney in his role promoting evil. But if -- and this is an ask that will not be answered -- if he acknowledges his role as one of the many Doctors Frankenstein who created the Trump monster, and he apologizes for it, then we should welcome him and work with him.
As the dwarf said, "You don't make peace with your friends."