These Abhorrent Times

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In a desperate push to make waves and generate some cheap publicity, a few Republican members of the  US House of Representatives , usual suspects, have glommed onto acquitted murderer Kyle Rittenhouse as a way to keep their name in the news.   Four have publicly offered the Kenosha shooter internships with their congressional offices.  Madison Cawthorn, a representative from North Carolina, seems to have hatched the publicity stunt first, and it was quickly borrowed by Matt Gaetz of Florida, Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.   

None of the representatives of Rittenhouse's home state of Illinois seem to be seeking his services at this time - and so far the GOP celebrity seems to be still enjoying his post-trial publicity tour and has not indicated an interest in accepting any of the offers.  It's probably hard to impress a celebrity like Kyle with an internship, ever a congressional internship, when Donald John Trump is salivating all over him!

So Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia took the GOP Rittenhouse Adoration Fest to a new low this past Wednesday when she introduced a bill in Congress, one that has no chance of passage, to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the exonerated killer for his efforts to "protect" his community.  (The shooter's. home and actual community is Antioch, Illinois, which is more than twenty miles from Kenosha - where the shootings and killings occurred, and there is certainly a case to be made that the young shooter was more of the "problem" on the night of the protests and shooting than he was a "protector.")

But for the time-being Marge Greene has outmaneuvered all of the other GOP House rodents who are trying to bask in some of Kyle Rittenhouse's undeserved glory.   Cawthorn, Gaetz, Gosar, and Boebert may all talk a good game, but Marge acts.  Who knows what cunning craziness the next few weeks will bring, or which political lunatic will unleash it?

They all cheapen and toxify House of Representatives, just as Kyle Rittenhouse and people like him cheapen and toxify the United States of America.

Somehow we must find a path to healing and move beyond these abhorrent times.