I am not an angel,’ I asserted; ‘and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.
― Tennessee Williams
Perhaps it’s just my own low tolerance for smug, self-serving arrogance, but one of the things on my bucket list is to wipe the $#!&-eating grin off Reince Priebus’ smarmy mug. How the Republican National Committee (RNC) managed to select a chairman who looks (and speaks) like he’s had one too many hits off a beer bong at a College Republican kegger defies rational understanding. As far as I’ve been able to discern, his responsibilities include defending the indefensible, denying the patently obvious (“Who are you going to believe- me? Or your lying eyes??”), and assiduously applying lipstick to pigs.
Politics for Republicans is first and foremost an exercise in gaining and maintaining power via cheap personal insults, disinformation, and winning by any means necessary. That sort of mentality doesn’t allow much room for anything even faintly redolent of self-awareness, and Priebus is the poster boy for the frat-boy mentality so pervasive amongst the GOP leadership.
After doing everything possible to ensure that Donald Trump didn’t end up as their candidate, Priebus has now eagerly taken on the task of acting as if Trump is what the GOP has always wanted and EXACTLY the sort of savior Republicans have craved (while evidently lacking the self-awareness to know it). I look at and listen to Priebus and I can’t help but wonder if he believes what he’s saying and/or tweeting…or if he, like most committed Conservatives, views politics as a zero-sum game in which the endgame is destroying Liberals by any means necessary?
Whatever the answer may be, it has nothing to do with what’s best for America. It’s about power and control…and doing (and/or saying) whatever’s necessary to be king of the mountain.
