Speaker Pelosi Let ‘er Rip!
By Sunny Dell
It started with a handshake snub. It ended on a tear.
Some have compared the antics of Tuesday’s State of the Union address to a playground fight between 10-year-olds. Fair enough, sort of.
There’s some room for argument that we need at least one adult left in the room, but what happens when all the adult, mature, legal methods have failed? Remember, this speech was made on the eve of the final impeachment trial vote, where regardless of stacked evidence and obvious wrongdoing, Republican senators are expected to acquit the most corrupt, dishonest and destructive president in American history.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a lot of things to a lot of people. She represents a district that is far more progressive than she is, but to the rest of the country, she is largely considered an extreme leftist. Labels are fluid as you move across geographical and ideological boundaries.
She’ll be accused of making a stink to please her base in San Francisco in an election year. Some of that may be true, but different things can be true at once. Tearing up the speech filled with lies and exaggerations, and spiked with random emotional pandering, was a visual that resonates with voters feeling hopeless as Trump evades justice. It was not a politically unsavvy move, but let’s not forget that Pelosi is also human and is processing this losing battle against the president with human emotions.
I will NEVER get tired of Watching Nancy Pelosi rip trump’s speech in half
Fuck everyone who jumped on twitter today and said she needed to step down
— ABlackWomanWhoDontGiveAF*ck (@battletested5) February 5, 2020
Some of that iconic rip was born of pure frustration and resistance, politically advantageous or not.
We all punch the wall sometimes, despite knowing that we’ll have to patch it. We all lash out at times, knowing we’ll have to apologize and redeem. Watching Pelosi rip that speech up was a fucking visceral moment that encapsulated the brewing anger among voters who feel powerless as Trump and the GOP tear up the Constitution and allow the intrusion of a true dictator.
While the outrage on the right focuses on her “classless” and “disrespectful” action, the left and those in the center who’ve just had enough saw a woman who is still willing to fight back. In normal times, even I would see Pelosi today as childish and petty…but these are not normal times. She long resisted the urgings of the left’s more progressive wing to “impeach the motherfucker” and she attempted to push back within the confines of legislation and propriety.
But bill after bill died on Mitch McConnells’s desk. Trump spewed lie after lie and invited every fathomable version of corruption into our already fragile system. She went about things in the proper way and then, like the rest of us, realized this system is failing to protect the country, that mature and adult means of resistance are no longer working, that the guardrails are off… And so, she took off the gloves and ripped that shit up because he and they have left her no choice but to get a little dirty.
WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 11 : House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks after a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence outside the West Wing at White House on Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The enemies she made in that action were already out for her throat, so why should she waste a hot second worrying about what they think? In that one boss move, she made it very clear who she’s interested in representing. Good for her!
You Might Also Like
