A Few Good Reasons to Hate Liz Cheney
The appeal of the Bush-era martyr and cuckold complex in politics.
By later this evening, Liz Cheney will lose her Wyoming Congressional seat and, in the eyes of the Beltway pundit and media class, ascend to a heroic political martyrdom for the ages.
For the partisan press, it’s an alluring story: nearly alone in her party, Cheney was willing to become the outspoken and enthusiastic tip of the spear against the spectre of Donald Trump, even as she is rejected by Republican voters. Hers has been the most prominent face on the farcical January 6th Commission, lending it the kind of faux-solemn legitimacy it was impossible to stage with hyperventilating Democrats or the tearful Adam Kinzinger.
Liz Cheney’s martyrdom is catnip for a dwindling number of Republicans who, unable to recognize what time it is, prioritize performative virtue in politics. These people–nearly all suburban, moderate, establishment Republicans employed as conservative columnists–seek their reflection in the politicians they support, because their heroes’ supposedly superior virtue reflects back on them.
This allows them to flatter their own egos without feelings of shame or self-aggrandizement. “Mitt Romey is a good man,” they’ve repeated, mantra-like since the Utah Senator’s spectacular loss in 2012—even as that assessment is based solely on a carefully-crafted media campaign that hardened, through much repetition, into conventional wisdom. (Of course, Romney is a stand-in for any number of political figures the media has assured us are “good, honorable men,” from Volodymyr Zelensky to John McCain. Just ask them.)
It’s no accident that, like French and Bill Kristol, most of Cheney’s once-Republican fans and defenders came of age professionally during the George W. Bush administration—and it’s clear that they’ll go to their retirements with the strong imprint of the politics of that time. While Bush’s GOP will always be known for the unwon wars in the Middle East, it was nevertheless a “compassionate conservatism,” prioritizing virtue-signaling and heroic posturing rhetoric as policy, regardless of its absurdity.**
For some liberal Republicans terrified and confused in the current moment in American political life, a frenzied hatred of Donald Trump masks issues that seem intractable. Not only is there no danger of being canceled by hostile reporters, editors and cable news hosts, these faux-dissidents can bask in media coverage usually reserved for the most progressive Democrats. But these are benefits that accrue to anyone willing to abandon conservatives.
Cheney has a seriousness and sobriety about her, which is key to her appeal as a martyr. The martyr fetish is something that overlaps with the sexual or political cuckold: the humiliation that comes from rejection is the thrill.
This is best exemplified by perforative martyr David French, the Atlantic writer who, for the last half-decade, has seemed eager to play out his psychosexual fantasies publicly. Since 2016, he has lashed out in vicious and brutal columns about Trump voters, especially Christians—and then, of course, he gets to wave his own bloody shirt, writing almost erotically about people saying nasty things to and about him on the Internet. Like a martyr or a cuckold, the hatred he engenders proves the rightness of his cause and, more importantly, his superior virtue.
But not everyone can be a martyr as an Atlantic columnist, or get a donor’s sinecure to write a rambling column at National Review like the sad Jay Nordlinger. These people—especially these people—require heroes on the political stage to reflect their heroic self-conceptions back at them. And for this gig, Liz Cheney is perfect; she is their square-jawed truth-teller, a paragon of “honor.” The jeers from low conservatives make it all the more potent and thrilling. (You can hear the music swelling, pathetically tugging at the heartstrings in the tweet above.)
Her defenders are quick to point to Liz Cheney’s conservative bona fides on a variety of issues heretofore important to voters, from tax and spending policy to immigration and gun control. Her only heresy, they contend, is becoming a militant lightning rod of opposition to one man.
No, it didn’t begin with January 6th. For four years on the Hill, Cheney–together with the remnants of the failed Weekly Standard–relatively quietly indulged in the Democrats’ most absurd Russia conspiracy theories. They circulated now-discredited opposition research, listened to maniacs hawking books and podcasts to Democrat hyper-partisans, and nodded sagely when discussing absurdities like Jon Chait’s 4000-word claim that the ex-president has spent nearly four decades as a deep cover KGB agent of influence.
Cheney and the boys who send her love notes at the Dispatch and Bulwark aren’t necessarily dumb or unsophisticated people; they’re just broken. They are blinded by a hatred that deforms their ability to properly assess situations. The bottomless evil they saw in Trump, they believed, made him capable of anything. And, if he was capable, he was surely guilty of anything the most fevered imagination could concoct.
It’s no surprise that, after years of mounting obsession—and the frustration of not being able to kill-shot and drive Donald Trump from public life, both the rhetoric and the regime’s actions have escalated into frightening, Late Republic territory. Summoning all the gravitas she could muster, Cheney—and then her father, the former vice president—referred to Donald Trump as “the greatest ever threat to our Republic.”
Even taking their delusional claims at face value about the alleged dangers to “our democracy” of doubting the outcome of the 2020 election, any reasonable person would shake his head in disbelief.
Yes, it’s self-evidently insane hyperbole. But it’s extremely dangerous. First—even if it’s completely wrong—it’s an opinion that’s now shared by the vast majority of the most consequential parts of the US government: the people who make up the justice, law enforcement, national security and intelligence bureaucracies and (allegedly, on paper) are tasked with keeping us safe and making sure there is equal justice under the law.
Second, this cadre of officials feels sufficiently empowered with this belief that they feel entirely justified in acting on it. This is rhetoric which justifies the state committing terrible crimes—but it’s far more than just talk. This is far more than a theoretical fear: we’re now several seasons into the weaponization of the government against Trump. A partial list of only the most significant efforts: RussiaGate; the Ukraine impeachment; harassment from SDNY; January 6th; the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago.
Surely, “the greatest ever threat to our Republic” justifies far more punitive response from the government than mickey-mouse threats that resulted in Lincoln’s dismissal of civil liberties during the Civil War, or Woodrow Wilson and FDR’s dismissals of civil liberties in World War I and II. The stridency about this unique danger to “our democracy” justifies anything in the realm of state power, including the flaunting of equal justice and the weaponization of the legal system.
Using the polarizing figure of Trump, Democrats and their fellow-travelers in the Deep State–the national security, law enforcement and intelligence branches of the administrative state–have succeeded in redefining conservatives as national and homeland security threats.
Cheney, for her part, deserves to be run from political life for her gleeful part in giving cover for the national security state’s war against half of America. That martyrdom will be erotic for both her and her fans.
** In that Republican Party, John McCain wasn’t laughed out of the room when he suggested a “100 Year War” against radical Islam— even as Democracies can’t fight long wars, much less generational ones. And the “Freedom Agenda” of the Second Inaugural didn’t manage to discredit Bush, either. Permanent revolution is not a reasonable foreign policy goal, regardless of the desirability of freedom in theory.
“I Know What Time It Is”
“Do You Know What Time It Is?” seems like it’s everywhere, and is being used by everyone (even a few very based candidates for public office). It captures a very real divide between folks on the Right who understand that we’re in a fundamentally different place than we were even a decade ago, and that repeating the empty mantras of the Bush years is inadequate to the task. We’re a country today that is unbelievably divided–and we’re not divided about dumb stuff; we’re divided about the fundamental character of the American regime. But you know all that.
I made these designs for t-shirts and tank tops that, I think, captures the ticking clock at the end of the Republic.
I think you used flaunt when you meant flout.
Great writing, in any case. You do a good job of capturing the utter contempt decent people ought to feel towards people like French and Cheney.
Hit the proverbial nail on the head as always -- well done, sir.