I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If someone sent you this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
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However, this week, I’m going to make the Zoom chat open to both subscribers and non-subscribers (though I will only be sending the video to paid subscribers). I’ll send out a link tomorrow morning, so please jump on, and while you’re at it, hit the button below.
“… It’s Too Late.”
If you need one article to show a loved one, friend, or work colleague who has not gotten vaccinated, let it be this one.
Dr. Brytney Cobia said Monday that all but one of her COVID patients in Alabama did not receive the vaccine. The vaccinated patient, she said, just needed a little oxygen and is expected to fully recover. Some of the others are dying.
“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” wrote Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, in an emotional Facebook post Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”
The quotes in this piece are brutal.
“A few days later when I call time of death,” continued Cobia on Facebook, “I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same.”
“They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”
“You kind of go into it thinking, ‘Okay, I’m not going to feel bad for this person, because they make their own choice,’” Cobia said. “But then you actually see them, you see them face to face, and it really changes your whole perspective, because they’re still just a person that thinks that they made the best decision that they could with the information that they have, and all the misinformation that’s out there.
… “And now all you really see is their fear and their regret. And even though I may walk into the room thinking, ‘Okay, this is your fault, you did this to yourself,’ when I leave the room, I just see a person that’s really suffering, and that is so regretful for the choice that they made.”
This story is heartbreaking, and while I understand the impulse to shrug this off as people simply hurting themselves (and those around them), I can’t go to that place. Yes, people not getting vaccinated during a deadly pandemic that has taken more than 610,000 lives is an incredibly dumb and irresponsible thing to do. But the penalty for dumb and irresponsible behavior is not — and never should be — death. I have nothing but empathy for those who are still dying.
These people are being fed a steady stream of misinformation about COVID and the vaccines. They’ve been lied to by people they trust. I can’t even imagine the trauma of that realization at the moment of their potential demise. Even worse is the trauma for their loved ones — their wives and husbands, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, etc. — when they realize that it’s because of their decision not to get vaccinated that they are no longer here. The pain of that realization surely endures — and so the ripple effect of each COVID death now, post-vaccine, is even more profound.
Every death, even of someone who failed to protect themselves, is a tragedy. I grieve for all of them and their families. I will save my anger for those who have put them in that position for deeply cynical reasons. And if you are not vaccinated or know someone who still hasn’t gotten their shot, please make them read this. It’s still not too late.
In Praise of Liz Cheney
Yesterday afternoon, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi booted two Republican members of Congress, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. In response, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled the five Republicans he’d named from the committee.
This was completely predictable. McCarthy wanted Jordan and Banks on the investigative committee because he knew they would use the forum to attack Democrats and decry the investigation as a partisan witchhunt. Pelosi kicking them off the committee, while entirely appropriate, was a political gift to Republicans. This move makes it easier for the GOP to argue to their supporters that the investigation is partisan — and ultimately, the perception among Republican voters is what matters to them most. No Republican, not even Jordan, wanted anything to do with an investigation of January 6, and now they don’t have to.
I did, however, get a good chuckle out of this quote from McCarthy. “Republicans will not be a party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts." That has a strong OJ Simpson, after being found not guilty of a murder he clearly committed, saying he would search for the “real killers” vibe … or this hilarious sketch.
Of course, the House investigation is only “partisan” because Republicans have made it that way. Most House Republicans voted against creating a bipartisan committee and the GOP filibustered the measure in the Senate. Appointing someone as congenitally unserious as Jim Jordan was just more of the same.
But there’s also the fact that the committee IS bipartisan. Rep. Liz Cheney has already accepted a spot on it. Pelosi is reportedly also considering offering a seat to Rep. Adam Kinzinger. But Cheney is the interesting player here.
Yesterday, after McCarthy pulled the Republican members from the committee, Cheney spoke to the press, and her statement is extraordinary.
“At every opportunity, the minority leader has attempted to prevent the American people from understanding what happened, to block this investigation.”
… "The idea that anybody would be playing politics with an attack on the United States Capitol is despicable and is disgraceful. I'm absolutely dedicated and committed to making sure this investigation holds those accountable who did this and ensures that it never happens again."
… "Any person who would be third in line to the presidency must demonstrate a commitment to the constitution and a commitment to the rule of law, and Minority Leader McCarthy has not done that.”
Cheney is 100 percent correct here. McCarthy is quite clearly playing politics with the January 6 investigation, and his lack of fealty to the Consitution and the rule of law is disqualifying. But not long ago, Cheney served with McCarthy in the House leadership. Now, weeks later, she is saying that he is unfit to be Speaker of the House. I honestly can’t recall a member of Congress attacking their caucus leader with this kind of venom.
There aren’t many areas of public policy where I see eye-to-eye with Liz Cheney, and that’s fine. But as far as I’m concerned, she deserves nothing but praise for her willingness to speak out against the spinelessness of her fellow House Republicans. She has torpedoed her political career to stand up to the GOP’s assault on democracy. Even if she keeps her congressional seat in Wyoming, which I would imagine is increasingly unlikely, she has no future in the House Republican caucus. There will be no forgiveness for Cheney’s apostasy. She is far too conservative and uncompromising to have any future in the Democratic Party either. More likely than not, her time in electoral politics will come to an end in January 2023.
Cheney is not dumb. Surely she understood that this would happen if she refused to keep her mouth shut about January 6. And yet, here she is, accepting an invitation from Nancy Pelosi to serve on the investigative committee and calling out her former leadership colleague, Kevin McCarthy. That takes guts and is worthy of praise, even if I find her other policy views thoroughly objectionable. I’m amazed to be saying this, but America would be much better off if we had more leaders like Liz Cheney, who are willing to occasionally put politics aside to support a larger set of principles and ideals.
What’s Going On?
Great piece by my friend Dahlia Scheindlin on the politicization of the Israeli judiciary.
Harrowing report from Associated Press on life inside a detention center for Uighurs.
Interesting article by Max Fisher on the nature of modern cyber warfare (hint: it’s not actually warfare)
Jack Thomas has only a short time to live. So he wrote about what it’s like to know you’re going to die.
Like most of us, I've done stupid, thoughtless, or just careless things in my life that could have killed me (mostly in my teens and twenties). But nobody was actively lying to me to encourage these things...these folks have much more of a complaint than I would have had.