This One's Local...

...but if you change the names and locations

Under normal circumstances - which haven’t existed politically in this country since an astonishingly failed businessman propped up by the myths of a completely unreal reality show rode down the golden escalator in one of many buildings he named after himself - it might be excusable, if not prudent, to vote for a chameleon like Michael Baumgartner to represent us in Congress.

These are not normal circumstances, and if you don’t recognize Baumgartner for the trickster he is, I’ve got a seven pound bag of Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce to sell you at a price I can guarantee is within your budget.

Michael Baumgartner is Kathy McMorris Rodgers in pants. He’s for saving social security. He’s a champion for farmers. He’s all in for veterans. He’s for tax relief. He’s against cancer. The guy or one of his people shows up for ribbon-cuttings, grand openings, infrastructure celebrations, you name it, purporting to fight for the working man, blah, blah, blah. Then he goes back to the other Washington and falls in step with the MAGA minions; every fiber of his being, a Trump lackey.

You can’t be “for veterans,” while cozying up to a Secretary of Defense who tried to cheat the families of four fallen soldiers out of benefits by declaring they died during a cease fire (during which fire never ceased) in the Iran war/excursion/operation. You can’t be for “tax cuts” for us plain folk here in Eastern Washington while you’re kissing the butt of a leader championing tax cuts only for the obscenely wealthy. And even if you show up every time a camera rolls chronicling the tragedy of these godawful fires (I guess to show you’re the candidate against fire), and assure us you’ve been on the phone to Trump, when in fact you were on the phone to a Trump lacky, you can’t get away from the fact that Washington is a Blue State, and what Trump likes to do with Blue States, is make them suffer.

I’m waiting for the first Republican still running for office who’s willing to stand up to our mind-numbingly incompetent president to fight for any issue designed to bring relief to the day-to-day American citizen. Michael Baumgartner is not that Republican.

He appears to be a relatively intelligent human being, having graduated from WSU with a B.A. in Economics, then gone on to Harvard to earn a Master’s degree in Public Administration, after which he assumed positions in foreign service (not to be confused with military service). Those are not the credentials of what our president might call a “low I.Q individual.”

All of which means Representative Baumgartner cannot claim ignorance for backing an administration that believes and behaves in a manner a hundred percent counter to the promises he makes to his constituents back here in Spokane’s 6th Legislative District.

Look, the only way to slay this brazenly anti-democratic federal government that is leaking down into our local governments through politicians like Baumgartner, is to cut off its head by kicking the legs out from under those who support it at every level, and unless you’ve put parental controls on all news outlets other than Newsmax (and even Fox is showing signs of beginning to scrape the Trumpstench off the bottom of its shoe) you know we’re living under an administration that considers Rule of Law to be abhorrent. In the 2026 and 2028 elections a vote for any candidate who supports Trump is a vote for Trump and a Trump win puts us one step further from democracy.

Personally, I have no dog in this fight. I am a white, heterosexual, American male, born in 1946 to a veteran B-17 bomber pilot married to the daughter of a World War I veteran who lost her brother; shot down over the Pacific. From the rise of the U.S. as arguably the most powerful democracy in history, to this beginning of what looks like steep decline, I was given- undeservedly - every opportunity. But I believed my elders when they said I have a duty, a moral directive, to do all I can to provide those same opportunities for all who come after me.

I could be wrong, but I’m guessing Michael Baumgartner, and the rest of his privileged colleagues in the U.S. Congress were given some version of that same message; yet they choose to follow, and promote, the policies of President Thumbscrew, an intellectually incurious man with zero access to feelings of guilt, shame or empathy, whose only joy comes from the pain he causes anyone he perceives as his enemy.

You can’t have it both ways, Mr. Baumgartner. Though I assume you will be re-elected, rest assured there will come a time when your fealty to a would-be dictator will be viewed as treasonous.