This week another Russian leader fell out of a window. Accident.
Last week a Russian colonel was shot five times in the chest. Suicide.
Maria Yankina, 58, was the woman who fell. It was an "accident."
Valdim Boiko, 44, was ruled to have "self-executed" himself.
I put accident and self-executed in quotation marks because everyone knows better. The cause of death ruling is pretext. Putin is sending out warnings with unmistakable and literal body language. The cliche of pirates is that "dead men tell no tales." In reality dead bodies tell an unmistakable message. Don't get on the wrong side of Putin. A public hanging or firing squad would force people to acknowledge the truth. This way people can know but pretend they don't.
My own congressman, U.S. Representative Cliff Bentz, Republican, is unexceptional in his caucus. He has started his second term as a U.S. Representative in a solidly red district. He is a lawyer, White, male, a long-time conservative Republican who quietly made the transition from Reagan, Bush and Romney into Trump-ism. He is pro-gun and pro-life. He supported McCarthy as Speaker. He voted to expel Liz Cheney from GOP leadership. There are no surprises in any of that.
In his first vote in Congress back in 2021 on the evening of January 6 he voted along with a majority of his GOP caucus to disallow the electoral votes of Pennsylvania. He said he deplored the violence earlier that day but “I am committed to listening to the opinions of my constituents." His Republican constituents believed that Trump surely won and Biden surely cheated. Oregon's mail-in balloting has gone off without incident for decades, but Trump and Fox said mailed ballots were rigged and ballots were counted improperly. The public believed them. Governors, the cyber security officials, the Attorney General, and the Justice Department said the election was legitimate, but there was a critical missing part. Fox News kept sowing seeds of doubt. Republicans in the House and Senate, with deep roots and national credibility, mumbled. They were legislators. Policy makers. They did not want to stand in front of a stampede. Cliff Bentz was new. If seasoned Republican legislators weren't telling people that Biden won the election, then who was he to try to turn the stampede? Bentz found a pretext, saying the Pennsylvania Supreme Court must not have understood Pennsylvania election law. He went along with the herd. He needed a pretext.
Cliff Bentz was on local television on Friday. The anchor asked Rep. Bentz if he would support Donald Trump in 2024.
Bentz responded, "He did great things while he was in office. Perhaps he can do great things again."
One of the challenges for future students of this era will be why it was that so many "normal Republicans," people who stand for the pledge of allegiance, people who say they respect the Constitution, people whose careers have been in the law, have been willing to tolerate behavior in Donald Trump that flagrantly violates the public trust. It was obvious from Bentz's answers that he prefers anyone other than Trump. He was wiggling and squirming. He voiced the opinion that the right candidate would be able to serve a potential eight years, not merely four more. He could not bear to say that Donald Trump is disqualified for office; that he attempted to undermine democracy. He organized a multi-pronged effort to undermine the vote, to get state legislatures to overturn their own voters, to build slates of "alternative electors," to claim falsely that the Justice Department found widespread fraud, and to demand a Vice President throw out ballots. No. That cannot be said aloud. Trump might endorse a primary opponent, the political equivalent of falling from a high window.
GOP leaders go along because they are afraid of the monster their own media created for them. Too few people stood up to object when it mattered. Now the herd is accustomed to being lied to. Officeholders missed their window. Now they need to go along. They justify it with pretexts.
Russian leaders can pretend that these two people died by accident and suicide. They need to, to avoid their own high window. GOP leaders can pretend Trump is just another GOP president who did nothing disqualifying.
History will not be kind and rightly so.
Good analogy, Peter!