I do think there’s a sizeable difference between having deeply buried shame about what they’re doing and actually having doubts that make their way to the surface where they could actually change the behavior.

It’s crazy to look at these people and just see the layers of the onion. Here is a person who knows she’s doing wrong. It’s written on her face. And yet, she puts on a defensive layer and keeps right on trudging forward with tears in her eyes as she digs deeper and deeper into her hole.

Mike Johnson is another one of these. You can look at him and know that his smug little grin is a thin veneer trying to keep the outside world from realizing that he knows how wrong he is and somewhere in there absolutely hates himself. Even with Trump and Vance, it’s written all over their faces. They spend every day fighting it, denying it, trying not to let themselves look, but you can see in their eyes that they can’t help it. They know, and they keep on anyway despite themselves.

It would be so easy for any of them to just let go of all that and start trying to help people. To listen to that part of themselves they desperately try to shut up day in and day out. To stop feigning ignorance and try to make things better. They could pick any second to just stop poisoning themselves for a sake of a sunken cost cult mentality held up by people who feel just as sick about their own decisions.

Carlin had some good material, but this is an absolutely stupid mindset. We can cause an extreme level of ecological damage. Will the planet eventually recover? Quite possibly. But that’s not a certainty, and in the mean time we’re triggering a mass extinction precisely because irresponsible humans figure there’s no way we can hurt the Earth and it’s self-important hubris to think that we can.

But the time we’re living through and the time we’re heading into are all the proof we should need that it’s actually hubris to assume our actions have no meaningful impact.

I completely understand that feeling, and it was my initial reaction too, but honestly, I think they’re kind of right.

If you’re playing chess and the opponent’s knight takes your rook, do you throw your queen at it on principle? Even though it’s backed by a pawn? Or do you tighten up your own defenses and wait for the best opportunity to strike?

Don’t get me wrong, AOC and Green are the energy we need here. I don’t even think it’s a bad play for them to make as much noise as possible about Trump’s overreach, even if it is repeating the same behavior we’ve seen for decades. But if 126 Democrats voted against it, how many Republicans actually voted for it? What’s the strategic cost of using the inertia that might flip a handful of Republicans on something that doesn’t have the numbers yet?

What if we need them for a play down the line? What if we can flip more of them and actually get an impeachment instead of just proposing one on principle because we didn’t already exhaust the idea?

I think the people should be pushing for impeachment, and I think Congress should impeach him. But I want that to actually happen. I don’t just want it to be a sentiment that doesn’t go anywhere.