 Okay, I get that the bar is really, really low right now and it's to the point where when a Republican does the bare minimum and even just acknowledges basic reality, even that is pleasantly surprising. But still, I think that liberals really have to try to do a little bit more to resist the inclination that they feel to turn the Republicans that do the bare minimum into heroes. I'm of course talking about Liz Cheney, who is all of a sudden being propped up as a hero because she was ousted by the Republican Party for not peddling the lie that Donald Trump lost the election because it was stolen from him. That's pretty obvious. We shouldn't reward people who are adults who admit something that is very obvious. I mean, I do believe to an extent in positive reinforcement, right? If you're trying to potty train a toddler and they don't shit their pants, maybe you reward them for that. But by the time you're 10 years old, 15 years old, 20 years old, I don't think that we need to applaud you for not shitting yourself. You've done the bare minimum. Good job. That's expected of fully functioning adults with any brain cells that are left. But that's not what we've seen with Liz Cheney. They've gone out of their way to turn her into a hero, which is very, very dangerous because Liz Cheney, even if she acknowledges Orange Man bad, Liz Cheney is terrible herself. What we're witnessing is a civil war within the GOP and both sides are terrible. And usually I try to not perpetuate any false equivalences where I both sides certain issues that don't need to be both sides. But in this instance, both sides are actually pretty terrible. They're both psychopathic, albeit for very different reasons. But if one side is fighting the other and the other side is fighting the other, set back and let them tear themselves apart. Now, sure, you could acknowledge Liz Cheney told the truth and that objectively is a good thing. But to make her a hero, no, that's not acceptable. In fact, that's actually really dangerous. Ryan Grimm of The Intercept explained in a brilliant article, probably the best I've seen about this Liz Cheney kerfuffle, why liberals need to stop doing that. Do not shed any tears for Liz Cheney because she was ousted from GOP leadership because she's not opposing Trump's lies because she is principled and cares about democracy. Every action that she takes is a coordinated political move that she believes will further help her own career. So Ryan Grimm explains, there can be no question of whether Representative Liz Cheney is correct in her particulars. The Electoral College has voted, she said, from the floor of the House on Tuesday evening, interrupting a Republican gapfest devoted to the topic of cancel culture to speak of her own cancellation scheduled for the next morning. Liz Cheney is a leader of great courage, patriotism and integrity. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said with a straight face on Wednesday after Republicans dismissed Cheney from her post by a voice vote. As Democrats and the cable networks that revolve around them think through the meaning of Cheney's excommunication from House leadership, little could be more important than being relentlessly reminded that, as the dude might say, while Cheney may not be wrong, she's just an asshole. Indeed, her assholeness is central to any political analysis of the moment. And it's an analysis of exceeding import because getting it wrong will lead to a very, very dark place. Ask the Iraqis and the run up to Cheney's ouster. MSNBC pundit Nicole Wallace slammed the GOP for coming after Cheney for her refusal to go along with the big lie and the assault on democracy. It has ushered in Wallace, of course, a dedicated salesperson of the Iraq War having served as the Bush administration's communications director knows as much about the big lie as Cheney. Cheney knows lies both big and small. She with Wallace was a leading booster of her father's war. She has shown no remorse or reflection over the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Quite the contrary, it was Trump's attack on the decision to go to war in Iraq and later his insistence on exiting Afghanistan that triggered her most deeply and drove her to work publicly with Democrats to keep the occupation going. Cheney's celebration of America's commitment to democracy abroad, as example by her floor speech on Tuesday, is as brazen as Trump's own fuckery. The Cheney wing of the Republican Party has shown nothing but contempt for democracy around the globe in the period since World War Two, reveling in the overthrow of democratically elected leaders, only approving of elections if they are won by the candidate preferred in Washington or if the promise of them can be used to justify an invasion. Liz Cheney's father, Dick Cheney, served as deputy chief of staff and chief of staff to President Gerald Ford, as his administration welcomed the rule of Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, sparse the pay-ins to democracy. Liz Cheney's affection for US interventionism may mark the origin of her hostility to the Trump wing of the party, but the question of whether her stand today is truly one of principle could best be answered by her sister, Mary Cheney. Now, let's just stop right there, because I think it's obvious that the conclusion that Grimm is working his way towards is this fact that Liz Cheney doesn't actually care about democracy. She's not speaking out because she feels compelled out of her desire to save democracy. She's speaking out because she's a political opportunist. That is all this is about. Now, the story regarding Mary Cheney and how Liz Cheney reacted to her once she started running for office, that tells you how much of an opportunist Liz Cheney is and there is not an authentic bone in her body. Her only calculation is what is going to be the most politically expedient for me. She has zero principles. This is all about power. So Grimm explains the story of Mary Cheney. For years, the Cheney family stood apart from the Republican Party's culture war against the GOP, even as the Bush Cheney administration cynically deployed opposition to marriage equality as a tool to drive out the evangelical vote for the party. Lin and I have a gay daughter. So it's an issue that our family is very familiar with Dick Cheney set that year with respect to the question of relationships. My general view is that freedom means freedom for everybody. Running for Senate in 2013, Liz Cheney threw her sister overboard. Quote, I love Mary very much. I love her family very much. This is just an issue on which we disagree. She told viewers of Fox News. Wow, Liz, this isn't just an issue on which we disagree. You're just wrong. And on the wrong side of history, Mary, a Republican operative herself, shot back on Facebook. Liz has been a guest in our home, has spent time and shared holidays with our children. Mary's wife, Heather Poe, wrote to have her now say she doesn't support our right to marry is offensive to say the least. Dick Cheney sided with Liz because for the Cheney's power comes before everything. So it's not merely as simple as Liz Cheney being a bigoted homophobe and just rejecting her sister's homosexuality. She literally publicly retroactively withdrew support for her sister, which she loves. She knew her sister's wife and was around them. But publicly, she had to denounce her sister because she wanted to win an election. And that's the only way you can appease a homophobic Republican party. Even denouncing your loved ones. That's a must. So Liz Cheney is one of the biggest political opportunists in America because we know that she doesn't believe that gay marriage is bad. But this demonstrates that she said what she believed she had to say to get ahead in politics and nothing has changed, nothing has changed. If you believe that she cares about democracy, there's this bill called the For the People Act that is one of the most effective measures to combat the consequences of the big lie. So Republican controlled legislatures across the country, they're using Trump's lie about the election to crack down on voting rights. So if Liz Cheney was really concerned about the consequences of Donald Trump's lie, I mean, she would align with Democrats to pass the For the People Act to make sure that this undemocratic these undemocratic laws that are getting passed around the country don't actually have any legs. You know, she can override it like that by passing the For the People Act. However, the bill already passed. Liz Cheney was not a co-sponsor of that bill. And when the bill came up for a vote, guess how Liz Cheney voted? She voted against the For the People Act. And we're supposed to believe that Liz Cheney cares about democracy, that everything that she's saying is authentic. If Liz Cheney actually cared about democracy, she could have supported the For the People Act. But it turns out she doesn't actually give a flying fuck about democracy. And this is all about her next big career move. Perhaps she's carving out a lane for herself in the 2024 Republican Party primary and she's going to be the anti-Trump Republican who is going to take on Donald Trump or someone who is a Trump Republican like Ron DeSantis. But either way, I know that all of the liberals who are buying her bullshit. You're legitimizing a wing of the party that is perhaps equally as terrible as the Trump wing of the party. The neocon wing of the Republican Party. The amount of people they've murdered by lying about wars, talking about the big lie. She's a part of the Iraq War and the lie that they had weapons of mass destruction. So I'm sorry, Liz Cheney is not a hero. I'm not going to shed any tears for her because she was ousted from GOP leadership. If you do that, you're assisting someone who's an apologist for war crimes, for illegal and unconstitutional wars. Don't do that and stop doing this. It's not just Liz Cheney like liberals go out of their way to rehabilitate George W. Bush, who should be in prison as we speak. The fact that he's a free man in and of itself should be outrageous to liberals. But since he says Orange Man bad, well, that means he is welcomed into the resistance with open arms. Stop doing this. Stop. It's affecting normies, liberals I know. Now all of a sudden they think that Liz Cheney is courageous. But that's not the case. Liz Cheney is a fraud. And the fact that she was ousted from leadership. It says nothing about her character. She would be taking the opposite stand, defending the big lie. If she believed that was the best move for her career. Period. End of story. She's given us more than enough evidence to deduce that that is exactly what she would be doing. So shut up about Liz Cheney liberals. She's terrible. Stop defending her. Stop making her a star for the love of God.