Annie Oakley goes to Washington, circa 2021
WASHINGTON—The lady loads her Glock, tucks it into a hip holster, then steps out of her house — wearing skinny jeans and high heels.
Usually she prefers to strap the weapon around her thigh.
Clickety-clickety-clickety through the not-so-mean streets of D.C., at least not this pleasant residential neighbourhood.
She is a mother of four. Owner of a gun-themed restaurant in Rifle, Colo. Rifle — too perfect.
Also, a rookie Republican congresswoman, quickly making her bones as a gun-championing lawmaker: Annie Oakley Goes to Washington, circa 2021.
“Government does NOT get to tell me or my constituents how we are allowed to keep our families safe. I promise to always stand strong for our 2nd Amendment rights.”
Lauren Boebert released this digital video a couple of weeks ago — six million views as of the weekend — amidst efforts by some Democrats to ban members of Congress from carrying guns on the grounds of the Capitol. And that was before rioters pillaged the Capitol.
Yet Boebert, fierce ally of Donald Trump, isn’t remotely chastened by the violence, the havoc, the threat to legislators posed by the wilding horde. Indeed, fingers have been pointed at the 34-year-old — an admirer of QAnon, by the way — as someone who may have given Capitol tours to aspiring insurrectionists one day before the Jan. 6 rampage.
She busily live-tweeted during the assault, even narrowing the whereabouts — or nonwhereabouts — of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. You know, the grand dame of the Democratic party. The woman some of the insurrectionists were hunting, maybe to put on show trial, perchance to execute. “We were locked in the House chamber,” Boebert tittle-tattled. “The Speaker has been removed from the Chamber.”
Even Republican colleagues were outraged. There’s been a public howling for her resignation or removal. Boebert scarcely bats a false eyelash.
“We should take Democrats at their word when they say never let a crisis go to waste,” Boebert sniffed in a statement.
That statement also accused Democrats of encouraging anti-Trump violence, specifically mentioning Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Madonna, Robert De Niro and Johnny Depp.
On Jan. 9, hitting the Twitter bandolier again: “Hillary must be pissed it took the DNC until 2020 to successfully rig an election.”
Yup, absolutely refuses to back off her insistence that the election was stolen from Trump, flat out bollocks.
Boebert isn’t a QAnon kook on the conspiracy theory fringe, no-name frothing on 4Chan from her basement. She’s a duly elected member of Congress and, while more flamboyantly outrageous than most Republican pols, all of a piece with where that party has gone, dragged into the swamp of turpitude and perversion by Dear Leader.
But America’s hallmark obsession with guns — the nation’s abiding love — is one sickness that can’t be laid at Trump’s feet.
In fact, a 1967 regulation exempts members of Congress from a federal law banning firearms on the Capitol grounds. Which is why the secretary of the army had to provide special authorization for the National Guard to carry weapons when troops were deployed to protect the Capitol after the ransacking — troops that on Friday began departing from D.C., some 15,000 outward-bound but 10,000 remaining in situ. Because there’s chatter in the darkest corners of the accelerationist online network that radical rabble might try to disrupt Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate — now deferred to Feb. 9, though Pelosi will formally walk over the single article of impeachment, for inciting insurrection, on Monday.
It was Boebert who led more than 80 Republicans asking Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (who’s done a shameless 180 since initially blaming Trump for siccing his tribe on the Capitol) to loosen up the gun regs. Lawmakers are, weirdly, permitted to carry-conceal in their offices and in the corridors of the citadel of democracy, but can’t bring weapons onto the floor of either the House or the Senate.
Post-marauding, Pelosi ordered metal detectors set up outside the House chamber.
Boebert was among the first to have a hissy fit — clearly pistol-packing, setting off the alarm as she attempted to barrelhouse across. She refused to be wanded, likewise wouldn’t permit security to take a peek inside her bag. Was turned away — didn’t go quietly — and returned later, entering the chamber under circumstances that remain unclear. Other Republicans waltz right through, ignoring the magnetometer blinking red. Those poor cops couldn’t stop ’em.
When the House returned to session, the day after President Biden’s inauguration, Pelosi issued a diktat (pending) for a $5,000 fine against any Congress member trying to bypass the detectors en route to the chamber.
And still at least three Republicans balked at being wanded. Rep. Steve Womack (Arkansas) yelled at the wand-wielders, claiming (according to a reporter pool nearby) they were “creating a problem,” that they did “not understand the ramifications of ” their obstruction, ordered them to “get back!” and “don’t touch me!”
Rep. Rodney Davis (Illinois) called the detectors “bulls--t.”
On Thursday, as reported by the Washington Post, Rep. Andy Harris (Maryland) set off the detector, leading security to pat him down, discovering a gun. Harris asked another Republican congressman, Rep. John Katko, to hold the thing for him, according to witnesses, but Katko refused.
Harris, a six-term legislator, declined to answer media inquiries. But his chief of staff issued a statement: “Because his and his family’s lives have been threatened by someone who has been released awaiting trial, for security reasons the congressman never confirms whether he nor anyone else he’s with are carrying a firearm for self-defence.”
Rep. Don Young, from Alaska, boasts that he carries a knife in the House and once put it to the throat of former House Speaker John Boehner during a heated debate.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn, freshman congressman from North Carolina, blustered to his hometown paper, the Smoky Mountain News, that he was packing heat when the maddened pack breached the Capitol. “Fortunately, I was armed, so we would have been able to protect ourselves.”
Doubtful they were coming for him.
Who do Republicans fear? Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez, the firebrand New York City Democrat, told CNN she had skipped Biden’s inauguration because she was supporting a local union strike in her district, but added that lawmakers “don’t yet feel safe around other members of Congress.” She clearly meant nutso Republicans.
“The moment you bring a gun onto the House floor, in violation of rules, you put everyone around you in danger. It is irresponsible. It is reckless.”
She wasn’t being melodramatic, either. During the election campaign, Marjorie Taylor Greene — a crackpot QAnon advocate who won her Georgia seat in November — released an ad that showed her holding an assault rifle next to a photo of Ocasio-Cortez and fellow “Squad” members (progressives or radicals, depending on your tilt) Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Until Facebook made her take it down.
How zany intransigent is Greene? The mask she wore when rising in the House to harangue in favour of overturning the election results — hours after the Capitol was stormed — declared: “CENSORED.” Belied by the fact her speech aired live on multiple news outlets.
Four days later, Greene was suspended from Twitter for repeatedly asserting that Georgia’s election outcome (the same count that got her a pew in the House) was a fraud and calling the state’s election officials “idiots.” The ditz has suggested the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981 and the 9/11 terrorist attacks were staged. She endlessly denigrates Blacks, Muslims and Jews. She dissed Biden as the president of “Communist China.”
On Thursday, via Twitter, Greene announced she’d filed articles of impeachment — against Biden. His first full day in office, for criminy sake. She afterward issued a more fulsome statement, accusing the president of “abuse of power” during his time as vice-president in the Obama White House.
I am a stranger in a strange land.