When Trump made ‘Darth Vader’ good | International

Remember Dick Cheney? Almighty Vice President of the Government of George W. Bush (2001-2009), proudly bore the nickname of Darth Vader. He was the ideologue of the Iraq war, promoted from the Guantanamo detention camp after 9/11, torture in interrogations and the idea that the end justifies the means. From the helm of the oil services giant Halliburton, which did such a good business in the Middle East, he became a revolving door athlete. When actor Christian Bale picked up the Golden Globe for best actor for his incarnation in the film ViceHe thanked “Satan” for inspiring him. A hawk of hawks, a veteran of the Nixon era, Ford and Bush senior, Cheney is one of the great villains of America’s left.

Or was. Because last Thursday, at the events held to mark the first anniversary of the assault on the Capitol, he was warmly greeted by a string of Democratic legislators and recognized by the leader of all of them, the president of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. The old Cheney and his daughter, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, ousted for her opposition to Donald Trump, were the only Republicans present at the minute of silence called in Congress. Most of the party members had left the ceremonies, some alleging a scheduling problem, others denouncing the partisan use of the tragedy experienced a year ago.

“These kinds of leaders don’t remember any of the colleagues I knew when I was here for 10 years,” 80-year-old former Vice President Cheney told the media. “I am deeply disappointed that many party members do not recognize the serious nature of the January 6 attacks and the still-existing threat to our nation,” he later said in a statement. Nancy Pelosi highlighted how “honored” they were to have him there that day and congratulated him on his “courage”.

These are very special times in Washington. A year ago, a mob of protesters harangued by Trump stormed the Capitol in order to torpedo the certification of the electoral victory of Joe Biden and once black beasts of the Democrats, such as the Cheneys, former President George W. Bush or Senator Mitt Romney have become the last Republican line of defense against the trumpismo.

Few allies as unexpected as Liz Cheney, a distinguished member of the party’s conservative wing, which rejects abortion, have considered that the drowning technique (water drilling) in the interrogations does not constitute torture and, at the time, he refused to denounce the promoters of the hoax that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. A decade after that, however, the congresswoman did stand up to Donald Trump’s campaign of electoral fraud, publicly rejected the lies of her leader, voted in favor of convicting him in the trial of impeachment for inciting the insurrection and today she is one of the only two Republicans who are part of the Investigation Committee of January 6.

Cheney, 55, has been ostracized. The sole representative for Wyoming in the lower house since 2017, she was one of the three leaders of the Republican caucus, but her fellow party members fired her last May after booing her for what they considered a betrayal. In an article in The Washington Post she tried to defend herself: “I am a conservative Republican and the most conservative of conservative values ​​is reverential respect for the law.” He did not convince and in the legislative elections of 2022 he is already awaiting internal adversaries who will dispute his candidacy to renew his seat.

On Thursday, he declared that the Republicans’ fright at the acts of remembrance of the attack on the Capitol, in which five people died, is “a reflection of where the party is.” It is in the shadow of the cult of Donald Trump and the fear of losing the seat. She is not there, but not where she used to be. Last September he gave the bell by announcing his support for same-sex marriage after years of rejection, an especially heartbreaking rejection for the family, since his sister, Mary, a lesbian, was married and those statements caused a schism. “I was wrong,” said the congresswoman in an interview on the program 60 minutes, from CBS, “I love my sister very much, I love her family and I was wrong.”

Democratic Congressman Vicente González, who entered the Capitol in the same year as Cheney, called Cheney and Congressman Adam Kinzinger – the other Republican loose verse who sits on the January 6 Investigative Committee – as “heroes.” “Politically I don’t have much to do with them,” the Texan told this newspaper, “but I have great respect for them for having done the right thing, I think history will remember them as heroes for having drawn the line of what is admissible.” .

Since the arrival of Donald Trump to power, the pulse between political adversaries has exceeded the ideological and Washington has seen the board itself, the rules of the game, blow up. The conversation goes beyond what to do with taxes, what military policy to apply or whether or not it is constitutional to force a federal employee to be vaccinated against covid; now there is talk of whether or not the result of a presidential election can be annulled based on unfounded accusations of fraud.

That new order has served to reconcile many Democrats with a president like Bush Jr., detested by the left for reasons similar to those of Cheney, but who divorced Trump since the same 2016 elections, was an example of a chivalrous transfer of power with his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, and maintains a tender and public friendship with Michelle Obama, one of the most popular women in the United States. In April 2017, in the early stages of the Trump era in the White House, Pelosi said, “Did we ever think the day would come when we would say, ‘Please give us back George W. Bush?’ We were able to really work with him ”.

In the eyes of the opposition, few rulers seem as good statesmen as those who have already retired. Bill Clinton also received congratulations from Republicans such as Paul Ryan or even Fox presenter Sean Hannity, one of the chain’s most ultras, in opposition to Obama.

There is something different, however, in this political time. At the end of his life, Republican John McCain (who died in 2018) sparked a veritable wave of enthusiasm among Democrats. Many remembered how, when he was Obama’s Republican rival in the presidential elections, he came out in defense of the Democrat in the face of personal infundies and defended that, despite political differences, he was a man of honor. In these years of political turmoil, old adversaries arouse nostalgia among the Washington Democrats. It has to do with hateful comparisons, with the direction that Abraham Lincoln’s party has taken, with that saying that says “others will come, they will do me good”, maybe even to ‘Darth Vader’, or to a Cheney.

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