Fight Club

"I want you to hit me as hard as you possibly can."

I know this question is fraught with more answers than one, but when a reporter asked yesterday about the increasingly ugly tone of schoolyard bullying, insults, slap fights, games of dozens, pantsing, swirlies, and generally juvenile behavior that increasingly defines the workings of Congress.

I pondered it momentarily and said to her, “Lack of consequences leads to a lack of honor. And just like Fight Club, the Republicans are fighting themselves.”

Gentlemen were, for centuries, known to demand satisfaction on the field of honor. In America, the fatal rencontre between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr is the most famous duel. However, matters were still settled with pistols as late as 1859, when David C. Broderick, a Democratic Senator from California, was killed in a duel with former Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, David S. Terry. Broderick was a ferocious anti-slavery campaigner and all-around colorful character. He also discharged his pistol too soon, and Terry shot him in the chest.

The last duel I can find between two members of Congress is that of Jonathan Cilley and William J. Graves in 1838.

Dueling fell out of favor in the mid-19th century, and the Code Deullo was largely forgotten.

Perhaps not for long.

The Washington Fight Club — you’ll be shocked to learn this is almost entirely on the Republican side of the equation — is getting increasingly aggressive and ugly.

We’ve got Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Lady Sasquatch) calling Lauren Boebert (R-OnlyFans) a whore. Rep. James Comer (R-Hunter’s Laptop) got into a heated exchange with Rep. Jared Moskowitz, calling him a “Smurf” during a hearing. Moskowitz had struck Comer for engaging in the same practice the Tennessee slowcoach had accused President Biden of loaning a family member money.

We’ve got Kevin McCarthy and Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett trading elbow jabs in front of reporters.

After Kevin gigged Burchett in the kidneys, Burchett claimed, “I chased after him. As I’ve stated many times, he’s a bully with $17 million and a security detail. He’s the type of guy that when you were a kid would throw a rock over the fence and ride home and hide behind his mama’s skirt…You just don’t expect a guy who was at one time three steps away from the White House to hit you with a sucker punch in the hallway.”

“I did not kidney punch him,” McCarthy said, “If I were to hit somebody, they would know I hit them.” 

One of these men is a former Speaker. The other is a prominent Member of the House. In a sane world, you’d find them in the principal’s office after school for detention.

Meanwhile, in the relatively genteel Senate, Senator Markwayne Jimmy Jeff Ed Bob Skeeter-Joe Mullin is another irritating example of the Jim Jordan school refusing to wear a suit jacket, trying to straight-up brawl with a witness.

Reading the transcript is comedy gold:

MULLIN: “Sir, this is a time, this is a place. You want to run your mouth — we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here,” Mullin said.

O’BRIEN: “Okay, that’s fine. Perfect.”

MULLIN: “You want to do it now?”

O’BRIEN: “I’d love to do it right now.”

MULLIN: “Well, stand your butt up then.”

O’BRIEN: “You stand your butt up, big guy.”

At this moment, it took 82-year-old Bernie Sanders to restrain the roid-ragey Mullin. When Bernie comes off the top rope, it’s madness.

Sure, it’s funny, but given the incentives for bad behavior in the House particularly, we can expect this sort of chaos monkey behavior to continue and accelerate. Why? Because none of the old normative forces of personal and political behavior apply in today’s MAGA GOP.

Good behavior is punished. Do you want to pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the government open? Expect a motion to vacate the chair and political punishment. Want to commit the unpardonable sin of working across the aisle or — God forbid — for the benefit of your constituents? You’ll catch ugly Fox coverage and a primary from your right.

Bad behavior gets clicks, eyeballs, and online donations. Bad behavior gets Fox News hits where you get to stare at the camera and earnestly say, “Sean, I know I took a dump on the floor of the House, and now the Soros globalist media is trying to cancel me.” In the post-Palin era, the voter generation raised on talk radio and Fox News 1.0 became increasingly shaped by political oppositional defiant disorder.

Rules are for suckers. Decency is a lie to keep your rebel spirit down. They don’t want you to be your genuine self. Manners are a liberal plot, and traditions are a roadblock to the dreamt-of revolution. In Washington, the public misbehavior isn’t a bug; it’s a feature of the post-ideological political culture on the right. Authoritarian movements need the heat, the clash, the ugly edge to every level of discourse, public and private.

The trap in which the MAGA GOP finds itself is that the novelty of transgression is fleeting, and they’re chasing the dragon of increasingly short political attention spans. None of this will cure itself. There are no better angels of their nature.

The dark incentives are in command, and when the absurd grows tired, the violent takes its place.