“A useful lesson to bear in mind when we contemplate what allows powerful people to instruct less powerful people that it is high time to move on: a lack of personal stake in the mess they seek to leave behind. We see this dynamic when, after every shattering school shooting, politicians with the power to change laws, like Sen. Ted Cruz, explain that it is instead time to move on. It’s easy for Ted Cruz to move on when his children are still alive. ‘Time to move on’ has unsurprisingly come to represent the bulk of the GOP response to Trump’s actions, both while he was in office and after.”

“‘Let’s move past this’ was the best response to the behaviors that triggered both the first and second impeachments, and the behaviors that helped foment an insurrection at the Capitol and continue to undermine public confidence in the vote. ‘Let us look forward, not backward,’ Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole said on the House floor during the debate over Trump’s second impeachment last January. Never mind that the failure to hold him to account in the first impeachment led to the horrors of a mass effort to subvert the election and also led to a failed second impeachment. No, the effort to impeach him most recently was still met with the insistence by the bulk of his party that it was time to move on. Of course it was easy for them to suggest that it’s time. It’s always time to move on if your life is unchanged by what came before” writes Dalia Lithwick in Slate.

Clipped this essay because it’s a bit myopic. I’m not saying Lithwick should’ve bothsides-ed the situation, but by not acknowledging the right wing’s absolute screaming, clawing at the door in between desperate, half-choked sobs, kicking wildly while rolling on the floor, gurgling spittle, face beyond swollen from tears nuclear meltdown over their immortal holy Christian warrior president losing reelection, she’s not letting on the simple truth that it actually feels kind of good to say “fuck you, deal with it” to your perceived lessers. More people on the left should embrace that feeling of power when it comes. Watching one’s opponents squirm is fun.