You. Said. Nothing.

As you all know, I consider Babylon 5 to be not only the greatest science fiction show to have ever been produced for television, but also one of the top ten shows in American television history. As such, YouTube suggests clips from the program to me all the time. This one came across the other day.

Yesterday, Senator Mitt Romney announced that he would not run for a second term, and would retire at the end of this Congress. This announcement was tied in with him promoting a biography written by Beltway stenographer McKay Coppins. The Atlantic carried an excerpt of the upcoming tome. And boy, is it juicy. You can read it for yourself, but a couple of highlights:

(Romney had long been put off by Pence’s pious brand of Trump sycophancy. No one, he told me, has been “more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God’s will to things that were ungodly than Mike Pence.”)

And:

One afternoon in March 2019, Trump paid a visit to the Senate Republicans’ weekly caucus lunch. He was in a buoyant mood—two days earlier, the Justice Department had announced that the much-anticipated report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller failed to establish collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. As Romney later wrote in his journal, the president was met with a standing ovation fit for a conquering hero, and then launched into some rambling remarks. He talked about the so-called Russia hoax and relitigated the recent midterm elections and swung wildly from one tangent to another. He declared, somewhat implausibly, that the GOP would soon become “the party of health care.” The senators were respectful and attentive.

As soon as Trump left, Romney recalled, the Republican caucus burst into laughter.

He disparaged Mike Pence. And he and his colleagues laughed at Donald Trump behind closed doors.

But they said nothing.

They said nothing as Trump tore up the norms which had kept this Republic functioning for two centuries. They said nothing as Trump caged children. They said nothing as Trump barred Muslims from traveling to the United States. They said nothing as he inched closer to Vladimir Putin.

And Mitt Romney said nothing. Oh, he would demur from time to time. But he never led an opposition from within the Republican Party to Trumpism. He didn't stick his neck out. He did the bare minimum to salve his conscience. He criticized Pence for relying on "God's will" to explain the unexplainable; but it seems he did much the same thing.

He said nothing. None of them did. They never do. They wait until they're on the way out the door to spill the tea. That helps no one. It doesn't help the oppressed. It doesn't help those on the receiving end of the upsurge in fascist violence. It helps only men like Romney to absolve themselves of the sin of connivance. He said nothing because it was easier to say nothing. Nothing pricked his moral core. These are all hollow men and women, with no ethical center. They swim languidly in their privilege, and concern themselves not with the consequences of their inaction. 

Now Mitt Romney will receive encomiums—no doubt from President Joe Biden and former president Barack Obama as well—and the pundits and the Beltway stenographers will wax rhapsodic about his bravery and his bucking the GOP system. He deserves none of it. He is a cipher, an empty man, and his world will end not with a bang, but a whimper.

He said nothing. History will judge him for it.

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