So Young, So Full of Vileness

I don't remember when I first heard of Madison Cawthorn, newly elected member of Congress from North Carolina's 11th District, which is the seat formerly held by Mark Meadows (Mafia Mulligan chief-of-staff).

It may have been at the Republican National Convention this summer or just before that. I know I read his Wikipedia page that night and shook my head over his lie about how his partial paralysis from a car crash is what made him unable to attend the Naval Academy. (He had been rejected before that.) Then there was the part about how he went to college (at Patrick Henry College) for one semester before dropping out with D grades. That 22-year-old private college, by the way, appears to be part of the parallel universe of institutions the Religious Right is constructing to keep its young — mostly home-schoolers like Cawthorn — hermetically sealed from the rest of the world and to train the vanguard of the future they foresee.

It seems as though before that, the first thing I had heard about Cawthorn is that he visited Hitler's vacation home in 2017 (because it had been on his bucket list... since when do 22-year-olds have bucket lists?). He had posted a photo of the visit on Instagram.

That's quite an outfit you've got there, Herr Cawthorn! (This is not the photo from Hitler's place. It's also not that guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark who gets melted near the end, though I could see why you might be confused.)

Since being elected, Cawthorn has been an enthusiastic backer of Mulligan's ongoing coup, and, of course, voted not to certify the election and against his impeachment. He's been recorded telling people to contact their representatives and "lightly threaten them" and he spoke at the rally before the insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on January 6.

And — deep breath — I wouldn't be writing any of this tonight if it weren't for an additional bit of Cawthorn's personal history I just heard about today. 

During his single semester at Patrick Henry, he was so well known as a sexual predator that 150 fellow students from his time there signed a letter to that effect (there are not many more than 300 students at the school!). One signer is the woman who was the head Resident Assistant in the women's dorm and had personal knowledge of residents who reported his behavior to her at the time. 

This story from October 2020 has many details from women who reported him for various levels of clearly bad behavior:

...there was a whisper network about Cawthorn among PHC’s women students. “Girls were warning other girls not to go on rides with him,” .... “It was generally well-known among the girls there, and there were always stories coming up” ... Several women told her at the time that after they would rebuff Cawthorn, he would continue to pursue them. “They’d be like, no, I don’t want to go out with you, but he would just follow them around and continually ask them out over and over again, and just wouldn’t take no for an answer” ... She added, “I think most people knew he was kind of misogynistic and kind of a flirt. But there were a decent number of girls who were like, he’s more than just a flirty guy.”

So that's just great. He's perfect for the Party of Trump in every way (and there's even more if you read the linked articles).

By the way, this is the person Cawthorn defeated for his seat in Congress: Moe Davis, a retired Air Force colonel, attorney, and former administrative law judge. He was one of the chief prosecutors of the Guantanamo military commissions, but "resigned from the position after he refused to use evidence obtained through torture and because of political influence and pressure in prosecutions." We sure don't need anyone like that in Congress. 

No, we need more neo-Nazi sex abusers for sure. Who the hell voted for him in a district that was newly redrawn to not be gerrymandered?

I hope North Carolina's 11th district throws this jackass out as soon as possible, like these folks who rallied outside the office in Cawthorn's home town yesterday demanded.