George Santos may not be the hero this country wants. But he's the one we deserve. If a political society doesn't punish liars and/grifters and/or criminals, then we deserve criminals and grifters and liars to govern us.

Does anyone better represent our time in this place than does George Santos?

He faked his education. He faked his career. He faked his charity. He faked his religion. His sudden money is a mystery. He continues to deny an apparent criminal history in Brazil. He claimed his family survived the Holocaust. He claimed he had lost employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting. And when confronted about it all, he owned it.

He engaged in an admirable bit of performance art that we need to take a moment to appreciate. Sometimes, at Washington cocktail parties, someone will toss out as a joke or a conversation starter a line like, “I wonder if you could run a congressional campaign in which you faked your entire resume. I mean, not some of it, but the whole thing. Like, you're literally not allowed to say anything true about yourself.” In response, some earnest wag or some mansplainer inevitably coughs up some truism about opposition research, which basically amounts to the fact that it exists, which stops people from running with a fabricated persona. So the first heroic thing about Santos is that he endeavoured to test the hypothesis the rest of us mortals just joke about: What if someone made up a persona and ran for Congress? Twice...? The answer? The person would be elected eventually. And that's fabulous (as in a fable) when you think about it. This brings us to the second awesome thing about The Talented Mr. Santos: He's not remotely sorry or ashamed. He lied. He was caught. He admits most of it. But unlike us mortals, who would crawl into hole with shame, he seems fine with it all. Santos is a mythical creature that was invented by Santos. And he is a fraud. And he has already moved on. "This [controversy] will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be effective. I will be good." he told the New York Post. He visited the Merchant Marine Academy yesterday, he wished everyone a Merry Christmas, ad he's going to show up for work at Congress in January as though he belongs there, which is fabulous (incredulous fable) when you think about it. He is exactly the politician we deserve. If a political society doesn't punish liars, it encourages lies and the lying liars that tell them to become politicians. If a political society doesn't punish politicians for grifting, it encourages grifters to become politicians and more politicians to become grifters. If a political society doesn't punish figures who adopt new ethnic or social identities, guess what? Santos is just the reductio ad absurdum of everything we have signaled as a political society that we don't mind, which is unsurprisingly fabulous if you think about it. 

There goes that man.

I want a hero: an uncommon want,
    When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
    The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
    I’ll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

- L-rd Byron

The truth is a magical rabbit.