Admit it, we're not so bad compared to That Orange Guy! (I sense you disagree.)
Something insidious has begun to creep up on us, very possibly adjusting our world-view in ways unthinkable and unhealthy, entirely without our realizing it. We’ve been reeling about, dazed and panicked at the very notion that we might be facing a Trump presidency, however slim the odds might be, and this thing that’s happening has only just started, so let this serve as our first warning.
It all started in late October, when Right Wing blogger Warren “Methinks He Doth Protest Too Much” Henry over at The Federalist posted a bug-crap-crazy essay, Liberals Adored Trump When He Was Winning The GOP Primary, the gist of the essay being it’s entirely the progressives’ fault that That Orange Guy is the Republican candidate for the White House. Witness the self-righteousness with me and we will come back to the “cried wolf” thing later:
Donald Trump’s rise was fueled in part by progressives who cried wolf about Republicans for years. During the so-called “invisible primary” and early contests in 2016, several liberal pundits entertained the idea that Donald Trump was not the worst possible GOP nominee, even if some ultimately changed their minds.
Apparently it was the liberals’ job to, I dunno, warn the Republicans about Trump? Because I guess it was our responsibility to clue them in that Trump was the absolute worst guy in the Klown Kar of Kandidates the Republicans served up, even if the Republicans themselves never noticed it until it was too late for them to back away slowly? Yeah, I don’t get it either.
But the thing that really perplexes me is Henry’s belief that we on the left should never have said mean things about Jeb! or Cruz or Rubio or anyone of that entire unhappy lot because calling out non-Trump Republicans for their crappy, no-good, bad ideology and terrible, country-ruining ideas was somehow “crying wolf.”
I don’t think that phrase means what he thinks it means. Henry goes on to write:
The Left wants to disappear their treatment of George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain down the memory hole—but it’s instructive to note how many ignored the threat of Trump, even when he was on their doorstep.
I for one don’t want to disappear my ill treatment of any of those guys. In fact, I’d like to kick them all down the deepest memory hole I can find and step on their fingers when they try to crawl out because it was they and their kind who set the stage for Trump.
Right wing conservatives got their low-info constituents used to being lied to, ensured their enthusiastic votes by ramping up their anger and fear with ever more over-the-top declarations of danger and patriotism, demonized left-leaning political figures and… well, I’ll stop here because I don’t have to tell you guys. We all know that Trump is the embodiment of every right-wing talking point ever spoken, every dog-whistle ever blown, even if conservatives want desperately to look away from the unflattering image in that mirror.
I suppose we can cut Warren Henry a bit of slack; sounds like he’s dazed and panicked at a Trump presidency, just like us, and feeling not a little defensive about it. So I laughed, shook my head sadly, and moved on, like you do after reading drivel of that caliber.
This is where it gets a bit worrisome.
I enjoyed Real Time with Bill Maher’s most recent show (Season 14, Episode 37). It started with a positively heart-warming interview with Obama, then a round table with ex-Governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm, actor Martin Short, and a very whiny David Frum. The problem starts at the end of the round table and just before the New Rules, when Bill Maher starts to moan to Frum about how much he misses the Golden Days of Yore when all we on the left had to worry about were the usual bunch of mean-spirited, pinch-faced, right wing religious conservative nutbars:
I know liberals made a big mistake because we attacked your boy Bush like he was the end of the world. And he wasn't. And Mitt Romney we attacked that way. I gave Obama a million dollars because I was so afraid of Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney wouldn't have changed my life that much or yours. Or John McCain.
Well, I guess Bill’s not entirely wrong; he’s a rich, straight, white male, so his life and the life of the guy he was talking to, rich, straight, white male David Frum, wouldn’t have changed all that much. Sadly, you can’t really say that about the rest of us.
So, no, Bill; liberals didn’t make a mistake of any size attacking Jeb! or Romney. The last right wing religious president we had very nearly was the end of the world if you consider “the world” as the entire world economy. Dubya and his motley crew crashed it, remember? And they destroyed the world of every family of all the soldiers they sent off to a stupid, useless war who didn’t make it back.
They were honorable men who we disagreed with and we should have kept it that way. So we cried wolf and that was wrong.
WTF?! They are not honorable men who we merely disagreed with. They are obstructionist assholes who have only their party, their power, and their pocketbook in mind when they pass bad laws and nominate bad judges, and never the good of the country, not even the good of their own rabid voters.
We did not cry wolf. Laying out the facts is not crying wolf. They really are that bad. We were not wrong when we said they were bad.
Unfortunately, Bill Maher is getting some online attention for his generous acceptance of liberals’ fault for the pickle we’re in, so we may see this idea gain traction in future as conservatives try to wiggle out from under the blame. But I fear the larger problem is that we, ourselves, may all start viewing the more traditional religious right wing conservative as acceptable and even reasonable when compared to the utterly unthinkable horror of Trump. But they are not. Each of them is quite horrible in their own special, reactionary way.
If you had a cancerous brain tumor, you’d have to be pretty stupid to sit there pining for a good ol’ brain embolism, even if an ischemic stroke is, perhaps, on paper, better than a tumor.
First Diary EVAH! Or second, because I lost the first version when I accidentally hit the wrong key, having assumed my draft was being auto-saved. It wasn’t. Live & Learn.
