A good education is no substitute for common sense
A few days ago, Heather Havrilesky posted "In His Own Words" on The Awl about the failed military operation in Yemen. She described how those of us on the left outsmart ourselves trying to sound all erudite and smartypants, and then suggested using Trumpspeak to talk about it. Her suggestions:
It was a disaster, a huge disaster, and totally preventable. Trump messed up. Completely incompetent.
Another:
Those SEALs went in there, and got torn apart. Nightmare, never should’ve happened. Trump messed up, big league. Completely unstable.
And another
Impeach the guy. He’s an unstable person. Yemen? Disaster. Everyone knows it’s true. Even he knows it. Awful. Everyone agrees.
She encourages persistence, and says:
If you’re not boring yourself, you’re not doing it right. Seriously. It’s time to stop trying to sound like the smartest person in the room.
There have been other writers who have implored the left to stop outsmarting ourselves to irrelevance (David Frum also suggests single, actionable causes, e.g. “Votes for women.” “End the draft.” “Overturn Roe v. Wade.” “Tougher punishments for drunk driving.”)
Trump is scary, but this isn’t about just Trump. We get rid of Trump, we still have Pence, McConnell, Ryan, DeVos, Sessions, etc. This is about Republicans, and the leaders they’ve chosen. Removing Trump is the Republicans’ problem, just like repealing ACA is their problem. We should celebrate and accelerate Trump’s impeachment (if it ever occurs), but that should be a means to an end for us. The end we’re trying to achieve is Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and a Democratic president.
The tweet I plan to bore myself with:
Republican leaders are cowardly. Totally incompetent. They all have the judgment of drunk teenagers.
There are three elements of this to riff off of:
- Cowardly — Republicans are frightened of women, non-whites, and are sexually repressed.
- Incompetent — Republican leaders are sloppy, and have no idea what they are doing. They don’t know what they don’t know.
- Judgment of drunk teenagers — They lack common sense. They can’t tell shit from shinola, and they’re not smart enough to know why they need to know.
There are many nuanced criticisms of Republican leadership that play to our base (e.g. “It’s Working Out Very Nicely” on This American Life uses beautiful storytelling to illustrate how horrific the deportation drama has been). We can rail how inhumane they are (and they are), but Republicans wear the insult of “inhumane” from a softy liberal as a badge of honor, as they do “greedy”, “racist” and “autocratic”.
While Hitler comparisons may be more accurate than even we want to admit, they aren’t likely to be effective. To break rank, they need to be convinced they’ve made a mistake, e.g. they’ve elected the Jimmy Carter of the Right. They hated Carter, and celebrated the splintering of the Democrats under his leadership. As the Sessions vote illustrated, they’re o.k. with pinning their hopes on a racist, but they may be scared of losing their Senate majority.
David Frum’s cover piece for The Atlantic paints an all-too-scary re-election scenario for Trump, painting how the tactics Trump is using can be characterized to gullible voters: bold, decisive and crafty. Let’s drive home how cowardly, incompetent, and dopey the Republican leadership has become.
