[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
There is a strange, furtive political creature often to be found among us these days in social and traditional media, an angry, accusatory persona flinging dictums and advice from an absurd perch of former conservatism, attempting poorly to somehow transform themselves into liberal policy scolds.
Behold the Never-Trumpers, Republicans and conservative media writers who never endorsed Trump and now routinely bash him whenever they can. Insulated from vicious political forces in the racist, authoritarian Republican base, they haplessly yearn for an honest Republican Party that’s been obliterated, sure when the nightmare is over Republicans can be a real political force again, not just a surrogacy of Vladimir Putin.
George Will, Ana Navarro, Steve Schmidt, Megan McArdle, these four come to mind, and they also share another distortion quirk of Never-Trumpers, this amazing clucking over liberal solution ideas and proposals with dire warnings that Democrats are becoming, my God, leftists, they…they bring forth the horrors of…of…socialism, Jesus, run for your lives!
Where did this impulse come from, this sudden concern and attention for the state of American liberalism? Because these conservative writers know full well their Republican Party and alleged conservatism is smashed beyond recognition, very likely never to recover and doomed to defeat for at least the next decade. No matter how ridiculous or frivolous their yap is on eventual policy they still desperately hope and try to keep some legitimate conservative sliver of ideology in it.
Keep in mind the current American Executive branch is crushed into a horror show of Russian treachery, gross incompetence, gale force lying and amazing laziness, Trump never works and there’s not even an ambassador to Mexico. We’ve just endured a viciously regressive shutdown with a repeat entirely possible by Friday, yet these Republican conservative writers still dare to cluck over the coming Democratic ascendency of liberal policy.
The arrogance of the conservative mind, the mind-bending audacity to ignore any reality and still have the mental will and wish to control others, it still astounds me. I’ve been intimately familiar with it all my life yet how these souls possess and generate this mean anger of authority will always mystify me.
Much this wearying claptrap has been lashed out to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the blazing first-term Congresswoman from New York, easily the most inspiring and innovative politician to be seen in 40 years. A particularly nasty and putridly untrue version was published this morning by Megan McArdle in the Washington Post, its glaring offensiveness meriting rebuttal here.
Gaslighting is a form of abuse where plain reality and truth is just flatly denied—no, I didn’t get publicly abusive at that party last night, you’re imaging it, it never happened. A recent example was the maddening assertion by acting chief of staff Mulvaney that Pelosi didn’t put Trump through the bassomatic over the shutdown, Trump still had leverage to call an emergency or even shut down the government again.
AOC is summoning all the energy and will she can to get the freaking United States government acting on real solutions to ameliorate climate change, finally, so far all the Democratic Party has been able to muster the bravery to assert that it in fact exists. She’s introduced a resolution for a Green New Deal and in a classic freshman error with a new staff different versions of the workup appeared before the final version.
AOC’s staff didn’t handle it well, AOC finally stating to ignore the workup versions and use the final language in the resolution. McArdle then uses that statement as a form of gaslighting.
AOC did not gaslight anyone, she simply said to ignore incorrect versions of markup and use the final version, it was messy but there was her marker and path for truth. For McArdle to compare this to the rank , searing lying that routinely comes forth from Mulvaney, Conway and Huckabee is beyond outrageous, a terrible distortion of the truth and reality that matches the gaslighting she says liberals are so obsessed with.
Liberals are tired of being abused with gaslighting, Ms McArdle, for those who revere the truth and know adherence to it is the only path for success and happiness obsession with its implementation is of critical importance to us, yes.
Incredibly McArdle bounds ahead yet again with record-breaking arrogance, stating AOC is the same evil anti-democratic force Trump is, making up a fantasy how Trump didn’t bully his way to the nomination and that somehow in the early stages of her career the Democrats can find a way to stop AOC.
Go paddle up a river of Republican futility for a lifetime, Megan McArdle, AOC is a brilliant liberal light of truth and hope, while the stinking, lying smashed mess of Republican regression recedes, no matter you’re desperate attempts to stop it.