Dear fellow KOS readers,
After reading April Siese’s June 28th article on “Trump’s Truth Social Meltdown” (www.dailykos.com/...), I replied to another reader’s comment about how he or she believes Cassidy Hutchinson “is brave and ethical.” In my reply, I did credit Hutchinson with bravery, but I had to disagree with her being ethical. My reply prompted others to reply that they felt sorry for me, that they thought I’m a horrible person and that he or she would block me if I made further comments.
I have to say that I just don’t get it. Of course, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but I just don’t understand the thought process that leads them to those opinions.
Did Ms. Hutchinson do the right thing? Yes.
Was Ms. Hutchinson brave to testify against Trump and Meadows? Yes.
Will Ms. Hutchinson be harassed and threatened by the Trump base? Yes.
Is Ms. Hutchinson an ethical person? No.
So, what leads me to that last conclusion?
Ms. Hutchinson is an adult. A young adult yes, but she’s still an adult who should know right from wrong. She’s an adult who chose to work for Steve Scalise, who is a liar and an insurrection supporter. She chose to take a high-level position in the Trump administration understanding that Trump is a racist, misogynist, serial liar, emotionally unstable, narcissistic, and so on and so on. She then also took on a position working with Mark Meadows who had made numerous racists statements as a member of Congress. This belies the good moral compass that another KOS reader gave her credit for having. I credit Ms. Hutchinson with not being an insurrectionist, but that is not enough to make her a good person much less any kind of hero. Did Ms. Hutchinson resign her position after the horror of January 6th? No, she did not. Did Ms. Hutchinson voluntarily submit her testimony to the January 6th Committee? No, she was subpoenaed.
The kicker for me is that, during her live testimony, she voluntarily offered up that she was highly supportive of the Trump administration’s policies. What kind of moral compass do you possess if you find goodness in: tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy; The Muslim Ban; family separations at the border; no transgender people in the military; the anti-NATO stance; deserting the Kurdish in Syria; giving Kim Jung Un the opportunity to stand on the world stage with a US President; kissing Putin’s ass in front of the entire world; telling Xi Jinping that the Uighur concentration camps are a good thing; mass murder of a few hundred thousand Americans by intentional neglect of the COVID-19 pandemic; and so many, many more degenerate policies? If you stand by those policies, your moral compass points to E which in this case stands for evil and not for east.
Some have countered that she offered up praise for those policies so that she might deflect some of the vitriol and threats bound to materialize from the MAGA base. I call bullshit on that theory. Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and others have also supported most of the Trump administration’s policies, but that hasn’t stopped the flow of hate and threats. This is true for many who have left the Trump Train. For the MAGA crowd, you’re either ALL IN or you’re now an ALL OUT RINO.
Another reply to my comment bashed me for calling Ms. Hutchinson black-hearted. I truly don’t understand how a liberal can think she has a good heart. Just think of those babies and young children that were taken from their mothers at the border. They will be scarred for life. If they are even reunited with their parent(s), the damage is done. The infants were deprived of the necessary bonding required from their mothers. I learned about Dr. Harlow’s experiments many, many years ago in Psyc 101 in college. Here’s an article relating those experiments to what happened at the US border: lilith.org/… Bash me if you want, but I’ll stick with my black-hearted comment.
Another commenter gave Ms. Hutchinson the incredibly weak excuse of “SHE JUST WORKED THERE.” (The all caps was used by the commenter.) Really! Wow! The old “I was just following orders” ploy. (I’ll forgo the full Nazi analogy.) Ms. Hutchinson worked in the Trump administration by choice. She approved of the policies and she did not resign.
Other commenters hoped that, as being a young person, Ms. Hutchinson will possibly change into a moderate conservative or even become a progressive democrat. That’s some incredible magical thinking. Ms. Hutchinson has already been indoctrinated. Even though she stops at insurrection, she supports far-right MAGA policies. Once again, she volunteered this information and was not asked about her beliefs. I’ll be generous and give Ms. Hutchinson a 15% higher chance of changing her political stance over that of Stephen Miller changing his political stance.
The United States of America is three steps away from becoming a theocratic autocracy. This is an existential crisis. Although many of the Republicans that have testified have done the right thing in offering, via subpoena, their testimony, they have also stated that they would vote for Trump if he’s is the Republican candidate in the 2024 election. They state that they don’t want to vote for him, but it’s basically a policy of party over country. They’ll be quite happy if Trump doesn’t run and they can vote for Florida’s dictator governor, DeSantis.
I have never voted for a Republican for any office in my 42 years of voting and I don’t plan to ever do so. Yet, I’ll tell you that if the tables were turned and it was Biden that had attempted a coup, I would suck it up and vote for the Republican candidate. I could live through four years of bad policy rather than voting to help overturn our democracy.
So again, I just don’t get it. These conservatives that are testifying before the January 6th committee can be credited with not supporting an insurrection. But one good deed does not a good person make.