Friday, August 03, 2018 5:20 PM
The President Is A Loser (2018Aug03)
For those of us who weren’t fault-finding with intense scrutiny (though god knows there were plenty of those) President Obama’s eight years were rather legendary. His financial recovery efforts worked phenomenally—his Affordable Care Act passage was heroic. Oddly, those who would benefit the most were its most ardent opponents—and many Republican voters are now on record as supporting the ACA, but dead-set against ‘Obamacare’.
People will say that Obama didn’t stand tough enough—as if Bush-43 hadn’t already ‘toughed’ us into bankruptcy. All I can say is—he was tough enough to kill Bin Laden—and it’s a lot easier to defend a legacy as first black president who-didn’t-start-a-war, than as first black president who did.
My point, if I have one, is that Obama did a great job—and Hillary was the front runner in the last election because she promised more of the same. It wasn’t until the dog-whistling, lying Republicans teamed up with the lethal Russian GRU that people started chanting ‘Lock her up’ (as if they knew how their own damned emails worked).
Trump must concede the truth of Russian election meddling, because it is laid out in several indictments, literally step-by-step. But Trump and his Republican cadre can never admit that Trump’s election to office was the Russian’s victory—and a blow against the United States. Can you blame them?
Trump’s frighteningly-large number of followers—are people who cherish the United States’ traditional failings, and are uncomfortable with our historic, constitutional ideals. They wish to roll us all back to a less perfect union. Any change for the better is something they’ll embrace for themselves, but denounce for anyone else—their idea of a community is focused on the fence around it, not the heart at its center.
The founding fathers feared party and partisanship would quickly subvert the American Experiment into corruption and elitism. Scholars have questioned the dangers of our current two-party system—but, in the end, it seemed so perfect, like Yin and Yang. Conservatives and Progressives—one to hold on to the wisdom of the past and one to reach for the promise of the future—how, indeed, could we fail to have two parties?
But there’s trouble in this Eden—what if the Conservatives are not really conservative? What if they have had their paradigms swept away by a society and a culture changing at ‘ludicrous speed’? Have they been warped, even crushed, by the illogic of Conservatism in an age of vanishing industries, vanishing storefronts, even vanishing wires?
And what about Social Media and Conservatives? Has Conservatism been a false front for Elitism, all along? Does the transparency of a YouTube-world make it impossible for elitists to maintain their fictions of benign objectivity?
Hey, wouldn’t it be better to release a doctored video of Planned Parenthood doctors, trying to make women’s health care seem like a criminal enterprise? That’s conservative, right? When did they first jail Margaret Sanger? 1916, I think. The Conservatives of that time could arrest the woman. Those of our day are reduced to lying about her—so, that’s progress, I guess?
Anyway, Trump is a liar—to himself more than anyone else. Can you imagine the lack of self-awareness that allows him to think of himself as our president—without feeling any shame at all? Can you imagine being one of his supporting Republicans—pretending Trump is fit, Trump is innocent, Trump is sincere? When they know in their hearts that good people don’t have to lie that much. Yes, we are the victims—but we should thank heaven we aren’t the perpetrators.
