As usual, Victor Davis Hanson is spot on:
A “coup” is no longer proof of right-wing paranoia, but increasingly a part of the general progressive discourse of resistance to Trump.
In these upside-down times, patriotism is being redefined as removing a president before a constitutionally mandated election.
The Babylon Bee picks up the torch of satire; the torch virtually everyone else dropped before the altar of PC… and they’re running with it. Here’s a snippet from Impeachment Inquiry Canceled After 5 Episodes Due To Low Ratings:
“The showrunners promised all these big bombshells, shocking twists, and startling revelations, but they weren’t able to deliver,” said one reviewer writing in Hollywood Reporter. “When there are so many better options out there—rewatching The Office, checking out The Good Place, staring at paint as it slowly dries—why would people tune into this tepid, uninspired mess?”
I have to admit, it’s getting to me this week. It’s a downer. One of my predictions was 100% wrong. I was certain Hillary voters would calm down after a few months. With time they’d realize Trump, as imperfect as he is, was two things:
- Not the end of the world.
- Part of the give and take of democratic elections.
I didn’t think folks could stay nuts for years and years. They had to go to work and change diapers and feed the cat. Reality would intrude on their inner narrative of doom. I was wrong.
It’s been three long stupid years and apparently it’s possible for large groups to stay nuts indefinitely. Evidence from reality has literally no effect. Their dire predictions just didn’t happen: The economy hasn’t tanked, the streets aren’t running with blood, the IRS hasn’t seized their Prius, polar ice caps are still ice covered, nobody’s starving, red states haven’t sacked and pillaged blue states, China hasn’t “trade warred” us into the dirt, abortion is roughly as legal as it was before the election, Kavinaugh isn’t having orgies in the Oval Office, and most importantly… jackbooted thugs never materialized to round up liberals and incarcerate them in work camps.
I tried an experiment yesterday. I walked the streets in a small town. I looked for visual differences between 2019 and 2007. Not much I could see. The only difference I noted are a lot of “help wanted” signs, the absence of newspaper vending machines, and someone drove by in a spiffy new Jeep Gladiator. (In both 2007 and 2019 cars look like EPA mandated shitbubbles but at least the Gladiator appears to have balls.) Jobs, newspapers, and one new vehicle… that’s it.
This week’s circus event has the feel of desperation. One doesn’t try this hard to impeach a man that’s eleven months from losing an election. If you can beat a team in the arena you don’t try to kneecap their QB in the parking lot before the game.
I get the feeling that December might include a big desperate Hail Mary pass. The holiday season has always been earmarked for Congresscritters doing things that they’d best like forgotten. The 2009 Christmas Eve passage of Obamacare, taught me there are things that can only be done when everyone is fretting over eggnog and the populace as a whole just isn’t in the lynching mood the D’s need to operate in the open. (Note: The last two times time the Senate held a roll call on Christmas Eve are 1895 and 2009. The former was to allow post civil war Confederacy soldiers into government jobs and the latter was so I would save $2,500 a year on health insurance).*
If Trump is still standing in mid-January, opposition candidates will have to defeat him the old fashioned way; by either being dirtier or better… neither of which is likely to unseat the Orange one. Time will tell if my minuscule PreditIt bets play out but the pre-game warm up looks to be the real game.
Also, it’s hardened my heart. I get that the guy I vote for doesn’t always win. That’s how voting works. Sometimes your guy wins, sometimes their guy wins. I was always pretty cool about that. But now, because of the ugly, messy, grasping, clutching, needy approach to what should be a vote count, I’m colder.
The argument seems to be “I will burn this car to the ground if you don’t give me the keys and let me drive!” The desperation, the longing for power, the feeling that anyone but one side at the wheel is not just undesirable but an affront to the universe… is concerning. I’m coming to feel safer with the inept, clueless, idiots of the party of R in power simply because the party of D wants it so badly. When a group is willing to unleash a scorched earth campaign against all who oppose them, it makes me less inclined to give them a taste of control. I can almost hear them say “make me the president because it’s my birthday and I want it”.
Luckily it’s the weekend and then Thanksgiving. The burner goes to simmer and the ensuing week is too short do anything too stupid. One would hope.
That’s my take on it. To reiterate: The impeachment vote (if it happens) will go down exactly as it would have on November 9, 2016. It will be based on the same logic (“give me the ring!”) as it would have in 2016. Then there’s a good shot at a black swan event between now and mid-January. I can’t guess the form of the destroyer but I doubt it’ll work out as hoped.
I have to hand it to Trump, he’s done a good job of being politically unkillable in a toxic environment. I wish him continued success in that endeavor. Less for his accomplishments as to keep Smeagol away from the ring. (Honestly, Orange Man being not-Hillary Clinton is all I really wanted and one term would have formerly seemed fine to me. As the “loyal opposition” went full “coup and resistance” I’ve dug in my heels. I suspect I’m not alone in that reaction.)
As always YMMV.
A.C.
*For those interested in the Orwellian concept of a memory hole. Here’s a quote from a presidential speech on June 23, 2007: “I will sign a universal health-care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.” I was there to hear it but I like to recheck verbiage for accuracy. The speech was called “The Politics Of Conscience” and it was wildly popular at the time. However, the link at barakobama.com is gone. It’s scrubbed from the usual places and I couldn’t easily find a transcript. I figured all presidential speeches are archived somewhere? I was surprised. Virtually every post I’ve ever written on my blog is still live right now. I’m not the sort to think about deleting my past mistakes. That’s why I’m not a politician.
Your pivotal mistake was when you figured “They had to go to work…”
I know! I totally fell for the idea that folks are much like I am. Wrong!
It’s soooooo weird! I’ve worked every day of my life since I was mowing lawns and delivering newspapers by bicycle. I’ll never really understand folks who do nothing. With all that time doing nothing you’d think they’d have hobbies better than hanging around watching politics like they’re rooting for their favorite football team. Ayn Rand talked about people having the spare time to write an opera. I’m not seeing these twits using their empty lives to do anything. They’re not playing instruments, learning Latin, mastering ceramics, or summiting mountains. Just sitting on their ass rambling about global warming on Facebook. Don’t they get bored?
Just one teensy little question. Okay, two. Did you in fact save $2,500 on your insurance? And, in the grand scheme of things, how much impact do the antics of the federal gov actually have on your day to day life vice the antics of the duly elected local crooks?
In my world, the answers are “of course not, are you on crack?” and “virtually none. I’m more concerned about the borough council outlawing my woodstove over federal highway money for roads they don’t maintain because the state has that job.”
So I quit paying attention to this lunacy.
Ha ha ha ha… nobody saved $2500 per household on insurance. Not a single person I’ve met has been happy with their magic Obama-savings. That’s why the quote is memory holed. At the time anyone with minimal experience or skill at math knew this would happen yet the $2,500 selling point was shoveled for the better part of a year. I also didn’t get to keep my doctor if I like my doctor. Did you? Predictably, the quality of care in my area has fallen from “pretty good” to “high third world”. Isn’t it weird when people lap up totally bullshit… possibly even knowing it’s total bullshit… and you’re seemingly alone saying “this won’t work”? You wonder where all the adults went. Ten years later whatever you said would become a fucking mess has become a fucking mess but the horde that caused is it busy with a new improved way they should run some other complex system; currently an impeachment but a month ago bitching about Syria and a year ago bitching about immigration.
I noticed a similar thing in the latter part of the Bush Jr. regime. Anti-war protests were everywhere and they seemed sincere. An hour after Obama was elected the left was hunky dory with war. They don’t hate war; they hate not being in charge. Heck, when Trump partially pulled out of Syria a month ago the folks that went apeshit screaming “no blood for oil” in 2010 were pissed about leaving a nearby location in 2019.
Anyway, I can’t help but pay some attention… but I ration it. Stare too deeply into the abyss and the abyss stares into you.
Good and very accurate commentary. The left needs to throw away their pacifiers and grow up.
Don’t hold your breath. The longer and louder a person squeals in protest against the real world, the more they’re invested in their imagined alternate version where they’re the hero of their own movie. Three years into watching Trump not ruin the world has made the faithful burrow into their own head. It’s also why cognitive dissonance hit so hard when Trump won in 2016. Eight years of Obama, preceded by 8 years of Bush Jr. (who was a squish) and 8 of Clinton allowed some folks to grow to adult age (at least chronologically) without learning that democracy (and life) is a competing market of ideas. They never lost and thus didn’t know you could. Now they pretend they didn’t lose.
Mark me down as a grouch, but I have fundamentally distrusted Democrats since the term of Jimmy Carter. See, as far as I can tell (and Teh Narrative is something else) Carter was nominated because the Democrats believed that, against The Man Who Pardoned Nixon, they could nominate a talking dog and win. So the major Democrat factions each thought their Top Man should have the nomination, and none of them would tolerate the top man of any other faction. Hence Carter, who wasn’t ANYBODY’s first choice. And so Carter got to the White House and was a constantly undermined by grandstanding idiots in his own party.
Now, Carter might have been just as big a disaster on his own. In his career as an ex-President her has shown an unhappy talent for being a complete twit. But the way the Democrats backstabbed him stayed with me. And that impression has been reinforced by the behavior of Democrats in every administration since.
Now, don’t get me wrong; I don’t for an instant believe that the Republican Party is a repository of all things Right and Just. But during my adult life, the behavior of the Republican Party has been an order of magnitude LESS odious than the behavior of the Democrats.
And I frankly don’t see that changing any time soon.
I see this putsch as the dying breath of the now more powerful and influential 60’s generation of ideologue protesters trying to have one last shot at being relevant, coupled with the legion of useful idiot millenials as their mindless lemming ground troops. They hated on Reagan and W nearly as badly. Though not spoken loudly, IMO the SCOTUS and judiciary is their key concern as that was their backstop insurance policy. Honestly the rise of socialism and leftist fascism has baffled me and your thoughts on that woild be interesting. I thought we’d put that nightmare to bed in the face of consistent failure but that ignorant new voting block has drunken too much KoolAid.
The rise of domestic socialism baffled me at first too. When USSR dissolved without a shot fired I was thinking “Oh, thank God that’s over. Let’s all rejoice.” Then everything moved to re-assert the experiment in US and EU lands. Totally unexpected.
However, I’ve come to see a different angle. Try thinking of socialism as a cult instead of an economic theory or political movement. Suddenly it makes sense.
This, I think, is at the heart of the current situation. People reject the wealthiest and easiest life in human history to re-try a system that’s immiserated and killed millions and failed in dozens of nations. They do this because they are in thrall to a cult, not because they’re mindful of their own motivations. Socialism, by whatever name is convenient at the time, is always on deck for another try. Underlying principles of socialism that speak deeply to the darkest corners of a broken soul. Greed, sloth, pride, envy… these things are baked into the cake and they take the form of redistribution and other socialist ideas. Pride is the idea that you, alone among all humanity, can make a system work that always fails. Nobody pushed Obamacare thinking Dick Cheney would be running it. They all imagined themselves at the wheel; because of course they’d be in charge. Envy is why people desire to pull down those who have more accomplishments or money than themselves. Socialism gives it the fig leaf needed to pretend it’s a “good” thing. It’s also the reason people will gladly live in squalor so long as they’re sure nobody else has a better life than themselves. Sloth is the sincere belief that working harder to be a better person is all a waste of time. Socialism is a cult-like presence that preys upon weakness of… for want of another word… soul. The desire to boss other people around and take their toys is born with us. Normally it’s overcome by growing up (again for want of a better word) “civilized. Children are supposed to be taught out of greed, sloth, pride, and envy. Growing up is hard. The maturity to embrace the lesson doesn’t take root in all people. Thus, the same movement springs up in a new mask over and over. It’s a cult that lets some unaccomplished yoyo believe they’ll solve all the world’s problems if they just form a group big enough to take Bill Gates’ money and reallocate it as he or she, the wiser and better person, directs from their mom’s basement. It probably always has been this way, even long before that nutsack Marx coined a new term for it.