Conservative pundit Erick Erickson keeps sending those emails, trying to solicit business for his subscription service where, presumably, he rants and raves about theology and the American political system. His latest is his attempt to discredit the Republican NeverTrumpers who’ve emerged as nothing more than mercenary creatures who, finding themselves shut out of the Trump orbit, have flung themselves against him.
This is a little hard to credit in the case of The Lincoln Project’s George Conway, as his wife, Kellyanne Conway, is a Trump senior advisor, his Wikipedia page suggests he was considered for several senior positions in the Administration, and he’s widely considered to have impeccable Republican credentials.
But let’s stipulate to it, just because it’s useful to let him have his broad generalization. Here’s what caught my eye:
I really don’t care if someone wants to vote against Trump or run vanity ads in the DC market solely designed to troll him. But there are two parties in America, one of which is okay with killing kids and one that generally is opposed. None of us should be surprised that the ones who privately mocked the pro-lifers from within the party will now be so public in their disdain.
And what Erickson cannot do – because it would vitiate his position on the Hill of Moral Superiority – is take the next step and begin the crucial analysis: the party that is generally opposed to killing kids (hah – so wrong on so many levels, but I gotta stay focused) happens to support the most corrupt President in modern history, and does so with great enthusiasm.
Great enthusiasm. Supported by 80-some percent of Republicans. Sometimes even into the 90s.
Even if I let him have a hypothetical position that Trump is helping save ‘kids’, there are many other Republicans, presumably far less corrupt – presumably – that he could support. We could return to that all-hype incredibly deep Republican bench (to paraphrase a few credulous pundits) from 2015, with names like Rubio, Kasich, Cruz, Carson, and more than ten others – all, it turned out, such lightweights that only helium equaled their lack of gravitas, but, still, the Republican Party could kick Trump out and turn to one of them, instead.
Or even failed Indiana governor and current VP Mike Pence.
But, no. It’s not Erickson’s designated party of “baby-killers” who has embraced corruption, naked and barely denying it, invoking racist tropes and flaunting incompetence as if it were a virtue.
It’s his supposed party of pro-lifers with their arms and legs locked around Trump.
I’ll skip making accusations of hypocrisy, partly because I doubt Erickson will ever read this, and partly because there’s a deeper point to be made.
In logic and mathematics, there are various formal methodologies for what are called “proofs” – indisputable reasoning that makes a point. Many of us learned the basics of proofs in mathematics in our high schools, and I think most of us hated it. I rather enjoyed them, myself.
Among these approaches is reductio ad absurdum,
… the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.
It’s not hard to recognize that Erickson and the Republican Party have reached an absurd position. Erickson, as one example, has contorted himself into a self-characterizationcaricature as an objective observer, even as he has propounded the view that anyone who condemns Trump suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), a vaguely defined term implying its victims hate Trump for irrational, illogical reasons.
Distrusting him for 20,000 lies should, according to Erickson, be filed under TDS. And that’s just a for instance.
Similarly, other Trump supporters embrace other absurd positions concerning Trump: the black community’s best friend, saved the economy from ruin, rebuilt the military, etc etc. And I’m so tired of hearing I just feel that Trump … someday I’ll just have a good shout at one. Hopefully, the Trump supporter will be on TV and I won’t get in trouble for it.
Since Erickson rests his support of Trump on the issue of abortion, it suggests that the key philosophical error of Erickson and the Republican Party is on the abortion issue, at least in its current configuration. I am going to start calling it the fatal litmus test of American democracy. That is, if you are a pro-choice candidate, then your competency, your positions on other issues, your integrity, all that matters to me, the Joe-regular vote, doesn’t matter to the anti-abortion voter. They tick off the “for abortion” box in their mind, swing over to the other column, and vote for the opponent.
Whoever and whatever that opponent may be.
Grossly incompetent, conspiracy theorist, crackpot, religious nut, chronic liar, freakin’ serial killer. All they have to do is embrace anti-abortion, have the gift of gab, and not piss too many people off.
The position leads to absurdity, and it suggests the avid anti-abortionist may not be on the side of the right. but on the side that leads to injustice and failure.
I suggest, in America, a secular democracy, that the use of the abortion issue as a litmus test is absurd and harmful. If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one. And using it as your litmus test is the essence of tomfoolery. There’s more to selecting our governing people than whether or not they support abortion rights.
And it’s being proven, in a rigorously logical way, right now.
