As we near the end of the Trump Administration’s disastrous tenure, we need to learn and understand that this has not been a aberration, but that this has been the result of an ideology which featured a frenzied rejection of the expert, and not only those experts which expressed opinions at variance from that dictated by the right wing ideology, but virtually all expertise which had not proven itself in a tangible manner. The argument that, if you wouldn’t employ a ten-year old to fix your $40,000 truck’s engine, why would you employ someone with no expertise in government and a chronic habit of lying as your President, was never taken seriously by those who thought themselves conservatives. Such is conservative ideological blind loyalty.
While long time readers may remember that former and most incompetent Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) preached the virtues of amateurism, that did not mark the appearance of entrenched amateurism. We can go back to 2000, when the Republicans won the House and Senate and, by all accounts, “spent like drunken sailors” the surplus it inherited from the Clinton Administration, led the country into two wars, for which it also refused to budget and tax, and passed foolish legislation, such as the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which brought upon us the Great Recession. They mistook position & responsibility for prestige & absolute power. Such are the mistakes of the avaricious amateurs.
Or we can go further back to the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan Administration (1981-1989), the very picture of ambitious, ideologically-driven amateurs, blundering about and damaging the country.
And it’s even possible that we could make an argument that the adherents of the John Birch Society (JBS), an early component of the conservative movement, which has since lost prestige and influence but still exists.
Why did JBS lose influence? Because of their fantasy-prone delusions about the world. They advanced absurd notions about the Federal government being controlled by communists and other such rot. The founder, Robert Welch, Jr., was eventually chased out of the Republican Party by such personages as Buckley and Goldwater, but I believe the delusions which characterized them had already contaminated the Republican Party, judging from the right-wing email streams I’ve had inflicted on me over the years, as well as much of the political commercials we’ve seen from them.
But today we can judge the “conservative movement,” and the judgment is harsh. The offspring of the conservative movement, motivated by toxic team politics, baseless economic theories such as the Laffer Curve, frantic absolutism on such topics as gun control, abortion, and religious freedom, and, perhaps most importantly, the infection of the Party with absolute loyalty to a Apocalyptic End-Times religious philosophy, which gives its promoters positions of power and wealth to which they have no right, has led to the following, an incomplete list:
- A party unable to screen out unqualified candidates for office, such Donald J. Trump;
- A party base so credulous as to believe the documented, objective lies of Donald J. Trump;
- A party prone to believing the most fantastic notions, such as the idea that regulation and taxation are absolute evils;
- To take as truth utter lies concerning political opponents, such as the Pizzagate conspiracy theory of QAnon, or even about each other;
- Vast incompetence, in which the latest example is the failure in having sufficient vaccine on hand and distributing it efficiently, and making promises which cannot be fulfilled, but for which there many, many examples;
- Insurrection based on false claims;
- The notion that unsupported belief is sufficient to be a responsible American citizen;
- Possible betrayal during said insurrection by members of Congress;
- Insistent use of fake talking points by members of Congress in order to score political points;
- A Party so dedicated to winning that it uses gerrymandering, and even less savory tactics to suppress the votes of non-Republican voters, rather than dedicating itself to making it possible for all qualified voters to vote;
- Threats of further insurrection by a far-right which has nurtured racist grievances for decades;
- & Etc – which you may take to mean I’m tired of typing this crap.
Perhaps one of the oldest and most accurate aphorisms is The proof is in the pudding. The above list of failures embodies that, and leads to the pro forma question of Why? I say it’s that toxic team politics; religious mania led on by the delusional, grifters, and conmen; the taking as religious tenets such dubious concepts as regulation and taxation are automatically evil; white privilege; and all the rest lead to a toxic and deadly disaster when it comes to dealing with the challenges of crisis, as well as daily, governing.
Source: PRC
We should taken the hints provided by the Iraq War, in which the CIA was exposed for torturing terror suspects, a practice both barbarous and ineffective, and the response to the Katrina hurricane disaster, which left New Orleans in ruins and its inhabitants in desperate straits – all preventable. The Bush Administration, along with the aforementioned Republican control of the legislative branch for the first six years of the Bush Administration, should have been a broad hint concerning the intellectual bankruptcy of the notions of the “conservatives”.
Source: FiveThirtyEight
But the pudding we’re now experiencing is what I think may turn out to be the endpoint. True, some 74 million American citizens voted for President Trump in the 2020 Presidential election – but latest polls suggest that if the election was run again, he’d get less than half that. And the allegations of deadly conspiracy that are beginning to mutter against certain Republican members of Congress suggest that suspicion against the entire Republican Party operation may become strong enough to argue for its crippling.
What do I want to see? The ejection of religious elites, the grifters and conmen and, as I said before, the wildly delusional from the Party would be a fine beginning. If it is emphasized that Paula White and her ilk, currently advisers to the President, wear that badge not as an honor, but as a badge of shame, I’d be encouraged. The shrinkage of the numbers of their adherents would signal a return to old fashioned American common sense, and an abandonment of the hedonic selfishness which is, even for an agnostic such as me, indicative of profound blasphemy within Christianity.
An expungement of the celebration of incompetence, a return to asking candidates Are you qualified?, and the realization that a career in business doesn’t make one qualified for government leadership. An embracement of voting and excellence and, hell, democracy, and an expungement of voter suppression tactics. A rethinking of the tenets of the Party, and the realization that business and government are not one and the same.
Oh, I could go on and on. I’ve been doing the responsible citizen thing since before I started this blog in 2014, and I’m really, really sick of the corruption of the Republicans. I sincerely hope the Trumpian disaster, his epitomization of libertarian selfishness, will lead more and more Republicans to realize their Party has been eviscerated by rogues and devils, and that the libertarian philosophy that Greed is good! needs some serious rethinking – or junking.
With Biden running a responsible Administration, the responsibility for the free press and pundits may now be appropriate coverage and critiques of the new Administration, countering the inevitable lies from the dead-enders, such as Tony Perkins and others who’ve come to power and influence with Trump, and making it clear that a conservative party dedicated to democracy and good governance is still welcome, and even needed – but the Republican Party, the liars and prevaricators and manipulators who’ve enabled it since at least the time of Gingrich, and President Trump are not that party. Not in the least.
