I see that Erick Erickson is on the edge of terror, although even he may think he’s frightened of societal disturbance, and not what should really disturb him. Regardless, he’s busy saying silly things:
I have to agree with George Will and his magnificent column the other day.
Regarding this week’s events in Palm Beach, Fla., of course the rule of law is important. So, however, are other things, including social comity and — check the Constitution’s preamble — domestic tranquility. No value ever eclipses all others. Fiat justitia, ruat caelum — let justice be done, though the heavens fall? Let’s not.
The left is hell-bent on finding some reason to throw Donald Trump in prison. They impeached him twice. Now the Attorney General, who’d be on the Supreme Court but for Trump, has joined the fun to throw him in prison.
If you really do want to tear the country up, you’d do exactly that.
Otherwise, you’d ignore him.
An incredibly short-sighted remark in view of the potential damage the former President might do, depending on the contents of those documents, and his intentions thereupon.
But let’s skip that; it’s too obvious.
Erickson speaks of trust:
Merrick Garland and the Democrats are doing everything they can to get the man re-elected in their never-ending quest to find some way to throw the man in jail.
Let him go. Move on. Ignore him. You are right now finding some reason why you cannot in the name of justice, defending democracy, and the rule of law.
With each excuse, you are undermining all of the above.
This nation is running low on an indispensable ingredient of a successful society: trust, in institutions and one another. This week was another subtraction. Garland has said about the Justice Department, “We will and we must speak through our work.” Actually, his political duty is to explain and justify his work more thoroughly than he did in his minimalist statement Thursday afternoon. [George Will, I’m sure, but uncredited.]
Yes, this is about trust. Will and Erickson need to understand that trust comes with underpinnings. That a breach of trust must come with consequences.
Without those consequences, public and, yes, humiliating for both perpetrators and their allies, our society will die from lack of trust. This is why grifters are considered to be evil. This is why Erickson and Will are wrong.
But Erickson is terrified that the ideology around which he’s built his life, the Conservative Movement as some proponents call it, is about to burn to the ground. While I’m sure some will attempt to characterize Trump as an interloper, an aberration, and Erickson will be among them, the truth of the matter is that he was enthusiastically accepted by much of the base of the Republicans and the conservatives, and those that did leave were swiftly replaced by extremists holding dubious beliefs, or, worse, only the belief that they wanted and deserved power.
Trump is the toxic product of a broken ideology, an ideology that holds precepts foreign to American sensibilities, and Erickson has based his life on this ideology.
It’s not surprising that he’s dismayed, that he’s defending a possible traitor to the nation.
But he speaks of trust, so let’s speak of trust.
The peaceful transfer of power, one of the most important foundations of American government and society, is built on trust. We trust each other to transfer power peacefully, we trust the courts to fairly and lawfully arbitrate electoral disputes, we trust that our political opponents have our best interests at heart, and the dispute is over methods, not goals.
We trust each other not to instigate anti-government riots based on fits of pique at having lost.
So now we’re faced with a political movement – that’s yours, Erickson – that has produced a leader that has breached norms and laws, been credibly impeached, has a host of other negative, but irrelevant here, attributes, and has lost the trust of much of the American electorate, an electorate that seems to believe that crimes were, indeed, committed. An anti-government riot was instigated, and not only are there still high Republican officials bloviating their “doubts” about the 2020 election, but now Republican candidates who have lost in the primaries – let me repeat that, in the primaries – are shrieking that they were robbed.
Robbed by their own clubmates, as it were.
To speak so reverently of trust when you’re part of a Conservative Movement that will have none of it is really a bit of a sanctimonious joke.
And the worst part? Erickson’s right, and yet he’s not willing to back it up. Trust is the bedrock of this nation, and yet he continues to defend, and be part of, the untrustworthy Conservative Movement, an ideology that is based on an all-consuming selfishness, an arrogant adherence to religious kant over rationality and debate that renders opponents into creatures allied to the Devil.
Hard to trust those who you’ve consigned to the care of satanic forces.
Erickson calls for trust of the untrustable. His own broken argument destroys his desired conclusion, that his Conservative Movement escape close scrutiny.
And, under such scrutiny, the Movement turns out to be packed with fourth-raters and those who’ve forsaken reason for religious kant dispensed by grifters and power-seekers, who deny reason and reality itself in preference to those things that bring them power, wealth, and even just reassurance.
It’s an ugly, ugly disaster, a toxic pit of hellish personal characteristics.
Garland screwed up? PLEASE. He did the right thing, and the United States will be better for it.
Ooops, forgot: And that post title? Here’s Erickson, one more time:
And the fact that some of you will scream about this and insist it was all legitimate and I’m a partisan for saying otherwise actually makes my point for me. You’re too broken to be rationale on this. Your hatred has made you what you hate. You need to let it go, forgive, and move on.
Yeah, he actually went there. Arrogance supreme. Which may be America’s greatest curse these days.
