Oft times, I share a big read from another's online article because of how good and impactful that article is.
This time, I'm pointing y'all if you haven't read it already to Mark Leibovich's article in The Atlantic titled "The Most Pathetic Men In America." The introductory artwork to the article ought to clue you right away to whom he's accusing (it is paywalled):
I will admit I never loved the Trump story. This sometimes surprises people. I have been covering Washington for many years; I’ve been accused of being a “keen observer” of the capital. Surely, I must have been thrilled to have such a ridiculous piece of work at the center of it all, right?
Well, no. I never found Donald Trump to be remotely captivating as a stand-alone figure. He’d been around forever and his political act was largely derivative. His promise to “drain the swamp” was treated as some genius coinage, though in fact the platitude had been worn out for decades by both parties. Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” in 2006, just as the Reagan-Bush campaign had vowed to “Make America Great Again” in 1980.
Trump said and did obviously awful and dangerous things—racist and cruel and achingly dumb and downright evil things. But on top of that, he is a uniquely tiresome individual, easily the sorest loser, the most prodigious liar, and the most interminable victim ever to occupy the White House. He is, quite possibly, the biggest crybaby ever to toddle across history’s stage, from his inaugural-crowd hemorrhage on day one right down to his bitter, ketchup-flinging end. Seriously, what public figure in the history of the world comes close? I’m genuinely asking...
Better objects of our scrutiny—and far more compelling to me—are the slavishly devoted Republicans whom Trump drew to his side. It’s been said before, but can never be emphasized enough: Without the complicity of the Republican Party, Donald Trump would be just a glorified geriatric Fox-watching golfer. I’ve interviewed scores of these collaborators, trying to understand why they did what they did and how they could live with it. These were the McCarthys and the Grahams and all the other busy parasitic suck-ups who made the Trump era work for them, who humored and indulged him all the way down to the last, exhausted strains of American democracy...
It's been noted elsewhere and here at this blog that trump simply wouldn't have gotten as far as he had if only the Republican Party leadership had enough spine and enough self-respect to kick him to the curb before the first round of 2016 primaries took place. They could have arguably denied him a spot on the ballot on ethical concerns alone (not just his failed businesses - he was facing fraud charges over his "Trump University" when the primaries began! - but also ongoing complaints of sexual misconduct), his refusal to accept certain guidelines and requirements demanded of other candidates, anything.
But the GOP failed to stop him. They feared trump's threat to run an independent campaign much like Ross Perot in 1992 would split the Far Right vote and guarantee a Hillary Clinton win. trump had them in a terrible Catch-22. The Republicans dreaded trump's corruption but outright hated the possibility Hillary could become President: Not out of any fear Hillary would wreck the nation, but that Hillary out of basic competence would prove that all the hathos and fearmongering about her was a big lie.
So the Republicans let trump play. Worse, the party leadership indulged trump in 2016, allowing him to bully his way across the debate stages and drag the Republican brand into a toxic mud pit of open racism and ignorance.
But back to Leibovich:
What would you do to stay relevant? That’s always been a definitional question for D.C.’s prime movers, especially the super-thirsty likes of McCarthy and Graham. If they’d never stooped this low before, maybe it’s just because no one ever asked them to...
Early on, when wary Republicans were still publicly dreading where the Trump experiment might lead, you’d hear flashes of concern over how it—or they—might be adjudicated by those ever-hovering future historians. As his own presidential campaign was ending in 2016, Marco Rubio predicted that there would one day be a “reckoning” inside the GOP. “You mark my words, there will be prominent people in American politics who will spend years explaining to people how they fell into this,” Rubio told The New York Times (Update: Rubio cleaned up his act, became a stalwart Trump patron, and we’re still waiting on that reckoning.)...
Two decades on and many rungs up the org chart, McCarthy can be sensitive to perceptions that he is a lightweight whose career trajectory is owed purely to his Olympian brownnosing and backslapping capabilities. “I like that reputation,” McCarthy claimed to me, not persuasively, “because it helps people underestimate me.” McCarthy had come close to becoming speaker before, in 2015, but a Benghazi-related gaffe knocked him out of the running. Now the ultimate job is again within reach. Blinders on. Legacies are for losers. McCarthy learned from the master.
“My legacy doesn’t matter,” Trump told his longtime aide Hope Hicks a few days after the 2020 election, according to an account in Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. “If I lose, that will be my legacy.” This became the essential ethos of Republican nihilism. By lashing themselves so tightly to Trump, Republicans could act as if the president’s impunity and shamelessness extended to them. His strut of cavalier disregard became their own...
trump not only bought the souls of most leading Republicans who all proved to be hollow ambitious vessels, he bought them cheap.
trump defeated the Republican Party when he became so openly racist and sexist that the Far Right voter base rallied to him like no other, compelling these ambitious hollow Republican officials to bend the knee to their own mobs. It's been said before: trump gave the Far Right base license to be rude, violent, and racist, and they will worship him forever for it.
And that Far Right base will go to war for trump because there's nothing left to Republican ideology but cruelty, greed, and power.
Read all of Leibovich's article (again, paywalled), to see in full just how far gone the Republicans have fallen.
And then for the LOVE OF GOD never vote Republican again.
1 comment:
Just as Fergus gave the Pig People what they wanted when no other candidate would: "Your ignorance is noble and your bigotry is patriotic"; when they all slavishly flocked to him as devoted as any random junky to their main source, he all of the sudden had something that the Republican party was every bit as desperate for: a chance at winning the presidency. W won it in '04, but before that it was his daddy in '88, and the demographic trends weren't getting any more favorable for them. So McCarthy and Graham and the rest of the lot? There's your reckoning: they finally had to face up to the fact that the Republican base was a shitpile of bigots and imbeciles who had been deliberately courted by the Republican establishment for decades, and that they would no longer sit down and shut up between elections. That is and will be Fergus' legacy: he's the anti-pied piper who led the Pig People out of the closet and into the public square and told them to freak freely.
Those spineless Republicans now see that as their only path to power, and they will (obviously now) do anything for power.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
Post a Comment