Dear Koch Boys

Dear Koch Boys:

I don’t mean to be a nuisance but I’m trying to figure out some things. I believe there is no lost love with y’all and Trump. I think you have criticized, decried and berated him at times probably because he is a loose cannon and you are obsessive control freaks with not-so-delusional ideas of grandeur and omnipotence. In the event, though, Trump, being a vacuous piece of garbage and an idiot, has had to rely for help on many of the private institutions you have financially favored. He passed a massive tax cut while failing to curtail spending, a mixed bag for you but a Republican certainty.

Trump has deregulated everything he could get his hands on, deprofessionalized and gutted the Civil Service and promoted hacks everywhere, again standard Republican fare. His ascent would have been impossible without several decades of your groundwork. You reduced a sizeable share of the American electorate to sheep and imbeciles not only incapable of seeing the truth but inoculated against it and smitten with a defensive web of lies. They also have a taste for aggression--killer sheep. Very clever. Americans didn't want what you were peddling so you concocted an enormous deceit.

Then Trump stole your sheep. Trump appealed more primitively to all the hatreds you nurtured. Those resentments were based on imaginary threats and made-up causes anyway, of governmental overreach and mobs of marauding, freeloading, morally inferior and unfit citizens seeking solace in the nanny-state. How do you feel about all of this now? It must be ambivalent. You have wanted to destroy the government but Trump might destroy more than that, perhaps threatening your wealth and revenue streams. And what happens if Trump inadvertently triggers a reaction against you?

Your influence might wane forever. You think you are so invulnerable and then Trump comes along but the seeds of the insanity were planted by you. When reality and truth come unmoored who can control it? Did you really think you could? You have created this unbelievable mess and wrecked a nation’s character. It is both what you intended and not. Ambivalence must be the answer, to how you feel, but I will hope to hear from you to resolve my remaining doubts and uncertainty about your attitude to this mutant strain of conservatism escaped from your libertarian lab.

That infectious pseudo-philosophy of hate is stalking the wastelands of conservative thought, making inroads in its highest reaches, producing compulsion and enslavement. Corpses cover the ground. There were never any real principles there, so, there is no resistance. Trump rules now, but there is evidence of an impending self-destruct. We will see.

I await your response. And, take heart. Your sheep are out there still, in reality neglected and abused by Trump until he needs them again, though thrown an occasional bone. Perhaps you can get them back. They are ready to follow someone off a cliff, meanwhile grazing democracy out of existence. 

Sincerely, and with Kind Regards,

James M Flanagan