Watch “conservatives” scramble around trying to save face and convince the world they stand for anything other than living like pigs in the age of Trump. There was the “fiscal,” small government ploy, which a few of them still cite to try to separate themselves from the “social” conservatives, as though it makes any sense at all when they spend money like water on the military and the surveillance state and still cut taxes (mostly on the rich) thereby producing inconceivable deficits and bankrupting the government.
There’s the “Democrats are worse” faction who fail to mention Democrats haven’t had their way for forty years or since Republicans decided bullying their adversaries, subterfuge and hostage-taking, as in shuttering the government in the budget wars and other forms of intimidation, were appropriate tactics. What a gig! They insist on controlling everything but deny any responsibility for the outcomes. The occasional left-wing victory, like Obamacare, which was still crippled by them and a compromise, makes them livid and completely insane.
It becomes an obsession—a touchstone and focus for every irrational argument and unsupported assertion. Their culturally superior, literate, philosophical wing, like Andrew Sullivan and P. J. O’Rourke, call themselves “Burkean” alluding to vague, anti-progressive norms that fetishize an idealized state that never existed while plucking supposed nuggets of goodness from the huge sewage treatment apparatus surrounding Trump. They only want intelligent, thoughtful social evolution, I suppose. Where is that in Trump?
Where is it in his tsunami of incompetence and insults and in his extravaganza of decadence, debasement and decay? I give up. There is no dignity or decency among them, only a torrent of lies, so they forfeit the presumption of integrity. They look out for themselves while our institutions burn.
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