Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For March 3, 2021

 Feb 24

To R. Scott Clark and his 2 sentence blogpost claiming that Deconstructionists are waging war with God and will pay the consequences. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Simple declarations employing fear-mongering is a preferred tool of authoritarians. Here there is not even the slightest attempt to rationally engage in a discussion on Deconstruction. Rather, we are expected to flee in horror from Deconstruction because Clark said so.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 2

To Pat Buchanan and his article that speculates on whether Trump will be King (a.k.a., ‘President’) again. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.

The title of the article leaves in doubt whether the person choosing that title truly understands the office of the Presidency. Trump himself seemed not to understand the office itself since he accused everyone who disagreed with him, especially people from the other two branches of government as having significant character flaws.

Buchanan himself doesn't seem to have all of his facts correct. He seems to have forgotten how Trump had bragged about his supporters remaining loyal even if he shot someone in the middle of NYC.

While Buchanan claims that there was endless immigration across our southern border, not only did Obama have cages constructed to hold immigrant children, he had deported more people than any previous President (see  https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-deportation-policy-numbers/story?id=41715661 ).

Yes, Trump cut regulations and taxes and thus unemployment went down. But we should note that unemployment was continuing to go down under Trump because it had been going down under Obama. We should also note that Trump’s cuts in taxes, along with his spike in military spending, created a spike in the deficit.  And why Trump didn't order the significant updating of infrastructure under a good economy is unknown but it produced a lost opportunity. Trump's cuts in regulations allowed for more toxins to enter the environment as well as continued to increase the future effects of global climate change.

The media's treatment of Trump often revolved around playing back what Trump had previously said. Trump responded to media criticism just like any authoritarian responds to criticism: with insults and accusations.  Trump's calling the MSM the ‘enemy of the people’ was dictator’s response which helped insulated his followers from facts and thus contributed to creating the cult like following that exists today. That cult following has been criticized by Senator Sasse (Neb) as well as arch conservative columnist George Will with Will leaving the Republican Party until the cult is gone. In fact, traditional Republicans including some former officeholders are thinking about starting a new political party.

And while Buchanan reports that only 6 Republican Senators voted to convict him during the latest impeachment, it was actually 7. And it isn't difficult to see why the impeachment was filed. For even before the election, Trump claimed that the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged. Such expectations along with insulating his followers from outside news greatly contributed to the violent insurrection of January 6.

None of the above includes Trump negligent post April handling of the pandemic which up until that time, Trump’s response to the pandemic received mixed grades.

There are many more negative things that could be reported on Trump. But what is apparent here is that Buchanan found his penchant for authoritarian leaders well matched with Trump. And is to that extent that Buchanan himself seems to have tenuous hold on political realities.

Trump's Political Game Show: Principles And Consequences

When I was a kid, I remember watching the TV game show, Truth Or Consequences. In that show, a few of the members of the audience would become contestants who were then set up to perform some kind of stunt or participate in a contest. Sometimes the setup would include being asked a trick question before having to perform stunts. If they correctly answered the question, they would have provided the truth rather than having to experience the consequences of participating in a stunt or contest. The truth never seemed to be experienced (click here for an example).

Trump's presidency has created its own version of this game show. Only instead of offering a choice between telling the truth or suffering the consequences, we are told that if we follow our principles when it comes to limiting Trump's power, we will suffer the consequences.

Trump's power is currently being threatened in two ways: the possibility of impeachment, and the midterm elections. Both Trump and Giuliani have issued dire warnings as to what will happen should Trump be impeached. While Giuliani warns of a populist revolt, Trump prophesies that the US economy will collapse (click here and there). Nevermind that impeachment is called for when there is significant evidence that the President has violated the people's trust. What Trump and Giuliani are telling us is that the consequences of following our principles would be too great to bear.

Likewise, Trump has warned America that violence will be used to undo what his presidency has accomplished if the midterm elections give control of Congress over to the Democrats (click here). So again, if the election, which consists of Americans voting for those they believe best represent them, results in electing a majority of Democrats to the Senate and/or the House, dire consequences will be experienced.

Trump's game of principles and consequences is a call to his base to focus on being pragmatic to the point of forgetting principles. That is not too different from Dick Cheney's call to get into the tactical gutter with terrorist combatants who do not follow international law. The message from both has been that the world is too dangerous for those who are good to live by their principles. And that description of the world is perhaps too easily accepted by some who felt that their principles were getting in the way of what they want to do in the first place.

But in calling us to be pragmatic rather than principled, Trump and his team are calling for us to have a simplistic view of the world. Those who are different are evil and so we are told that we must be governed by practicality provided that Trump and his team are the ones who define what is practical. And since much of Trump's base consists of many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians, Trump's call to being simplistic is not a difficult message to sell. After all, many of us religiously conservative Christians want to believe in a simplistic, black-white world. Many of us fear complexity because that means that we could be both sincere and wrong. Many of us prefer to believe in a world where our sincerity is the only guide we need when making choices. To believe otherwise is to admit that we have to pay more attention to this world than we care to.

Of course the irony of Trump's message to his base is that his base pride themselves on living by their principles. It is one of their characteristics that allows them to think of themselves as being different from, and even better than, the rest of the world. But in forsaking their principles because they don't live in some utopia, those from Trump's base prove that they are no different from the rest of the world that they so easily look down on.