There was a time, not so long ago, when people on this site prided ourselves on being what we called “reality-based.”
While most diaries and commentary are exactly that, it seems to me that overall the site has lost some of its reality-based mojo of late.
Please do not take this as a personal criticism of anyone in particular. It is intended to be more of an observation, in the hopes that we progressive Democrats can adjust our perspective in order to better meet real-life forces that we can expect to encounter in future elections.
Let me start with a qualifier: Yes, there is a tendency by all of us human beings to focus on those things that tend to validate our preconceived notions and opinions. That’s not something that’s unique or even more preponderant on this site than anywhere else or among liberals, conservatives or independents. But increasingly there seem to be large numbers of people who tend to cocoon themselves inside the particular political bubble of their choice.
Having said that, it seems to me that there is an increasing trend on this site toward more cocooning and less of a tendency to put things into an objective, reality-based perspective.
So exactly what is it that raises this topic in my mind?
There are two things: The results of last year’s election and the assumption by many here that Donald J. Trump will be impeached.
Lets look at the matter of last fall’s election results first. Many people, myself included, were so stunned with the results that it took many months to even begin to deal with it. In hindsight, the thing that was most disheartening was how wrong my assumptions were. Wrong to assume that just because we had finally elected our first president of color that that would mean we had made permanent,dramatic strides in terms of race relations in this country. We did make strides, but they may have been exaggerated in our own minds. In hindsight, the seething undercurrent of resentment by others to the fact that we had elected our first African-American president should not have come as such a big a surprise as it was.
Many folks, myself included, also seemed to have adopted a perspective that there was no way that this country could possibly elect a person like Donald Trump as president, regardless of your views on race. He was obviously unfit and unqualified (at least to many of us).
Which brings us to today. After reading for months and months many comments claiming that it is virtually inevitable that Donald Trump will be impeached, something has always stuck in my craw when reading that. As it turns out what has really bothered me is how so many people continue to say that even though it seems highly unlikely that an impeachment scenario will actually play out.
Yet the ongoing narrative (i.e. wishful thinking) that our long national nightmare will somehow be over soon when the Knight in Shining Armor known as impeachment comes along to save us all...continues.
To those who insist that it’s inevitable, there is probably no way to convince you otherwise. However, for those who haven’t taken a step back and applied some critical thinking to that idea yet, let me ask you to do so for a few minutes.
First of all, no Republican controlled Congress has ever enacted articles of impeachment against a fellow Republican. Never. Many people harken back to analogies to Watergate. However, that is a very poor comparison to today’s political climate. First of all, Democrats were in control of both houses of Congress and the investigations into Watergate. And, yes, while there ended up being a few Republicans who finally sided with Democrats in finally getting around to supporting impeachment, it was a long time time coming and very few Republicans actually really did so (Nixon resigned before most had publicly turned against him).
Today, we have perhaps the most partisan Republican controlled Congress in American history. There is not one single Republican leader in either house who has demonstrated to me any degree of independence from their party when it comes to holding their fellow Republicans accountable. Not one. In fact, virtually every single Republican in the House and Senate can almost always be counted on by their fellow Republicans to support the party line with extremely few exceptions (perhaps one or two votes in the past few years of any note by perhaps one or two Republicans). It seems to me that it is not in the nature of any of today’s elected Republicans to enjoin the drastic step of actually voting to impeach a fellow Republican. Not one.
An argument encountered recently by me is that Republicans will support impeachment if it came down to a matter of their political survival. While that line of reason holds some degree of logic to it, in the sense that politicians and especially today’s hyper-partisan Republicans are self-centered by nature, there is no scenario that can be seen by me where any Republican office holder would use support of impeachment as the best route to their political survival. First of all, every single voting district in this country has rabid Trumpistas, most of whom are either Republicans or conservative independents who tend to vote Republican. So, there is no scenario that comes to my mind where it would be best for any Republican to vote to impeach Trump for their own political survival. Quite the contrary. There is a scenario whereby many Republicans publicly object strongly in their rhetoric with things that Trump and his administration may have done. But that’s a far cry from supporting impeachment.
This diary’s primary focus has been on just two main examples of how this community seems to be drifting from our original purpose of being reality based. There are other examples too, not the least of which is the proliferation of out-and-out falsely predicated diaries that are sometimes up-rated, once again, with no critical thinking given; not to mention those annoying robot diaries posted on this and other sites (bots) by people trying to sell stuff or with some altogether different agenda than the purpose of this site.
It seems to me that we progressive Democrats need to be more vigilant in terms of taking an objective view to try to see things as they are rather than how we would like them to be.
Reality is our friend. It may not seem like it when we look at the results of last November’s elections and we see the reality of Donald J. Trump sitting in the White House, Republicans in control of both houses of Congress and the appointment of radical right-wing extremists to the Supreme court and other federal positions.
How is reality our friend when you look at all that?
Because only by looking at things realistically will we be able to successfully combat all that and change the political landscape. Hopeful wishing and dreaming will not do it. That has failed in the past and will continue to do so in the future should we proceed to ignore reality and look at things only the way things we want them to be instead of the way they are.
Only when we fully grasp the reality of the situation in this country will we be fully prepared to address the challenges we face to our progressive achievements and future progressive advancements.
(This diary doesn’t even go into the whole matter of whether we would actually even be better off with the removal of Trump by impeachment. That’s a whole other topic altogether when you consider that he would be replaced by an even more radical, right-wing extremist by the name of Mike Pence, whose personal style would, to many people, look comforting and competent by comparison to Trump. We’ll leave that subject for another time).