Yesterday I posted this comment and was asked to put it in a diary and expand upon it:
[Republican politicians, conservative pundits, opinion-makers and opinion-havers] spent eight years characterizing absolutely everything the President did, said, or had going on around him, no matter how benign or routine, from policy “czars” to executive orders to coffee salutes to tan suits, as an outrageous, unprecedented, profoundly threatening, panic-inducing crisis. Eight years creating controversy over things they knew were not controversial; eight years feigning outrage over things they knew were not outrageous; eight years putting their audience in a constant, unrelenting state of panic.
As a result, they anesthetized themselves to anything genuinely or legitimately controversial or outrageous.
Others have written about this too, so I can’t take full credit for the idea, but it was hard not to notice going back to the earliest days of the Obama administration that Republicans and their various propagandists were irresponsibly ginning up controversy and outrage and encouraging their audience to panic over things they themselves had ignored, been fine with, or even openly advocated, during the Bush presidency — i.e., that they knew were neither controversial nor outrageous, and certainly not cause for panic.
One quick example: the ten-second sound clip of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying, purportedly about the Affordable Care Act, that “We need to pass it to know what’s in it,” or words to that effect. OMG!! Democrats passed Obamacare without knowing what’s in it! Outrage! PANIC!!! What she was saying was, the Senate had to pass its version before the House could get a look at it and then start the reconciliation process. In other words, she was describing how the legislative process works and has always worked; there was absolutely nothing controversial or outrageous about that; about what she said, or what she meant by it. And yet….
I could go on and on about all the fake “controversies” and “scandals” — facts minus context plus wishful thinking — that had the GOP’s fan base in a perpetual and relentless state of panic — and I use that word quite deliberately — from January 20, 2009 through November 8, 2016. I can’t count the number of times I pointed out many times in various places how utterly and epically irresponsible it was of those politicians and pundits to tell their fans not only that there was a reason to panic but that they actually should panic; not merely be concerned or upset or outraged or even afraid but full-blown, abject, inconsolable panic; the feeling that they and everything they knew, loved and cared about was under constant, mortal, imminent threat.
See, ordinarily it is the job of our leaders to assuage fears, especially irrational fears; to tell people not to panic when there’s no reason to panic (and even, occasionally, when there is). It’s their job, and the job of the “news” media, to keep the public informed and thus grounded in reality; if the public is panicking for no good reason, they have a duty, as the Preamble to the Constitution puts it, to “ensure domestic tranquility.” Or if you prefer, “Keep Calm, and Carry On.”
When Obama became President, the Republican Party and its media enablers decided to do the precise opposite; to create controversy and feign outrage over absolutely everything, even the most benign and routine matters, and behavior that was entirely congruent and consistent with their own. The end result was a population of tens of millions going about every day in a constant state of panic, angered and outraged and threatened by everything they saw and heard and, ultimately, unable to distinguish genuine controversy, real threats, or the truly outrageous, from things that only occurred in Republican fan fiction.
Which brings us, of course, to Grand Nagus Drumpf.
Volumes have been written and will be written over how and why one of Our Two Great Political Parties™ nominated and elected a self-evidently unqualified, vulgar, ignorant, demented racist gangster to be President of the United States, and more particularly, how their voters could ignore all of the genuine controversy and justifiable outrage over him that, in any other year or era, would have not only disqualified any other candidate but cast him or her out of politics forever. To be perfectly blunt, he may very well be the shittiest human being on the planet, but they nominated and elected him anyway. Nothing he’s done as President since then has changed any of that.
It’s almost pointless to list all of the things about Barack Obama and his presidency — most of which were fictitious — that Republicans and their fans were outraged by, compared to all of the things about the Grand Nagus and his regime that they’re not outraged by. I’m frankly sick of the cynical political game of “Where’s your outrage over [X]?” but I’ve been watching this movie for 30 years and seen that pendulum swing back and forth four times. I figured out a long time ago that Republicans and their fans don’t actually care one whit about whatever affront to Freedom and Liberty® they’re grousing about on the Sunday shows during Democratic administrations.
But what happened during the Obama years was the GOP and its allies taking that kind of cynicism to a whole new level of cognitive dissonance, driving their base past peak outrage to the point where if everything is an outrage, then nothing is; if everything is controversial, then nothing is. They saw Obama — not the man himself, but the character in Republican fan fiction — win two national elections despite being a Kenyan Muslim socialist authoritarian dictator who hates America, made the IRS target conservative groups, had czars, used executive orders to do stuff, and also did Solyndra and Fast & Furious which were really bad things too. As outraged and panicked as they were by everything they knew Obama was and did, it seemed that no one else was (thanks, Lamestream Media), and he still won, twice, and was never driven from office in disgrace, which he should have been if half of what they “knew” was true.
Trump, then, is a result of the Republican base having lost their ability to distinguish the benign and routine from the controversial and outrageous; to distinguish a genuine villain from an imaginary one. They were in a state of panic for 8 years and yet their fears never came to fruition; things Republicans always say will certainly happen if we elect a Democrat have a way of never actually happening. If someone as depraved and wicked as Obama (again, the comic-book character, not the man) could get elected, be president, and not have the world come crashing down, why not a vulgar, ignorant, demented racist gangster with no governing, public-service, military, legal or diplomatic experience? Why not replace one comic-book character with another?
The midterms may have been a sign that this fever may be breaking, but this week’s cynical and disingenuous call for “bipartisanship” by the odious creature that currently holds the title of “Senate Majority Leader” suggests otherwise. Time will tell.