[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
Last week Digby of Hullabaloo noted yet again the mind-boggling chutzpah and arrogance of President Trump, the truly sociopathic psychology required to blatantly lie about the screamingly obvious extortion over Ukraine and insist the whole deal was about fighting corruption.
Every day honest Americans have to start their day knowing the President is a rank childish liar, in many dimensions it is a trial. The gross mental unfitness of President Trump is not a new story, but there was something in this particular scenario outlined by Digby that stayed with me in not-a-good way, how in the name of Susan B Anthony could this ever work, what’s truly wrong here?
So I put on a mental hazmat suit and attempted walking through it from the perspective of President Trump. I’m a career criminal and liar but the idiots around never comprehend and I always get away with it, so I’m going to criminally extort Ukraine to cheat election 2020, just like I cheated election 2016 with Russia.
Now I’m caught, but I’ll just lie about it and perversely project the opposite or the criminal act upon my opponents, it’s fun to see them turn purple and degrade their psychology. Even if this is one of those sticky lies that won’t go away I’ll just make up any convenient fantasy within the story that rips it to the libs again and it will work, I’ll walk.
It was that precise last part of the horror story that really bothered me and made me pause, the absolute breakdown of the mental state of the President of the United States to a stinking criminal sewer is bad enough, but the complete instant confidence to create a comfortable fantasy that would be endlessly blared forth by Fox News, talk radio and conservative media was even worse.
The perversion and degradation of Fox News and conservative media is not a new story either, but with the arrival of a criminal fascist like Trump it’s frightening and horribly depressing to see them turn into classic propaganda mechanisms for the very worst that be expressed in human political terms. Coupled with the media enabling is the even more depressing and dismaying—if that were possible—is the inevitable political enabling that would have to be present for this to happen.
One can be dismayed and disgusted at the minds in conservative media—Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, Oliver North—but their descent into rank propaganda to enable fascist criminals isn’t particularly surprising, their shining hatred of liberalism would naturally lead to a path of distortion and lying.
But the political minds in the Republican Party enabling all this, oh my god just another knifing fascist fact in all this horror show, how could this have happened? These American souls were brought up by good earnest parents, they went to great schools and often have real public service records.
They didn’t just set up their checking routing number when they signed up, they swore on a bible to protect the country and the constitution, all that parenting, education, public service, personal reputations to the oath, all of it gone and slammed into the sewer for a fascist criminal.
Horrifying to see the President of the United States as a lying criminal every day, but it’s even worse to see all these individuals who were good honest American public servants turned themselves into groveling liars on a dime, god one would not think it would be possible without watching it in real time.
One of the best to keep pointing this out to enabling Republicans is Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, even if it’s somehow possible to escape the catastrophe of Trump in the present this course of enabling can only mean long-term disaster. The record of acceptance and enabling to criminal fascism has no escape, none, but it’s the damage to your mind and soul that really matters, don’t do this, it can’t be necessary.
Yet in just another surreal day in America Republican Senators seem poised to somehow throw it all away—the history of American Democracy, adherence to the rule of law, adherence to family and ethics, decency and fairness, all of it gone so they can grovel to Trump and the Republican base, god what a sick depressing sight.
Our country and political system was set up to stop a catastrophe like Trump, Republican Senators, there’s still a chance you won’t let yourselves and the country down.