I don't think I've ever reprinted this, but today it seemed suitable to publish a chunk of it. It takes the form of an Open Letter to Senator John McCain, and I wrote it almost exactly 16 years ago today. Or, in elaborate-excuse-making-years, 11 years before any Never Trumper bothered to noticed that their Republican Party was full of Republicans and that the crackpot alarmist Left had actually been right about the Right all along.
Some of the specifics I mention may have acquired the slight sepia tone of a time gone by, but I ask you to read the descriptions the Republican party as I saw it then back then, during my earliest days as a blogger, in the depths of the Bush Years -- who the base really was, what they really believed and what really motivated them -- and compare that with the Republican party you see all around you today. The Republican party which virtually every Never Trumper still swears sprang into spontaneous existence sometime in the spring of 2016 and for which they swear they bear absolutely zero responsibility.
From May 15, 2005:
...I used to like McCain. I used to feel kinda sorry for him, but since he made the calculation that the road to the White House passes tongue-first through George Bush’s pyloric valve – the very same draft-dodging drunk son of Petroleum Privilege who made his political bones by taking giant shits on genuine war heroes and starting a Faith-and-Lie Based war – any reservoir of esteem that I may have had for McCain has dried up.
No longer a “maverick”, Bush has done what no VC prison could do: bend McCain to the will of his enemy and render him meekly and cravenly obedient.
Consider, Senator:
1. We are two countries, not one. We are us-and-them, and politics is a zero-sum game, and you and the rest of the Quisling Middle have to face who "they" are.
2. The Bush Administration has done every evil, divisive, catastrophically stupid thing we warned you he would do. You watched Mr. Uniter-Not-Divider implement a reckless, ultra rightwing agenda with a bloody vengeance, and yet even now tell yourselves that he can't possibly, really mean it. That he's not really completely nuts and that a legacy of "loony Jesus freak" would not play well around the Bush family table come next Thanksgiving. Who in the world are you trying to convince, Senator?
3. To understand who your Party really is Senator, understand that around 41% of this country still believes that Saddam Hussein planned the 9/11 attacks. That the hunting and impeachment of Bill Clinton was perfectly legitimate because he was a bad man. When you ask them why, they're maybe a little embarrassed to admit their ignorance and bigotry right up front, so they'll tell you that Clinton lied. When you point out to them the dozens of lies that Bush and Cheney have told -- without any doubt, mind you -- it’s right there on tape -- and they start at you blankly, or tell you it's not the same thing, or tell you that even Moses has flaws but the Lord was with him.
4. To understand that, when Tom DeLay says that the massacre at Columbine was because students were taught the theory evolution in school, you can bet your immortal soul that around, oh, let's say 41% of your fellow citizens nod their heads in agreement.
5. So do you get it? At all? These people are stupid and bigoted and proud of it. The good old days of "All in the Family" when you could chide or mock or shame the hateful and the ignorant into behaving better are over. The much older days -- the antebellum days -- of openly preaching hatred from pulpits are back. And your party does not shun this diseased thinking, they cultivate it. They depend on it.
6. The Democrats lost by a couple of hundred thousand votes, give or take. Lost by two Chicago wards, give or take. Not smashed or driven to extinction, just beaten by a tiny fraction of votes in a few places.
7. So 41% of the people in the country are basically beyond redemption. They are your solid Republican base. They live in an Orwellian/Fundamentalist bell jar where all they hear are Rush and Sean, all they watch is Fox or the 700 Club. They are as propagandized as any Muskovite living under Stalin and they believe that if they even think a single, unorthodox. un-Republican thought they will burn in a Lake of Fire forever. Which, I must admit, is a very effective incentive system. Sure we had "Vote or Die" but you have "Vote Republican or Burn in Hell For All Eternity You Fucking Faggot-loving, American-hating Traitor." And you, Senator, now side with this hateful mob every time.
8. You live by the sword, Senator, and die by the sword. These people are the enemies of the country you say you love. The enemies of everything you believe in. They are the enemies of the freedom you once fought for so bravely, and now you bow and scrape and dance for the amusement of people who you have to know in your heart stand foursquare against every value you cherish.
And in the end, that it the uniquely nauseating thing about your case Senator McCain: You, who spent several years in VERY intimate contact with the minions of the kind of people who now control your party.
Single-minded extremists who have no compunction using any means necessary to advance their cause. Who view ideological purity as the highest virtue, and compromise as a counterrevolutionary sin.
Who believe they are immune to the forces of history; who believe that history itself can be transcended by a big enough bulldozer and enough spilled blood.
Who reek or open contempt for rules and reason: who demand that their mad dogma trumps nature, democracy and that if monsters flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon, it was because of fags and feminists and God lifting his “veil of protection” over our nation.
Who believe liberal judges are worse that terrorists.
Who believe that anyone who stands against them in the slightest is either a fool to be “re-educated” or “converted”, or a heretic to be obliterated.
In the moment of crisis, Senator, you stand with them and against all that you once said you held most dear. Of your own volition, you stand neck-deep in a river of profoundly vile shit, Senator, and holding your petticoats up at this late date and hoping that you won’t get spattered simply makes you look stupid as well as utterly unprincipled.
And, since you seem to have no principles left, I must assume in the end it’s the perks that won you over and keep you obediently stooging for your county’s enemies. You know, the health benefits. The parking.
I guess the buffet in the Senate commissary is better than the luncheon menu at the Hanoi Hilton.
End of re-post.
Which is why, every day in every way we can, we...
4 comments:
Thirty years ago, Frank Luntz and Newt Gingrich taught Republicans how to talk about Democrats the way the Nazis talked about the Jews. Which Republican voters were already learning from Rush Limbaugh, not just about Democrats but about Democratic voters.
And, here we are.
And in the face of all that - right up until - and even after his death, he got a pass from most of the American people.
And that proves, once again, that democracy in America is screwed.
Please create a mobile version of your website; it’s hard to read this on my phone. Thanks!
It might be instructive to indicate which of those points would apply to his vice president's daughter Liz. She seems to be getting some good press for admitting Donnie was a liar and a seditionist. But fundamentally when it comes to rich vs. the rest of us or corporations vs the environment etc. she's as bad as he is.
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