Your Lincoln Project Quote of the Day

See if you can spot the critical world-building work that is being done in this exchange between Lincoln Lads co-founder Reed Galen and Lincoln Project Senior Advisor Tara Setmayer.

Galen   Tara, why is it our friends on the Democratic side of the aisle can't see the threat for what it is?  And maybe not even just the Democrats but individual Americans?  What is it?  Are we just Pollyannas?  Are we Cassandras?  What is it that we see and when we hear these things, that so many alarm bells go off?  And what do we as an organization and individuals need to be doing to make it clearer to folks what's happening?

Setmayer:  I don't know why it's so hard for others to see what we see.  Y'know, the immediacy of this threat.  Maybe it's because they're in denial.  It's not as "sexy" as arguing over some of the culture war or trigger words -- owning the Libs.  And, y'know, our progressive friends want the government to come in and Free!College!  and Free!Child!Care! and all those things that sound great in political ads.  But this is a Much Bigger Threat.  And we're not going to stop yelling it from the rooftops because we have to.  And I think we have been successful in the last couple of years in waking people up, shaking them out of their political apathy, because they've seen what has taken place under the Trump administration.  

Setmayer:  And I know Rick [Wilson] and I have said this many times that we cannot normalize what happened during those four years.   That's why I have no patience for some for these Trump enablers who are writing books and trying to go on these tours to rehabilitate their reputations.  I have no tolerance for them because its like, you were there until it wasn't convenient for you anymore.  Meanwhile, now you want to come out and warn everyone how dangerous it was after the damage you helped inflict?  I don't want to hear it.

There is so much going on here that is integral to the mythology that Never Trumpers repeat over and over and over again until it becomes an agreed-upon narrative that we need to take it apart the same way Johnny Cash smuggled a Cadillac out of the factory: one piece at a time.

First, all Never Trump myth-making depends on fencing in all discussions about how the GOP lost its mind to the period of 2016 until today.  Nothing prior to that period is ever touched on in any serious way unless it is to light a candle at the shrine of St. Reagan.  This amputation of all political history prior to 2016 serves a number of vital purposes, but  mainly it is importance comes down to absolving   the Never Trumpers of any responsibility for the roles they played in creating the Republican Party that begat Trump, and wiping the Left's decades of warning that the GOP was racing down the road to fascism from the pages of history.  

Second, once the existence of the Left has been erased and history has been radically abridged to include only the years "under the Trump administration" and "the last couple of years" and "during those four years", Never Trumpers can then position themselves as the Saviors of the Republic by virtue of the fact that they were the only people with the wisdom and insight to recognize the threat, -- "Tara, why is it our friends on the Democratic side of the aisle can't see the threat for what it is?"--  and noble enough to stand up to it.  Everyone else is either "in denial" or was a collaborator who now has a book to sell or a MAGA meathead who only cares about "owning the Libs" or is a clueless Liberal who only cares about "Free!College!  and Free!Child!Care!"

Third, having established themselves as both prophets of the highest order and noble martyrs, they are also completely justified in slagging the shit out of those in influential positions who not only refused to heed their warning starting in 2015/6 but mocked them as stupid and deranged for saying what they were saying. 

Fourth having successfully erased Liberals from history and having been anointed by the media as the sole occupants of America's moral and political high ground, they can now demand from their former doubters and tormenters who enabled all this shit after 2015/6 that they confess their sins and and atone for their complicity before they are permitted to join the ranks of the forgiven.  Before we get on with this "unity" and "We're all on Team America, right?" claptrap.  

And finally, if you're saying to yourself, "Hey wait a damn minute Unca Driftglass, didn't you write all of this already?  Back in January?  In a long, long post entitled "Boom Times Are Coming to the Indulgence Factory?" my answer to you is, yes.  

Yes I did.  

And I ended that long, long post as follows:

But just try to apply Miller and Sykes' own Never Trump words and logic backwards in time.  To the time before Trump.  Ask them what about all those Liberals who, history has shown, were most definitely "right too soon"?  

Ask them about all those Liberals who have been ignored or slagged or nitpicked to death by these very people because we on the Left were right about the Right loooong "before it was fashionable"?  Before Bill Kristol told us it was OK?

Go ahead and ask them, and then watch what happens:

No Half Measures