Emission Theory Politics: In Which Mighty Beams of Higher Political Awareness Shoot From Their Eyes

From Wikipedia:

Emission theory or extramission theory (variants: extromission) or extromissionism is the proposal that visual perception is accomplished by eye beams emitted by the eyes. This theory has been replaced by intromission theory (or intromissionism), which states that visual perception comes from something representative of the object (later established to be rays of light reflected from it) entering the eyes. Modern physics has confirmed that light is physically transmitted by photons from a light source, such as the sun, to visible objects, and finishing with the detector, such as a human eye or camera.

The journey between the Wrong Explanation and the Right  Explanation was a long one, with emission theory requiring periodic adjustments to explain things like, if being able to see things comes from beams shooting out of our eyes, why can't we see at night?

In the fifth century BC, Empedocles postulated that everything was composed of four elements; fire, air, earth, and water. He believed that Aphrodite made the human eye out of the four elements and that she lit the fire in the eye which shone out from the eye, making sight possible. If this were true, then one could see during the night just as well as during the day, so Empedocles postulated an interaction between rays from the eyes and rays from a source such as the sun.

Currently, Never Trumpland remains enthralled by several variations of a kind of political emission theory.  The belief that they and only they were given special beams of perception that shoot out of their eyes that allowed them to see the danger that Donald Trump and the GOP represented at exactly the moment those threats came into existence.   

And hey, if what it takes for you to face yourself in the mirror and make it through the day is some  fantasy about your unique and super-awesome powers of perception, I suppose there's little harm in it.

Until you start to monetize it.

Until you start to build a business on the claim the you and only you were wise and savvy enough to the danger ahead therefor you and only you are wise and savvy enough to navigate our creaky, leaky pro-democracy politics through the shoals of Republican perfidy. For example, here is Stuart Stevens on The Lincoln Project podcast this week:

I think what The Lincoln Project did -- and I can say this without any false modesty because I wasn't involved with it when you guys started it -- I think that you as a group were the first, really, to see [the] 2020 race with the clarity that ultimately became accurate...

Then comes the problem of the two corollaries to this self-aggrandizing emission theory of politics.

First and most problematic corollary is what to do about those inconvenient Liberals?  Specifically, if your business model depends on the theory that only you and a few of your Conservative cronies were gifted with the power to spot the danger that Donald Trump and the GOP represented at the moment of creation, then any Liberal who was warning about the escalating derangement on the Right long before the Never Trumpers spotted it with their special beams of perception absolutely must be discredited, ignored or dismissed as alarmist crackpots who were just out there crying wolf decade after decades because, well, you know how Liberals are. 

Which has been the text or subtext of a number of Never Trump conclaves including the one I wrote about here.

Because if idea that the Left has been right about the Right all along were allowed to flourish -- were allowed to become a competing narrative -- then suddenly Never Trumpers aren't gifted prophets and sages who have earned the right to tell everyone else to shut up  and sit down.  Suddenly they're just garden-variety Republican hacks and morons, who were perfectly content to go along with the Limbaugh/Gingrich program decade after decade until the monster they'd build in the basement finally grew big enough and rowdy enough to kick the doors off the lab and throw them out the window.  

Thus Never Trumpers have created a cozy, non-falsifiable ideological terrarium for themselves in which all that yapping that the Left was doing for decades about the Right losing its mind must necessarily have been wrong or else Never Trumpers with their mighty Beams of Higher Political Awareness  would have seen it.  And since Never Trumpers did not see it with their mighty Beams of Higher Political Awareness until sometime between 2015 and 2018, the threat obviously did not exist before then.

All of which becomes even more galling when our Never Trumper friends just take our stuff --

Stuart Stevens again:  If you've ever wanted to ask yourself what would you have done in 1860, which side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge would you have been on, this is that moment.

-- without bothering to say "Please" or "Thank you".  From this blog in September of 2016:

Which Side Are You On?

(From an original idea by my beautiful wife.)

Don't get me wrong.  I don't mind noobs borrowing our stuff for the good of The Cause. The Cause is critical.  Attribution would be nice,  but since "Dumpster Fire" I've sorta gotten used to it.

However I do mind it when they take the fruits of decades of our work spent warning of the rising threat from the Right even as they work assiduously to pretend that we simultaneously  don't exist and/or that we're too stupid or feckless to understand the nature and urgency of the threat.  

I mind it a lot.  

The second troublesome corollary to the Never Trumper's emission theory of politics is not so much infuriating as it is hilarious.  It holds that anyone who came later and more grudgingly than they did to the conclusion that the GOP is a zombie death cult is (unless they're a personal friend) a mere hack and opportunist who is not to be trusted.  That by virtue of their  mighty Beams of Higher Political Awareness they and only they are qualified to decided who gets to enter the charmed circle of the Absolved and who doesn't

I wrote about this is obnoxious detail back at the dawn of 2021 ("Boom Times Are Coming to the Indulgence Factory")  And it is hilarious because it surfaces the Never Trumper's own utter lack of self-awareness. The same people who gave us on the Left 1,000 shrill speeches about  "How dare you question my right to command the spotlight and how dare you ask about my past!  This is a fight for the Soul of Murrica you idiot and any ally is a welcome ally no matter where they came from of what they have done in the past!" have arrogated to themselves the title of Guardians of the Velvet Rope and are now charging entrance fees and scrupulously examining the credentials of anyone who wants to join "their" movement.

The most entertaining example of their complete lack of self-awareness this week comes via this exchange between Mona Charen and A.B. Stoddard over at The Bulwark Collective:  

CHAREN:  You know, this... this ceaseless incitement of the very worst aspects of their base is the sort of thing that you would have... that you see all the time in dysfunctional countries. You know you see it in the Arab world to a large degree. A lot of the corrupt leaders in the Arab world are constantly feeding uh awful propaganda and incitement to their people to just keep them angry at somebody else so that they won't turn their anger about the conditions in the country toward them.  It's something that Putin does very, uh, skillfully it's... it's not something you associate with the United States.

Really?  Really?  Are you 100% sure about that Mona?  Because my lived experience as a citizen of these United States lo' these many decades is that this is exactly how your Republican party has been operating all along.

That this is exactly how your party built it's Doomsday Weapon:  a base of reprogrammable meatbags with no "Off" switch: 

It is exactly how the Conservative moguls behind Hate Radio and Fox News became obscenely rich and powerful, and the only way your party has managed to win anything for decades.

But please continue

CHAREN:  But it's very, y'know... isn't it interesting, A.B., that we're at this moment now where the inciters have also just lost control of what they can direct the mob to think or believe. So for example, the other day when when Trump encouraged the, uh, audience to get, uh, booster shots they booed him.

STODDARD (laughing):  Oh no! 

CHAREN:  No... yeah. So, y'know that's the... it's... it's not something that y'know... the Monster, once unleashed, can't really necessarily be controlled even by the even by the ringleader.

Let that last sentence sit with you for a minute.  The thought of these two Bush Regime leftovers laughing at those foolish Republicans waaaay over there who were too stupid to realize that once they raised up a monster and unleashed it, that sooner or later it was gonna run out of their control.  

Let that last sentence sit with you and then, if you've never done so, give this post of mine a read.  It's from +16 years ago.  April of 2005.  My earliest days as a blogger.  It's entitled "Little Red State Fundy sez..." and is a dire warning to that, to win elections, the GOP was in the process of raising up a monster that it could never hope to control and which would eventually turn on them and consume them.

And what was Ms. Mona Charen doing back in 2005?

Well Ms. Charen was doing what all the other Never Trumpers were doing -- working hard , each in their own way, to build the very monster that would one day run out of their control, gobble them up and spit them out.

In Ms. Charen's case in 2005 she was out there by promoting her two books:

"Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us)" 

And:

"Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First"

 And if you can't see the humor in that -- grim, gallows humor to be sure -- well, I feel sorry for you.

No Half Measures