From time to time, I love to use this quote from the movie, I Robot:
In my Facebook memories, today came a post from 2016, which I posted during the Republican National Convention. In it I shared, some words from my favorite political writer Charles Pierce, who recognized what so many failed to, just how dangerous one Donald J. Trump was to the country and our political commonwealth as a people. Now from my perspective, it seemed that the point was self-evident – but after I posted it – a herd of disgruntled commenters came out of the woodwork. When I saw it today, I realized that: 1) I was right to post it, and 2) everything I said terrible about Trump has come true with a vengeance.
First, the quote from Mr. Pierce:
Damn them all now.
Damn the delegates who will vote for this man. Damn the professional politicians who will fall in line behind him or, worse, will sit back and hope this all blows over so the Republican Party once again will be able to relegate the poison this man has unleashed to the backwaters of the modern conservative intellectual mainstream, which is where it has been useful for over four decades. Damn the four hopeless sycophants who want to share a stage with him for four months. Damn all the people who will come here and speak on his behalf. Damn all the thoughtful folk who plumb his natural appeal for anything deeper than pure hatred.
Damn all the people who will vote for him, and damn any progressives who sit this one out because Hillary Rodham Clinton is wrong on this issue or that one. Damn all the people who are suggesting they do that. And damn all members of the media who treat this dangerous fluke of a campaign as being in any way business as usual. Any support for He, Trump is, at this point, an act of moral cowardice. Anyone who supports him, or runs with him, or enables his victory, or even speaks well of him, is a traitor to the American idea.
Damn, to name one, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, now exposed as the feckless political weakling he’s always been. On Wednesday, during an inexcusable CNN-sponsored informercial for himself, Ryan was asked the only question that mattered:
But the challenge facing Ryan was clear when he was asked a question by Zachary Marcone, a Republican who said he couldn’t support Trump because he is “openly racist.” “Can you tell me, how can you morally justify your support for this kind of candidate?” Marcone asked.
Ryan responded like the spineless careerist tool he’s always been.
“You’re going to help elect Hillary Clinton and I don’t think Hillary Clinton is supporting any of the things you stand for if you’re a Republican.”
In other words, if we don’t elect this authoritarian wild man, I won’t get to gut Medicare the way I’ve always wanted to.
If I were Ryan, I’d put that on a bumper sticker.
When view from the perspective of the damage that has been inflicted upon us over the last four years, I think saying damn you is rather tame. And certainly, Mr. Pierce was totally correct when he pointed out that far too many Americans failed to recognize “the true magnitude of the threat that this reckless clown poses to American democracy. Not until Wednesday [July 13th] did we hear clearly the echoes of shiny black boots on German cobblestones.“
The comments devolved into three main themes.
The first group was the civility police who felt it was “overwrought” to express a desire of damnation on delegates who were knowingly making an unfit man the Republican party’s nominee for President.
Overwrought? Really? Overwrought? Take a look at this picture and then read the quote about black boots above.
If anything, Pierce should have been harsher.
Next came the fancy rationalizations and lies one tells themselves to ease a troubled conscience. Sadly this person went so far into the twilight zone of Trump mania; he and I are no longer friends. There is only so much embracing of evil one can deal with.
don’t misunderstand my abhorrence of Donald J. Trump. But I can’t bring myself–regardless of how long I hold my nose–to vote for Clinton. I can’t. She’s the ugly version of Jane Fonda. I’d have gladly voted for other candidates–both Rep and Dem. But this is the dilemma so many of us face: Tweedle-Dumb or Tweedle-Dumber. I completely reject your posit that HRC’s not to our Republic. No one can seriously believe her “special server” had anything to do with anything but her covering her, Bubba, and Chelsea’s tracks re the Clinton Foundation!
It’s truly amazing to me that after four years of symbolic and literal destruction of the norms of American governance, some are still fixated on this. Especially because they have been unable to prove any wrongdoing vis a vis said e-mails. As for “both sides do it” nonsense, we’ll get to that in a minute. One’s tawdry self-justifying lies and rationalizations don’t put food on the table.
My response at the time remains quite valid:
The problem with that point of view is that its cop out-and is a means of denying our own role in creating this situation. I get it that people don’t like the alternatives-but the markers were there when people voted and more importantly didn’t vote when they had the opportunity. Trump, like the dangerous opportunist that he is exploiting this, and I promise you that if he actually wins, he will abuse his office in a way that will make Obama or Nixon look like a poster child. Furthermore-as Jon Stewart pointed out-and the embrace of Trump is an embrace of everything the GOP says it hates about Obama.
Take my state of Alabama. People tired of obstructionism elect the same obstructionists sometimes without opposition. My own Congressman is a member of the so-called Freedom Caucus that has as it’s primary goal to screw us out of the life we earned. The markers were there when he ran for office.
We created this mess-not some mythical “other”. The government is the people and the people have gone off the rails to follow a dangerous demagogue. I will oppose Trump with my every waking breath because he represents exactly the kind of demagogue the founders warned against.
The other tack came from someone who symbolizes the word privilege, with a capital “P”. The person who decries the institution for failing him, but can’t stoop down to dirty his hands by doing something simple – like voting. What makes it worse is that said individual lives in Europe, but appears to be quite unappreciative of the benefits that go with that position. I can accept that some people live in their privilege – what I can’t deal with is a person who can’t or won’t appreciate the blessings that have been given to him.
What you might, and to me seem to be missing is the essence of this general development. BOTH the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are the problem. The political establishment that they have, together and for their own purpose, constructed or grown is ITSELF and evil and selfish things. You talk about individual human beings, but this political establishment has a life of its own — I call this sort of thing a “superpersonal organism” because it has its own existence, that survives the individual human beings that come and go in it, in much the same way as cells live, die, and are replaced in a squirrel or a man.
What Trump represents is a reaction against the superpersonal organism of the political establishment itself. Sanders represented the same basic reaction in the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party had the anti-democratic fail-safe mechanism of “super delegates” to obviate any popular democratic reaction by the cells/people within the organism that might threaten the overall vector of the political establishment. It operated in much the same way as an immune system operates in other organisms, to attack and reject foreign bodies and subversive germs.
The Republicans lacked this anti-democratic mechanism (I expect this to be rectified in due course), and so, with the elimination of Sanders, Trump remained as the candidate against the political establishment. At this point in time, it is no longer a question of “Republican vs Democrat” but rather “political establishment vs reaction against the political establishment”.
He probably pulled a muscle patting himself on the back after that – congratulating himself on his so-called “knowledge”. It’s nothing of the sort.
I will repeat something I have written here before: Vox Populi is not Vox Dei. People can and do make mistakes. The citizens of Germany wanted safety and stability in 1932. They voted for a monster who destroyed their country and gave them neither. The historical parallels in this election are all too real.
Furthermore, the idea of the “political establishment” only goes so far-and ignores the role of the people and money in creating that establishment. Both the Democratic and Republican parties were thriving until “true conservatives” “true progressives” made ideological purity their key considerations in choosing a candidate. The tea party monsters, with their astroturfed movement founded on historical ignorance. started the process on the GOP side, the failure of the blue dogs on the Democratic side created a lot of the current problems. Because so many people don’t vote, you have a minority percentage of ideological zealots choosing our representatives. It does not have to be that way.
Plus, much of what people are angry about is misplaced blame. They created the mess and then are unhappy with the results. The foundations of most of our economic troubles were laid during the Reagan years-but even at his height, Ronald Reagan would never have endorsed the kind of rampant extremism that the Trump-led GOP represents. People blame the President for poor economics when it’s really not within his authority to fix. ( The reverse is true when Trump tries to take credit for the “booming” economy). The gospel of “shareholder value” is as much or more to blame-and the same people carrying Trump torches are actually defending that morally bankrupt short term view. The rich people feel no obligation to the political commonwealth and, therefore, they argue, neither should the people who cheer them on. But they never seem to get the blame that is due them.
The problem with revolutions is that they generally kill their participants-and great nations, like large ships, don’t make quick changes of direction. Opposing Trump is not the same as blindly supporting the other side-its about recognizing him as the truly dangerous man he is.
It’s four years later, almost 150,000 Americans are dead because of Trump’s sheer incompetence at the top of the American government and unmarked, unaccountable thugs in BDU’s are walking the streets of one our major cities.
The truth is, in 2016, American Democracy committed ritual suicide.
The jury is still out on whether it can be resurrected from the grave Trump and his enablers built for it.
So yea, I told you so doesn’t quite say it. And Mr. Pierce was right to damn them verbally in 2016. “Any support for He, Trump is, at this point, an act of moral cowardice. Anyone who supports him, or runs with him, or enables his victory, or even speaks well of him, is a traitor to the American idea.“