Are Conservatives That Stupid?

In his public response to the recent win by Democrat Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, Paul Ryan said Lamb won because he “ran as a Conservative”. Among other things, Ryan said Lamb was “Pro-life”.  He also said that Republicans cannot afford to be “massively outspent as was the case with these two candidates” (a wink to his donor class).

Further, Ryan claimed that had Donald Trump not gone down to “campaign” for the Republican Saccone, the victory for Lamb would have looked more like a landslide. What in the hell is that saying? Does Ryan love Trump that much to so blatantly mislead?

Every Conservative Republican should feel insulted right down to their Don’t Tread on Me bumper stickers.

The fact is that Saccone forces outspent Lamb 2 to 1. If you count just money coming in from sources outside the individual campaigns, Lamb was outspent 5 to 1. Thirteen million dollars was spent by Republicans in that race portraying Lamb as a bleeding heart, Liberal, Nancy Pelosi Democrat. Per Ryan, Conservative Republicans saw through that tsunami of Republican spending to see the “Conservative Champion” that Lamb truly was, instead of voting for the actual Republican…right.

Impressively (as far as I’m concerned), Ryan definitively has given “Pro-life” a new definition for Republicans. 

Conor Lamb openly and actively supported “Pro-choice” and Roe v Wade while also stating his choice, were he a woman, would be not to have an abortion. So let it now be proclaimed that if you oppose abortion personally and want that decision to be freely chosen by you, not by government legislation, then you are Pro-life!

Opening the door to the fact that no woman gets pregnant because she wants to have an abortion would go a long way toward finding middle ground between militant positions. Such would reduce far more abortions than punitive laws and restrictive health care. Everyone wins. Good for you Paul.

The first I heard the talking point that “two Conservative Republicans” had been running in PA’s 18^th Congressional District was on Fox & Friends at 6:15am the morning after the election.  I then saw that talking point popping up among Republican spokesman and politicians everywhere.  Because it is so ludicrous on its face you have to ask the question: what in the blazes is going on? Who’s in charge of what?

If they wanted to avoid the reality that they have an unstable, angry clown in the White House, they could have simply pointed out one fact: that Lamb was a better candidate. Rather than trying to adopt him. The Trump mantra that Republicans will believe and accept anything given to them degrades anyone who believes in legitimate Conservative issues.

When Trump rallies the faithful at one of his tabernacle-style gatherings he is simply saying over and over; you are all my “Mikeys” and you’ll eat anything I feed you. I want to think that’s not true. 

With the prophetic words of a young Loretta Lynn; “I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid”, perhaps Conservatives will begin to educate themselves and not accept Republican leadership or Fox News treating them like idiots.

Donald is the New Dennis

Once again the reporters of current events are treating Donald Trump like he is President, as opposed to man who is playing President. Nothing says that better than a South Korean delegation on the front lawn of the White House making an announcement about a meeting between Kim Jong-un and Trump (which apparently does not definitively include the South Koreans). An announcement our Secretary of State obviously had no advance warning of.

Yet the analysis I have seen thus far has wallowed in meaningful speculation. Really? How many times can a person be kicked in the ass before it is felt? The only thing meaningful about this announcement is how consistent it is with the lunacy of this Presidency.

The White House has been reduced to that of a giant circus clown car. No matter how many ridiculous, slap stick, or even scary things emerge from it, there always seems to be just one more.

It is understandable why Kim Jong-un might be described as a nut-case, but that, at the very least, would be short sighted. He is the inheritor of a nation of 25 million people which the world has allowed to devolve into a giant cult.  Through decades of indoctrination, he, his father, and his grandfather have been elevated to deity status.  The use of a perplexing and bizarre interpretation of Marxist Communism has essentially been talking points to support their autonomy.

As might be expected, Kim Jong-un is seriously ruthless. His gulags and assassinations are notorious. He appears to judge the condition of his nation’s people by the extent to which his authoritarian rule is sustained.  He is, by all reasonable international standards, a bad dude.

It also appears that he is fascinated or even loves Western culture.  Exposed to the West during his early school years in Switzerland, he is not as blind as the vast majority of North Koreans. Yet I question that he might now view the West as one might a carnival sideshow.  His fascination with Dennis Rodman is a good example.

Not only did he court the attention of Dennis Rodman and allowed Dennis into his inner sanctum, but he also publicly acknowledged their relationship. Why? Could it be because Dennis represented the peculiar extreme of American Sport’s eccentricities?  I think so. I also believe it to be entirely possible that Kim Jong-un sees Donald Trump as the Dennis Rodman of American Governance, maybe even as a kindred spirit.

For Trump to elevate Kim Jong-un to that of an international foreign leader is no small deviation from 64 years of American foreign policy. Americans may think that this “bold” move on the part of the Trumpster is just our way of solving the problem of having nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.  It is far more likely that Kim is playing Donald like the marionette he is.

What is North Korea without nuclear weapons? A blacklisted, third world nation unable to compete in the world, except in displays of synchronize human movement.  More importantly, what is Kim Jong-un without nuclear weapons? Ditto. There is no denuclearization of North Korea on the horizon…period.  Kim’s ride up the escalator at Trump Tower is his first victory. There will likely be more with the great “deal-maker” President we now have in charge.

What makes Trump so predictably a loser? It can be wrapped up in the answer he gave this week to a reporter. When asked what made the apparent moves by Kim Jong-un happen, he answered quickly (for him) a truthful one word answer. He said “me”. He actually believes that bombastic remarks like “fire and fury”, “little rocket man”, and “I’ve got a bigger button” can change the course of international relations.  Someone with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder could not believe differently.

Simply put…Donald Trump is the new Dennis Rodman…minus the piercings.

There is a Forest...Really

We are currently immersed in the glacier pace of evolving political history. It is difficult to sense the motion or be confident of the direction. However, when current events are finally viewed retrospectively, with much of the minutia filtered out, the obvious nature of what is happening will become clear, and likely in stages.

It is easy to see this when applied, for example, to something like slavery.

Slavery was a fully acceptable part of life, chronicled as an ordinary matter of fact in such illustrious publications as The Bible. Yet as society progressed the onerous and detestable nature of slavery was eventually met with anger, then sorrow for its tragedy, then regret that it ever occurred, and finally befuddlement. Today we are generally perplexed on how human beings could have felt and acted as they did.

However slavery is a low bar in illustrating this human peculiarity. The same can be applied to many less obvious things such as child labor or religious freedom. Some things we still are trying to immerge from like racism or torture.

On a less universal level the same could apply to the insane proliferation of firearms in the United States. The manic desire of those who want to maintain this insanity has pushed the response to this behavior well into the ‘anger’ zone.

With slavery this ‘anger zone’ required a horrific Civil War to move it to the sorrow, regret and befuddlement stages. Hopefully that won’t be necessary with guns, but a future generation (already living) will surely look back and say “how were they so damned stupid?”

On an even smaller scale we are currently experiencing the same evolution with the placement of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

We had two Presidential campaigns in which the vast majority of supporters for both candidates and those who like neither assumed the outcome was inevitable.  Of course it wasn’t.  However, that was a single event. Like flipping a light switch, there was an assumption that even though the color or intensity of the light emitted by the Donald was unknown, we would at least be able to see what was going on.

Not so fast. When Trump began his administration by first engaging the Press and Public with extended energy devoted to the size of his inaugural crowd, the near future should have had some clarity. It did not. Trump continued to be considered a blank slate, even by his detractors, so the view of his behavior and policies was served up to intellectual discourse. 

As Southerners engaged the Country 200 years ago in the economics of slavery instead of its repulsive reality, the critics of Donald Trump have willingly cavorted among the trees of American politics unable to see the forest that surrounds them.

Have we even begun to get to the anger stage?

Once in office, Trump began to hire the most unqualified and (as proven evident) incompetent people to assume senior positions in our Government.

He placed his completely unqualified, inexperienced, and (frankly) immature son-in-law to handle personally our Nation’s most sensitive foreign relationships, a fact that would be deemed too ridiculous for a comedy sitcom. His daughter, his caddy, his bodyguard, a cluster of bungling billionaires, and talk show personalities were all given the keys to the castle. Every American should be mouthing the words “are you kidding me?!?!”

Donald Trump campaigned showing a weird attraction to Russia generally and Vladimir Putin specifically, a nation that is careening headlong into authoritarianism. So what does he do? He puts in charge of foreign affairs a man we all saw being pinned by Putin with decorations, as if they were going steady. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

His mentally debilitating narcissism serves up wildly unhinged communications, which much of the Country turns off at the end of the day, as if it were just another reality TV show. The obvious conflicts of interest Trump has tried to make opaque fool nobody. Add to that the long list of resignations, firings, guilty pleas, indictments, foreign intrigue, and one out of every three days spent at a Florida golf club; I have to wonder how the growth of these gnarled trees can be analyzed as if each deserved stand alone scrutiny.

Just step back everyone and look at the forest. It’s really there…it’s big and it’s absurd.

People have not gotten angry enough yet and maybe they need to. It’s the first step. Perhaps that would overwhelmingly reposition Congress such that the insanity can be dealt with. Perhaps the Special Prosecutor will uncover enough indisputable evidence to throw the baggage out. Perhaps the continued meltdown of Trump will cause the rest of the Executive branch to act. Perhaps this is a four year nightmare. As one historian recently put it, regardless of what happens…“it won’t end well”.

One thing I feel for certain. There will come a time in the not too distant future when people will look back on us, who so passively watched or even supported the Trump deforestation, and ask “…how were they so damned stupid?”