With more revelations emerging every day about the crimes surrounding last year’s January 6 attack on Congress, Republicans are taking to the airwaves. They continue trying to downplay the insurrection, as they have been taught to do by Trump.
But a new line of stonewalling has developed recently: the “I’m offended” defense. I’ve heard at least five Republicans say they are angry at nasty Liberals who assume that all Republicans are equally guilty for the insurrection. They somehow think that they and the 70-some-odd million Republicans who voted for Trump—and continue to support him—have nothing to do with the attack. Apparently, they don’t want to hear about it any more.
Not surprising. People who commit and abet crimes seldom want to see the crimes in the public spotlight.
Of course, no “nasty Liberals” assume that all Republicans are equally guilty. Literally no one at all has said anything of the sort—except of course the Republicans who are “offended” by the non-existent accusation.
High dudgeon about a non-existent slur is an old Republican trick. Newt Gingrich used to try it all the time. Heck, Richard Nixon was a master. Trump, of course, is the Voldemort of the technique. It’s just a subset of the engineered victimhood narrative that conservatives use all the time. It’s one of the debased rhetorical tricks that helps them deceive themselves and others into believing that they are unfairly put upon.
But in another sense, all conservatives are indeed responsible for the insurrection. Even those Republicans and ex-Republicans who now see the imminent danger posed by the Trumpist remnants of Lincoln’s party bear responsibility. Here’s why.
The entire foundation of modern conservatism is nothing but a long con.
Since the 1930s, “conservatives” have propounded false and self-justifying sophistries to prop up their fearful prejudices about the world. The details of these arguments shifted with changing times. But the upshot was always the same. “Our values are under assault; our enemies have the upper hand; you should be afraid, righteous, and even militant if pushed too far.”
Ninety years of repeating these lies to fearful people ended up seeding and cultivating the perpetrators of the insurrection.
Over the next few posts, I intend to show how the four pre-Trump bedrock conservative "beliefs" nourished the insurrectionists. These BS chips are:
Small government
Low taxes
Strong military
Traditional values
Each of these “tenets” is wrong. They exist to mollify the inadequacies of “conservatives,” who don’t have the inner resources to deal with reality. They prefer instead to dominate and control others, to demand privileges they should not have, to affront and bully rather than to welcome and encourage.
But more important, the domination, control, privilege, and bullying favored by “conservatives” are vices—defective character traits that harm both the owners and their society.
By injecting sophistical justifications for these vices into America’s veins for some nine decades, “conservatives” have trained generations of fearful people to nurse their fears and inflate them into cherished grievances. Is it any wonder the most immoderate of them have finally decided that even violence is acceptable?
I know that “conservatives” hate to hear this. But that is just one more symptom of their weakness. It takes deep inner strength to face reality, accept one’s responsibility for it, and set about fixing what one has broken. I applaud all “conservatives” who have recognized the danger to the Republic posed by Trump and Trumpism. They are lighthouses marking the way through the darkness of the Trumpist maelstrom.
But they too are responsible. They did not see soon enough that “conservative” BS was salting the political landscape. They were only too willing to use it to win elections. Indeed, some of them may still be the same opportunists they have always been. Perhaps the latter have simply realized that they can’t play the game any more if the Trumpists win.
In any case, Decent America has no choice now but to side with them. They alone hold the key to peeling off the five percent or so of votes that will make Republicans lose badly enough to return to democratic norms. We have to make common cause with them or we won’t have a decent nation left after the next elections.
But Decent America has to be clear-sighted about the fact that “conservatism” has brought us to this pass and, should we succeed in getting through, we can’t let “conservative” BS take hold again.
So my next post will begin a short course on the big four “conservative” BS chips. Perhaps most people won’t put up with them any longer when they understand why these falsehoods exist and what makes them bull hockey.
And maybe then we can get back on the path to a more perfect society that “conservatives” have pushed us off.
The long con that birthed Trump: Conservatism has always been BS
The actions and speach of Donald Trump or Putin or Margorie Taylor Greene and of Manchin and Sinema would have shocked Emperor Nero.
This is an absolutely quintessential description of where we are in terms of political discourse. Secondly, SCOTUS is apparently poised to begin the dismantling of the Adminstrative State - one of Bannon's core tenents. We also need more atheists on SCOTUS because they have clearly accepted the religious right's contention that discrimination based on "religious freedom". It stuns me that intelligent people with advanced degrees still believe in myths and legends.