Thursday, April 27, 2023

Theme For The Day

In his column for The Atlantic, Wehner wrote, "It is a lesson nearly as old as time itself: Those whose passions are inflamed—and Trump supporters are nothing if not perennially inflamed—are drawn to destruction.'“Rage and phrenzy will pull down more in a half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years,' the 18th-century conservative statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke warned."

Well, yeah; but Burke's prescription could as easily be turned against American democracy as against MAGA.  I don't think I'd reach that far back in order to disprove the "inflamed passions" of MAGA.  It's not their passions, after all, that are the problem.  It's their insistence on ignorance as strength, and war as peace, and lies as truth, that are the problem.  But this is a good, if rather lackluster, observation:

Adding that "Lack of restraint is the essence of the Trump movement," he notes self-restraint has never been in evidence when it comes to the former president and his followers who only desire is to "own the liberals" but now they are "owning one another."

It was an article of conservative faith in the '60's that, as the "radicals" moved on into the '70's they would, like the French in the Revolution, have their own "Reign of Terror" as they purified the movement by condemning all those in the People's Front of Judea because the true liberators were in the Judean People's Front.  Which, yeah, happened.  And now it's happening to MAGA.  The sun comes up, the sun goes down; and there's really nothing new under the sun.

"The extremism, aggression, and lack of restraint in MAGA world are spreading rather than receding. They are becoming more rather than less indiscriminate. Those who are part of that movement, and certainly those who lead it, act as if they’re invincible, as if the rules don’t apply to them, as if they can say anything and get away with anything," he wrote. "Now this movement, which has taken such delight in aiming its nihilistic arrows at the Democratic Party and the Republican establishment, at media outlets and scientists, is in the process of devouring itself."

Or, as the former Republicans who want to be the kewl kids say now:  Fuck around and find out.  We are clearly in the finding out stage.

Case in point, he notes, has been the lashing that Fox News has been taking from pro-Trump lawmakers after the unceremonious booting of Carlson, a MAGA favorite.

Yeah, about Tucker:

He, uh, doesn't have his platform any more. Yes, Rick Wilson says Tucker could be the GOP nominee in 2024, but that's nightmare fuel for the GOP, not for the rest of us.  Biden would hardly have to campaign.

Sen. J.D. Vance, who owes his Ohio Senate seat to a Trump endorsement, texted the New York Times and proclaimed, "Tucker is a giant, and the most powerful voice against idiotic wars and an economy that placed plutocrats over workers. This is a huge loss for a conservative movement that hopes to be worthy of its own voters.”

You're gonna have to remind the rest of the country who J.D. Vance is again.  And then explain why they should care about what J.D. Vance says.  Not unlike this guy:

I know who he is because, until redistricting, he was my U.S. Representative (my new one is so invisible even I can't remember his name). Crenshaw doesn't even have the "reasonable Republican" street cred of Nancy Mace, and he's easily as crazy as she is when the audience is right.

"The priority for those who love our country is to contain the wreckage and defeat the MAGA movement. We’re still in mid-drama, so that day is a ways off. But it will come. Because in the end, those who live without limits are destroyed by them," Wehner predicted. 

That last sentence I agree with.  As for defeating MAGA, it's coming: both from within MAGA, and from without.  Of that I have no doubt at all. 

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