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You're a Conservative like Sweetbreads are Sweets. [1]
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Date: 2022-08-20
Like his wives, whatever Trump hugs, he betrays.
Everyone has good and evil impulses. Everyone. Even someone like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had occasional thoughts and impulses about ‘whitey’ that flew in the face of his noble life. Considering how white America treated King, he had to have entertained such thoughts. He was a human being.
Still, he remains one of the most justifiably respected moral figures in history, because he didn’t try to pray his way into heaven. Rather, he defined himself by his words and deeds.
But Donald Trump did something no other American politician did. He gave Americans license to act on those base thoughts and impulses. He gave Americans permission to be their worst selves.
And because he made being an intolerant jerk a patriotic act, some Americans in and out of government have still not abandoned him. Their unwavering devotion to the most corrupt American office holder ever is eating away at our institutions and democracy itself.
This is despite the inconvenient truth that no American has a greater collection of psychological disorders, verified lies [there’s a new oxymoron for your collection], impeachments, lawsuits against him, ongoing criminal investigations, or business failures than Trump.
But Trump’s champions still proclaim to anyone willing or not to listen that one must be a Democrat or liberal or progressive to dismiss Trump as the most corrupt, inept, emotionally arrested prolific liar in American history. This assertion was rendered preposterous because no candidate in American history was ever more opposed by members of his own party.
So, this is to you who still support Donald Trump and self-identify as conservative.
Well, you’re not. You like the label. And I get that. It has got a great sound to it. Solid. American. Conservative!
But you’re not conservative. Not even close.
Your notion of conservatism is defined by Donald Trump, and not by any ideology. You and too many people like you wouldn’t understand what conservatism means if someone hit you on the head with a copy of Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative nailed to a baseball bat. And it’s a slam dunk that you never read it.
Do you believe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan, Goldwater, Javitz, George Romney, Arlen Specter, Margaret Chase Smith, Lawrence Hogan Sr., Gifford Pinchot, Thaddeus Stevens, or Charles Sumner could abide by Trump? Do you even know all these people? Of course, you don’t. But you should.
You’ll permit Trump to con and fleece you tomorrow as enthusiastically as you did yesterday, no matter how much more we learn about his corruption today. Reality changes. You cannot. You’re too existentially invested.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his brilliant 1841 essay Self-Reliance (another work real conservatives revere that you never read) said the same thing, albeit more eloquently than I ever could. And he did so with fewer willfully ignorant Americans to inspire him:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.”
Former Speaker of the House John Boehner noted, “Trump’s not a Republican. He’s not a Democrat. He’s a populist.”
Boehner added, “He doesn’t have an ideological bone in his body.” The same can be and should be said about you.
No, you are not conservative. You’re in a dying cult of personality whose Kool-Aid is an ice-cold pitcher of fear and ignorance. And you’re even willing to destroy the greatest democracy ever created just for another sip.
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