Our Hulk Hogan Government

Forescript:  Rush Limbaugh does NOT deserve the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

       In February 2019, Estase wrote a blogpost comparing the Court of King's Bench to crooked NBA referee Tim Donaghy.  The blogpost argued that American politics might be as real as professional wrestling.
       Jean Jacques Rousseau posited imaginary systems of government.  That is, he did for government what Isaac Newton did for the natural world.  What is real becoming imaginary may have aided in creating republican systems of government.  But in an era where presidents from Wilson on have treated Congress as a rubber stamp, many of us see representative government in danger of becoming totally imaginary.
       The relationship between the White House and Capital Hill is so dysfunctional that we almost expected Pelosi to hit Orange Blatherskite over the head with a folding chair during the State of the Union address.
       O.B.'s respect for Paul Ryan had been even lower than it is for Pelosi.  Obviously, it's O.B.'s desire for unfettered power, rather than party, that makes him despise the Speaker.  Total domination may be a pro wrestler's goal, but it makes little sense in government.

New Republic Conservatives

   When Estase was an undergraduate, he noticed a difference in the attitude of the Nation and New Republic towards President Clinton.  Nation saw Clinton as an unprincipled opportunist--someone who couldn't be trusted to stand on principle for anything.  Clinton's iffy environmental record and support for DOMA bear out the Nation's view of Clinton.  New Republic had the Tabitha Soren view of the Clintons.  Assuming that the antiwar generation was infallible, New Republic happily overlooked Whitewater and other signs of the Clintons' dishonesty.  Blind adulation was the New Republic's attitude toward Team Billary.
       If anyone wants to see what he Republican version of New Republic looks like, they need look no further than AM radio, Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News.  Loathe to say anything critical of Orange Blatherskite, these news sources come up with tu quoque on a scale never formerly thought possible.  Trump's inability to pick staff who hold their post for more than a year is of no concern.  While O.B. is in trouble for seeking dirt on Joe Biden from Ukraine, the oblivious Trump doubles down by repeating his impropriety with China!  The response of the New Republic right is to act as though Biden's potential abuses of power absolve Trump from misusing Executive power!
     Never before have Republicans had so low a bar for their office-holders.  Pointing to Democratic malfeasance is now a cover for open defiance of the public trust. 
       While it may be proper to pressure foreign governments for information about terrorists, this is of use of Executive power for public protection.  What O.B. is doing with Ukraine and China is entirely different.  This is use of Executive power for Trump's PERSONAL BENEFIT.
       By this time, the response of the right-wing Outrage Machine against the legitimate qualms of Mitt Romney (whose conservative bona fides go further back than 2015) are a sadly predictable response.  As are the memes claiming that attacks on our lawless president are attacks on conservative America.  This is just how much of a stranglehold New Republic Republicans have over the conservative movement.

Animo et Facto

       Francis Bacon said we believe nothing so much as that which we wish to believe.  After eight years of Oh Blah Blah, Estase yearned for a president who didn't make extensive use of executive orders and presidential fiat.  He thought Glenn Beck was like him in wanting a Frodo president--someone who would take the Ring of excessive presidential power created by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and then expanded by FDR, and throw it in a volcano.  To keep the business of the Dittohead Right, Glenn Beck now sings the praises of a Gollum president--someone who sits in a darkened cave where he sees only the shadows of his imagined success, clinging to Imperial power, repeating the words, "My precious!"

       Thus, the chasm between intention and reality becomes apparent.  Republicans thought they were electing a conservative super-patriot, and have actually empowered a statist who is less conservative than George W. Bush.  But you would never know this from the corrupt conservative media;  too afraid to tell the Right the truth for fear of losing listeners or viewers, they heap adulation on the same kind of autocrat they just spent eight years condemning.

Stupid Comparison of the Day (Complete with Economic Hogwash)

       Cognitive dissonance (or rank economic ignorance) is at work when Orange Blatherskite simultaneously claims he is master of a booming economy, and says that the Federal Reserve needs to cut interest rates.  If the economy were actually doing well, basic economics says that interest rates should go up.  Some point to the decreasing value of the stock market.  The stock market rose to such heights only because lowered interest rates killed the bond market.  
           Everything above is obvious to anyone who actually understands economics.  The President apparently said that he didn't know who the bigger enemy to our economy was--the Chairman of the Fed or Chinese President Eleven.   Huh?  The President thinks the Chinese are such an imminent threat that he destroys American commodity exports a la Jimmy Carter to "fight" them, and now he implies that the Chairman of the Fed is worse than the dictator of a Communist regime?  This moment of stupidity was brought to you by the letters "O" and "B."

A Never Trumper Thanks Liberals

       Being a Never Trumper means that one always has to explain and justify oneself to other conservatives.  Typical accusations are of trying to ingratiate oneself to liberals, or of having impossible standards of purity when it comes to Trump's lamentable life choices.  George F. Will is an "elitist" who is "bitter" and "out-of-touch."  People who thought Paul Ryan a better conservative than Trump are just plain fools.
         The verbal abuse from the left includes the name of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which might as well be called the White Trash Law Center.  Originally formed to fight actual racists, the SPLC is now weaponized against pro-lifers.  Apparently, people who oppose abortion are white trash now.   Then comes this:

So we can now see that the left thinks everyone who rejected the demonic Hellbeast known as H-> is white trash.  And that the former Whigs who opposed slavery were white trash as well.  After all, the Republican party was formed by poor whites (easily distinguished from the fine slaveholding gentry who elected the Democrats of the 1860s).  Nancy Isenberg makes it so much harder to find fault with President Trump, and remain credible as a conservative in 2019.  The dismissal of a wide swath of Americans as white trash is amazingly arrogant, and enough to bring out the Dale Gribble in Estase.  I can see why a book like this was nominated for an award.  The NPR liberals must love Nancy Isenberg, as should President Trump.  Isenberg reinforces every trope of the Trump machine about "elitists" and the "establishment" who hate ordinary Americans.

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

       The conservative movement used to have really pure ideas about the limited powers of the Presidency.  Then it embraced someone who idolized dictators and strongmen, and things went out the window.

There are several points of comparison between the pissed off British electorate of 1770 that inspired Edmund Burke's Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents and the segment of the American public who find Citizen Kane attractive.   The British rogue John Wilkes was the Donald Trump of his day.  His damning sin was bucking the Earl of Bute, but what he was denied Parliament for was his insult to George III in North Briton #45.  The first time Wilkes was denied his seat, the Middlesex electors were at least allowed to elect a replacement.  The second time, the ministry named a Colonel Luttrell to fill Wilkes' spot.

        The grievances of the British in 1770 were the weak legislature caused by an intrusive executive power (namely, Lord Bute and the court faction), the fact that competent leaders were unwilling to enter office because of the undermining of ministries (as happened with Pitt the elder and Lord Rockingham), and a public feeling that the executive was overwhelming the legislature.

       The grievances of the Trump faction today are similar.  They include a pushover Congress that does everything the President asks, Congressional leaders who are scapegoats for executive programs, and a public uninterested in empowering Congress.

       The problem with the backers of Citizen Kane is that they want to deal with an emasculated Congress, not by restoring to proper functions of Congress (e.g. by returning to actual budgets, rather than continuing resolutions;  an end to finances being designed in the White House), but by replacing one autocratic President with another autocratic President. . . .Virtually no position Trump takes is based on facts, reflection or experience.  Limited government and constitutionalism are meaningless to him.  All Trump promises to be is a different type of autocrat. . . .So, unlike the British in 1770, there exists today in America discontent, but a strange, incoherent discontent that aims to remedy a disorder by the same disorder.

       Estase wrote that on his old blog Q.E.D. before the election, and unfortunately, events have proceeded accordingly.  Orange Blatheskite has relied on Presidential Decrees and National Emergencies to achieve what he cannot by legitimate means.   

 

 

 

What Have You Done for Me Lately?

       The election had results nationally and in Killinois that were in some ways entirely predictable.  Both nationally and locally, Republican chances were hurt by Donald Trump and Bruce Rauner being self-absorbed, and not caring about the consequences of their behavior.
       America's Hill of Offense is its thriving abortion industry.  That industry was aided by Illinois' King Solomon, Bruce Rauner, through the signing of House Bill 40, which created taxpayer-funded abortion in Illinois.  Governor Rauner has been a corrupting influence on the Illinois Republican Party since the day he was elected.  Many representatives and state senators have been forced to make Faustian bargains to stay in Rauner's good graces.  Rauner's personal wealth has made up for the decreased contributions by the bewildered and betrayed Republican voters.
       Once the base of the Republican party was abandoned by Sci-Fi Bruce Rauner, J.B. Pritzker made short work of him, and the effect was felt throughout the Republican party in Illinois.  Similarly, the self-absorbed Orange Blatherskite hurt Republican candidates, while making this election all about him.  In Paul O'Keefe's biography of Wyndham Lewis (Some Sort of Genius) , Wyndham Lewis is quoted as telling Dick Wyndham, "People are only friends in so much that they are of use to you."  Insolently thinking of himself as the personification of the Republican Party (an illusion reinforced daily on Fox News), Trump gloated about the defeat of great candidates like Mia Love from Utah, saying that the lack of adulation from them somehow made them undeserving of victory.  Illinois congressman Peter Roskam also suffered from the toxic overflow of Trumpian egotism.  Orange Blatherskite is a user in the same vein as Wyndham Lewis.  People are tools for Trump.
        With Trump's lack of loyalty and chronic self-centeredness, it only makes sense that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was let go in favor of a malleable cipher who will do only Trump's bidding.  This obvious attempt to kill the Mueller Investigation will probably not meet with Senate approval.   And Republicans need to get used to saying "Speaker Pelosi" again.  So much winning!

Top of the World, Ma!

       Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, whose conservative credentials are far better than those of Orange Blatherskite, has nonetheless decided to nail her flag to Trump's mast.  Showing loyalty to someone who shows none to his Attorney General seems a big mistake.  Apparently, Jeff Sessions is supposed to refuse to prosecute Republicans when they break the law.  What's more, apparently Orange Blatherskite also called his own Attorney General a "stupid Southerner" and "mentally retarded."  (Remember all those people who tried to say that he hadn't made fun of a journalist's disability, and Ann Coulter's worrisome explanation that O.B. was ridiculing a "standard retard?"  Some pro-lifer, that Donald Trump!)
       How will Marsha Blackburn use Trump to win votes when Tennessee voters are, in the president's estimation, "dumb Southerners?"  A perplexing question.
       The president shows no loyalty for his underlings.  He uses people for his own advancement, and then throws them away.  Sort of like White Heat gangster Cody Jarrett.  
        In the 90s, Democrats made themselves look terribly silly defending the amoral Bill Clinton through his series of womanizing claims and worse.  Feminists in particular seemed to think legalized abortion made up for a president who used women like Kleenex.  Republicans are starting to look just as silly, defending a lout who can't even treat his own Attorney General with respect.  They should also remember how White Heat ends;  Cody Jarrett is cornered with no escape, and chooses a violent explosion rather than facing more jail time.

Right-Wing Philistines

       American conservatism at one time held a set of beliefs that included things like anti-Communism, belief in limited government, und so weiter.  These principles were reflected by an intellectual class who made reference to them in their writings.  There were different strains of conservative thought, but common themes united the Barry Goldwaters, Russell Kirks, and William F. Buckleys.
       The past decade has seen a dramatic deevolution in the complexity of conservative thought.  Talk radio, which at one time seemed like a means for bypassing the liberal messages of network news, has encouraged a pettiness that doesn't become any movement.  Conservative thought has become obsessed with the economic.  Right-wing philistines only concern themselves over the economic life of man.  Cutting taxes has gone from being a treatment for symptoms of liberalism to being the entire Republican message!  Limited government and the more philosophical aspects of the message have gone the way of the passenger pigeon. 
       A few years ago, the TEA party movement started this process, in an Ayn Rand reaction to budget-busting Obama policies.  The TEA party was agnostic on social issues, hence one never saw people in colonial garb protesting gay marriage or abortion.  Their simplistic tirades about taxes ended up becoming the dominant strain on talk radio.  It never occurred to the right-wing philistines that Obama was hardly the first president to go to absurd lengths in growing the size and cost of government.  When a New York liberal decided to try to get the Republican Party's nomination, the memories of the right-wing philistines didn't encompass the decades of sex and scandal that he brought with him.  Absurdly, many people who were strongly religious started to compare him to King David, or say that he was God's anointed, meant to bring America back to her roots.  Those of us who were skeptics were decried as liberals.
       The result is a Republican Party that is morally bankrupt.  Having abandoned her principles to a horde of talk-radio dittoheads, she created an Obama-style continuing resolution (weren't we supposed to be done with such things?) that even funded the worshippers of Moloch over at Planned Parenthood!  The obvious question is whether voting Republican has any discernible effect over what kind of government we get.  We may get a tax cut, but the schema of government remains the same.

Deep State, Deep Doo-Doo

       Many of O.B.'s supporters are fond of the term "deep state."  Their conspiratorial leanings incline them to believe that government employees exist primarily to frustrate the goals of the Trump Administration.  Somehow, previous Republican administrations never suffered from career government employees, but this one does.
       Naivete about how government functions seems to be a big problem with the alt-right, "populists," and other assorted Trump acolytes.  Non-military government employees are usually Ivy League graduates.  As a function of their origin, they obviously lean left.  They are career employees, as opposed to the political appointees every administration gets to install.  O.B.'s intention to radically cut the number of State Department employees no doubt incenses people who earned advanced degrees in International Relations with an eye to public service.  It also seems ill-advised in a world where diplomacy beats bloody slug-fests every time.  Even Ronald Reagan realized that the State Department served a vital function in preventing armed hostilities!   So if there's a war with the deep state, it's one that Trump started.
       Just as how O.B.'s supporters enjoy saying nasty things about Republican legislative leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, they enjoy fantasies about saboteurs in Federal office buildings, plotting against the valiant patriots in the West Wing.  This manichean view of politics suits the uninformed and those who enjoy talk radio careers.  The latter are largely responsible for the simplistic views of most Trump supporters.  One might well say that Republican voters are less informed after 25 years of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin.  Their impossible standards of right-wing purity would be impossible to meet in a legislature, where compromise is a necessary tool of government.  This is why right wing crackpots say idiotic things like "Paul Ryan is a liberal."  Paul Ryan is a person who has to cobble together governing majorities on every issue.  This means that in order to govern, even subhuman bottom feeders like Bela Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have to have some of their desires met.  It's called democracy--look into it!

Killing Edmund Burke a Second Time

    The constellation of factors that are at play with Orange Blatherskite are making him a caricature.  The first is the current standards of political correctness, which are so impossible to not violate that even liberals end up getting accused of racism, sexism, and homophobia (the liberal holy trinity).  Second, O.B. takes pride in flouting even the most basic standards of adult behavior, let alone the rarified pseudomorality of political correctness.  Insults are O.B.'s love language.  Third, O.B. has the maturity of a twelve-year-old girl combined with the aggression of Rambo.  It's no wonder Tex Killerson is on his way out of Foggy Bottom;  imagine the frustration he felt trying to calm down North Korea, and seeing his boss engage in Twitter escalation with the regime.  
        Any things on fronts like abortion or deregulation that O.B. has done the right thing on seem overshadowed by the pettiness and lack of policy sophistication he displays.  O.B.'s favorite subject is the problem of illegal immigration.  At the same time O.B. wants to build a wall to stop illegal immigration, he attacks NAFTA on the basis that it is too favorable to Mexico!  The man who calls himself a genius doesn't seem to appreciate that any economic growth in Mexico will in and of itself reduce illegal immigration.  A poorer Mexico is one which will continue to have an exodus from it.  This "Jacksonian Nationalism" is tribalistic, short-sighted, and makes it easy for liberals to call O.B. racist.  These things don't seem to matter to O.B., and the fact that Fox News seems to consider O.B. the gold standard in conservatism means that millions of Americans are being led to believe that conservatism is race politics for white people.