How Trump broke conservatism - By Michael Gerson

[DonViejo]

By Michael Gerson Opinion writer October 23 at 7:24 PM

A common defense of President Trump points to the positive things he has done from a Republican perspective — his appointment of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and other conservative judges, his pursuit of the Islamic State, his honoring of institutional religious freedom. This argument is not frivolous. What frustrates is the steadfast refusal among most Republicans and conservatives to recognize the costs on the other side of the scale.

Chief among them is Trump’s assault on truth, which takes a now-familiar form. First, assert and maintain a favorable lie. Second, attack and discredit sources of opposition. Third, declare victory based on power or applause. So, Trump claimed that Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson’s account of his conversation with a Gold Star widow was “totally fabricated.” (Not true.) Wilson, after all, is “wacky.” (Not relevant.) And Trump won the interchange because Wilson is “killing the Democrat Party.” (We’ll see.)

The pattern is invariable. President Barack Obama is a Kenyan; the Mexican government deliberately dumps criminals across the border; “thousands and thousands” of people in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attacks ; Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s father consorted with Lee Harvey Oswald; vaccination schedules can be tied to autism; Obama was “wiretapping” Trump Tower during the presidential campaign; Obama asked British intelligence to spy on Trump; at least 3 million immigrants voted illegally in the 2016 election. Any source that disputes Trump is personally defamed or dismissed as “fake news.” And how is truth ultimately adjudicated? “The country believes me,” Trump said earlier this year. “Hey, I went to Kentucky two nights ago. We had 25,000 people.” Confronted by a reporter about his routine deceptions, Trump answered, “I can’t be doing so badly, because I’m president and you’re not.”

Thirty years ago, University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind” began with the words: “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: Almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” Bloom found this deeply problematic, because the ability to determine truth from falsehood, right from wrong, is essential to personal flourishing and civic health. I wonder what Bloom would make of a political philosophy in which truth is determined by 25,000 screaming partisans and reality is a function of fabulism. Conservatives were supposed to be the protectors of objective truth from various forms of postmodernism. Now they generally defend our thoroughly post-truth president. Evidently we are all relativists now.

Not quite all. Some of us still think this attack on truth is a dangerous form of political corruption. The problem is not just the constant lies. It is the dismissal of reason and objectivity as inherently elitist and partisan. It is the invitation to supporters to live entirely within Trump’s dark, divisive, dystopian version of reality. It is the attempt to destroy or subvert any source of informed judgment other than Trump himself. This is the construction of a pernicious form of tyranny: a tyranny over the mind.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-trump-broke-conservatism/2017/10/23/e68f180e-b817-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html

[hatrack]

1. Oh, no, sorry Michael: the bridge was rusting from years of coats of Stupid Paint . . .

Shitstain just jumped up and down in the middle until the span collapsed, producing a cloud of dust and revealing the shear points and missing rivets for all to see.

[JHB]

2. But he didnt break it. They spent 50 years turning politics into a...

...demolition derby, and now they’re annoyed that someone who isn’t the “house” team won the big prize.

But they won’t kick him out, because they still want The Big Prize and they lose any chance of it if they boot him, because the audience they’ve built goes with him.

[genxlib]

3. All those things in the first paragraph

Are things that any (R) would have done.

To give him credit for doing those is like giving him credit for showing up to work. Which, ironically, is one of the many things he can't be bothered to do on a regular basis.

So all of those "accomplishments" are nonsense.

His real "accomplishment" is stirring up and mobilizing the ugliest and loudest segment of our population into a political force that now makes it hard for the old guard GOP to get rid of him without fracturing their coalition.

So congratulations GOP. You broke it, you bought it. All of you pearl clutching will fall on deaf ears until you put Country before party and do something about it.

[JHB]

4. There he goes again.

[stopbush]

5. As others have pointed out, the lies of the Rs started decades ago

and have not abated.

Their economic policies have been proven over and over again to do the exact oposite of what they say. Yet every single proposal they offer is based on the same failed trickle down myths.

Without Reagan, there would not have been Bush. Without Bush, there would not have been tRump. tRump is simply the logical conclusion of Rs policies and attitudes that have been foisted on this nation for decades.

BTW - all of these Rs who are now clutching their pearls would be fine with everything tRump said and did during the campaign if only he had pivoted into a normal R. Upset about his treatment of a Gold Star widow? Didn't bother them during the campaign. Telling lie after lie? Nary a peep from the now distraught.

Disgusting cowards and enablers, all of them.