Before I go on indefinite hiatus, which I'm basically going to do after I finish getting all this off my chest, I'm going to, um, get this off my chest.
For the last roughly two years, amazingly intensifying in the last nineteen months, I've watched two factions of conservatives/Republicans engage in the most ridiculous, cowardly, dishonest proxy war I've seen in four decades of groaning about politics.
"The NeverTrumpers must be purged"/"Those who supported Trump will never be welcome back" is, no matter which group of merry morons engages in it, dumb, dishonest, and cowardly.
See, here's the dirty little secret no one's willing to admit for some inexplicable reason: We're not really talking about pundits and writers and politicians of various levels of smugness, intelligence, and influence.
Nah. They're weapons to hand.
We're talking voters.
Nah. They're weapons to hand.
We're talking voters.
It's dishonest because if your principles or beliefs or goals are so important that you're willing to work or vote for them, you're going to take votes wherever you can. To borrow a phrase from a friend of mine, no one cares why the monkey dances; just dance, monkey, dance.
No one but God cares that your clicks are driven by hate, that your vote is made with your nose held, or that your bullet comes with regret. If your policy goals, and not just your aesthetics, are at issue, you'll take every damned vote you can and tally it without blinking.
It's dumb because this stuff, on social media, only slowly leaks into the general population, but leak it does. Your food fights over trivia ("SHE DISRESPECTED TRUMP AT HER FATHER'S FUNERAL!!!!" is a salient example right now) tell people you might need later to get tossed.
Now, maybe you think incumbent Presidents are easily primaried (HAHAHA) or beaten in general elections (lesser but real hahahaha). Maybe you think Trump is gonna Reagan 1984 all over 2020 (resume HAHAHAHA).
You'd be dumb to think either thing; worse, you'd be deliberately so.
You'd be dumb to think either thing; worse, you'd be deliberately so.
It is cowardly because you lack the courage to move beyond your proxy battles and just say what you bleeping well mean.
You don't mean David French or Tom Nichols or Sean Hannity or [I can't come up with other examples because I tend to think Trump shills are boring and so don't even pay attention to them, maybe that Kirk kid] shouldn't show up again, you mean those who think and speak as they do.
And it is precisely because telling those voters gets lost is actually politically suicidal in a country that has a soft spot for all the bad things that no one says so, and instead, oh look more bloodsport aimed at some politician or pundit who dares stand on the other side.
I didn't vote for Trump because I morally felt I could not, and wouldn't vote for Clinton because I was morally sure I could not. (I didn't vote for any of the clownshow candidates because I quit the Silly Party decades ago and I'm not going back.)
But as long as what's left of the Republic stands, there are and will be fights where you'll need allies; and if your policy positions are right-of-center, I have really bad news about your ability to get Democrats on board and what happened to the variously-colored-Dogs.
OMG I JUST FIGURED OUT WHY TRUMP HATES DOGS
Anyway, have fun with your mutual bloodletting. I'll be back to work on Thomas and the Island of the Damned at some point in the future.
