Morning Reads – Thursday, June 14, 2018

@Benevolous:

First off, lots of conservatives have been appalled by Trumps behaviour from the beginning. Are you going to pretend that the “never Trump” movement didn’t exist? It is just that after the guy won, what were you going to do? Democrats like this guy believe that Republicans should act to blow up his administration and with it their own agenda “on principle” https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/jeff-flake-and-moderate-republicans-should-stop-talking-about-the-dangers-of-donald-trump-and-do-something.html but Republicans rather justifiably say that they will do so only when Democrats prove themselves capable of doing the same.

Also, Bill Clinton did not get impeached for his personal behavior. He was impeached for lying under oath to federal investigators in a matter that was material to both that investigation and a civil trial, and was later disbarred for that also. If you recall, Democrats used the same tactics against Kenneth Starr that Republicans are now using against Mueller. The difference is that Starr got tons of convictions involving a Whitewater scandal that incontrovertibly did happen, and they included the sitting governor of Arkansas. Yet to this day lots of Democrats claim that it was a partisan witch hunt that turned up nothing and never should have happened. Now the Paula Jones thing had nothing to do with Whitewater, true, but it was Bill Clinton who signed off on expanding the scope of the independent counsel – a scope which existed thanks to John Conyers during Watergate by the way – to include that because he thought that he would beat it due to lack of evidence and he could claim himself to be exonerated. Turned out to be a horrible mistake that cost Al Gore and his wife the presidency.

As for “If you were a white supremacist, what party would you choose? ” and the rest of your missives, those are Democratic talking points. Republicans and independents have a different view of the world that are based on legitimate economic, social and political views as well as life experiences. There was a time when Democrats fully acknowledged this. Sadly that time has passed. Yes, the Republican Party attracts a small number of fringe extremists. But here is the deal: so do the Democrats. But because you are already on the left, their views don’t seem extreme to you. Can you name a single Democrat elected official in this country, or a single leader of a progressive organization, whose views you consider to be too far to the left? You can’t, because being someone on the left, their views don’t strike you as offensive or dangerous. But trust me, there are plenty of people on the right and in the middle who consider folks in your coalition that you are perfectly willing to support – or at least tolerate – as being just as objectionable as neo-Nazis.

You aren’t confronted with that reality that much because the mainstream media doesn’t use the same fearmongering tactics with respect to the far left that they do with the far right. (Which makes their being regarded as “the mainstream media” a joke.) Instead, the mainstream media actually sanitizes and glamorizes far-leftists in a way that they never would their counterparts on the right. An excellent example: we hear tons about the anti-Semitism of fringe Trump supporters. What about the same from the organizers of that massive women’s march? Not. A. Peep. What was the attendance of the Women’s March? Like 1 million in Washington alone with who knows how many more in simultaneous smaller city rallies? Well imagine if the anti-Semites who endorsed that Virginia Senate candidate – that the National Republican Senate Committee will not endorse or support by the way – had gotten 1/20th that crowd size to DC. CNN, NBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post etc. would have immediately proclaimed it Germany in the 1920s. That’s a real blind spot there, and so long as it exists, it will continue to give people like Trump an opening to exploit.