The Right Owns Trump’s Betrayal (or, Conservatism Death Watch Part CLXXVII)

Honesty_Island

So apparently Trump is not only handing vital intelligence to the Russians, who intend our destruction, and doing so for no purpose other than to feed his own ego, but in doing so stabs in the back the allies upon whose cooperation we depend.

Not the first time, or the tenth, in the past several generations that America has unconscionably betrayed vulnerable allies, from South Vietnam to Iraq to Syria to Iraq again, and many more. (That anyone is dumb enough to help us is a perennial surprise to me. When in living memory have we ever not betrayed our allies?)

But we usually do so either for intelligible reasons of realpolitik or sympathetic reasons of progressive guilt. That doesn’t justify it, but does excuse it to some degree.

Now we do it because we elected a man who is little more than a slave to his momentary egoistic impulses.

When the Clinton impeachment went down to defeat, one conservative commentator (I forget who) said something like: “From now on, if anything worse comes out, no matter what it is, the Democrats own it. They chose to keep this man in power, knowing what he is.” I thought so then and I still think so.

You know who owns Trump?

  • All the “conservative” broadcasters and the undead remnant of the Religious Right, whose job it was to warn their people
  • All the GOP bigwigs who were handed repeated opportunities to deny Trump the nomination, and tossed them away
  • Cruz, Rubio, Perry and all the other former Trump opponents who sold their souls

Related: “This Is Not a Crisis,” Republicans Say as a Large Spider Slowly Devours Them

Ironically, the people who don’t own Trump – the people who have my sympathy – are the people with subject matter expertise (foreign policy, economics, education, health care, etc.) who work in his administration so they can minimize the damage. Those people are choosing crucifixion. I honor and admire them, and can empathize.

1 Thought.

  1. Pingback: A Man of Honor – Hang Together

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