“Leadership: Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.” -Donald Trump, Twitter, Nov. 8, 2013
“Responsibility’s a heavy responsibility, man.” -Richard “Cheech” Marin
Hi, Trumpniks! Sick of winning yet?
No really, are you sick yet?
Boy, I bet it was fun the last few years getting to lord it over all those liberals and vegans and “experts” who read books and know stuff. And having Gary Busey’s idiot sidekick as president was fun, in a sliding-your-dick-against-a-cheese-grater sense of ‘fun,’ but then the stock market crashed and you had to decide whether having a job was worth Gramma dying.
In the fight against coronavirus, Trump says we are fighting a war against an “invisible enemy”, which must be difficult for him, since his usual psychology is to assume that someone is the enemy just by their appearance. But what do Our Wartime President and his cult know about real war? Have they ever sacrificed? In World War II, would they have put up with rationing? Would they have put up with blackouts? Would they have donated blood? Would they have volunteered for the military? Or would they dodge the draft? If these “patriots” had been around in the ’30s and ’40s, would they have treated military preparedness as a joke, said the whole war effort was a socialist plot against our freedoms, and spread rumors that Roosevelt’s real name was “Rosenfeld”?
Most of the actual “war” has been fought on the state level even as the Party of Trump creates a resistance against the program. Take Michigan as a major example.
While the Left holds Governor Gretchen Whitmer as a hero, largely because Trump seems to have picked on her as his latest bete noire, right-wingers have varying degrees of skepticism. In several pieces, Reason Magazine pointed out that some Michigan sheriffs are refusing to enforce her virus shutdown orders, because among other things the Michigan shutdown “includes a prohibition on large retailers selling allegedly nonessential items, such as paint and outdoor supplies, meaning stores like Home Depot had to tape off those sections from customers. Lawncare services have been temporarily shuttered. With very few exceptions, the order prohibits people from traveling between residences, even to their cottages in the northern part of the state, where there are few COVID-19 cases. Residents of other states, however, may still travel to such properties in Michigan if permitted by their respective home states. Individuals may not use motorboats, but they are authorized to use boats without motors. The order bans “public and private gatherings of any kind,” yet it still allows for the sale of lottery tickets, the proceeds of which go toward funding K-12 education in the state.”
Well, as I keep saying: it is possible for two different things to be true at the same time. It is possible to want to take the virus seriously and make serious public preparations against it, and also to say that government can go too far in saying what’s good for the public. But if you don’t like Whitmer, I give you the same advice that I give to anyone who doesn’t like Trump: Next election, VOTE THE FUCKER OUT.
That doesn’t seem to be good enough for some people in Michigan and other states who came out at the end of the week and over the weekend into Monday to block traffic – including ambulances – while carrying firearms, wearing military gear and waving Trump campaign banners and Confederate flags.
Yeah, because nothing says you love freedom and America more than flying the traitor flag of a slaveholders’ rebellion.
And as simultaneous leader and follower, President ALL CAPS twitted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA” over its Second Amendment policies. First off: Liberate them from whom? Liberate them how? With “Second Amendment solutions”? Why, because Democrats are now in charge of those states? Gee, who was it saying that people couldn’t accept the results of the last election?
There has been a lot of talk about “freedom” and “liberty” being thrown around, not only by right-wingers but by leftists who look at them and see “liberty” as a joke. In fact the coronavirus crisis (the crisis being not the virus itself but our response to it) does a lot to demonstrate why we don’t have a more libertarian world or in particular a more libertarian America. In a perfect libertarian world (itself a subjective hypothetical) we would need less laws because people would be educated enough to make decisions for themselves and exercise common sense. We have all the laws we do because people do not have education and common sense. And every time there’s a crisis, government uses that as a pretext to take more and more liberties, and they can do so because people do not exercise common sense.
Liberty doesn’t just mean rights, it means responsibility. And contra libertarians, it used to be conservatives making that assertion. Liberty means not only taking responsibility for one’s free will but accepting that we need to protect others’ rights. But some people define “rights” as belonging only to them, not even to “white people” but only to white people of a certain tribe and political alignment. And these rights do not imply taking responsibility for one’s own decisions or extending the same right to others.
Just as their role model demands all the power and none of the responsibility, the cult demands the freedom to do as they please without acknowledging the consequences. Such shutdown policies that have been enacted – on a state-by-state level – are based on observation of other countries and the fact that even now, we have far more cases and more total deaths than any other Western country (not counting China or Islamic states that are not transparent in their reporting). You go against these policies, the likelihood is you will get the virus and spread it to others. And yet such folks are willing to say that someone has to die and bear the statistical loss because staying the course would be a greater cost to the economy. And yes, they’re still calling themselves “pro-life.”
These people are just as serious about being pro-death as they are about being pro-life, which is to say: Not. They are no more serious about saying “someone has to die” than they are about someone else’s unwanted pregnancy. It’s not THEIR problem. The reason leftists can say things like “name one member of your family whom you are willing to sacrifice for capitalism” is because they can. Because with what we know about the virus, if you do not practice distancing, that challenge is no longer an abstract hypothetical. It’s not ‘their’ problem any more, it’s YOUR problem. But as soon as it becomes YOUR problem, Lawdy, it’s the biggest injustice in the world. And that’s what we’re dealing with here.
If one New Yorker dies every 12 minutes over three days, nobody panics, that’s all part of the plan. But shut down lawn care service, and everyone loses their minds!
We are seeing the wisdom of Jello’s phrase. Certain people are more agitated at the loss of conveniences they have been accustomed to than the actual rights that they never bothered to exercise.
Your president is blowing millions to pacify the farming community and compensate for the fact that they have been rendered uncompetitive in the free market due to government policy (first tariffs and now the virus response). And that isn’t socialism?
In the last few days we have had more and more reports of Our President’s federal government deliberately intercepting shipments of medical supplies to states after the states had procured and paid for them. And THAT isn’t a government overreach?
Philando Castile had a license to carry a gun and a policeman killed him anyway. Are you protesting THAT government abuse?
Flint, Michigan STILL doesn’t have reliable drinking water. Are Michiganders protesting that?
No. You’re protesting because you can’t grow seeds or get a haircut.
If there’s anything more contradictory than liberals demanding the Federal government exercise more power when they know they can’t trust it under current management, it’s so-called small-government conservatives whining about state governors after all these years talking about federalism and “states’ rights.”
And yet, in their continuing pathology in wanting it both ways, Trumpniks insist that their Leader is the rebel against “the establishment.” Never mind that he needed the Republican establishment to get anything done at all, and to keep his ass in power after he incriminated himself. Look, Trumpniks, I know most of you are AM radio fans, so you’ve read Rules for Radicals, right? Remember the twelfth rule: “The twelfth rule is: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. ” In other words, once you’ve achieved your goal, you are in the position that your target was in, and now you have to actually do those things you said your enemy wasn’t doing. In still other words, you can’t stick it to The Man when YOU ARE THE MAN.
Your people are in charge. And while you may not control the House any more, you still have the Senate, which means you still appoint judges. You have a whole government of people who think like you. Not just Trump, but people like Supreme Court Justice “Boofing” Brett Kavanaugh, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, and Congressman Louie Gohmert, representing the great state of Gohmert.
How can you hate the government when YOU ARE the government?
You got everything you wanted from a President who’s just like you, for at least two years. So why are you whining?
You’re whining because state governors are going against the political correctness of Fox News and AM radio and the Internet and enforcing public health restrictions, and they can because that’s the way federalism works. Because it was set up that way by the Founders precisely to make sure that a corrupt autocrat couldn’t have too much power, and you “freedom” lovers are mad that your little King can’t do whatever he wants to stop them.
Freedom and balance of powers means that no one has absolute power, INCLUDING YOU.
So do me and the rest of us actual libertarians a favor and SHUT THE GODDAMN FUCK UP, because people like you are making the leftists look good.
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: The real worst-case scenario of Republican domination is that they will turn America into a one-party state – that one party being the Democrats. Because after Republicans completely destroy the political reputation of anybody to the right of Joe Biden, the only competition in our politics will be Political Hack Democrats (like Biden) versus Social Justice Warrior Democrats (like AOC).
Because keep in mind Trumpniks, the main reason your control is not complete any more is because of the midterm elections and the last round of state elections, which occurred after 2016, when you had both houses of Congress, and the effects of Republican dominance in the states were becoming clear. If 2018 demonstrated anything, it’s that the more the Republicans cater to ooga-booga tribalists who hate science and fear evil spirits, the more likely it is that more people like them will turn into people like ME: Former Republicans who are sick of their shit.
I mean, back when Republicans hadn’t completely pissed away their reputation as a party of liberty, the joke was that “a conservative is just a liberal who’s been mugged by reality.” Well, by that standard, a libertarian is a conservative who got mugged by Republicans.
No matter how you interpret the 2018 midterms, the special elections, and the 2019 Kentucky election, it comes down to three factors: Either more people voted for Democrats than in 2016, more people who voted Trump in 2016 voted third-party/Libertarian in the next election or more people who voted Trump just stayed home. Possibly all three.
Because if lots of people (including me) agree with “conservatives” about how incompetent and venal the Democrats are, and they voted them back anyway, what does that say about Republican incompetence and venality?
And seriously kids: I don’t like this either. I don’t like going without clubs, and restaurants, and movie theaters. I don’t like being told I CAN’T do something. I know it’s a huge issue not being able to physically go to church. But if there’s any one person to blame for the loss of your liberties, blame the guy who was for the ‘China virus’ before he was against it. Blame the president who killed the Pandemic Response team, who removed the agents we had in China to observe disease trends, and who, like the World Health Organization, took China’s lead in the early stages of the Wuhan spread because no one wanted the Communist government to look bad. Blame Trump, who was informed by his own people what was going on, but who said in January, “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!” It was your right-wing capitalist icon who wrecked the market by giving Wall Street mixed signals, and it was your libertarian rebel who did China’s bidding, and that’s why the governors have to shut down the stores, because YOUR president didn’t want this country to be prepared for a pandemic.
You wanted a Third World dictator who said he’d do everything by himself. That’s what you got. Liberty for other people wasn’t important to you, and now you’re living with the result of what YOU wanted.
Look, Trumpniks: You had your fun for three years. You got to do everything you wanted to this country, and as many predicted, you completely fucked it up. Now it’s time for you to sit down, shut up and let the grownups run things again.
Or else come November, you’re really gonna have something to protest.