I generally hold a position about the past that everything that happened led us to whatever moment we are in and wanting it to be different is pointless. You don't get emancipation without the tragedy of the Civil War; you don't get Pax Americana and the state of Israel without the horrors of the Holocaust. When Trump won, I thought, "If we can survive him, then we might see then American people turn on the unpopular GOP positions."
While I still hold out hope that Trumpism is repudiated next November and he winds up in jail, I'm afraid the damage he has done to our politics could last decades. In particular, the lying viciousness that typifies his every utterance has become the media strategy for the entire GOP.
Yesterday's horrific attacks in Israel should have been a moment when Americans rallied together against terrorism and for our long time ally, Israel. Instead, we have gotten a non-stop lying campaign about the Iranian money in Doha having funded the attacks. Biden is "responsible" for the attacks because he negotiated a deal to bring back Americans in return for unfreezing Iranian funds held by South Korea for humanitarian reasons. Or maybe just because he's "weak" in the tough guy performative way that GOP goons think of power.
The farrago of lies coming from just about every Republican mouthpiece is sickening. I think I saw one "normal" response, from Steve Scalise, that mimics a pre-Trump type response. "We stand with our friends in Israel in condemnation blah blah blah."
The lessons from Trump to his cohorts in the GOP is this:
A) There is no penalty for lying.
B) There is no penalty for being awful and cruel.
I don't know how long it will take to, as Hillary Clinton put it, "deprogram" the GOP, but it won't happen without a long period of them wandering in the wilderness.
UPDATE: I just saw a clip of Ronna McDaniel calling the events in southern Israel "a great opportunity for our candidates". Fuck these people.
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