Saturday, January 28, 2017

REPUBLICANS AREN'T COWARDS FOR FALLING IN LINE BEHIND TRUMP -- THEY'RE WORSE

Very few Republicans have denounced President Trump's Muslim ban, and the ones who have denounced it have done so with a lot of "both sides do it" language:



For the most part, Republicans are saying nothing, even though a number of them -- Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence -- denounced the idea when Trump first raised it in late 2015. A lot of people on the left are responding to this the way Daily Kos's David Nir has:
Cowardly Republicans go utterly silent in the face of Trump's cruelty to refugees and immigrants
Nahhh -- these people aren't cowards. They're worse.

They don't fear speaking out. They just don't care about the people affected by the ban. All they care about is what Republicans have focused on for years: power for themselves and tax and regulatory cuts for their donors. Nothing else matters.

This isn't a moral issue for them. For them, it's like the moral puzzle that forms the basis of the movie The Box and the Twilight Zone episode "Button, Button": Imagine if you could obtain a million dollars, and all you had to do was remotely kill someone you've never met. Would you do it?

That's what tacit support for Trump's policies is now: You give him leeway, you get those tax and regulatory cuts for the rich, and the only downside is the suffering of people you don't care about.

Yes, as I noted, many prominent Republicans denounced this idea in 2015. But that was when they believed that Trump wouldn't win the nomination, much less the general election, and they thought his advocacy of this policy would hurt their chances of being in a position to cut rich people's taxes and regulations. Now that they know that this wasn't an impediment, they're back to not caring who gets hurt.

That's not cowardice. It's amorality, which is worse.

4 comments:

DTR said...

Couldn't agree more! Dems should use that famous GOP slogan to their own benefit. Repeal and Replace with a Democrat in 2018.

896216598755556665 said...

The Dark Side's take on the box was interesting. When given the box, the recipient was told, "Someone you don't know will die." And when the million bucks was delivered and the box was taken away again, the button pushers were told, "The box will be given to someone you don't know," implying they would be the next to die.

I wish the world really worked that way.

Danp said...

Button-button: Great analogy, Steve. Thanks for the follow up, 896....

Feud Turgidson said...

'Member when we used to go after BushCo for being too close to the House of Saud? I almost feel nostalgia for those days of Splendor In The Sand when George and Bandae, hand in hand sheikhin' they booty to the Wahabi version of Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding. At least them it was just Saudi, Yemeni and Eqyptian rebels wanting to blow up a few iconic buildings.

On the other hand, maybe now the extreme radicalized jihadi youth of dozens of countries with large Muslim populations will feel more moved to forget American icons and go after the looming crap towers of a certain hotelier. One week into theDonnie the Narcissist's First Reich and things sure ain't lookin' quite so Thousand Yearsian for the Trump Brand.