QOTD: Broken Eggs

 

Recently, we posted commentary by Paul Krugman, Josh Marshall and Brian Beutler to the effect that America and Democrats can't go back to a status quo ante following the destruction and abnormality of the Malignant Fascist's coup on our democracy.  Now, in a similar vein, Jamelle Bouie writes in the New York Effing Times that "America Broke Something When It Gave Trump A Second Chance":

... “Broken eggs can never be mended,” he [Abraham Lincoln] wrote in reference to the fate of slavery as the war carried on, “and the longer the breaking proceeds the more will be broken.”

Fort Sumter broke the Union and with it, slavery. Whatever the nation was or would be in the aftermath of the war, neither the nation nor its Constitution would protect, support or sanction human bondage.

You can think of this Trump administration as a similar state of affairs. The American people broke something when they gave Trump a second chance in office. And there is no going back to the Union as it was. If Democrats hope to lead the nation to any kind of recovery, much less renewal, they must understand and internalize this fact of the matter.

Broken eggs cannot be mended. To try to do so, to try to return to some notion of normality, is to court failure. Worse, it is to play a repeat of the last Democratic administration when, in pursuit of the familiar, the Democratic Party all but passed the baton back to reactionaries working toward something revolutionary.

We share the concern that the embedded establishment Democrats and their consultants currently playing catch-up to the will of the voters will misread what needs to be done, some of which Bouie,  et al outline in their commentaries. That can't be allowed to happen, because if a new Democratic administration becomes an exercise in mending broken eggs, it's courting the kind of failure from which America will never recover.  We need junkyard dogs, not cosseted schmoozers.

QOTD -- A Failed Presidency

 

"... On Tuesday, Trump gave his State of the Union address. 'What a difference a president makes,' he said. Trump believes he is popular, strong and successful. The truth says otherwise. Trump is as unpopular as he’s ever been. His approval in high-quality surveys from CNN, the American Research Group and Reuters hovers between 36 percent and 40 percent. His disapproval rating reaches as high as 60 percent. Even the most skilled presidents would struggle to recover from this kind of collapse. We can safely assume that, for Trump, things will only get worse.  [snip]

"What Trump has, a little more than one year into his second term, is a failed presidency: one that has crashed on the rocks of his ambition to supplant constitutional government with that of his own will. Yes, Trump has done a tremendous amount of damage. And yes, he has degraded American democracy to the point where it is on life support. But he’s failed to make himself a dictator, and the public is poised to punish his party for his transgressions.

"Unfortunately, that will be the easy part. It’s what comes after that that will test our ability to make the union whole again." -- Jamelle Bouie, NYT, on "What Hath Trump Wrought."  This excerpt is the conclusion of his op/ed, which deserves a full reading (free link).  Bouie covers the assault on the rights and liberties undertaken by the Malignant Fascist and his toadies -- with help from a spineless MAGAt Republican party/ cult and a corrupt Republican Supreme Court -- that Americans are well on the way to deciding wasn't what they wanted or expected, and are voting accordingly.

Quotes Of The Day -- The Democratic Big Sweep

 

"... Both Trump and his administration are less interested in helping ordinary Americans than they are in fulfilling their idiosyncratic program of austerity, pain and deprivation. They are all stick, no carrot.

It’s against this backdrop that voters just went to the polls and cast millions of votes against the president by way of Democratic candidates, moderate and progressive, who stood for both affordability and the nation’s most cherished values, who pledged to use their time in office to protect their new constituents from the provocations and assaults coming from the government in Washington.

If these elections had gone the other way — if the Democratic Party had underperformed or even lost one of these contests — then every commentator under the sun would say, rightfully, that Democrats were in disarray; that even the president’s deep unpopularity couldn’t keep them afloat with voters.

But Tuesday was a Democratic victory. And the party didn’t just win — it won by commanding majorities on virtually every field of play. In polls, in focus groups and now at the ballot box, the public is telling us something very clearly: Trump is simply too much. If this is an opportunity for Democrats to win back lost ground — and it is — then it is also a warning to a Republican Party that has tied its entire identity to the man from Mar-a-Lago." --  Jamelle Bouie, NYT, concluding that Trump is an albatross around the neck of his rotted out party/ cult.

____________________

 

"... If you look at recent Republican campaigns and positioning, it’s striking how much energy they’re putting into issues that just don’t matter much to ordinary Americans. Republicans may be obsessed with trans athletes, but most people aren’t. Polls and yesterday’s elections suggest that rants about the menace of illegal aliens have a lot less traction with the public than G.O.P. apparatchiks imagine — and that Americans don’t like the spectacle of masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street.

"This disconnect between party priorities and what matters to ordinary people seems to me like a much bigger deal than Democratic 'wokeness,' which was always exaggerated anyway.  [snip]

"Last night’s blue wave won’t stop MAGA’s attempt to consolidate authoritarian rule in America. If anything, they’ll redouble efforts to rig the 2026 midterms, although California, by approving a major redistricting, has largely neutralized their gerrymandering plot.

"A couple of months ago I noted that previous examples of autocrats who consolidated power after winning an election, from Hitler to Viktor Orban, did so while they were still popular. I asked whether a despised autocrat could do the same. After yesterday, it’s clear that Trump really is despised. Can he still end our democracy?

"I guess we’ll find out." -- Paul Krugman, in his eponymous Substack, on last night's historic Democratic victories coast-to-coast and which party is out of touch with voters.  Voters plainly said the poor Trump economy and the rising cost/ loss of health insurance were the two biggest issues in their minds, and Democrats are more trusted than MAGAt Republicans on both. 

QOTD -- "No Kings" And Trump's Vulnerability

 

"... [M]uch of Trump’s effort to extend his authority across the whole of American society depends on more or less voluntary compliance from civil society and various institutions outside of government. And that, in turn, rests on the idea that Trump is the authentic tribune of the people. Reject Trump, and you reject the people, who may then turn on your business or your university or, well, you.

"Nationwide protests comprised of millions of people are a direct rebuke to the president’s narrative. They send a signal to the most disconnected parts of the American public that the president is far from as popular as he says he is, and they send a clear warning to those institutions under pressure from the administration: Bend the knee and lose our business and support.

"To the degree that major protests could undermine the administration’s ability to exert political authority, it makes a whole lot of sense for Republicans and the White House to spend their energy attacking the No Kings movement.

"And this, I think, should serve as an important reminder to opponents of the administration that for all its boasts and bluster, it knows as well as anyone that the president is unpopular and that his administration is vulnerable." --  Jamelle Bouie, New York Times, on MAGAt Republican attacks on the "No Kings" movement (gift link).  You can always tell when the mob boss Malignant Fascist and his fellow cheap crooks are concerned about something like the burgeoning "No Kings" movement -- they furiously try intimidation, threats, and lies.  We can't help but relate it to the Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) line in "The Maltese Falcon" -- "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter":

QOTD -- The VRA Is Dead; Long Live The VRA

 

Jamelle Bouie writes in the New York Times about the likely demise of the Voting Rights Act (signed into law 60 years ago yesterday by President Johnson) at the hands of Chief Justice "Balls and Strikes" Roberts, and of the four republics that America has transitioned through.  This an extended excerpt:

... There are several American republics and at least two Constitutions, a first and a second founding. Our first republic began with ratification in 1788 and collapsed at Fort Sumter in 1861. Our second emerged from the wreckage of the Civil War and was dismantled, as the University of Connecticut historian Manisha Sinha argues, by Jim Crow at home and imperial ambition abroad. If the third American republic took shape under the unusual circumstances of the middle decades of the 20th century — what the Vanderbilt historian Jefferson Cowie calls “the great exception” of depression, war and a political system indelibly shaped by immigration restriction and the near-total exclusion of millions of American citizens from the political system — then the fourth began with the achievements of the civil rights movement, which included a newly open door to the world.

This was an American republic built on multiracial pluralism. A nation of natives and of immigrants from around the world. Of political parties that strove to represent a diverse cross-section of society. Of a Black president and a future “majority-minority” nation. There was an ugly side — it’s no coincidence that state retrenchment from public goods and services followed the crumbling of racial barriers. But for all its harsh notes and discord, this was the closest the country ever came to the “composite nation” of Frederick Douglass’s aspirations: a United States that served as home to all who might seek the shelter of the Declaration of Independence and its “principles of justice, liberty and perfect humanity equality.”

It’s this America that Donald Trump and his movement hope to condemn to the ash heap of history. It’s this America that they’re fighting to destroy with their attacks on immigration, civil rights laws, higher education and the very notion of a pluralistic society of equals.

The Supreme Court’s war on the Voting Rights Act precedes Trump but it is simpatico with his aims. The court’s steady effort to make the law an artifact of the past is of a piece with its broad expansion of executive power for the current president. Both work to undermine the basis for this more politically equal era of American democracy and clear the path to an American autocracy.

But while the Voting Rights Act may be heading to its demise as a functional piece of legislation, it can still stand as a symbol: of our collective capacity to expand the horizons of  democratic life; of our creative intelligence in the task of making a more perfect union; and of our ability to confront and overcome the worst of this nation’s past and present.

The Voting Rights Act is quite likely dead. Long live the Voting Rights Act.

Bouie is quite right to be hopeful despite the darkness enveloping our country (and the world) today.  The four republics he identifies weren't immutable.  Each gave way to another America in time, some worse, some better.  We're seeing the "worse" now, but Bouie (and we) believe there will be a "better" in time.  But for that day to come sooner rather than later, we must "confront and overcome the worst of this nation's past and present" and never shirk from that responsibility.  We can't let the legacy of our lives be the triumph of pure evil over an imperfect good.

QOTD -- Resistance And Demoralization

 

"... It is in the past two months that we have finally begun to see resistance. Ordinary people began boycotts and took to the streets in large protests. Lawyers challenged the administration on virtually every one of the president’s illegal and unconstitutional executive orders. And Democrats began to tap into and amplify grass-roots anti-Trump energy, from the anti-oligarchy rallies of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Booker’s record-breaking speech on the Senate floor. The courts have clearly taken note of the shift in public sentiment, delivering major defeats and decrying the president’s attacks on cherished American liberties.  [snip]

"Trump wants us to be demoralized. He wants his despotic plans to be a fait accompli. They will be if no one stands in the way. But every time we — and especially those with power and authority — make ourselves into obstacles, we also make it a little less likely that the administration’s authoritarian fantasy becomes our reality." -- Jamelle Bouie, in the New York Times, on "One Way to Keep Trump's Authoritarian Fantasy from Becoming Reality."  Trump, as much as he wants us to believe, is not an unstoppable force.  Obeying in advance, going along to get along, outright capitulation, passivity, giving in to hopelessness -- that is how he succeeds, and we fail.  Resistance, standing up and speaking out, creating "obstacles," believing in our ultimate victory over evil -- that is how he fails, and we succeed.

Quote Of The Day

 

"... The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance. His long history of scams and hostile litigation — not to mention his frequent refusal to pay contractors, lawyers, brokers and other people who were working for him — is evidence enough of the reality that a deal with Trump is less an agreement between equals than an opportunity for Trump to abuse and exploit the other party for his own benefit. For Trump, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship or a positive-sum outcome. In every interaction, no matter how trivial or insignificant, someone has to win, and someone has to lose. And Trump, as we all know, is a winner.  [snip]

"If we view the president’s actions in light of his psychological need to dominate, it is almost certainly true that his flagrant abuse of the rights of migrants, asylum seekers and foreign-born students in the United States — snatching them off the streets to be imprisoned or, worse, sending them to an unaccountable foreign prison with no practical legal recourse — is just the beginning. In the same way that there was nothing that could stop Trump from imposing a tariff regime that, in his mind, humiliates America’s rivals, there is nothing that can dissuade him from using the coercive power of the state to dominate those he disfavors at home.

"Trump is a winner, and he’ll show it by making all of us the loser." -- Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times, on how "The Tariff Saga Is About One Thing."  

If a team of geneticists wanted to design a person who, because of his epically warped psychology, would be of mortal danger to anything he had control over, they could not have created one more perfectly imperfect than the Malignant Fascist, Donald J. Trump.  Bouie makes the point that, because of his psychological aberration, there's no satisfying his thirst for domination and no reasoning with our "mad king."  With largely unchecked power (kudos to SCOTUS and John Roberts) he's moving fast and breaking things (see post below).  And to think this country walked into this nightmare with eyes wide open makes us wonder about our national sanity.

QOTD -- No Going Back

 

"... To describe the current situation in the executive branch as merely a constitutional crisis is to understate the significance of what we’re experiencing. “Constitutional crisis” does not even begin to capture the radicalism of what is unfolding in the federal bureaucracy and of what Congress’s decision not to act may liquidate in terms of constitutional meaning.

Together, Trump and Musk are trying to rewrite the rules of the American system. They are trying to instantiate an anti-constitutional theory of executive power that would make the president supreme over all other branches of government. They are doing so in service of a plutocratic agenda of austerity and the upward redistribution of wealth. And the longer Congress stands by, the more this is fixed in place..." -- Jamelle Bouie, writing in the NYT that "There Is No Going Back" (gift link) after the Trump/ Musk coup. In this must- read piece, Bouie makes the point that, in just the past two- plus weeks, Trump and his co- President Musk have "altered the structure of things" in such a way that we can't expect to return to the status quo as it was before January 20, 2025.  A new rethinking of our political system will be required when and, more importantly, if we survive the fascist era in American politics.  We'd like to add that our judicial system must be included in any rethinking, as it has played a large and destabilizing part in getting us to where we are today.

More QOTD -- On Trump Immunity Claims

 

"...Rather than grapple with the situation at hand — a defeated president worked with his allies to try to overturn the results of an election he lost, eventually summoning a mob to try to subvert the peaceful transfer of power — the Republican-appointed majority worried about hypothetical prosecutions against hypothetical presidents who might try to stay in office against the will of the people if they aren’t placed above the law.

"It was a farce befitting the absurdity of the situation. Trump has asked the Supreme Court if he is, in effect, a king. And at least four members of the court, among them the so-called originalists, have said, in essence, that they’ll have to think about it." --  Jamelle Bouie, New York Effing Times, on the corrupt Republican Supreme Court's review of the Malignant Loser's claims of absolute immunity from crimes committed while in office (see also QOTD, below).

QOTD -- The Irredeemable Insurrectionist

 

In keeping with the theme of today's anniversary and the subsequent Constitutional issue at hand (see post below), Jamelle Bouie asks, in The New York Times, "If Trump Is Not An Insurrectionist, What Is He?"  Flowing from that, Bouie addresses the issue of whether it's undemocratic to bar the Malignant Loser from the ballot:

The unspoken assumption behind the idea that Trump should be allowed on the ballot and that the public should have the chance to choose for or against him yet again is that he will respect the voice of the electorate. But we know this isn’t true. It wasn’t true after the 2016 presidential election — when, after winning the Electoral College, he sought to delegitimize the popular vote victory of his opponent as fraud — and it was put into stark relief after the 2020 presidential election.

Trump is not simply a candidate who does not believe in the norms, values and institutions we call American democracy — although that is troubling enough. Trump is all that and a former president who used the power of his office to try to overturn constitutional government in the United States.

Is it antidemocratic to disqualify Trump from office and deny him a place on the ballot? Does it violate the spirit of democratic life to deny voters the choice of a onetime officeholder who tried, under threat of violence, to deny them their right to choose? Does it threaten the constitutional order to use the clear text of the Constitution to hold a former constitutional officer accountable for his efforts to overturn that order?

The answer is no, of course not...

The Republicans- in- robes on the Supreme Court could not escape ruling on this fundamental issue, as much as they might have wished.  But, whatever the decision (Bouie expects them to weasel a way to allow the Malignant Loser on the ballot), delegitimatizing election results that don't go their way will remain key to the Malignant Loser's Christofascist Republican playbook.  They're all irredeemable insurrectionists now.

QOTD: Attacks On "Wokeness" A Loser

 

The New York Times' Jamelle Bouie has an op-ed about how the Republican / Forced Birth / Shooters party "woke mind virus" refrain and culture war, while ginning up the fascistic MAGA base, isn't resonating with the majority of Americans:

"Along with low unemployment, there’s been meaningful economic growth, and [Biden] can point to significant legislative accomplishments. The Democratic Party is behind him; he has no serious rivals for the nomination.

But Biden’s biggest advantage has to do with the opposition — the Republican Party has gotten weird. [snip]

Not only do Americans not care about the various Republican obsessions — in a recent Fox News poll 1 percent of respondents said “wokeness” was 'the most important issue facing the country today' — but a large majority say that those obsessions have gone too far. According to Fox, 60 percent of Americans said 'book banning by school boards' was a major problem. Fifty-seven percent said the same for political attacks on families with transgender children. [snip]

And yet there’s no sign that Republicans will relent and shift focus. Just the opposite, in fact; the party is poised to lurch even further down the road of its alienating preoccupations. On abortion, for example, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, says candidates need to address the issue “head on” in 2024 — that they can’t be 'uncomfortable' on the issue and need to say 'I’m proud to be pro-life.'

But the Republican Party has veered quite far from most Americans on abortion rights, and in a contested race for the presidential nomination, a 'head-on'focus will possibly mean a fight over which candidate can claim the most draconian abortion views and policy aims."  (our emphasis)

We welcome Republicans using the same culture war slogans and positions for a general election that they use in their right-wing primary elections, as the clueless Ronna Romney McDaniel appears to suggest. It's worth a minimum of 100 electoral votes for Dems.

QOTD: Only One Choice

 

"The problem, which should be obvious, is that Democrats did not make democracy a partisan issue. Republicans did. They did when they stood with Donald Trump in the wake of Jan. 6; they did when they embraced 'Stop the steal' and election-denying candidates; they did when they made light of the threats against Nancy Pelosi and the assault on her husband.

"There is nothing stopping Republican candidates and Republican voters and Republican leaders from pursuing their partisan and ideological goals while keeping their commitment to free and fair elections. There is nothing stopping them from rejecting antidemocracy extremists in their midst and affirming the vital principles of popular sovereignty, rule of law and political equality. There is nothing stopping them, in other words, from making a different set of choices about the kind of political party they wish to be part of.

"It’s not Democrats who left the voting public with only one choice if they want to protect democracy as they know it. The reason the stakes are so high is that the Republican Party has made them this high." (our emphasis) -- New York Times op-ed writer Jamelle Bouie laying out where the problem lies.

The increasingly desensitized and distracted public, encouraged by Republican / Insurrectionist Party candidates to ignore their dark agenda and focus on grocery bills, are probably tired of hearing that this election is about preserving democracy. The cynical among them may just regard it as alarmist election season talk. Should the fascist right gain power in the House and Senate, we'll see how long it takes for those cynics to realize that voting in protest of inflation (which the fascists have no solution for) wasn't a good deal if we lose our democratic republic in the process.

 

QOTD -- "The Only Way Out Is Through"

 

"The main argument against prosecuting Donald Trump — or investigating him with an eye toward criminal prosecution — is that it will worsen an already volatile fracture in American society between Republicans and Democrats. If, before an indictment, we could contain the forces of political chaos and social dissolution, the argument goes, then in the aftermath of such a move, we would be at their mercy. American democracy might not survive the stress. [snip]

Our experience, as Americans, tells us that there is a clear point at which we must act in the face of corruption, lawlessness and contempt for the very foundations of democratic society. The only way out is through. Fear of what Trump and his supports might do cannot and should not stand in the way of what we must do to secure the Constitution from all its enemies, foreign and domestic." (our emphasis)  -- from Jamelle Bouie's strong op-ed in today's New York Times. The quotations capture the first and last paragraphs of the article, which should be read in its entirety to appreciate why the argument for not prosecuting Trump is flawed and dangerous.

 

QOTD -- Legitimacy

 

"Considered in the context of a 30-year assault on the legitimacy of Democratic leaders and Democratic constituencies (of which Republican-led voter suppression is an important part), the present attempt to disrupt and derail the certification of electoral votes is but the next step, in which Republicans say, outright, that a Democrat has no right to hold power and try to make that reality. The next Democrat to win the White House — whether it’s Biden getting re-elected or someone else winning for the first time — will almost certainly face the same flood of accusations, challenges and lawsuits, on the same false grounds of 'fraud.'”-- Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times today on "Can Only Republicans Win Elections?", to which the answer from the rotted- out Republican Party appears to "Yes!"

QOTD -- Gearing Up More Voter Suppression

Jamelle Bouie tells us to be ready for more efforts by the rotted out Republican Party to try to restrict access to voting in the months and years ahead:

The upshot of all of this — the charges of fraud, the refusal to acknowledge the president’s defeat — is a party prepared to do even more than it already has to restrict voting. “This election has shown we need major reforms to our election systems, including voter ID laws across the nation, to protect against fraud and rebuild the American people’s trust in fair outcomes,” Senator Rick Scott of Florida said in a statement touting a federal bill that would introduce a strict ID requirement in addition to making it more difficult to get a mail-in ballot. Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas has similarly called for new ID requirements and a crackdown on mail-in voting. And Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky told his Twitter followers to “look at the evidence” of fraud “and decide for yourself” while he shared a conspiratorial blog post on “anomalies in vote counts.”

A party that's been manufacturing and living off of white grievance for decades is using every rear guard tactic to delay the political effects of inevitable cultural and demographic changes.  They're emboldened by their Dear Leader getting 74 million votes (only about one- third of the electorate), but as Bouie points out later in his article, their voter suppression efforts could easily backfire by disenfranchising some of their own voters.  Even that ironic outcome is not to be wished for;  democracy demands free, fair and open elections.  In achieving that goal, the fight with these un- democratic, banana Republicans is never over.

The National Memorial For Peace And Justice

On April 26, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, AL. The memorial is "dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence."  Jamelle Bouie has a must- read essay about what the lynching memorial signifies for the history of the period from the post- Civil War Reconstruction to the mid- 20th Century, as well as the echoes of that history in our politics and culture today. Here's a snippet:

Lynching echoes in other ways. Our politics are in the grip of a backlash defined, in large part, by deep racial entitlement on the part of many white Americans. Indeed, racial violence—or the promise of such—remains a potent tool for defining the boundaries of white racial community. As a candidate for president, Donald Trump promised state action against Hispanic immigrants and Muslim refugees. Not as punishment but as defense—a way to keep America free of people that, in his view, cannot assimilate. How did he describe these groups? As “rapists,” criminals, and drug dealers—dangerous gang members who defile and kill innocent American women. Far from repelling voters, this language primed and activated racial fear and resentment among many white voters, supercharging its electoral potency. Trump wasn’t just defining an enemy, he was speaking a language of racial threat—of purity and morality—that has its roots in the lynching era.

The memorial itself is a punch to the smug gut of American "exceptionalism." From the memorial's web site (link above):

Set on a six-acre site, the memorial uses sculpture, art, and design to contextualize racial terror. The site includes a memorial square with 800 six-foot monuments to symbolize thousands of racial terror lynching victims in the United States and the counties and states where this terrorism took place. 

The memorial structure on the center of the site is constructed of over 800 corten steel monuments, one for each county in the United States where a racial terror lynching took place. The names of the lynching victims are engraved on the columns... 

Due to the malignancy in the Oval Office and the Komplizen in his regime and the Republican Party, millions upon millions of his worshipful followers have felt empowered to emerge from under the rocks where fear and resentment have always existed. Of course, racial intimidation in service to a white supremacist hierarchy can be seen today in excessive police violence in minority communities, in voter suppression and racial gerrymandering, and in individual acts of cruelty large and small.  This memorial is an opportune reminder of what happens when a vicious racial philosophy is allowed to take hold, and why we can't let that happen again.

Afternoon Reading - "There's No Such Thing As A Good Trump Voter"

We're rather tired already of the corporate media's fetish -- extensive throughout the campaign, but still obnoxiously arising this morning in such places as the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle  -- for chin- strokers about "The Trump Voter" and their "economic anxiety" and sense of (white) loss. Jamelle Bouie tells us what we need to hear amidst all this normalizing of the abnormal: "There's No Such Thing As A Good Trump Voter."

Whether Trump’s election reveals an “inherent malice” in his voters is irrelevant. What is relevant are the practical outcomes of a Trump presidency. Trump campaigned on state repression of disfavored minorities. He gives every sign that he plans to deliver that repression. This will mean disadvantage, immiseration, and violence for real people, people whose “inner pain and fear” were not reckoned worthy of many-thousand-word magazine feature stories. If you voted for Trump, you voted for this, regardless of what you believe about the groups in question. That you have black friends or Latino colleagues, that you think yourself to be tolerant and decent, doesn’t change the fact that you voted for racist policy that may affect, change, or harm their lives. And on that score, your frustration at being labeled a racist doesn’t justify or mitigate the moral weight of your political choice. 

In the same way that the election-year demand for empathy toward Trump supporters obscured the consequences of Trump’s support for his targets, this demand for empathy does the same. It’s worse, in fact. In the wake of Trump’s win, the United States was hit with a wave of racist threats, agitation, harassment, and violence, following a year in which hate crimes against Muslim Americans and others reached historic highs. With Trump in office, millions of Americans face the prospect of a federal government that is hostile to their presence in this country, and which views them as an intrusion, even if they are citizens. Even if they’ve lived their entire lives as Americans. 

To face those facts and then demand empathy for the people who made them a reality—who backed racist demagoguery, whatever their reasons—is to declare Trump’s victims less worthy of attention than his enablers. To insist Trump’s backers are good people is to treat their inner lives with more weight than the actual lives on the line under a Trump administration. At best, it’s myopic and solipsistic. At worst, it’s morally grotesque.  (our emphasis)

In Bouie's piece he notes a comment from the reptilian Chris "Lizard" Cillizza to the extent that (hot take alert!) we shouldn't treat all the shitgibbon's supporters as racists, misogynists, etc.  But, as Bouie says, the choice they made in voting for a racist, misogynist, etc., makes it "morally grotesque" to empathize with them.

Rest assured, we won't be giving out any cookies to these slugs, nor should anyone else.  In the meantime, as Bouie suggests, how about a little less attention to the Stormtrumpers and a little more to the current (a running compilation here) and future victims of the shitgibbon's white nationalism?

(Photo:  One of the more G-rated photos of good 'murrican Stormtrumpers - heil!)