Wednesday’s Indivisible is a stark contrast to the other days of the week, in more ways than one. The first Wednesday show of the 100 day run started with the host saying he thought we were pretty divided after all that, and then proceeded to trash the notion of indivisible itself each and every Wednesday since then. Perhaps it is because Wednesday’s Indivisible show is run by and interviews conservatives and Republicans.
This week they didn’t even bother to talk about the subject of the week, healthcare, for half the show. Rather than let the Honorable Senator from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, continue to mouth half-truths and outright falsehoods for the whole program, the host decided to bring on a conservative apologist and attempt to explain away the actions of the authoritarians in their midst.
A few words for the Senator first. Medicare is for the disabled, the old and poor women with children at home. It isn’t for people who could work and get insurance. There hasn’t been a welfare program to speak of in this country since Bill Clinton signed it all away in the 90’s. So your target of choice, welfare queens, don’t exist anymore. Nice try Senator. You should really try harder.
But that really wasn’t the annoying part. The annoying part of the show started about halfway through when the guest changed to Conor Friedersdorf who attempted to explain away the Nazi elephant in the room. The authoritarian problem in the electorate.
Mr. Friedersdorf first suggests that conservatives were resistant to change. That excuse is good as far as it goes, but it really doesn’t cover the half of it. I’ll get to that in a minute. He goes on to add that the second thing that conservatives don’t like is government interference. Luckily I had swallowed the mouthful of tea I had just drank because it would have been all over the wall at that point.
They don’t like government interference? Since when? They want government to be able to put pipelines anywhere they want. They want government to keep women from getting medical care that conservatives might not approve of. They want government to keep people off of drugs, etc, etc, ad nauseam. There are very few things conservatives don’t want government involved in and most of them fall into the area known as my business. Sadly, my business as it applies to conservatives is just as varied as the business of the US is; and so consequently isn’t enforceable as law in any real sense. There are some fine upstanding conservative drug dealers and pimps who would disagree with most of your social conservative stances on the subject of easy sex and profligate drugs.
Conservatives love change as long as the change is in the direction they want. They want to change healthcare back to what it was before there was healthcare. Back to when there were no cures or treatments for disease, just charlatans on soapboxes preaching the value of their snake oil. They want to change science back to religion, change the world back to christian and change the president back into a king. At least they appear to have succeeded on that last point. Conservatives are adverse to change only so far as the change that took our ape ancestors out of the trees and into caves.
Conservatives are not fans of small government. Conservatives are fans of low taxes on themselves, and they currently enjoy some of the lowest taxes on the face of the planet. Taxes will be even lower for the wealthy, lower than they’ve been since before the Great Depression, very soon now. Conservatives love authoritarians, they’ve been installing them for other democracies for several generations now. They’ve got a dictator in mind for us at the moment, too.
There is something they could do to convince me and the rest of the liberals otherwise. Convince us you aren’t the racists, fascist and authoritarians we think you are. It goes something like this; we will believe the leadership of the Republican party and conservatives in general are not fascists and racists on the day they punish Steve King for being a racist and a fascist and not one minute before that.
What King said was RACISM with a pedigree directly traceable to The Fourteen Words (Also “14” or “The Fourteen”) of White Supremacism and White Nationalism, to wit: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The Fourteen words are directly traceable to 88 words taken from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, “What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe. Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all knowledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be examined from this point of view and used or rejected according to its utility.” Next time you see a Neo-Nazi, look for the tattoos, 14/88, THAT’s what those symbols mean. 14 words. 88 words. Right there.
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It’s real simple. Hang Steve King out to dry for his blatant embrace of eugenics and racism, his wholly transparent use of white power talking points, and I at least will believe that you are earnest in your desire to bridge the gap. Span the distance. Meet us halfway, at least. Until then I’ll be waiting here for the next shoe to drop. What will His Electoral Highness do next? Not even I am willing to guess that, and I’ve gone out on a limb for some pretty silly notions in the past.
No true Scotsman was born of English parents.
Occasionally, it's not a fallacy.
Authoritarian demagogues are not, in fact, conservative or liberal. They are opportunistic and will do anything, say anything, adopt whatever label if it consolidates power. Lately the trendy label is a capital-C Conservative.
You know the demagogues are winning when they turn brother against brother, friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor: a divided people is weak and vulnerable to exploitation.
The principal means to divide a people is to train them to see AND LABEL others principally according to demographics: Skin tone? Age? Class? Economic status? Level or type of education? Country of origin? Religion? Alleged association with a particular social policy ideology or political party?
The more different kinds of “them” there are, the fewer people count as “us”, and the weaker “we” are, and so we desire a so-called “strong leader”, who will kick “them” out and make “them” pay, and suddenly we have talked ourselves into supporting the autocrat of the month, just long enough for him to dismantle the national assembly, parliament, or congress (as appropriate to context), to consolidate power for himself, to implement martial law, and then to kick us to the curb as no longer necessary.
If you want the general public to have any rights, power, authority, quality of life, or benefits of society, then it is imperative to maintain the ties of family, friendship, and neighborliness (in that order) that bind all of us in this together.
In the run up to the 2016 election, a funny thing happened: We got to see two different animals. On the Democrat side, it became clear that the Clinton machinery actively suppressed the threat of a Sanders take-over. But on the Republican side, something completely different happened: A sensational entertainer learned how to game the system. Mr. Trump divided the opposition to his outrageous rhetoric among numerous other primary candidates, but in the Republican Party a plurality is generally sufficient to win a state’s nomination. (In a run-off election, he probably would have lost.)
The general election was another matter, but Hillary did have some obvious blemishes while Trump’s total lack of qualification was much more difficult to capitalize on, partly because of the popular myth of Mr. Smith goes to Washington.
In a sense, America is getting what she deserves. It sucks to be her right now.
…and yet you won't see any moves to punish the target I singled out. You don't even address that critical point in your counter. He still gets elected as a Republican and a conservative. He was here before Trump and he'll be here after Trump. Because his supporters are as racist and authoritarian as he is.
This is why you are committing a fallacy. Conservative is not defined by the dictionary. Conservative is defined by the actors who adopt the label. If you won't cull the bad actors they will define you and the group you want to be part of. You will be held responsible for their bad acts.
Conservative is a dead label as of 2016. It will be a generation before they recover from this deal with the devil. If the country survives. If we survive.
This is the reason why #MAGA=Misguided Appalling Gullible Americans is an accurate observation and not an insult. Because none of you can see just how wrong you are, even now. Conservatives can never again make any claims about Bill Clinton or Hillary. They have twice elected the worst Presidents in American history, back to back. Both times succumbing to irrational fears about liberals.
Pussy-grabbing Trump the child-rapist who launders Russian mafia money while being peed on by their hookers will be hard to do worse than; but I'm pretty sure Pence's war on gays combined with Sessions' renewed drug war and the associated concentration camps for gays, drug addicts and the illegals they are going to mass arrest will top him easily. If you people don't wake up, that is.
This is the article where I spotted the trend Ian Kjos. This is where I connected the dots between what conservatives say and what they do, and why that doesn't add up to what conservatives pretend to believe. What they believe in is power. Power for themselves. Power at any cost.