I'm Not Crazy. You're Crazy!

 

I’ve said it before, and will again: our democracy works best with two viable, opposing parties, assuming both are committed to problem-solving, understand cooperation, accept democracy in the form of election results even when they lose, are favorably inclined toward reality, place a modicum of value on truth-telling, and are disinclined to elect and cover for rude, brazen liars.

Until a few years ago, I included most Republican politicians in that description. At this point, though, I can’t understand how anyone – and not just politicians -- who considers themself conservative can continue to support Trump and Trumpism. If “MAGA Republican” isn’t an oxymoron, “MAGA conservative” most certainly is.

In the latest of many examples, we’ve learned that after the 2020 election but before January 6, Trump engaged The Berkeley Research Group, an atypically (for him) reputable firm, to investigate his theories of how the election was stolen from him: fraud, dead people voting, two thousand mules, hacked voting machines, suitcases, etc.: the Trumpian disloyal flush. After characteristically thorough work, BRG found nothing of significance. Some discrepancies, in fact, favored Trump. So he buried the report and continued to lie, planning ways to overthrow the election and encouraging an insurrection.

He knew he was lying; but, because he’s a damaged person who probably initially believed if he lost it had to be fraudulent because he’s Donald Trump, he kept on doing it. Loved watching deluded followers ransacking our Capitol at his behest. Even now, he insists he won by “a landslide.” How can anyone who loves America not be outraged? How can they not comprehend his dangerous unfitness?

And what to make of the latest information about the depth of collusion with Saudi Arabia, resulting in personal riches for him and Jared Kushner? Billions for Jared; millions for himself. The money rolled in after, as Trump put it to Bob Woodward, referring to Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, "I saved his ass.” Meaning supporting his regional corruption and letting him off the hook for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. "Tell Mohammed he owes us," he told his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. Evidently, he got the message.

As House Republicans prioritize Hunter Biden’s laptop and pursue the prurient pixels of pudenda planted therein, will also they investigate Trump’s obvious jobbery? Is a polar bear black?

Now seems a good time to mention Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ “response” to President Biden’s State of the Union address. After admitting, last week, that I didn’t watch, I’ve since looked into it. Has anyone uttered more ironic, clueless, un-self-aware words, in the history of politics starting in ancient Athens, than “The choice is between normal and crazy”? Timed to perfection following Marjorie Taylor Greene behaving like a third-grader, and all of her party pretending that Biden lied when saying, truthfully, that some Republicans would cut Medicare and Social Security. It’s on tape, people. Rick “sunset” Scott, Ron “reauthorize yearly” Johnson, Mike “pull it out by its roots” Lee, and more.

And, oh, the ballooning hot-air conspiracies: aliens; false flag precursor to martial law; bowing to China... Such is the the party of Trump. And Tucker. Gosar. Boebert. Cruz. Gaetz. Normal? Ron DeSantis turning Florida into an education-killing, book-burning, Disney-ruling autocracy. CPAC honoring Kari Lake for “exposing” widespread voter fraud, if “exposing” means “insisting despite proof of the opposite.” Normal or crazy?

Ms. Sanders was right. Just got the parties backward. Avoiding meaningful policy like Alex Jones and vaccines, she railed mostly about “woke” without defining it, confirming that her party has nothing to offer except to embittered distractibles. When she bragged about killing CRT in her state without saying what the initials stand for, observers may be excused for assuming she meant “Clear Rational Thought.”

Normal versus crazy. When I heard of bumper stickers and T-shirts saying “Make America Florida,” I figured it was a joke. It’s not. There’s no doubt that there are plenty who love the idea; especially those who believe the election was stolen, that liberals groom children to become gay, trans, or mealtime blood donors, that teaching Black history harms white kids, and that education is elitist. People who couldn’t define communism or socialism or capitalism or liberalism (or conservatism) if you handed them a dictionary in a wet paper bag. Parents grateful to have their children grow up in a state where teachers are required to remove all books from classrooms, including one about baseball hero and devoted humanitarian Roberto Clemente because he wasn’t, you know, white. So the book might offend DeSantisoid sensibilities.

Florida: where an out-Trumping-Trump, autocratic governor threatens to end all AP courses and sex education, along with press freedom. Who hired as the state’s surgeon general a “doctor” who mysteriously made it through medical school without a kindergarten-level understanding of science. A snide, angry, bullying, self-important governor who was reelected in Florida by a landslide, which proves the point.

“Make America Florida” means electing a dictator, not a president, who’ll make sure citizens remain ignorant enough to keep voting for people like him. Unless he gets rid of voting altogether. MAGA: Make America Go Authoritarian. By all evidence, that’s what they want. And, unless unwoke citizens wake up and stop it, it’s exactly what they, and we, will get.