For four years, Donald Trump turned his fire on anyone he thought was his enemy. His supporters cheered. Now his supporters are learning that Trump treats his supporters with the same contempt he has for his opponents. Michelle Goldberg writes:
Since Trump’s defeat, the MAGA revolution has begun devouring its own. As it does, some conservatives are discovering the downsides of having a president who spreads malicious conspiracy theories, subverts faith in democracy and turns the denial of reality into a loyalty test. As the internet meme goes, people voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party, and now the leopards are turning on them.
People and institutions that get involved with Trump often end up diminished or disgraced. Since the election, this is happening faster than ever. The president is reportedly thinking of firing Attorney General Bill Barr because, for all Barr’s obsequious toadying, he has declined to repeat Trump’s fantasies about widespread electoral cheating. Much of the MAGA-verse has turned on Fox News, because its news programs aren’t pretending that Trump won.
Both Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona have been slavishly faithful to Trump, but stopped short of breaking the law by refusing to certify the vote in their states. For that, they’ve been at least temporarily cast out of Trump’s movement. “What is going on with @dougducey? Republicans will long remember!” Trump tweeted. At a berserk Georgia rally on Wednesday, the pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood led the crowd in a “lock him up” chant against Kemp.
Trump, like Titus Andronicus, now has Republicans eating their own. And he'll feast on their remains until he's dragged off the stage. How long do Republicans want to sit at Trump's dinner table -- knowing that they're dinner?
Image: The Guardian
6 comments:
It's fascinating to see the GOP dissolve. Trump's centrifuge is dividing them into layers according to specific gravity. There's Trump's base - the lunatics/Tea Party/Freedom Caucus/white supremacist, conspiracy theory contingent that exists in some alternative reality. At the far end are the Patricians, conservative, old school Repugs. Guys like Kristol and Frum who yearn for a return to the Reagan GOP. In the middle sits the Craven GOP who pursue power by any means at any cost - the McConnell, Graham Brigade. These guys allow no principle to stand in their way.
We keep reading about a looming struggle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party. What heart? What soul? A heart is only useful if it still beats.
While we lament what has befallen the GOP, let's remember its a fate they chose. They once knew to keep out the fringe until they decided they could bring them in and somehow still control them. By the time the old school Repugs realized they were being overrun it was too late.
Can you imagine what Abraham Lincoln would think if he saw what his party has morphed into over the past four decades?
can we have jonestown again?
a shot in the bunker?
throwing themselves from the cliffs to avoid surrender?
ritual suicide to catch comet trump?
having the repubs provide their own solution
is just what i lived this long to see
tho ...whoa... watching them eat each other faces!!!
how would you change the channel?
find me a chair at the Place de la Revolution
is this the place you get to when your just done-of-it?
that endless grinding of a jackboot on the face of humanity
in the name of progress and for our own good?
Lincoln's face always suggested grim determination, Mound. I suspect that were he alive today his face would be a mixture of disappointment and horror.
The jackboot analogy seems pretty accurate, lungta.
Trump's endgame isn't based on acknowledging reality. His whole game is based on his (not unreasonable) belief that his rabid, brain-dead, shameless, hypocritical, racist followers will swallow all of his myriad lies about fraud and rally to his side before Inauguration Day. That all the racist (and clearly insane) cops will help him implement a coup and that the military (unsure of its membership's allegiance to the US Constitution) will sit by on the sidelines until it sees who is winning.
It's all insane, thwap. But Trump clearly believes he can pull it off.
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