Conservative editor Bill Kristol said something so precisely profound this morning that it must be amplified as a warning.
In calling out the Trump rationalizers, those people who know better so they attack the dissenters, the media, liberals, Clinton, Kristol said, “It’s the collaborators who can’t abide the resisters; it’s the fellow travelers who most want to shut down dissenters.”
1. Re Trump rationalizers: If you're intelligent person, you can't quite make yourself defend Trump's behavior, statements and governance.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 29, 2017
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The entire thread:
2. So you avert your gaze from Trump. You attack Clinton, the media, liberals of all sorts. You obsess about various side issues so as to..
3. …avoid confronting the fact of the Trump presidency and its implications for American politics. It’s a familiar psychological pattern:
4. Those who do, at some level, know better are more infuriated at those who won’t go along than are the simple-minded true believers.
5. It’s the collaborators who can’t abide the resisters; it’s the fellow travelers who most want to shut down dissenters.
6. And so when we ask in our editorial — http://www.weeklystandard.com/editorial-the-surrender/article/2010233 … — whether conservatives and Republicans are willing to have it said…
7. “that they stood on the sidelines and watched as the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Reagan was destroyed,” we may not have…
8. …got it quite right. Because while some are standing quietly on the sidelines, many feel they have to take a side.
9. And while they’re too intelligent to do much cheering for Trump, the way they can show they are, really and truly, on his side…
10. …is by criticizing the critics. Decrying dissent is psychologically and intellectually easier than defending the indefensible.
END
It is often said that the enablers of toxic people are actually the people who will inflict the most damage, while cowardly pretending to walk on both sides of the fence. Republicans, and there are many of them, are obsessing at dangerous levels right now about liberals and Clinton in order to avoid looking in the mirror.
President Trump knows the power of pointing the finger in the other direction:
Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?),….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017
Will intellectually sound Republicans recognize themselves in Kristol’s warning, or will they leave it to the rest to point out that they have indeed chosen a side when they criticize the dissent, the media and take refuge in distraction and “what about isms.”
It is time for Americans to realize that sides must be taken, but it is not the usual sides of Republican v Democrat. It is patriot, it is traditionalist, it is resister, it is law and order adherents and those who wish to protect our entire system of government against those who seek to undermine it.
Tossing mud at the media, liberals and Clinton right now is actively siding with and enabling Donald Trump’s assault on this country.
If Trump is not the Republican Party, time has run out for the party to distance itself. With each passing intellectually bereft, morally empty disgrace of an excuse to ignore the dishonorable elephant in the room, Republicans are choosing a side. And it’s not the side of their country.
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