Parsing Out Dystopia: Regressivism is the New Conservatism
Last year, George Will wrote an interesting and insightful book entitled Conservative Sensibility. Unfortunately, Will's book has come out in a time when his brand of Conservatism is dying. In its place we have Trumpism, a dangerous form of what I see as Regressive political thought. Regressivism is now running rampant through American society and is mainly made up of uneducated, faith-based, and/or zero tolerant people who live in hope for the past, fear of the future and hate of the present. That is what Will's sensible conservativism has malignantly morphed in to.
I've called Trump a thug, and that is accurate. I've called Trump a pathetic mind, and that is an accurate characterization. Yesterday, I called Trump a idiotic liar, and that is spot on. Once again, Trump's "bleach is a cure" comments are the single most shallow and stupid thing I've ever heard a politician utter in my 60+ year lifetime.
The man is completely unfit to serve as president, which is why I previously stated that the 25th Amendment should be invoked to take this neurotic, narcissistic, pathetic excuse for a mind out of office. The Office of the President has been assaulted by Trump. He has commited political rape. It will need rehabilitating after he is finally gone. America has lost its leadership in foreign policy, lost its leadership in environmental policy, lost its leadership in the well-being of all of its citizens. We are today a more hateful nation because Trump has enabled hate, Trump has accentuated differences rather than forging unity, and now Trump's vaunted economy (which was never as good as Obama's economy, except for the speculations of Wall Street) is a smoldering pile of crap.
That's the record of the Republican Party's candidate for President. End of story.
I have several family members that tend to approach me at gatherings and begin conversations arrogantly with what a great job Trump is doing and how bad the democrats are for opposing Trump. Well, I agree with them that the democratic impeachment of Trump was a complete misfire, a total screw-up. Trump should never have been impeached. It served ZERO purpose. End of story on that.
But, in the future when one of these arrogant know-nothings approach me I am no longer going to hold my tongue. I will politely tell them that politics is off-limits at family gatherings. Some of them will persist and when they do I will blast the hell out of them. Trump is an idiotic liar and if you vote for him you are no better.
We cannot allow this moment of time to go underappreciated. It cannot be emphasized enough that the "bleach is a cure" BS is not an outlier in an otherwise self-proclaimed "stable genius." It is the very essence of this man.
We will take the COVID-19 press briefings as an example, though this reaches into every aspect of the Trump administration. These briefings, supposedly intended to inform the American people about what this nation is doing in this crisis, are about 20% substance and 80% Trump praising himself and berating the press. I know why he does this. He knows that praising himself and beating up the press plays well with the 60+ million Americans who will vote for him this November. His base loves the man because he "tells it like it is" and "stands up to the liberal press."
He tells nothing like it is. What these voters want to hear is the fiction that Trump invents for himself. Trump himself is the "fake news" and his supporters, far from seeking truth in anything, cling to his fake news because they want the world to be something it is not. Another symptom of dystopia is how disconnected from reality Trumpists are because they fear reality and are angered by it. They are angered by equal rights, scientific facts, academic expertise, gay rights, reproductive rights, the separation of church and state, and by knowledge being more pertinent than belief. They are radical reactionaries against modernity (much as the Southern Confederacy was in the 19th century).
Trump represents the 19th century more than the 21st and the millions of regressive voters in the country want to go back to many aspects of that time. So, there is a possibility that Trump's supporters will believe their man when he lies to us all that his "cure" was sarcacsm when it clearly was serious. They love the lies because you have to love lies more than facts, love falsehood rather than truth, in order to be regressive. Regressivism is the new conservatism. Conservatives no longer have the political clout to accomplish anything.
(As an aside, let's assume for the moment that Trump was being sarcastic. What does that say about him, if it is true? It means that he chose to make sarcastic remarks of that nature in the middle of a national crisis press briefing. It means he chose to tell a "scientific joke" in front of the whole world on the day America marked 50,000 deaths from the virus the briefing was about. He chose to be funny. Think about that. It's actually worse if he isn't lying, which he is.)
I see Trump's virus press briefing of this past Thursday to be the ultimate manifestation of Regressivism, so far. We can not afford to let this moment pass without due judgment. We cannot afford to allow this moment to pass into complacency so that Trump's Regressivism can continue to march forward. For that reason it is vital to hold his feet to fire in this specific instance, which is a microcosm for his backwards thinking political destructiveness. This must be a watershed moment.
Even before last Thursday's debacle, Piers Morgan, Trump's long-time British supporter, blasted Trump and his briefings as "self-aggrandizing, self-justifying, overly defensive." This, essentially, is a summation of Trump's entire presidency.
Even further back than that, George Will stated: "Trump’s gross and comprehensive incompetence now increasingly impinges upon the core presidential responsibility."
Many Conservatives have taken issue with Trump's recent idiotic (there's no other word for it), comment that he has "total authority" to reopen the economy. This is a perfect example of Trump's unhinged bullying tactics. Leadership by bullying is Trump's way.
I have to admit I am furious with true Conservatives like Jeff Flake and Paul Ryan who decided, in droves actually, to quit the political arena in 2018. They knew their established, genuinely Conservative views were challenged by the radical right-wing of their party which I call Regressive. They showed no bravery whatsoever in the face of this crisis at the very political foundations to which they supposedly adhered. It would have been far better for them to seek re-election and fight for Conservatism in America instead of rolling over dead for Regressivism. This was our first line of defense against Trump's influence - and it failed miserably.
If you look at things as forces and not as ideologically identical, then the Regressives are similar to the Barry Goldwater faction in the 1964 Republican Party. It is an uppity bunch that started with the Tea Party Republicans in 2010. All that political force ultimately evolved into Trump’s Regressivism though obviously Goldwater would not quite know what to think of Trump ideologically. Between the two, Goldwater had a sharper political mind and better speaking ability, by far. Still, in his time, Goldwater was deservedly crushed when he ran for president.
Regressive political thought must be rejected by all of us. "Bleach is a cure" type thinking is not a glitch in Regressivism, it is the very nature of it. All Regressive voters are blind to facts and, yearning for the past, prefer myth to reality. Well, COVID-19 does not care about your myths. Nor do any of the other crises the world faces, like a nuclear arms race (something Trump advocates) or global warming (something Trump denies).
The "bleach is a cure" moment should be the beginning of the end of Donald "It's All About Me" Trump. It should be a glaring blow to Regressive politics, which lives off fake news, hearsay, and a belief that the world's ill's "will miraculously disappear." That's not how dystopia works. There are no miracles. Regressive politics is the antithesis of what we need in dystopia. We need science and fact, not miracles and fear. It is time for true conservatives, moderates, and liberals to send Trump back to the bankrupt casinos and reality TV shows from whence he came.
I've called Trump a thug, and that is accurate. I've called Trump a pathetic mind, and that is an accurate characterization. Yesterday, I called Trump a idiotic liar, and that is spot on. Once again, Trump's "bleach is a cure" comments are the single most shallow and stupid thing I've ever heard a politician utter in my 60+ year lifetime.
The man is completely unfit to serve as president, which is why I previously stated that the 25th Amendment should be invoked to take this neurotic, narcissistic, pathetic excuse for a mind out of office. The Office of the President has been assaulted by Trump. He has commited political rape. It will need rehabilitating after he is finally gone. America has lost its leadership in foreign policy, lost its leadership in environmental policy, lost its leadership in the well-being of all of its citizens. We are today a more hateful nation because Trump has enabled hate, Trump has accentuated differences rather than forging unity, and now Trump's vaunted economy (which was never as good as Obama's economy, except for the speculations of Wall Street) is a smoldering pile of crap.
That's the record of the Republican Party's candidate for President. End of story.
I have several family members that tend to approach me at gatherings and begin conversations arrogantly with what a great job Trump is doing and how bad the democrats are for opposing Trump. Well, I agree with them that the democratic impeachment of Trump was a complete misfire, a total screw-up. Trump should never have been impeached. It served ZERO purpose. End of story on that.
But, in the future when one of these arrogant know-nothings approach me I am no longer going to hold my tongue. I will politely tell them that politics is off-limits at family gatherings. Some of them will persist and when they do I will blast the hell out of them. Trump is an idiotic liar and if you vote for him you are no better.
We cannot allow this moment of time to go underappreciated. It cannot be emphasized enough that the "bleach is a cure" BS is not an outlier in an otherwise self-proclaimed "stable genius." It is the very essence of this man.
We will take the COVID-19 press briefings as an example, though this reaches into every aspect of the Trump administration. These briefings, supposedly intended to inform the American people about what this nation is doing in this crisis, are about 20% substance and 80% Trump praising himself and berating the press. I know why he does this. He knows that praising himself and beating up the press plays well with the 60+ million Americans who will vote for him this November. His base loves the man because he "tells it like it is" and "stands up to the liberal press."
He tells nothing like it is. What these voters want to hear is the fiction that Trump invents for himself. Trump himself is the "fake news" and his supporters, far from seeking truth in anything, cling to his fake news because they want the world to be something it is not. Another symptom of dystopia is how disconnected from reality Trumpists are because they fear reality and are angered by it. They are angered by equal rights, scientific facts, academic expertise, gay rights, reproductive rights, the separation of church and state, and by knowledge being more pertinent than belief. They are radical reactionaries against modernity (much as the Southern Confederacy was in the 19th century).
Trump represents the 19th century more than the 21st and the millions of regressive voters in the country want to go back to many aspects of that time. So, there is a possibility that Trump's supporters will believe their man when he lies to us all that his "cure" was sarcacsm when it clearly was serious. They love the lies because you have to love lies more than facts, love falsehood rather than truth, in order to be regressive. Regressivism is the new conservatism. Conservatives no longer have the political clout to accomplish anything.
(As an aside, let's assume for the moment that Trump was being sarcastic. What does that say about him, if it is true? It means that he chose to make sarcastic remarks of that nature in the middle of a national crisis press briefing. It means he chose to tell a "scientific joke" in front of the whole world on the day America marked 50,000 deaths from the virus the briefing was about. He chose to be funny. Think about that. It's actually worse if he isn't lying, which he is.)
I see Trump's virus press briefing of this past Thursday to be the ultimate manifestation of Regressivism, so far. We can not afford to let this moment pass without due judgment. We cannot afford to allow this moment to pass into complacency so that Trump's Regressivism can continue to march forward. For that reason it is vital to hold his feet to fire in this specific instance, which is a microcosm for his backwards thinking political destructiveness. This must be a watershed moment.
Even before last Thursday's debacle, Piers Morgan, Trump's long-time British supporter, blasted Trump and his briefings as "self-aggrandizing, self-justifying, overly defensive." This, essentially, is a summation of Trump's entire presidency.
Even further back than that, George Will stated: "Trump’s gross and comprehensive incompetence now increasingly impinges upon the core presidential responsibility."
Many Conservatives have taken issue with Trump's recent idiotic (there's no other word for it), comment that he has "total authority" to reopen the economy. This is a perfect example of Trump's unhinged bullying tactics. Leadership by bullying is Trump's way.
I have to admit I am furious with true Conservatives like Jeff Flake and Paul Ryan who decided, in droves actually, to quit the political arena in 2018. They knew their established, genuinely Conservative views were challenged by the radical right-wing of their party which I call Regressive. They showed no bravery whatsoever in the face of this crisis at the very political foundations to which they supposedly adhered. It would have been far better for them to seek re-election and fight for Conservatism in America instead of rolling over dead for Regressivism. This was our first line of defense against Trump's influence - and it failed miserably.
If you look at things as forces and not as ideologically identical, then the Regressives are similar to the Barry Goldwater faction in the 1964 Republican Party. It is an uppity bunch that started with the Tea Party Republicans in 2010. All that political force ultimately evolved into Trump’s Regressivism though obviously Goldwater would not quite know what to think of Trump ideologically. Between the two, Goldwater had a sharper political mind and better speaking ability, by far. Still, in his time, Goldwater was deservedly crushed when he ran for president.
Regressive political thought must be rejected by all of us. "Bleach is a cure" type thinking is not a glitch in Regressivism, it is the very nature of it. All Regressive voters are blind to facts and, yearning for the past, prefer myth to reality. Well, COVID-19 does not care about your myths. Nor do any of the other crises the world faces, like a nuclear arms race (something Trump advocates) or global warming (something Trump denies).
The "bleach is a cure" moment should be the beginning of the end of Donald "It's All About Me" Trump. It should be a glaring blow to Regressive politics, which lives off fake news, hearsay, and a belief that the world's ill's "will miraculously disappear." That's not how dystopia works. There are no miracles. Regressive politics is the antithesis of what we need in dystopia. We need science and fact, not miracles and fear. It is time for true conservatives, moderates, and liberals to send Trump back to the bankrupt casinos and reality TV shows from whence he came.
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