So, the President of the United States basically announces a target list of opponents he views as despicable and a deranged man decides to send pipe bombs to fourteen people on the list. Later in the week, an anti-semite walks into a Pittsburgh synagogue with an AR-15, kills eleven congregants, and then avows his anti-semitism in the ambulance on the way to the hospital to be treated for his wounds.
Immediately, the administration and its various and sundry lapdogs go into overdrive, vigorously disputing any notion that the President is responsible in any way for either tragedy.
Their claims ran the gamut from the idiotic -- Kellyanne Conway blaming general "anti-religiosity" for quite particularized anti-semitism -- to the merely banal -- the chorus of conservative and GOP enablers trotting out a false "both-sidism", ostensibly on the grounds that last year's shooting at the GOP baseball practice was by a supporter of Bernie Sanders, even though Sen. Sanders has never advocated any form of violence against his opponents but Trump emphatically, and on more than one occasion, clearly has.
Do they really think Americans are that stupid?
The answer is . . .
Yes, they do!
It is difficult if not impossible these days to logically defend the GOP playbook in all its particularized horror. It supported a tax cut and a strong lurch to the judicial right that Americans did not want and the repeal of a health care plan that they did want. Everything else has been babel, principally from Trump himself but often as not from his enablers and seconds either in Congress or on his staff.
Before last week's domestic terrorism -- that is what sending pipe bombs to politicians you abhor is -- Trump waltzed around the Saudi government's killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, first wondering whether it happened, then repeating Saudi denials, then basically admitting billion dollar arm sales were more important than a Saudi hit on a journalist, and then announcing that the Saudis were engaged in the "worst cover up ever." At the end of the day, his tone deaf stream of consciousness came across more as a lament for the ineptness of a corrupt regime. The fact that a dissident journalist was targeted and killed was beside the point, which is what you'd expect from someone who has labelled the press an "enemy of the people."
Amidst the horror of pipe bombs and Pittsburgh, America's would-be President has also been campaigning for Republican candidates in the mid-terms, which are next week. Here, of course, it is difficult to say that Trump is campaigning for Republican candidates. That is the ostensible purpose of his rallies, but they are never really about the candidate on the ballot and always devolve into the President's favorite subject . . .
Which is himself.
The essence of that "self" is to do anything to win. Truth, facts, leadership, America's standing in the world, all are beside the point. In the 1930's, FDR told Americans mired in a depression that the only thing they had to fear "was fear itself". In Trump's world, the only way he can win is to generate fear itself. So, a rag-tag (and always shrinking) group of impoverished and threatened Central Americans slowly making their way north is now a George Soros-funded "caravan" with some "Middle Easterners" so set on invading the US that it must be met by the army at the border and an executive order ending birthright citizenship at the White House.
Never mind that the army -- which is legally barred from doing anything under the Posse Comitatus Act -- will be pointless, and the order -- barred by the express terms of the 14th Amendment -- unconstitutional.
Never mind also that George Soros has had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.
Or that, by the time it arrives, the "caravan" will likely have diminished to nothing more than a long line.
Or that, by the time it arrives, the "caravan" will likely have diminished to nothing more than a long line.
Trump doesn't care.
His purpose is not to educate or argue of even engage at any intellectual level. It's just to instill fear. The same kind of fear FDR derided in the '30s -- "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror". FDR thought that type of fear would "paralyze needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Trump, however, is counting on it to do exactly that.
Retreat is his game plan.
It's the by-product of the fact-free, rage-fueled and neo-fascist partisanship he has raised to new, unseen heights, a partisanship whose ineluctable ends include retreats to pipe bombs and Pittsburgh. It's also a partisanship where either nothing gets done, or what gets done is unwanted, and politicians -- taking the President's lead -- then lie about it.
The mid-terms were supposed to be about health care because everyone wants those with pre-existing conditions protected; it's the one provision in Obamacare that no one opposes. Of course, to get there, the pool of insured had to be increased dramatically (hence, the mandate) so that the insurance companies could cover those with such conditions without making premiums unaffordable. Though the GOP has ended the mandate and sued to end the ban on pre-existing conditions, this has not stopped any GOP candidate from claiming that he or she is in fact for preserving the ban.
If the President can do it (lie, that is), so can they.
They think the lies won't matter and that some of those lies, in particular those about the caravan and birthright citizenship, will actually increase GOP turnout and allow them to retain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
As I said, they really do think we are stupid.
They only question left is the obvious one . . .
Are we?
Next week we'll know.
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