Weighed in the balances and found wanting
by Tom Sullivan
Sharper than any razor. Watch:
Every charge Schmidt leveled against Trump and Trumpism, Chris Hayes observes, was raised “by Mitt Romney, by Lindsay Graham, by Marco Rubio, by Rick Perry, I mean, on and on and on….” One by one, “the Borg assimilates them,” Hayes laments. Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt responded:
All of these people were happy to stand and assert that they believed in the American idea and ideal when the American idea and ideal was not being tested, when it was not under assault, when it was not being contested.
What we see is a crisis of profound cowardice in what I would argue is the worst generation of political leadership the country may have ever had.
Only Robert Mueller could add to that indictment. Or the God of Abraham. Or a chastened Jules Winnfield pondering the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.
The only accomplices Schmidt omitted from his rebuke Monday night are the president’s unshakable evangelical and conservative foot soldiers. They wrapped themselves in the mantle of Americanness and in the name of Jesus so long as their primacy in the social order went uncontested. Now, Redhats celebrate the Seven Deadly Sins on two legs. They wait in line for hours to applaud the man of corruption who lies to them with abandon, sneers at the rule of law, embraces murderous despots, and “pals around with” white supremacists. Xenophobes all, he and they traffic in fear in the home of the brave.
Redhats chant for retribution against those who will not bow as they do before their idol in supplication. Followers, once, of a different man who two millennia ago was himself scapegoated cheer when their president-king vilifies their neighbors and scapegoats the weak and strangers in the land of Washington, and of Lincoln, and of e pluribus unum.
They have sold their birthright for a mess of Trump pottage. They have no claim left either to those American ideas and ideals, or even to their savior’s name.
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