36 Comments

"Do you really think, apart from Republicans and Russian agents, that any Americans want to live like this?"

Yes. In fact, I KNOW people who really love living like this, and who would be absolutely thrilled to have Donald Trump as Emperor for Life. Current polling shows that 24% of the populace will not support impeachment no matter what Trump does. Far too many of our countrymen are not just comfortable with fascism, but think it is the ideal way the United States should be run. Because nothing says FREDUMB!!11! like fascism.

Expand full comment

Yes, but those people are Republicans, so Roy already made an exception for them. They'll always be a problem, but as Roy remiinds us, they're a minority, and Trump has alienated everyone outside his base. To me, the question is if he'll be able to cheat his way to "victory" again.

Expand full comment

"Current polling shows that 24% of the populace will not support impeachment no matter what Trump does." The base! This is central to my point.

Expand full comment

Those people are everywhere, in every country, in every population. In any single group of people its a good possibility that ~25% are only happy when they've got a Boss. I'm as anarcho-optimist as the next guy but the basic fact is that this personality type/flaw is as much a feature of our species as red hair, blue eyes, and allergies to ragweed.

I don't like working in groups where I have to rely on *any* of these people. But on any given day on the front page of the NYT or the WaPo 90% of the news is about these people reacting to something they don't like, loudly. So you can't escape them.

I think their lack of judgment should mean loss of the franchise. But no one listens to me, and while its not hard to determine who falls into that group most people aren't as harsh. All we can do is install electoral guardrails so the next time a syphillitic mob boss gives them that sick thrill the rest of us don't have to participate in their dystopian perversion.

Expand full comment

Hmmmm . . . maybe make ME the dictator they long for--at which point I will revoke their right to vote and then implement every liberal program ever dreamed of in order to "own" the conservatards.

Expand full comment

Great slab of prose there, Roy. In lesser hands, it would just be a verbose pissy rant.

As for Where We Are in this Age if the Triumph of Bullshit, I blame the establishment press. I fully understand the philosophy as it were that the job is just echo what’s said or done; Trump lies, their obligation is just to echo the lie. That’s reporting. But it has the effect of treating lies like truths and facts and that’s inexcusable and contributes to the harm to the nation resulting from decades of minority rule.

As for reverting to the mean, these times are closer to the means than the post-WWII era which was a complete anomaly sorry.

Expand full comment

It's not a verbose, pissy rant? I have failed again.

Expand full comment

You know you spew the high quality piss. The finest! Like the world have never seen.

Expand full comment

Very Heinleinian, in the good sense of the term (pre-Ginny).

Expand full comment

As someone 99% atheist (a.k.a. 100% agnostic) I've long associated a personal deity (if one is really out there) with reason itself as it seems to me like most of what separates us from the rest of His/Her/Its creatures. I'm also at an age where I doubt I will see recovery from the catastrophe that is this Administration so feel pretty strongly about lol nothing matters, too, so I really enjoyed this one. Thanks as always.

Expand full comment

Hear, Hear. It is a completely pointless exercise to debate/argue with Trump supporters. They are all operating in bad faith because the reasons they state for their support are 1) based on bogus facts, and 2) aren’t even their real reasons.

I wish I could say I thought of this meme, but I’m not that clever: “Arguing with a Trump supporter is like trying to play chess with a pigeon. They knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, then strut around like they won.”

Expand full comment

Thanks Roy. I agree. And though I wonder how much time must pass before reason is reasserted, I sort of think that the lack of buy in by the young cd undercut this shit show in sudden, dramatic fashion. this debacle is a baby boomer operation whose fascist elements (as opposed to small gov conservatism) finds little traction among the younger set. Long term, chaos is not an attractive governing philosophy for those w small children. Or those w decency and avg brains. So how much time will it take? Good question.

Thanks to you and all others who care enough to man the rhetorical ramparts, and lance the orcs as they come over the rail. I was thinking yesterday the important role loud constant opposition criticism plays in times like these. Hang in there.

Expand full comment

“The important role loud constant opposition plays”

Great observation. It’s like being trapped in a nightmare but dimly hearing a far-off voice saying, “Wake up! Wake up!” Until you eventually hear it clearly and wake up.

Expand full comment

My coevals are the worst. They're coevil!

Expand full comment

The Age Of Reason Versus The Age Of Treason, A Continuing Series

(PS: Roy, thanks for this. These Dispatches Of Daily Sanity are helping.)

Expand full comment

Ah, good! A tonic for the tropes.

Expand full comment

I'm a card-carrying geezer, and I can attest that people were just as fucked up back during the 60's and 70's. The Vietnam war and civil rights struggle, among other things, divided everyone, but the racists and right-wingers didn't need to be polarized, they were already entrenched in their beliefs, just like today. The main difference to me is that, thanks to decades of lunatic talk-radio and Fox propaganda, racism and right-wing stupidity are just mainstream Republicanism now, and the vicious carnival that is Trump is the logical manifestation of it. Remember, in the 2016 GOP primaries, the most transparently unqualified piece of shit ever to run for president garnered more votes than any Republican candidate ever. They had 17 other candidates to choose from and they picked this asshole, and 85-90 percent of them still look at this abomination and say "I approve!" The biggest problem for the future of the country isn't Trump, it's the Republican party.

Expand full comment

I wasn't around in the 60s (humblebrag) but it seems to me a crucial difference between fascists then and now is that now they have social media and 24/7 Fox advocacy to reinforce their beliefs. I could be wrong (am I? help!) but it seems to me that a 1967 fascist was stuck with his own hot takes and those he might get by subscribing to a weekly newsletter. In 2019, when I talk to the Good People On The Nazi Side, I raise a fact and it gets buried by a dumptruck of bullshit, none of which my interlocutors had to think up on their own. I worry that Fox and social media create endless permission for lunacy that did not exist in the era of three channels, one of which had Walter Cronkite officiating. My worry is that if Twitter had been around when McCarthy lit his fire, it would have never burned out but only raged hotter and hotter and destroyed us, in maybe the third Goldwater term or the first year of President Larouche.

Expand full comment

Roy, this is another vital column that needs to be made public. Just sayin'.

Expand full comment

Very much agree, but what saddens me is how much of this also applies to arguing with certain flavors of liberals these days, the ones who subscribe to a theory of Deep State that is only cosmetically removed from fascism. The real quandry is how to vote: reelect the bullshit brown shirt, or go with the more attractive folks with better hair and black shirts. I have no doubt whatsoever that our meritocracy would build ovens for either side.

Expand full comment

Democracy was always a Mexican standoff.

Expand full comment

See I have trouble with the "liberals" who are one step away from voting again for Trump. Usually that step is raising some rich guys taxes

Expand full comment

You are much more optimistic than I am. I am 73 years old and I have been aware for at least 40 years that this country is getting worse, sometimes in increments and sometimes in leaps and bounds. The difference between here and Spain is that the people realized they were living under a fascist dictatorship in Spain, whether or not they approved. Here people are convinced that somehow we are the last best hope..etc, etc, etc.

So let me leave you with my rallying cry: NIHILISTS FOR NOTHING.

Expand full comment

“Screw posterity—what have those bastards ever done for us?” —attributed to Groucho Marx

Expand full comment

Trumpkins are editing the Preamble to say that.

Expand full comment

Karl Hungus on the line, Mr. Lawguy.

Expand full comment

Maybe, but I'm thinking Turgunov, in English of course.

Expand full comment

At least it's an ethos.

Expand full comment

It is not reasoning that will save us from the Trumpenführer, it is the drip, drip, drip of information undermining the bullshit and sand on which the current Republican hegemony stands. It drove Nixon out of office, it will do the same to Trump, one way or another. Look how much opinion has shifted towards impeachment in less than two weeks. By Christmas it might well be 73%, leaving the infamous 27% alone in their family rooms watching Hannity. Things look very bad for the Administration right now, and as Pompeo and Barr get drawn further into the impeachment inquiry, it will get worse. If Pence is implicated, only the Senate Republicans can prevent President Pelosi. (No doubt they will, but who will face Warren or even Biden in the general election who isn't stained with amorality?) Say Barr presents some bullshit about the 2016 election and furthermore lies even more about Biden. How will that help them once the courts allow McGahn et al to testify on all the obstruction evidence in the Mueller report? Even the minor actors are stepping on their dicks, like Ag Sec Perdue telling good Republican small dairy farmers their day is past, all hail the megafarm and to hell with the watershed. They're chasing away all but their most rabid base.

Apparently we're all geezers here - good for us - and therefore we should remember, as the Trump White House does not, that the only good response to a verifiable scandal is to admit it right away, apologize and move on, assured the press will look for some other shiny object, probably involving the other side. Trump's yelling and lying and insulting is not the successful strategy he thinks it is, and apparently there's no one left who can tell him that. (I wouldn't mention it here, if I thought someone would read this to him. Let him strangle himself.)

Expand full comment

Roy, I'm sorry, but you couldn't write a verbose, pissy rant if you tried. Well, you could, but you won't because you're too busy writing good stuff. And I'm grateful for that.

Expand full comment

I really needed this one today. Thanks Roy!

Expand full comment

Extremely same. Thanks, Roy.

Expand full comment

Hey! Fellow commenters! I have some good news! About my own personal life, but possibly this is bellwether news too. A Parental Unit, who has spent 3 years beginning every opinion with "I don't like Trump, but..." (where the but is always that Trump is 100% right), guy who thinks the crisis at the border is that we are *not cruel enough*, and who seems genuinely to believe Democrats hate America... just emailed me to say "Trump needs to go. What Dem will we support?"

He was defending these fuckers and their fuckery right to the closing bell yesterday, so this was a sudden turn. China did it, maybe? Dunno, he didn't say. And of course in 2020 he will vote Pence because he's against Socialism. BUT, right now, he is THIS goddamn fed up. That is so heartening, for me personally and for the nation he represents in my head. I hope it's a sign the dam's about to break overall.

Expand full comment

OK, I interpret the Constitution to require that if Trump is impeached, not removed, just impeached by the House, he has to be stripped, scourged, and nailed to a cross. There, wingnuts, checkmate!

Expand full comment

> And our persistence as a species tells me that people know it and

> and are attracted to it and, when things get grim, will return to it.

…and may I add, 'Speedily, and in our days.'

Expand full comment