Alan Vanneman non-fave rave Megan McArdle has had a revelation: “It’s time for Republicans to save themselves”. According to Ms. Mc
By mid-February 2016, it was clear that some kind of collective Republican action would be needed to keep Donald Trump from winning the nomination. Instead, everyone stood around hoping that someone else would do the job for them. This was an error they repeated many times in the ensuing years, keeping quiet about outrage after outrage, passing up two separate chances to remove him from power and ensure he could never run again.
Well, honey, let me rewrite that a little for you:
By mid-February 2016, it was clear that some kind of collective Republican action would be needed to keep Donald Trump from winning the nomination. Instead, everyone of us,
including me , stood around hoping that someone else would do the job for us. This was an error we repeated many times in the ensuing years, keeping quiet about outrage after outrage, passing up two separate chances to remove him from power and ensure he could never run again. In my own case, I was afraid that if I spoke up none of my friends would speak to me, and because I worry more about not having friends than I worry about not living in a democracy, I kept my mouth shut.
Well, I’m glad that the scales have finally fallen from Megan’s eyes, even though the reason is, I strongly suspect, that she ran out of glue. For years— until, I don’t know, two weeks ago—Megan was explaining that it was the Democrats who were at fault for America’s Trumpian debacle, because they weren’t responsible enough in their criticisms of Trump and other Republicans to give themselves the credibility they needed to convince conservatives that Donald Trump was an amoral sociopath who would destroy everything he touched, something I bitched about as far back as 2017 and as recently as two weeks ago.
It's difficult to avoid the conclusion (if you’re me, anyway) that Megan seized on these opportunities for whataboutisme as a way of endearing herself to her friends (or at least not pissing them off) and “proving” that she was still on the side of “right” and not one of them. But her notion that it was impossible to convince conservatives that Trump was a bad guy unless it could also be shown that the hated Democrats were washed entirely free of sin (which of course they could never be) was utter and deceitful nonsense. They couldn’t figure it out for themselves? She couldn’t explain it to them?
No, she couldn’t, because they already knew Trump was an amoral sociopath. That’s why they embraced him. You can’t stop people from going to Hell when they’re in love with Satan.
Afterwords
Membership in the “Seven Years of Eating Bullshit With a Straight Face Is Enuff” Club seems to be growing. Anonymous “Hot Air” co-founder “Allahpundit” has announced his farewell, saying that he is moving to the anti-Trumpian “Dispatch”1 for the following reasons:
Fundamentally, the last six years have been a character test. Some conservatives became earnest converts to Trumpism, whatever that is. But too many who ditched their civic convictions did so for the most banal reasons, because there was something in it for them — profit, influence, proximity to power, the brainless tribalism required by audience capture. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer wrote. We’ve all gotten to see who the racketeers are. I would rather fail as a writer than succeed if success means being some demagogue’s footstool. To the extent my work at Hot Air has made that clear, I’m happy with it.
I could say, a bit sourly, that if Allahpundit ever thought Trumpismo was ever a “great cause”, well, I guess a steady diet of bullshit is bad for the brain. Allah and Megan could and should have seen through Trump—and said so—the minute he made his descent down the golden stair. But they did not. Why? For “profit, influence, proximity to power, the brainless tribalism required by audience capture”? Well, it wouldn’t surprise me.
Hat tip, con mucha ironía, to the National Review’s Dan McClaughlin, who earnestly, and amusingly, “refutes” Allahpundit’s perfidy.
1. Anti-Trumpian but woefully interventionist. See Danielle Pletka’s homage to murder—because it works!—here.
