CSotD: The Party you have dialed is no longer in service

This Clay Bennett panel seems harsh.

But if he drew back and provided a longer perspective, you’d see all the empty lockers and abandoned uniforms and, in a more just and sane world, there’d be a climactic scene in which star player Kellyanne Conway turns in her playbook and says, “I can’t do this anymore,” sparking a reassessment of what he has become.

But her resignation last night won’t be a climax except in the Conway family, because Dear Leader only sees Allies and Enemies, and does not question why anyone would be in one camp rather than in the other.

Kellyanne went crazy. *shrug*

And that’s too bad but we’ve got a game to prepare for, and we’ve still got plenty of loyal players.

Pay no attention to those disloyal liberals at Twitter who took this down:

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Robert Ariail)

(Clay Jones)

The critique here is relatively simple: Ariail has Q-Anon hitched to the tail of a nervous elephant. We can argue whether it’s a case of the cart before the horse or vice-versa, but the more crucial criticism is that, in reality, the elephant doesn’t seem in the least nervous.

As noted above, the nervous elephants have all left the circus, and Clay Jones is probably right that the future of the Trump Party lies in Q-Anon crazies.

 

It’s not just that Dear Leader tweets lunatic conspiracy theories about mail-in ballots, though that’s a clue.

 

(Which, BTW, calls for a pause, in a posting with very little humor, to appreciate Michael Ramirez‘s commentary on the topic, which actually did make me LOL.)

 

And it’s not just that Dear Leader tweeted this impenetrably bizarre comment about how to gain entrance to a convention that was being held on-line and on television rather than in a physical location.

 

The immediate crisis is that he retweets celebratory tweets welcoming insane paranoid overtly racist bigots into the GOP’s Congressional campaign tent.

 

And then adds his own congratulations to a candidate who believes things that are totally, absolutely, certifiably … well, if we threw the term “nazi” around before it became applicable, we’ve probably worn out “insane” on things that were merely eccentric.

As noted above, Dear Leader divides the world into Allies and Enemies, such that he can say of Q-Anon

I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate, but I don’t know much about the movement … I’ve heard these are people that love our country 

Four legs good, two legs better.

When journalists have tried to ask why the President would endorse lunatics and bigots, both Kayleigh MagaNinny and Mark Meadows have explained that we shouldn’t worry, that it’s okay: He has no idea what he’s talking about.

We don’t even know what it is. — Mark Meadows

While MagaNinny employs the Sgt. Schulz defense:

The media talks a lot about this so-called QAnon. I’ve never heard the president mention it. I often talk to him 10 times a day. Not once did he mention the group.

Conspiracy nuts once voiced the opinion that Roosevelt purposely allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor, but they never tried to convince anyone that he’d never even heard of Japan.

Which brings us to

The most dangerous lunatic theory of all

I’ve just begun reading Stuart Stevens’ “It Was All A Lie,” which I had held off on because so many insider books are just repeats of what we’ve been told: That Trump is lazy, incurious, mercurial and a bit dull.

But Stevens analyzes the fall of the Republican Party, such that Trump is not seen as a freakish outlier but as the natural result of a team in which the best players have turned in their uniforms and playbooks and simply walked away, some before Trump, some since.

(The Fresh Air interview with him is here.)

His book doesn’t solve the problem but at least it confirms that there is one.

That’s important to know, because, right now, the gravest threat is not from Trump’s small, loyal, unquestioning core of Deplorables.

It’s from the otherwise decent people who cling to the GOP because it has been their party in the past, and who retain the belief that cooler heads will act as a sea-anchor to keep things from drifting too far off course.

Cooler head have not stepped up in the past three years and they won’t step up in the next four.

There are no cooler heads anymore. The cooler heads have left the building.

That’s not just my analysis, and it’s not even just Stevens’ analysis.

“Anything Dear Leader Wants” is the clear, stated intention of the Republican Party, an openly declared cult of personality which, on the eve of their convention, has released this official explanation of their plans for the next four years:

 

Any player who doesn’t turn in his playbook now has declared what team he’s on, and you may not be able to see Russia from your front porch, but you can sure as hell see Fort Sumter.

(I was going to end cynically, with “Tomorrow Belongs To Me,” but I insist — with a respectful nod to the people of Belarus — on believing that even Rick Blaine, who insists that he sticks his neck out for nobody, can be roused by a patriotic gesture, however momentarily futile it might seem.)