This was written before the last election but bears repeating
On Contradiction (With All Due Apologies To Chairman Mao)
I was never comfortable when people attacked everything that Trump did, not just because it stretches the bounds of political decorum and rational discourse but, face it, some things he got right (even if you want to rationalize it as "the blind hog finding an acorn now and then" or "the stopped clock being right twice a day").
More to the point, though, I had to shake my head when folks get upset about picayune things or went out of their way to stretch to manufacture drama for some imaginary infraction when there was such a long laundry list of things appropriately to be pissed off about.
Dogmatic constancy is no virtue. Both sides of the political spectrum engage in contradictory behavior. Even Chairman Mao confessed that the best he could do sometimes was eliminate as many of the contradictions as he could and do the best he could with the rest.
But, come on:
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, you made Obama a foreign-born Muslim and a horrible despot but you weren't willing to actually apply the same code of conduct to this truly graceless boor; he, who by the way, was the main proponent of that gambit.
In fact, you ignored all evidence to the contrary and made Obama the hapless victim of supposedly random and unwarranted attacks. Snowflakes my ass. You characterized this urbane, gentle, gracious and intellectual man as an ogre and vicious dictator but ignored or downplayed the sort of behavior you wouldn't tolerate from a 14 year old.
Wait. No!??! You actually admire him still.
Your conservativism is retrograde and reactionary and extends beyond the things you initially hated but now love; like the Beatles, Elvis, rock and roll,
We watched you fight every Progressive innovation Civil Rights, Obamacare, even minor things like handicapped parking and accessibility from people with special needs. you fought all of those because supposedly they were going to hinder Economic Development. Now you try to own it.
Hell, you even try to own history: Yes, the Klan was born in the Democratic Party and Yes Hugo black and Harry Byrd were Klansman at one point in their lives; deny science; attack the news; the government; the fact checkers.
Obama spent two years fiddle-fucking around trying to get the other side to play nice on Obamacare. Instead, all he got was obstruction and an openly declared war. (I blame him for not ramming that through when we had the opportunity. it's one of the things I've always admired about the Republicans.)
Yet you dare talk about divisiveness? This man that you elected specifically because he was going to "break the mold" and has managed to violate every rule of political and social decorum?
Hillary was in your mind a murderer, a fraud, crook, and monster bitch, but, again, you refuse to apply the same standards - and we're not talking about political things, like political posturing and agenda driven spin, reasonable people can disagree - to truly monstrous behavior.
Your concern for Hillary and Bill's misogyny is interesting, given your support for a man who takes great pride in it.
You misidentify George Soros as a Nazi, which would be a terrible thing if it were true and not more drivel but this mutt is alt-right flea-bitten and somehow that raises not even one eyebrow.
Acorn, a community-based organization, was this supposed national threat, but the idea of someone actually tampering with election results? Nothing about which we should be concerned?
Saul Alinsky, a pretty esoteric political figure prior to the Obama candidacy, is about as centrist a leftist as there comes. His organizing principles are fairly consistently used by both sides. However, he was characterized as somehow a communist. (Or a fascist, you really don't know the difference do you?)
You think the president's love affair with Putin is no big deal. We sat through countless investigations of things Clinton but collusion by our sworn enemy, no big deal? You don't even see any analogous behavior in Trump's attacks on our institutions like the intelligence agencies and the media. Are you "heightening the contradictions"? Are you a fellow Traveler?
Hell, you fabricated an entire conspiracy around the horrible events in Benghazi and now you think the Deep State (you know the internecine liberal organizations like the CIA and the FBI, DNC & RNC) have taken over and are trying to corrupt this wonderful presidency that we finally have.
Emails, another manufactured crisis. it went from that to an investigation and then all sorts of umbrage when she wasn't prosecuted. Remember? but wait, the new Administration has been caught in numerous instances of the same sort of conduct. Now it seems that he's discussing sensitive confidential matters on his unprotected iPhone. Who cares, right?
And then there's the born-again Christians. God! there is a spot reserved in the deepest parts of hell for your hypocrisy.
You have fly-specked, counter-spun, and mischaracterized just about everything Obama and Clinton has ever said or done, engaging in some of the more bizarre theories and, yet, this bozo - who does not hide what he's doing - gets a pass. The best explanation I can put on that is that you are engaging in a rearguard action as a defense mechanism for not having to explain yourself.
You objected on every ostensible moral, legal, libertarian, and constitutional ground to just about everything proposed by the Obama Administration but now openly talk about shooting people at the border, taking away protester rights, infringing on personal liberties, and things that openly flirt with authoritarianism.
You reject science and pervert history. Oh yes, indeed, you are surely the party of Lincoln. If only you knew what that meant. Your political actions speak volumes otherwise. When now faced with the evidence of gerrymandering, voter repression, the internment of children, and a whole laundry list of things that go against common, if not political, decency, all we get out of you is a big power politik spin (How can anyone oppose requiring an ID to vote? The separation of children from their families was previously happening.) or, worse yet, an indifferent yawn.
You don't discriminate because you're for everyone. All lives matter, right? Bullshit.
Your concern for veterans, minorities, native Americans, children, gays or women is, more often than not, opportunistic and certainly after-the-fact. it's just spin. You don't really give a shit about Jennifer Flowers - as a woman - any more than you want to save Blacks from that horrible plantation we be keeping them down on.
You're incensed at the DNC's treatment of Bernie; are ya now?
You rely for your alternative facts on folks that have openly declared that they have an axe to grind, folks who, even at the top of their barking chain, shouldn't even be trusted to bag your groceries. Voter id is not voter suppression. Quit conflating the two.
you jump to conclusions that are not only far-fetched, they're antithetical. Someone sends a bomb; the Democrats, they must have sent the bombs to themselves. It's revealed that it's some Maniac Trump supporter, he must have been paid by the Democrats. An immigrant Caravan? who is putting that together? Where are they staying? Who is feeding them? they're marching here so that they can collectively steal the election. what planet do you live on?
Most of us already live in the ideological enclaves our communities have become, but you've managed to cloister yourself even more, cocooned in little support groups, exacerbating ignorance by layering your comfort food of misinformation and hysteria on it. Yes, infect the matrix! That's why you see conspiracies everywhere. They're like the sharks in the ice cubes to you. Yet, you don't see the turd in the punchbowl.
