History Will Judge the Complicit

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?

...In the United States of America, it is hard to imagine how fear could be a motivation for anybody. There are no mass murders of the regime’s political enemies, and there never have been. Political opposition is legal; free press and free speech are guaranteed in the Constitution. And yet even in one of the world’s oldest and most stable democracies, fear is a motive. The same former administration official who observed the importance of apocalyptic Christianity in Trump’s Washington also told me, with grim disgust, that “they are all scared.”

They are scared not of prison, the official said, but of being attacked by Trump on Twitter. They are scared he will make up a nickname for them. They are scared that they will be mocked, or embarrassed, like Mitt Romney has been. They are scared of losing their social circles, of being disinvited to parties. They are scared that their friends and supporters, and especially their donors, will desert them. John Bolton has his own super PAC and a lot of plans for how he wants to use it; no wonder he resisted testifying against Trump. Former Speaker Paul Ryan is among the dozens of House Republicans who have left Congress since the beginning of this administration, in one of the most striking personnel turnovers in congressional history. They left because they hated what Trump was doing to their party—and the country. Yet even after they left, they did not speak out.

They are scared, and yet they don’t seem to know that this fear has precedents, or that it could have consequences. They don’t know that similar waves of fear have helped transform other democracies into dictatorships. They don’t seem to realize that the American Senate really could become the Russian Duma, or the Hungarian Parliament, a group of exalted men and women who sit in an elegant building, with no influence and no power. Indeed, we are already much closer to that reality than many could ever have imagined.

Long but really excellent, insightful essay by Anne Applebaum. The rest here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/

[Chainfire]

1. History is written by the winners.

[leftieNanner]

2. That gave me chills

Especially since Barr used this exact phrase recently.

May it be US who write his history and his future.

[bronxiteforever]

3. Kick and recommend. Must read article.

Anne Applebaum is a treasure.

[NNadir]

4. Thank you, an excellent read. n/t.

[NNadir]

5. The concluding paragraph about a triumph over both Stalin and Nazis is beautiful:

...In the meantime, I leave anyone who has the bad luck to be in public life at this moment with a final thought from Władysław Bartoszewski, who was a member of the wartime Polish underground, a prisoner of both the Nazis and the Stalinists, and then, finally, the foreign minister in two Polish democratic governments. Late in his life—he lived to be 93—he summed up the philosophy that had guided him through all of these tumultuous political changes. It was not idealism that drove him, or big ideas, he said. It was this: Warto być przyzwoitym—“Just try to be decent.” Whether you were decent—that’s what will be remembered.

A respect for the view of history is a key to ethics.

I know how history will judge McConnell and Graham as well as the immoral idiot destroying this country.

[LiberalLovinLug]

6. K & R

"Could some similar combination of the petty and the political ever convince Lindsey Graham that he has helped lead his country down a blind alley? Perhaps a personal experience could move him, a prod from someone who represents his former value system—an old Air Force buddy, say, whose life has been damaged by Trump’s reckless behavior, or a friend from his hometown. Perhaps it requires a mass political event: When the voters begin to turn, maybe Graham will turn with them, arguing, as Jaeger did, that “their will was so great … there was no other alternative.”


IMO its too late for Graham. If he were ever to flip back against Trump it would only highlight how irresponsibly fickle and hypocritical he has been willing to be.