On Keeping Getting Worse

This post from Kevin Drum at Mother Jones captures the growing despair I have at the impeachment debate: "It Just Keeps Getting Worse." I don't (and Drum doesn't) mean--I don't only mean--my dismay at the drip drip drip of still more evidence of the White House either using the office of the President to go after Trump's personal enemies. That's awful enough. I mean, like Drum writes, the fact that so many Republicans seem to be staking their claims that the entire impeachment inquiry is nothing but an elaborate attempt by Democrats to snipe at Trump.

When I read right-wing media outlets, the focus centers on Democratic wrongdoing: Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff, any female Congresswoman of color, and (more recently) anyone or any organization with the temerity to suggest that Congress has an oversight role on the President. I'd love to hear a full-throated, detailed defense of the President's behavior as evinced in his own transcript (account of a transcript)--the one his office released.

I mean, the Ukrainian President mentions that they're ready to talk buying military hardware from the US. Trump replies directly with "I would like  you to do us a favor, though . . ." And then he proceeds to reference a longstanding conspiracy theory on the fringes of the right about the company Crowdstrike and its suppose role in, oh, lots of other conspiracies, such as Hillary Clinton's emails or the origins of the Muller probe. This is even before he gets to the long-discredited rumor-mongering about Joe Biden's work with the Ukraine under Obama. (A right-wing pundit, David Thornton, does a nice job reviewing exactly why all this is bunk.)

Even stopped there, the polarization on these questions would be disheartening. Lots of people on the right seem simply, gut-level convinced that the whole whistleblower report is a Deep State coup attempt, that it's Hillary, Obama, Biden, and the Democrats who are really doing the colluding with Russia and the Ukraine Exactly who is colluding with whom, and how, and to what end--all of this changes by the hour. All that matters is "Dems bad."

This is a post-truth-era battle. There's just no common epistemic framework between rightworld and leftworld here. They're not just disagreeing on minor details or shades of meaning. There's a whole nefarious reality, plans within plans within ever-more-baroque plans, that must be true in order for even the minor parts of Trump's thinking to hold water. But the shorthand version of all that thinking runs on a fuel not of facts but of feelings--the animus of right for left, the certainty that Dems are amoral monsters bent on evil. They can't (or don't bother) to explain why, and they certainly can't prove it, but doggone it they know that anything the Democrats say or agree to is a lie.

Of course, I'm sure some right-wing folk are thinking the mirror image of this about me and my side. It's Trump Derangement Syndrome: the left hates anything Trump says or does because Trump says or does it. All that matters is "Trump bad."

That may be true. Perhaps my dismay and fear--my exasperated confusion at people supporting Trump in this matter--are just what in-group bias feels like from the inside. I certainly try to check kneejerk reactions against Trump administration actions. (I'm glad Trump got rid of Bolton, for example. Of course, it's Trump who brought Bolton on in the first place...)

But I have to wonder if people on the right are really listening to or reading or watching Trump. Take, for instance, his multiple tweets and press conferences and statements about trying Congressman Schiff for treason? His dropping hints of Civil War if he's impeached? His desire to unmask the whistleblower so as to, well, do something unpleasant to him? How are these defensible? How are these thuggish threats anything like what Republicans are alleging (against all evidence) Joe Biden did?

The left hates anything Trump says?  I have to ask my right-leaning neighbors: have you been listening to what Trump is saying? Are these good and admirable things for a President to say? 

In order for impeachment to have its intended effect, removing a corrupt President, at least twenty Republican Senators will need to be swayed to vote "guilty." No one I've heard or read on the right or the left thinks this will happen.

Like Drum, I wonder if there even exists a point where Congressional Republicans (and the host of right-wing punditry) would balk at something Trump says or does. More--I wonder if, even if there is such a breaking point, it would have any effect. Another Drum piece from today notes that, despite growing unrest with Trump from farmers (over the trade war), farmers are unlikely to vote for someone besides Trump. They hate and/or fear Democrats more than Trump.

I'm not sure if or how that gets better.

JF