Underseer
Contributor
We can’t blame it all on Grovel McTreasonpants. Some of the seeds of what we see happening now were planted long ago.
George W Bush’s “Massaging” Intelligence Prior to Iraq Invasion
George Bush “massaged” evidence from intelligence agencies to produce the conclusion that Saddam Hussein was working on Weapons of Mass Destruction. When members of American intelligence called him out on some of his lies, the conservative propaganda machine launched into full attack mode.
It used to be that liberals complained about the intelligence community when they did immoral things like topple foreign governments, but conservatives once blindly defended American intelligence no matter what they did.
Bush got average Republicans to be in the habit of not just criticizing American intelligence agencies, but actively thinking of them as the enemy.
As the disastrous invasion of Iraq turned into more and more of a quagmire, more and more conservatives (politicians and voters alike) started blaming American intelligence agency for the Bush administrations misuse of (and modification of) evidence from the intelligence community.
So now when Trump tells the Republican base that all 17 intelligence agencies are wrong about Russia attacking American sovereignty and that they should believe Putin instead, they are primed to do so.
Bill Clinton’s Third Way Strategy
Bill Clinton turned the Democratic leadership from center-left to center-right.
The idea was that Bill Clinton would pull the entire Democratic party to the same political space that the Republicans occupied. Thus, in order to maintain control of the Republican base, Republican politicians would have to pull even further to the extremes.
This is why the Republicans became so radical and extreme during the Bush II administration. Clinton’s strategy worked.
The part of Clinton’s strategy that did not work is that the Republican party never paid any electoral cost for becoming so extremist. The Republican base simply followed them into extremism. The problem is that Republican politicians were only pretending to be right wing extremists, while Republican voters actually were, and Republican voters became increasingly frustrated that the actions of Republican politicians did not match the extremism of their rhetoric. So they naturally started looking for a Republican politician who would be as extremist as they already were.
Hillbilly Chuckletrousers succeeded in alienating many liberal voters, who became less interested in voting because there is now no one left in American politics representing us, he did succeed in pulling more corporate money into Democratic coffers, but he also caused the Republican base to become incredibly radical. The Third Way might have been good for the pocketbooks of top Democratic leaders, but it’s been an utter disaster everywhere else for everyone else, and may have contributed to the rise of Grovel McTraitorpants.
Nixon’s Southern Strategy
Nixon’s Southern Strategy pulled Southern voters from the Democratic party in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement. The strategy was built around the assumption that coded racist “dog whistles” would attract racist voters from the Democratic party to the Republican party.
The Democratic party used to be the party of racists, and the Republican party the party who opposed racism. Between Nixon and Reagan, that flipped. In the process, Republicans got very, very good at appealing to racists without making is sound like they were appealing to racists. So the Republican party started attracting more and more extreme racists, while radicalizing mildly racist voters and convincing them that they weren’t actually racist.
During the Bush II administration, white supremacists became more and more brazen about their association with the Republican party, while rank and file Republicans started talking more and more like white supremacists without realizing that they were doing so.
All of this set the stage for Trump, who was able to grab the nomination from 15 other Republican candidates by being open about his racism and doing away with the dog whistles and careful metaphors.
Ford, Reagan, Bush, Obama, and the Magna Carta
Nixon never went to jail for his crimes because Ford pardoned him. This let every president after Nixon know that they could be as bad as Nixon and expect to get away with it. Thus, when Reagan committed one of the same crimes as Nixon by stealing debate notes, nothing happened to him. No one was bothered by his actions and he paid no price for undermining the fairness of our elections.
Having matched Nixon, it was time to exceed him, so Grampy Dementia created a constitutional crisis by directly breaking the law. He sold advanced weapon systems to a terrorist regime bent on the destruction of America and sold drugs on American streets (destroying who knows how many American families) all so that he could break a recently-passed law by funding nun-rapers in Central America, thus directly attacking the system of checks and balances set out by the founding fathers.
Again, nothing happened to him. Oh sure, an unprecedented number of his lackeys went to prison, but nothing happened to him. All because people argued that having the rule of law instead of the rule of men would anger Republican voters and cause disruption in the nation.
So now all future presidents knew they could be as bad as Nixon and Reagan and expect to get away with it.
Bush I lied us into war, but technically, we can blame that on the military or intelligence community launching a successful psy-ops campaign against the American people, so it’s kind of outside the purview of this discussion.
There was a brief moment when the rule of law and the Magna Carta might have made a comeback when a Republican House actually impeached Hillbilly Chuckletrousers for lying about a blowjob while under oath. Unfortunately, at most, this established that Democrats would be held accountable, but Republican leaders were still above the law.
Then Darth Jar-Jar admitted to war crimes during a press conference. Senator McCain made big noises about holding Bush accountable for his war crimes, but nothing ever came of McCain’s threats. The Republican-controlled House and Senate did nothing to impeach Bush II for his war crimes, nor did they do much of anything about it. He admitted to it in a press conference. There are certain foreign nations he can never travel to because he would be arrested for the war crimes that he already confessed to in public. But in America, nothing will happen to him.
Obama made sure of that.
Obama could have prosecuted Bush for war crimes. He was no longer serving as president and so there was no reason he could not be prosecuted without an impeachment, but Obama made the insane argument that Bush II should not be charged with war crimes because we should “let the past stay in the past,” as though the fact that a war crime happened in the past was ever a valid argument against conviction of a war crime.
I would argue that because of Obama, the rule of law no longer applies to the president of the United States. As of right now, Republican voters have an expectation that Republican presidents will never be convicted of crimes committed while president.
If we try to put Trump in jail for money laundering and obstruction of justice and collusion/conspiracy with enemies and possibly espionage, we would have to violate a long-established precedent in order to do so. Republican voters have threatened to start a new civil war if Trump goes to prison for his crimes, and many past presidents have contributed to that expectation.
We now live under the rule of men instead of the rule of law, and that’s not Trump’s fault. Both parties contributed to that for decades.
Questionable Claims About Nixon and Reagan
Nixon is said to have negotiated with the North Vietnamese to keep the war going longer in order to give him an advantage in the election. I have no idea how reliable this claim is, but if it’s true, then it certainly set a precedence for colluding with enemies for purely partisan reasons. Nixon would have caused the deaths of many Americans and Vietnamese (not to mention Laotians) and massive human suffering just to win an election.
As Douglas Adams once said, “Anyone who has what it takes to have themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do so.”
Similarly, Reagan is said to have negotiated with Iran to keep those American hostages longer, in order to hurt Jimmy Carter in the election and increase Reagan’s chances of winning an election. If Reagan did, this would certainly explain why he was willing to negotiate with Iran and sell them advanced weapon systems.
As with Nixon and the North Vietnamese, I have no idea how much credibility to give this one, that’s why it’s in this section. If true, even the rumor of Nixon doing that (and just about anyone who paid attention to politics back then was at least aware of the accusation) may have emboldened Reagan to do something similar with the Khomeini regime in Iran.
Or maybe neither happened. I dunno.
Even if neither happened, the fact that the rumors floated around would have helped get Republican voters used to the idea of Republican politicians engaged in shockingly self-serving partisan conspiracies with hostile foreign governments. The rumors alone would have made the average Republican voter less likely to complain about Grovel McTreasonpants’ Grovelpalooza performance in Helsinki, his obvious collusion with the people for whom he’s been laundering money for decades, and his subsequent suggestion that we turn over an American ambassador to a nation with a highly questionable “justice” system over entirely specious criminal charges.
Conclusion
Did I miss anything? Is there anything else you can think of that happened in the past half century or so that has new meaning in light of current events, or may have otherwise contributed to current events in ways that other people are probably missing?
George W Bush’s “Massaging” Intelligence Prior to Iraq Invasion
George Bush “massaged” evidence from intelligence agencies to produce the conclusion that Saddam Hussein was working on Weapons of Mass Destruction. When members of American intelligence called him out on some of his lies, the conservative propaganda machine launched into full attack mode.
It used to be that liberals complained about the intelligence community when they did immoral things like topple foreign governments, but conservatives once blindly defended American intelligence no matter what they did.
Bush got average Republicans to be in the habit of not just criticizing American intelligence agencies, but actively thinking of them as the enemy.
As the disastrous invasion of Iraq turned into more and more of a quagmire, more and more conservatives (politicians and voters alike) started blaming American intelligence agency for the Bush administrations misuse of (and modification of) evidence from the intelligence community.
So now when Trump tells the Republican base that all 17 intelligence agencies are wrong about Russia attacking American sovereignty and that they should believe Putin instead, they are primed to do so.
Bill Clinton’s Third Way Strategy
Bill Clinton turned the Democratic leadership from center-left to center-right.
The idea was that Bill Clinton would pull the entire Democratic party to the same political space that the Republicans occupied. Thus, in order to maintain control of the Republican base, Republican politicians would have to pull even further to the extremes.
This is why the Republicans became so radical and extreme during the Bush II administration. Clinton’s strategy worked.
The part of Clinton’s strategy that did not work is that the Republican party never paid any electoral cost for becoming so extremist. The Republican base simply followed them into extremism. The problem is that Republican politicians were only pretending to be right wing extremists, while Republican voters actually were, and Republican voters became increasingly frustrated that the actions of Republican politicians did not match the extremism of their rhetoric. So they naturally started looking for a Republican politician who would be as extremist as they already were.
Hillbilly Chuckletrousers succeeded in alienating many liberal voters, who became less interested in voting because there is now no one left in American politics representing us, he did succeed in pulling more corporate money into Democratic coffers, but he also caused the Republican base to become incredibly radical. The Third Way might have been good for the pocketbooks of top Democratic leaders, but it’s been an utter disaster everywhere else for everyone else, and may have contributed to the rise of Grovel McTraitorpants.
Nixon’s Southern Strategy
Nixon’s Southern Strategy pulled Southern voters from the Democratic party in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement. The strategy was built around the assumption that coded racist “dog whistles” would attract racist voters from the Democratic party to the Republican party.
The Democratic party used to be the party of racists, and the Republican party the party who opposed racism. Between Nixon and Reagan, that flipped. In the process, Republicans got very, very good at appealing to racists without making is sound like they were appealing to racists. So the Republican party started attracting more and more extreme racists, while radicalizing mildly racist voters and convincing them that they weren’t actually racist.
During the Bush II administration, white supremacists became more and more brazen about their association with the Republican party, while rank and file Republicans started talking more and more like white supremacists without realizing that they were doing so.
All of this set the stage for Trump, who was able to grab the nomination from 15 other Republican candidates by being open about his racism and doing away with the dog whistles and careful metaphors.
Ford, Reagan, Bush, Obama, and the Magna Carta
Nixon never went to jail for his crimes because Ford pardoned him. This let every president after Nixon know that they could be as bad as Nixon and expect to get away with it. Thus, when Reagan committed one of the same crimes as Nixon by stealing debate notes, nothing happened to him. No one was bothered by his actions and he paid no price for undermining the fairness of our elections.
Having matched Nixon, it was time to exceed him, so Grampy Dementia created a constitutional crisis by directly breaking the law. He sold advanced weapon systems to a terrorist regime bent on the destruction of America and sold drugs on American streets (destroying who knows how many American families) all so that he could break a recently-passed law by funding nun-rapers in Central America, thus directly attacking the system of checks and balances set out by the founding fathers.
Again, nothing happened to him. Oh sure, an unprecedented number of his lackeys went to prison, but nothing happened to him. All because people argued that having the rule of law instead of the rule of men would anger Republican voters and cause disruption in the nation.
So now all future presidents knew they could be as bad as Nixon and Reagan and expect to get away with it.
Bush I lied us into war, but technically, we can blame that on the military or intelligence community launching a successful psy-ops campaign against the American people, so it’s kind of outside the purview of this discussion.
There was a brief moment when the rule of law and the Magna Carta might have made a comeback when a Republican House actually impeached Hillbilly Chuckletrousers for lying about a blowjob while under oath. Unfortunately, at most, this established that Democrats would be held accountable, but Republican leaders were still above the law.
Then Darth Jar-Jar admitted to war crimes during a press conference. Senator McCain made big noises about holding Bush accountable for his war crimes, but nothing ever came of McCain’s threats. The Republican-controlled House and Senate did nothing to impeach Bush II for his war crimes, nor did they do much of anything about it. He admitted to it in a press conference. There are certain foreign nations he can never travel to because he would be arrested for the war crimes that he already confessed to in public. But in America, nothing will happen to him.
Obama made sure of that.
Obama could have prosecuted Bush for war crimes. He was no longer serving as president and so there was no reason he could not be prosecuted without an impeachment, but Obama made the insane argument that Bush II should not be charged with war crimes because we should “let the past stay in the past,” as though the fact that a war crime happened in the past was ever a valid argument against conviction of a war crime.
I would argue that because of Obama, the rule of law no longer applies to the president of the United States. As of right now, Republican voters have an expectation that Republican presidents will never be convicted of crimes committed while president.
If we try to put Trump in jail for money laundering and obstruction of justice and collusion/conspiracy with enemies and possibly espionage, we would have to violate a long-established precedent in order to do so. Republican voters have threatened to start a new civil war if Trump goes to prison for his crimes, and many past presidents have contributed to that expectation.
We now live under the rule of men instead of the rule of law, and that’s not Trump’s fault. Both parties contributed to that for decades.
Questionable Claims About Nixon and Reagan
Nixon is said to have negotiated with the North Vietnamese to keep the war going longer in order to give him an advantage in the election. I have no idea how reliable this claim is, but if it’s true, then it certainly set a precedence for colluding with enemies for purely partisan reasons. Nixon would have caused the deaths of many Americans and Vietnamese (not to mention Laotians) and massive human suffering just to win an election.
As Douglas Adams once said, “Anyone who has what it takes to have themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do so.”
Similarly, Reagan is said to have negotiated with Iran to keep those American hostages longer, in order to hurt Jimmy Carter in the election and increase Reagan’s chances of winning an election. If Reagan did, this would certainly explain why he was willing to negotiate with Iran and sell them advanced weapon systems.
As with Nixon and the North Vietnamese, I have no idea how much credibility to give this one, that’s why it’s in this section. If true, even the rumor of Nixon doing that (and just about anyone who paid attention to politics back then was at least aware of the accusation) may have emboldened Reagan to do something similar with the Khomeini regime in Iran.
Or maybe neither happened. I dunno.
Even if neither happened, the fact that the rumors floated around would have helped get Republican voters used to the idea of Republican politicians engaged in shockingly self-serving partisan conspiracies with hostile foreign governments. The rumors alone would have made the average Republican voter less likely to complain about Grovel McTreasonpants’ Grovelpalooza performance in Helsinki, his obvious collusion with the people for whom he’s been laundering money for decades, and his subsequent suggestion that we turn over an American ambassador to a nation with a highly questionable “justice” system over entirely specious criminal charges.
Conclusion
Did I miss anything? Is there anything else you can think of that happened in the past half century or so that has new meaning in light of current events, or may have otherwise contributed to current events in ways that other people are probably missing?
