Anyone can understand liberal policy opposition to Donald Trump. It’s a little harder however, to understand the irrational hatred they have for the man himself. Certainly, they are opposed to most of his policies, but Trump is not a true conservative, and many of his positions would be more in line with the left rather than the right. But even then, Trump Derangement Syndrome shows its’ ugly face, and he is opposed for simply being the irascible New Yorker, Donald Trump.
For five years we have had a Democrat-media blitzkrieg against Trump. They have thrown every weapon they have in his face. Racism, homophobia, womanizing, bigotry, anti-immigrant, tax evasion, and any of a dozen more defamatory charges have been shot against him. None of them caused him to back down, and to make it far worse, he actually shot back. Liberals were only used to cringes, apologies, and pathetic explanations from conservatives, while they moved quickly on to the next unfounded charge.
With Trump gone from the presidency for half a year, their obsession has not let up. In classic liberal fashion, they attribute every bad thing that has happened under Biden to Trump. Every good thing, like the economy and covid relief is credited to good old Joe. We saw exactly the same pattern with Obama, where George Bush was nothing less than Professor Moriarty. Like the evil genius Sherlock Holmes imagined was behind all the criminal cases he struggled to solve, ‘Blame it on Bush’ became the Democrat-medias’ defense for every negative during the Obama administration.
Trump’s many successes running the country, especially with the economy, only add to the hatred liberals have for someone they long derided as a peson who would destroy America. Far more difficult than understanding liberals however, is analyzing TDS among conservatives. The left is notorious for personally attacking the person rather than debating the issues, whereas the right is supposedly noted for ignoring emotion and concentrating on results.
So how is it that such prominent conservative writers and speakers such as George Will, Bill Kristol, and Glenn Beck, detest Trump so much that they would prefer to have Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden as President? Why is it that conservative publications such as The Weekly Standard, National Review, and Washington Examiner should have spent four years sniping at Trump, and finally coming out with complete disdain for the man himself and his many accomplishments as President.
While it is certainly true that Trump is not a movement conservative, it is hard to deny that he did some awesome things as President. If he had accomplished nothing more than his Supreme Court appointments, he should be held in the highest esteem by all on the right. True, his justices have made some disappointing rulings, but if Hilary Clinton had made three appointments the face of America would be changed forever.
Though I no longer subscribe to The Weekly Standard, having dropped it early in 2016 when Bill Kristol was editor, both the Washington Examiner and National Review are unable to mention Trump in a favorable light, no matter the issue. So far, I have continued reading since they have many excellent conservative opinion articles whenever their obsessive TDS doesn’t kick in, and I am always interested in the thinking process of politically savvy conservatives.
Their main point of contention now, seems to be that all conservatives and especially Trump, must admit the election of Biden was fair and honest, and Trump’s loss was due to his own despicable, divisive nature. In true liberal fashion, our conservative intellectuals tell us to ignore every one of the election inconsistencies that are being investigated in multiple states, and to deny the flagrant election abuses we saw with our own eyes. Even the shameless political corruption endemic with mail-in voting, must be faced as a glitch in the system which can be overcome if we just contribute enough money to the Republican Party. Accordingly, only when we admit that Trump himself was the real problem, will true conservatives reclaim the Republican Party.
Though I frequently cringe when Trump speaks and was a Ben Carson supporter in 2016, I recognize that the left has gotten so extreme that only someone equally as extreme on the right can slow the drift. With the media, education establishment, courts, government bureaucracies, tech giants, and now corporate America all existing on the far left, it is too late for even a Trump to reverse course. The best we can hope for is someone like Trump to slow the leftward flow, until hopefully it implodes from its own extremism.
Analyzing the condition of America does not however, explain the irrational logic of anti-Trump conservatives. Chewing off your own tail so you can grow a new one seems loony to average citizens, yet our intellectual superiors tell us conservative peons we must disavow all support for wacko Trump in order to regain political power. The question we keep asking is, why? Can their position really be attributed entirely to a selfless desire to get America heading in the right direction?… Hmmm!
At this point we think of Occam’s Razor, the problem-solving principle that says the simplest answer is most often the best answer. The simplest answer then, is the same one that directs most of our actions; self-interest. Will, Kristol, and Beck for example, are favored among liberals who love the fact that they will often criticize conservatives, which give their syndicated columns access to liberal newspapers, and lands them frequent media appearances as representative of the ‘reasonable’ right.
Washington Examiner and National Review are typical conservative periodicals which are always cash-strapped. Their self-interest is in generating enough revenue to continue operating. This money comes from subscribers which are always thin in political publications, and paid advertising. A quick look at National Review Online July 19, shows an advertisement for Facebook.
The add brags among many other things “we’ve expanded our efforts to fight voter misinformation, removed 100+ networks (including Donald Trump – my add) of coordinated inauthentic behavior globally, and launched a voter information center”. Most would tend to agree that it’s a rather unusual advertisement to find on a conservative website.
Washington Examiner reveals their self-interest in the July 13 issue. A full page, full color Facebook advertisement graces the entire back cover. Mighty suspicious indeed. At the very least, it gives one cause to wonder if the editorial policies are influenced in any way by these advertisers, and raises the obvious question; Why would Facebook place these advertisements in publications that should be hostile to their blatant political censoring actions?
Now we are back to the chicken and egg. Did Facebook place the adds as a reward for the periodical’s negative coverage of Trump and encourage them to do more? If so, the magazines must surely recognize the blatant attempt at bribery. Or, did the magazines hope – or at least entertain the possibility – their attacks on Trump would attract the lucrative adds from the tech giants? In which case it would represent a despicable sell-out of their conservative readers.
Whether these simplest case scenarios are factual or not does not matter. What matters is that they raise the same suspicions in conservative readers that most of America has towards the world of politics and government. Namely: in our fractured country the average citizen doesn’t know what the hell is really going on or whom to believe.
