Above is a screenshot of the poll we ran last week about the title of this column. The consensus was very clear, so welcome to “F**king Mondays”! I’m not sure what this says about our readers, but we believe in democracy and the masses have spoken…
My 2020 Trump prediction
A memory from my Facebook feed popped up recently about a debate I go into with a Republican friend in February 2020, just after the Senate failed to impeach Trump for the first time. I’m not going to name my friend, but he was Chief of Staff to a fairly prominent member of Congress, so deeply embedded in the party and the political scene in DC. My friend is a moderate conservative and probably wasn’t a fan of Trump, but took the view that Democrats were a bigger threat to the health of the country than his own party. The debate was triggered by my comment that an emboldened Trump would almost certainly try to overthrow democracy, and Republicans wouldn’t do anything about it. My friend called this “blindly partisan and borderline conspiratorial”, leading to a spirited back and forth. I’m not going to post the full exchange (it was pretty long), but here’s how I responded to his claim that “there is no cultural tolerance for such an action either among military circles nor GOP circles”:
You'll forgive me if I show little faith in the GOP's commitment to opposing egregious violations of law and political norms. They've allowed a treasonous liar to destroy their own party, flagrantly abuse the power of his office, and commit blatantly impeachable offenses without any recourse. The GOP has rolled over for Trump in such a shameful way that it is hard to take anything they say seriously. Before Trump was elected, almost everyone in the GOP called him a severe threat to democracy and a grave danger to the country. Now he's rammed through far right Supreme court nominees, stacked the courts and passed tax cuts for billionaires everything is apparently OK. In an act of supreme hypocrisy, they are now claiming it is the Democrats who are fear mongering. It would be funny if it weren't so frightening.
You say that "The idea that either group would go along with Trump remaining in office simply has no grounds in America". Really? I didn't see any of them standing up and denouncing Trump for his shameful smearing of John McCain, his disparagement of a dead soldier's family, siding with Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies, his obstruction of justice, or his attempts to extort Ukraine into investigating an American citizen. Who then, will stand up to him when he claims massive voter fraud? This isn’t “alarmism” or “fantasy”, it’s based on Trump's own words. "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” That was the president back in 2016, before he launched an official investigation into voter fraud. Do you honestly think that won’t happen again? And who is going to stand up to him?
The GOP hasn't just stood by all of this nonsense without comment, they've actively protected him and provided political cover. And it’s getting worse by the week. Why? Because your party is now the party of Trump, and no one (besides Mitt Romney and precious few others) has the courage to stand up to him.
What I see from your response is a an elegantly worded, but factually bereft attempt to draw parallels between Trump and other Democrats in order to normalize all of this…. and no, nothing Obama did, or any president in modern history, is remotely comparable to Trump's criminal behavior while in office. This is why I am sounding the alarm about 2020. It isn’t Trump I’m worried about so much, it’s his far more competent enablers who have intellectualized his criminality and made him almost untouchable.
I hate to brag about this, but Trump did try to steal the election and violently overthrow the government, and a total of 10 Republicans voted to impeach him for it.
When liberals and sane conservatives warn that Trump is going to do the exact same thing in 2024, they aren’t being conspiratorial. I believe Trump will win the GOP primaries and attempt to steal another election. I also believe it will be violent and Democrats will stand alone in trying to stop him overthrowing the government. This is not something I enjoy being right about, but it is something that needs to be shouted from the rooftops so we are ready to combat the next assault on America’s democratic institutions.
Identity politics narratives
Andrew Sullivan has written a thought provoking piece on the identity politics left’s attempts to fit tragedies into their specific narrative about race. Sullivan argues that recent mass killings of Asian Americans, the murder of Tyre Nichols, and the conviction of a trans woman who raped two other women do not “fit into the pre-arranged “white supremacy” template” so often used by identity politics adherents. I’m not exactly sure how the trans rape case fits into his thesis, but his points on the other tragedies are important.
Because the mass killings were committed by other Asians and the killers of Tyre Nichols were black, Sullivan argues that the cases “reflect a reality far more complex than the crude racial hierarchies beloved of actual white supremacists and woke activists alike.” I’m not a fan of the “woke” slur given the right’s shameless use of the term to slander anyone they disagree with, but I do tend to agree with Sullivan on much of this. An example: I was told by a friend that Kanye West’s virulent antisemitism was really about him engaging in “White Supremacy”, as if black people were not capable of being antisemitic on their own. I’ve heard Jewish people being horrendously racist about black people too, and I think it would be equally ludicrous to blame this on “White Supremacy”. Black people and Jews are entirely capable of being racist assholes all by themselves. Not so according to the identity politics left, who insist everything must be viewed through the lens of oppression hierarchies.
This is serious problem the left needs to confront if they want to genuinely work for a better, less racist future. The ACLU got caught up in this madness after defining racism as “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people”. After Whoopi Goldberg claimed the Holocaust was “not about race”, the ACLU thankfully decided to update the definition to something sane: “racism occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or group based on race or ethnicity”.
The point here isn’t that structural racism doesn’t exist (it does), or that the police officers who killed Tyre Nichols didn’t harbor anti-black prejudice (they may have) — it’s that we need judge each case individually and accept that sometimes we can’t fit the facts to our own preconceptions.
The Banshees of Inisherin
I’m still not sure what to make of this strange, beautifully shot, and marvelously acted film. Nevertheless, the tale of two friends falling out on a remote island off the coast of Ireland in the 1920’s is a must watch. Actors Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, and Barry Keoghan draw you into an ancient world of Irish banter, music and mysticism with truly spectacular performances. It’s a simple plot with simple dialogue, yet the film and its characters are anything but. What is it about? The travails of close friendships, loneliness, aging, finding meaning in life…maybe? The story turns in unexpected directions making it feel more like an unfinished exploration of small island life in a bygone era than anything else. Either way, it’s well worth your time.
On The Banter
Rich Herschlag’s piece on why MAGA lunatics have killed his “tiny patch of sensible conservatism” is an absolute must read. I find myself in a very similar frame of mind these days — opposed to what I see as excesses on the left, but unable to bring myself to criticize them much because the other side is fucking insane.
The latest Banter Roundtable Podcast was an absolute blast, as was The Emergency Meeting podcast that saw Bob, Justin and I discuss the rapidly escalating war between Little Ronny DeSantis and the Orange Madman. The podcast is really growing right now, so make sure to listen!
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Not long till Tuesday, so hang tight…
Ben
The best Banter column I have read in a long time. I guess I had best upgrade to paid! Nicely done, Ben.
Rich Herschlag’s piece on why MAGA lunatics have killed his “tiny patch of sensible conservatism” is an absolute must read.