Adam Schiff had me sniffling yesterday. If someone had told my 2015 self that some liberal congressman from California, of all places, would have me sniffling in despair at the failure of the Republican party to adhere to their oaths of office… I would have laughed in their face and probably rattled off a “But Obama” diatribe.
How did we get to this point? How did we get to the intersection of Bizarro World and Batshit Crazy Town? This weighed heavily on me all night long and the more I thought about it, there were two main points that kept coming up:
- Lying hypocritical liars who lie.
- Apathy.
The lying hypocritical liars who lie encompass 99.98% of the political class. Both parties. Both teams. Federal and State. I believe the foundations for Trump were laid right after Reagan left office but there’s not enough room to go that far back so we’ll just start with W. Bush.
His second term was very brief. It lasted from his re-election in November 2004 until Election Day 2005. This was an utterly wasted term. It was dominated by an attempt to privatize Social Security, which the country rejected, political scandals involving I. Lewis Libby Jr., Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, a ham-fisted response to Katrina and a mishandling of the Iraq war to such a degree that many Democrats and Republicans have begun to vote “no confidence” in the Bush-Cheney war performance. If ours were a parliamentary system, Mr. Bush would have had to resign by now.
So now begins Mr. Bush’s third term. What will he do with it? The last time Mr. Bush hit rock bottom — then from too much drinking — he found God and turned his life around. Now that he has hit rock bottom again — this time from drinking in too much Karl Rove — the question is whether he can find America and turn his presidency around.
The New York Times.
Thomas L. Friedman wrote that opinion piece for the New York Times back in November of 2005. Far from flattering. I do not seem to recall the Republican party frequently coming to the defense of W.’s personal being during his terms. From what I recall, the Republican party came to the defense of the Republican policy vociferously. Of course, my memory of that time is probably not as sharp as some of you all’s (let me know in the comments if your memory is different).
Fast forward to President Obama’s re-election.
It seems that many Americans went to the polls without much enthusiasm for either candidate, but, nevertheless, with a clear idea of whom they preferred. The majority seemed to be saying to Obama: “You didn’t get it all right the first time, but we’re going to give you a second chance.” In a way, they voted for “hope and change” again. I don’t think it was so much a ratification of health care or “Race to the Top” or any other Obama initiative. It was more a vote on his character: “We think you’re trying. Now try even harder. Learn from your mistakes. Reach out to the other side, even if they slap away your hand, and focus like a laser on the economy, so those of us who voted for you today without much enthusiasm can feel good about this vote.”
The New York Times.
These are opinion pieces, yes. However, the rest of the media, aside from Fox, were unwilling to truly hit at Obama, the man, with the zeal they did to George W. Bush. The media grumbled very seriously when Obama started limiting press access.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Dozens of leading news organizations protested to the White House on Thursday against restrictions that sometimes keep journalists from taking pictures and video of President Barack Obama performing official duties. At the same time, two press groups urged their members to stop using official photos and video handed out by the White House, dismissing them as little more than “government propaganda.”
AP News.
Unfortunately, the press was unwilling to go any further in their demands for transparency and access. I remember this being quite a big deal to the ‘right’ media, especially after Sharyl Attkisson had her computer infiltrated. The press also seemed rather unwilling to doggedly follow up on Obama’s scandals, instead allowing the Administration to apologize for whatever had taken place and move on to the next newsworthy tidbit. This was most notable during the period in which Obama, fantastically, found out about most of his scandals from the news media.
We all remember this. Read the comments on the video. And then there was Benghazi.
This is what came out of Benghazi. Read the comments. This point in time is when cult45 solidified into anyone but Hillary. The subsequent reports from the REPUBLICAN led House found lapses in the bureaucracy but did not find wrong doing on President Obama or Secretary Clinton’s part. I would believe those three mens’ word over Obama, Hillary, Gowdy, and Issa’s any day of the week.
So we get to the hypocritical liars directly. That same Benghazi video has cult45 commenting on it even this year. Oblivious to the Republican’s pronouncement of innocence for Obama and Clinton, they chime away talking points from 4chan, talk radio, and various other social media outlets. I won’t lie, I cried watching this again, just like I cried when I watched it the first time. These three mens’ recollection are raw, they are powerful, and they are damning of the man in charge.
With all the information available to read most of what happened back in D.C., with these mens’ testimony, cult45 chose this as the answer to Benghazi.
The voting hypocritical liars simply did not hear that last video. The lying hypocritical liars that lie have used “BBuuuttt Her EMAILS!” as a cudgel against the entirety of the Democrat party for years now, for every conceivable topic, but have been deathly silent on their OWN findings.
A State Department investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email account found no widespread effort by her aides or other staffers to mishandle classified information.
The three-year-long investigation by State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security concluded that 38 individuals committed a total of 91 security violations involving emails sent to or from Clinton’s private server.
Politico.
A State Department report into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for government business, obtained by Fox News on Friday, found dozens of individuals at fault and hundreds of security violations.
The report summarized an administrative review of the handling of classified information relating to Clinton’s private email server used during her tenure as the nation’s highest-ranking diplomat between 2009 and 2013. The report, dated Sept. 13., was delivered to the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., who was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee until last year.
Fox News.
I wanted to write a long, detailed analysis of the events (to me at least) that pulled average people in the Republican party to the very fringes of rationale to support a man who lies to them on a daily basis but I am out of time. I suppose this can be a multi part story but Benghazi really seemed to be the flash-point where the lying liars that lie all came together and created a movement that is rending our country completely apart.
Obama was derelict in his duty to defend our citizens, Hillary was as ineffectual as she has always been, the Republicans saw their big political break to skewer Hillary while not ever doing a damn thing of substance to hold anyone accountable. The right wing media went into overdrive in their fear mongering of Democrats as their audiences winced in fear. The entirety of the cable news media saw their ratings going up with each successive dumb utterance from Candidate Trump.
There were real problems in past administrations, both Democrat and Republican. The commonality between all of them through the decades has been Congress’ refusal to hold anyone accountable for any of it. This has caused a population to become cravenly apathetic to their governance. The TEA Party was an awesome idea, but the citizen participants did not have the wherewithal to keep the tentacles of corrupt establishment, greed, and lust for power out of it. After decades of seeing the same corrupt politicians escape career ending scandals, it seems logical to be apathetic towards politics. And then the inconceivable happens; those same people who gripe about how crappy their representatives are get their votes. This circle jerk of enabling the abuser finally spun out of control in 2016 with the two worst candidates in American history vying to lead the free world.
With the fear mongering entrenched on both sides, we now live in a country steeped in fear where views are formed by entities the people know they should question but do not. Absolute trust is being given to entities that don’t deserve even a modicum of it out of the need for confirmation bias. We are here because history repeats itself and mankind refuses to learn from it, no matter the consequences to their, or their children’s, lives.
