Swimming in the Swamp
Trump wins because he's willing to get down and dirty.
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It's hard to know for sure through all the chaff thrown up by the fervently leftist mainstream media, but there seems to be a possibility that the American people are as disgusted with the revolting, un-American, debauched, shameless fraud shown by the Democrat party's treatment of Judge Kavanaugh as we are. Rasmussen Reports - admittedly rightist in tendency - claims a majority are, even including a third of Democrats!
At the same time, the Democrat most responsible for this disgrace, Dianne Feinstein (D, CA), is seeing a precipitous drop in the polls for her campaign - though because of California's jungle primary system, that means if she's replaced, it'll be by someone even more deranged. Perhaps the feminist psychopaths in the State of Fruits and Nuts simply don't like failures, as it seems that Sen. Feinstein will likely fail in her attempt to keep Judge Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court despite pulling out all the stops and sacrificing every shred of honesty or human decency she may once have possessed.
Is there anything of redeeming virtue in this sordid episode, which has left every single American institution covered with more filth than a frat-party bathroom floor the morning after?
Actually, there is - maybe.
Reality Checks: Always Worthwhile
German imperialist Otto von Bismark supposedly said, “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either being made.” Being generally libertarian, we don't much like laws in the first place, but the filthiest sausage factory Upton Sinclair described in his muckraking slaughterhouse investigations (which led to the creation of the FDA and ultimately to our modern all-encompassing regulatory state) looks like an operating theatre compared to our Congress. No matter how amoral, corrupt, venal, or dishonest we imagine our politicians to be, they - or at least, many of them - have just shown themselves to be worse than we imagined.
Is this particularly new? We tend to think not; they've simply done a better job of hiding it in the past. Flipping over the rock so we can see all the filth under it a great service done to the American people. Our political culture has not been sullied by the Kavanaugh episode. Quite the opposite: this episode has simply revealed to everyone how sullied our politics already were.
Did the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" reign supreme until last week? No: it seems that it's been dead for years, we just didn't realize it.
Are our supposed leaders generally cooperative, except when they're seized by a temporary fit of insanity? Not really: the lynching of Judge Kavanaugh was led not by newly-elected young guns eager to make a name for themselves, but by wrinkled veterans who've occupied the pinnacle of power for longer than most of their voters have been alive. The youngest among them, Cory Booker, didn't manage to accomplish much more than making himself a laughingstock.
No, nothing has changed; all is as it's been. There is nothing new under the sun. The difference is that all of America has had its nose rubbed in reality. What's more, in a month, all voting Americans will have an opportunity to express how they feel about filth at the polls.
Credit Where It's Due
If politics has been this filthy for a long time, though, why only now are we seeing it? There's one big, orange reason: none other than Donald J. Trump himself.
Why? Think about it for a moment: is there any other Republican who would have supported a judicial appointee accused of rape by an apparently credible witness and given him the opportunity to publicly defend himself while also forcing her to air her charges in public in the traditional American way?
For that matter, how many other Republican presidents would have appointed a man of such backbone as to be willing to fight back in the way Judge Kavanaugh has?
Yes, two decades ago Clarence Thomas stood up to false charges of sexual harassment. There is a big difference between vulgar sexual harassment and actual rape. Back then, the media at least accurately reported the substance of the accusations against Judge Thomas; today, the media trumpets "rape" whereas, in fact, Judge Kavanaugh's main accuser didn't claim that he'd committed rape, she spoke merely of misdemeanor assault.
In other words, not only did the media report accusations with not one whit of evidence, they falsely expanded those allegations to include an even worse crime than was claimed in the first place! It's anybody's guess whether Justice Thomas would have been able to stand up to that sort of treatment, and no doubt he is thanking his lucky stars that he didn't have to find out.
Why the escalation? Because this time, the Left's chosen victim did not back down. So they tried harder, and harder, making up more and more scurrilous and transparently unlikely stories, assuming that surely, surely, this latest brickbat would be the one that finally would make Judge Kavanaugh, or President Trump, cry Uncle and quit.
Haven't they yet realized that President Trump never quits? It's his greatest strength as well as his greatest weakness; we can all be grateful that the evil enemy still hasn't figured out how to use his persistence in the face of adversity against him.
That's for another day, though. Today, enjoy a scene even more powerful because of its rarity: Republicans standing up to the swamp!
For lo these many years, swamp creatures have been largely undisturbed in their lavishly taxpayer-funded swamp. Whenever some shining young Mr. Clean attempted to give the swamp a good thrashing, they had merely to turn and roar in his direction. The filthy spray and stench of rotten deals was enough to drive anyone scurrying back home.
But not Mr. Trump! Somehow, he's not bothered by the foulness of his surroundings. Rage and threaten as they will, the swamp creatures can't seem to stop him from manfully trudging through their swamp, drying out one patch at a time in the harsh light of day. Yes, he's covered with filth himself, but the swamp is no longer completely shrouded in mist.
It'll be a long time before the swamp is fit for decent people to swim in; we may never see another "Honest Abe" Lincoln. But we've learned two things: just how bad it is, and that it can be defeated or at least pushed back. Maybe others will follow the trail Mr. Trump has blazed?
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What does Chinese history have to teach America that Joe Biden doesn't know?
I am also a "mostly libertarian”. I did not vote for Mr. Trump or the “crook”.
I think my next vote goes to Trump and to some Republicans.
Thank you for this excellent article. I admire your ability to express your thoughts so eloquently. I will share your thoughts with my friends.
T. Sumer, MD
Not only did Mr. Trump support his nominee, he made sure the MSM would print the inconsistencies in Ms. Ford's story by mocking her.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-mockery-of-ford-reveals-nothing-about-her--and-everything-about-him/2018/10/03/58a1657a-c729-11e8-9b1c-a90f1daae309_story.html is the WaPo criticizing him:
Now, Mr. Trump apparently sees more political upside in belittling and insulting her. At a rally Tuesday, the president mocked Ms. Ford’s answers to the Judiciary Committee questions. “ ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ ‘Upstairs? Downstairs? Where was it?’ ‘I don’t know. But I had one beer. That’s the only thing I remember,’ ” the president said.
They hadn't reported in the weaknesses in her story, but he forced them to do so.
The WSJ explains it pretty well in discussing the treatment of Roseann Barr and Samantha Bee.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tale-of-two-indecencies-shows-how-we-got-trump-1528152818
Roseanne Barr and Samantha Bee seldom have anything interesting to say. But their recent controversies explain our political situation. Taken as one, the story has the precision of a parable.
Ms. Barr, a Trump supporter—in one of her many thoughtlessly grotesque moments—tweets a vulgar remark about longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. People reasonably interpret it as racist. Within hours, Ms. Barr’s No. 1 television program is canceled. Even reruns of her decades-old show are taken off the air.
Ms. Bee, a leftist who hates Mr. Trump—in one of her many well-scripted and vetted grotesque moments—makes an obscene remark about Ivanka Trump. That it is misogynistic is beyond dispute. The audience cheers. Her producer brags that the obscenity is trending on social media. After a day of outrage from the right, Ms. Bee issues a halfhearted apology. She receives an award. Her unpopular and unprofitable show stays on the air. Influential cultural voices earnestly debate whether her ugly comment was really all that bad. The conversation trails into silence.
Even the clearest parable can be misunderstood, so let’s explain this one. There are, generally speaking, two political factions in the U.S. One, the right, believes that America is a great nation and wants to preserve and continue its experiment in ordered liberty, limited government and free-market capitalism. The other, the left, believes America is racist and oppressive and yearns for some form of socialism.
The left has dominated cultural institutions—show business, journalism and higher education—for decades and has used that domination to convince itself and others that conservatives aren’t simply wrong but bigoted and vicious. Because they believe this—and in service to making others believe it—they interpret virtually any remark by a conservative as bigotry and viciousness, whereas even the most bigoted and vicious remarks by leftists are forgiven, forgotten or overlooked.
This leftist project has been so successful that it has created a kind of cultural cringe on the right. We censor our language, we cull our jokes, we debase ourselves after the slightest misstep. Even those politicians who were elected to promote our policies have often apologized for them, offering “kinder, gentler” or “compassionate” conservatism—as if the principles of governance that make us free and prosperous were heartless and brutal.
It becomes clear why those of us who believe in freedom would select a leader who will not apologize for anything—a product of vulgar leftist culture who will fight back on the left’s own terms and will institute conservative policies and ignore the opposition’s shopworn insults—“racist,” “sexist” and all the rest.
That leader may not be nice, or even good. But as the Barr-Bee situation shows, the cultural left has made it impossible to speak for conservatism without being simultaneously condemned as indecent and assaulted by indecency. It takes an indifference to decency to stand up against the opprobrium and do the right thing.
Do leftists dislike being held to the cultural rules they created? As a polite and decent man who believes that America is the least racist and oppressive country on the planet, that socialism is a moral atrocity and that ordered liberty is a gift from a gracious God, I find it hard to feel their pain over getting Trumped.
Well said, Jamie. Additional examples of the Barr/Bee phenomena could be repeated 100's of times. The Progressive's long march through the institutions was all but complete until last November. Thank goodness for Mr. Trump and their completely irrational over reaction to him, which has shown their true colors.
My thought is that they, the Progressives, had to react to Trump in this unhinged manner. They need to do everything possible to de-legitimize him to distract from and cover up all the crimes they have committed. Their marching orders are likely "Destroy Trump or hang".
@Voltaire - rumor hath that Hillary said something like "we've got to win this or we'll all go to jail."
Hobbes, U mentioned "old wrinkled veterans" when making reference to ms. feinstein et al., which immediately made me think of term limits. since this article is about the swamp and the creatures inhabiting it, however, the ideas collided in my head.
term limits don't prevent people from being professional politicians, but they do profoundly hinder anybody who tries to build up a power base in any office. the idea occurred to me that perhaps the civil service needs the same treatment. there are a lot of traitors (those who have seen my posts elsewhere may know what i mean, but a more detailed explanation will appear at another time) in high positions within the civil service (to whom U refer as swamp creatures), and their power, the exercise of which has few limitations, needs to be curtailed. perhaps there should be a limitation of serving no more than 15, or at most 20, years in any department; after that, U get a basic retirement, or U can move to entry level (or close to it) at another government agency (with requisite pay cut). folks who really Really REALLY want to serve in the government could thus do so, but they wouldn't make any money at it, and they would not be able to wield great power - at least, not for very long.
there obviously need to be tweaks to this idea, but were the civil service not a career-building opportunity, fewer people would make it a career. some would, and their nation would be grateful, but wielding great power would not be a large part of that service. nor should it be.
Spot on, b.a. - and we've written on this topic many times over the years.
http://www.scragged.com/articles/in-praise-of-incompetent-bureaucrats
http://www.scragged.com/articles/government-of-by-and-for-the-bureaucracy
As have others:
http://www.scragged.com/articles/motivation-agency-and-public-policy-a-book-review