Post-America chokes on its own toxicity

This is one of those days on which it seems like the only two sensible reactions to the state of post-American culture are weeping and hurling.

Well, and of course praying.

A lot of what this post is going to cite and discuss has to do with the accelerated pace of the rot since the Trump phenomenon got underway, but that's not the whole picture. Ultimately, Trump, and the hate that emanates from his support base, and also from the Left that wants to see him destroyed by any means necessary, are the fruits of trends that have been poisoning this country for decades.

And now it's at the point where some people whose position, on the surface, is the good and right one are sabotaging even that, caught up as they are in the coarseness with which most people now communicate, as I shall discuss shortly.

I'd like to start with Erick Erickson's Resurgent post from yesterday in which he discusses what he and his family have been through since he publicly declared that he couldn't support Trump:

Over the course of the campaign in 2016, we had people show up at our home to threaten us. We had armed guards at the house for a while. My kids were harassed in the store. More than once they came home in tears because other kids were telling them I was going to get killed or that their parents hated me. I got yelled at in the Atlanta airport while peeing by some angry Trump supporter.

We got harassed in church and stopped going for a while. A woman in a Bible study told my wife she wanted to slap me across the face My seminary got calls from people demanding I be expelled. And on and on it went. When I nearly died in 2016, I got notes from people upset I was still alive. When I announced my wife had an incurable form of lung cancer, some cheered. All were directed from supposedly evangelical Trump supporters convinced God was punishing me for not siding with his chosen one. For a while, given the nature of what we were getting in the mail, my kids had to stop checking it.

It's really like that.

And I guess you know about Michelle Wolf's appearance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

I suppose the place to start with regard to this is to point out that there was a time when that level of basic crudeness would not have been found at a Washington social event at which people were dressed elegantly and eating from fine china, glass and silver. But that's so obvious it's kind of a banal observation now, isn't it. Almost elicits a reaction of "Oh, please, to what year do you want to turn back the clock?"

In particular, the nastiness of Wolf's "jokes" about Sarah Huckabee Sanders encapsulated Wolf's overall tone and generated an exchange that in itself was full of poison.

Take the Daily Beast's Marlow Stern's reaction, for example:

The White House purposely sent Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway to the #WHCD to then feign outrage at the jokes made at their expense, so... don't fall for it

Does "cynical" even begin to scratch the surface? His assumption is that they were sent there to be lightning rods, to draw out snark that might then garner outrage among Trump supporters.

Except consider this tweet from Brad Thor, know to be vigorously opposed to Trump, to the point where he's considering a primary run against him in 2020.

Dear @PressSec - it took a lot of dignity, guts, and class to sit through what you did tonight. You personified professionalism. Thank you.

For which he came in for this kind of response:

She lies everyday at the podium and says horrible things about various people like our former FBI Director. She deserves no courtesy.

And the thread then takes a turn of digression that makes Comey the point.

The treasonous Comey? Lol! He is a disgrace to the FBI. You must be a supporter of honest Hillary? Don’t even get me started.  

The atmosphere demands that one take a black-or-white position on James Comey, an enigmatic, complex and flawed man, a man who has a longtime friend in Andrew McCarthy, who will vouch for his admirable qualities, even as he expresses dismay at his recent poor judgement (The book and the book tour were bad ideas, and the continuing mystery surrounding the way he handled the Hillary Clinton email case is discomforting):

I am fond of Jim Comey and have been for 30 years. I vigorously disagree with both his handling of the Clinton emails investigation and the manner in which the FBI has conducted what is supposed to be a classified, counterintelligence probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — not a public, government-orchestrated campaign of insinuation that Trump was complicit in Russian perfidy.

No doubt because of my personal regard for him and respect for his high-end ability, I am inclined to cut the former director slack. He was thrust into a no-win situation: It is not his fault that Democrats nominated a criminal suspect, or that Republicans nominated an irregular politician heedless of the norms of discretion and distance that a president should maintain when dealing with his law-enforcement subordinates. Comey aside, I had no better friends in nearly 20 years as a federal prosecutor in New York than Dan Richman, the Columbia Law School prof through whom Comey transmitted information to the New York Times, and Pat Fitzgerald and Dave Kelley, Comey’s lawyers. These aren’t just former colleagues of mine; they are old friends. I haven’t tried to speak to any of them about this matter, but my esteem for them weighs on me — as does my duty to be an honest analyst. How well I resolve that tension is not for me to say; I can just tell you it is real.

See how far afield we've gotten? All because in 2018 post-America, everyone has to be either a total villain or a white knight. And, yes, due to her job, Sarah Huckabee Sanders has to cast aspersions on Comey in her press briefings. Sanders works for a loathsome being who directs her to speak thusly. And her father, who has always been disappointing and has, since the Trump phenomenon got underway, had his respect-worthiness diminish markedly, is no doubt a factor in her loyalty to Trump, which is bewildering, given her Christian moorings. I really hope she reaches a point at which she can no longer hold that job. But, as with the case of Comey, in this rancid atmosphere, she must either be a scurrilous scumbag or an uncommonly noble paragon of virtue. She is not allowed to be a complex human being.

And then we come to the biggest vulnerability that someone like Sanders sets herself up for, because, as noted above, she does indeed work for a president who is indeed a loathsome being.

Republicans calling Michelle Wolf disgusting and vulgar must not remember the dude they elected bragging about grabbing women by their vaginas whilst cheating on his wife with porn stars.

There's not much room for squirming past that one.

I'm pretty sure the above tweet comes from a left-leaner, but I'm also pretty sure the one below comes from a right-leaner - i.e., the one kind of person in all this who ought to know better than to take this occasion to point out Sanders' precarious position.

Sarah Huckabee has zero shame and goes out there and lies to the nation daily on behalf of a despicable conman.

But, as we can see, it takes no time at all for a simple expression of admiration for a moment of composure to turn into a cesspool of tribalist gotcha, absolutist takes on figures in precarious professional positions, and, of course, nasty juvenile ways of expressing it all.

The sum total of it all is a demonic cacophony that leaves scant room for maturity, self-respect, and humility.

It gets later in the day by the microsecond.

God help us.