The tribalists are lined up on their various sides this morning, ready to stick it to the bad guys. Here's the thing about where any and all of them are coming from, though: they have to disingenuously exclude any context beyond the gotcha prizes they clutch in their grubby little hands.
Hunter Biden's laptop contains some emails pertaining to Ukraine and China that implicate "the big guy," aka his dad. Okay, it's pretty easy to acknowledge that that's bad. But what is to be done with it? Does anyone think that the DoJ, as currently constituted, is going to assign a special prosecutor to pour massive resources into investigating it? Will relevant House and Senate committees hold hearings about it? With everything else on the nation's plate right now, I rather doubt it.
Ginni Thomas's emails to Mark Meadows pretty clearly pin her as a Trumpist kook who really thought there was a snowball's chance in Hell of getting the 2020 election overturned. Clarence Thomas's lone dissenting SCOTUS vote in the order to make Trump cough up January 6-related documents makes the whole thing even more unseemly. But Ginni Thomas's Trumpist turn is nothing that many a formerly respect-worthy conservative hasn't done. Think Victor Davis Hanson, Roger Kimball, Rod Dreher . . . you get the idea. And are we to jettison all that we've known about Justice Thomas for years - his remarkable life story, his voting record on the bench?
I've been thinking about something I included in yesterday's post, specifically point number four, where I said
Whataboutism that would bring up the truly shameful treatment of Gorsuch at his hearings (and it was shameful, as was subsequent remarking on how angry he got; this man had been the subject of the most rotten kind of slander - namely, that he'd sexually attacked women in his youth) only perpetuates our societal brittleness. It ensures that neither side truly hears the other across the chasm that divides us, rendering it utterly ineffective for - well, whatever it is intended to be effective for. It persuades no one of anything.
But soon after writing it, I listened to Commentary magazine's daily podcast, in which John Podhoretz, Christine Rosen and Noah Rothman make a pretty persuasive case that it is indeed important to bring up the rotten treatment Brett Kavanaugh got at his hearing, particularly in light of the Washington Post's "credible evidence" phrase in its editorial juxtaposing what Kavanaugh was subjected to with KBJ's hearing. As they point out, the three "witnesses" Blasey Ford was relying on couldn't recall a specific date or location for a party at which Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her. They go on to point out that a year after the hearing, Blasey Ford's attorney let the cat out of the bag that the real aim was to keep SCOTUS from getting a justice who might find Roe v Wade's reasoning flimsy and might personally view abortion as the extermination of human beings.
I am in complete agreement with the Principles First position that non-Trumpist conservatives who want to run for public office are going to have to acknowledge that they're going to lose some elections in. the immediate and intermediate future. But let's level with them. The task is daunting as hell. There's going to be a big fundraiser for Harriet Haggeman, headlined by Kevin McCarthy in Washington soon. Doesn't that tell us everything we need to know about what a garbage party the Republicans have become?
And, of course, the rejoinder remains what it has been for seven years from those who have gone ahead and voted Republican: "Are you okay with the alternative?" Of course, the ate-up, drool-besotted throne sniffers are quick to so respond, but so are lots of ordinary citizens who view themselves as somewhat engaged and generally right of center, but who say they have busy personal lives and/or careers and only so much time to stake out a position that doesn't involve holding their noses.
My overall point here is that I've come to be damn reluctant to even begin to admire any public figure anymore. I have no brand to defend, no turf to protect.
This is what happens when the bedrock institutions and norms of the most advanced society in history crumble.
And it happens at a dandy time, doesn't it?
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