Poor Execution

On Saturday at his bonfire pep rally in Wisconsin, Trump made a statement that instantly reverberated in basic, sane society.  Rather than show video of the comment -- which makes it even worse as you hear him rant and sashay and play to the crowd -- to give him added the screen time around the world he craves, I'll just quote the heart of the passage.  Well...no, let's call it the "core," because there's not heart here.  What Trump said was --

"The baby is born. The mother meets with the doctor. They take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully. And then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby."

Many articles and news stories have pointed out the actual, proposed law in Virginia that Trump has completely lied about, explaining how it has absolutely nothing at all to do with what he said.  I will not do so here.  Not only OF COURSE does it have absolutely nothing at all to do with what he said and if anyone thought there was even a hint of validity to Trump's knowing-lie then they are unthinking, empty-headed, easily-fooled by your shameful prejudices and close-minded, and nothing I said would convince them otherwise -- but more so because explaining what the actual, benign law would be changes the subject and gives substance to Trump's lie by making it a subject of debate.

It is not a subject of debate any more than "Italy is not a real country" is. It was a sick, full-bore, knowing-lie meant only to inflame.  And we can be assured it was a knowing lie because the proposed law doesn't actually exist so there can be no evidence ever presented to him to make such a claim.  As foolish and sick as his most-resistant opponents may think Trump, for him to truly believe such a crazed claim by others would require a descent into madness so deep that not only would he be unable to string sentences together at a profoundly worse and consistent non-stop level than he's at now, but even his own cabinet would at last know that they have no option for their own safety and the 25th Amendment for mental instability must kick in immediately, and there has been no move for that.  Well...yet.

Worse, it was the kind of lie fascists use to create a foundation for later fomenting violence.  Angering their trusting, idolizing base into a mad frenzy against the murderers and heathens and rapists and bad hombres and Muslims and Jews and black people who live in shi*thole countries all out to ruin the white way of life.

To say that someone does something that Nazis did is not to say that they themselves are Nazis.  It only says that they live by beliefs that evil hatred has used over time and overlaps with one another occasionally to create their own sick path.  And blaming Jews on killing babies and "blood libel" is something that Nazi propaganda did out to stoke fear in others to be used as victims.  I don't believe that Trump is a Nazi, and most definitely not a Hitler.  I believe that some of Trump's supporting base are Nazis and he speaks to them in words he know they will hear in their own way as familiar and comforting, and so he builds on their hate, and enables them in their actions.  I also believe that Trump is a fascist, and white supremacist, and a pathologically lying, misogynistic, racist, hate-filled con man. That I don't think he is a Nazi, nor especially a Hitler -- which implies a level of actions far-deeper and sickeningly worse -- is small comfort.

Almost more than in the past, though, venal as Trump was over the weekend, this is yet another event that is not about Trump.  This is about the elected members of the Republican Party in Congress who enable him.  That not a single Republican stood up on the House or Senate floor to speak of his or her distress at Trump's statements -- let alone that most of them did not --  speaks to what the Republican Party has become.  (Mind you, I don't also say that "all of them" did not because I suspect in today's Republican Party there are some -- too many -- who agree with Trump's tactics.)  And I note that I set a very low bar here for them to merely speak of their "distress" at this knowing-lie.  What it actually requires is far more than simple distress, but total outrage.  I long ago gave up expectation of that in today's GOP.

What Trump did was, yet again, disqualifying.  Further, anyone who actually believed what he said disqualified their own opinion on any political subject as having thoughtful insight and being meaningful.  But it is the elected officials of the Republican Party who enable it all who are the ones that the light shines the most because they know what is being said and done, and are in a position to stop it, and stop it easily, but chose to go along for the ride.

We saw what happened in the Blue Wave of the 2018 mid-terms.  The ride they are taking is a deserved one into oblivion.  Or hell, whichever comes along first.