gerson, m

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" style="" face="Times New Roman">disillusioned conservatives, Jennifer Rubin, Peter Wehner, David Frum, Anna Navarro and Charlie Sykes among them. Michael Gerson, once a speechwriter for George W Bush, says: “The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased. The movement has been seized by a kind of discrediting madness, in which conspiracy delusions figure prominently.”</font></span><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an <b>10 22</b></font></span></div><div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Conservative <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/20/gop-maga-trump-racism-white-grievance-strategy/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Washington Post columnist</a> Michael Gerson penned a piece Thursday in which he said he was wrong to think that Republicans weren't really racists when it came right down to it.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He recalled working in the White House when then-Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) endorsed Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) as a Republican ideal. At the time, working for George W. Bush, Gerson said that he thought statements like that were just blunders that came from ignorance.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"The general goodwill of the GOP on racial issues could still be broadly assumed," he wrote. "This is among the worst errors of moral judgment I have made as a columnist. I tended to view bigotry as one of America’s defects or failures. The historical works I read often tried to defend the best elements of the American ideal as dramatically outweighing the worst moments of its application."</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He argued that even after all these years, the kidnapping, murder, abuse, raping and racism still aren't fully resolved with many launching renewed white supremacy and "Klannish violence."</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>"This is the environment into which the MAGA movement is pumping a toxic discharge of bigotry," </b>he continued. "Former president Donald Trump recently employed his own (supposedly) lighthearted treatment of racism’s cruelest epithet. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/08/trump-n-word-rally-dangerous/?itid=lk_inline_manual_17" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">'The n-word!' he told a campaign rally</a>. 'Do you know what the n-word is?' The crowd certainly did, when given permission to use it by Trump. 'It’s — no, no, no. It’s the ‘nuclear’ word.' This was not a dog whistle; it was a Confederate trumpet."</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Gerson recalled Trump telling White women that “low-income housing would invade” their neighborhoods. Now that he's thinking about running in 2024, Trump is telling his followers he wants “to take back that beautiful, beautiful house that happens to be white.”</b></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump and the GOP are now handing MAGA exactly what they want.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“They want crime,” Gerson quoted Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) talking <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/tuberville-reparations-crime-black-americans/?itid=lk_inline_manual_21" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">about Democrats at a Trump rally</a>. “They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The implication is that Black Democrats are trying to steal from the White Republicans.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"In MAGA world, the incitement of white grievance <em style="">is </em>the strategy," explained Gerson. "Such appeals are inseparable from racism. And they reopen a wound that nearly killed the patient before. It is politics at its most pernicious."</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/20/gop-maga-trump-racism-white-grievance-strategy/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Read the full column at the Washington Post.</a></p></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/ralph-nader-here-is-trumps-top-betrayal/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/ralph-nader-here-is-trumps-top-betrayal/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Devastating critics like Dana Milbank, Republican Michael Gerson, Eugene Robinson, Margaret Sullivan, and conservative Max Boot of the Washington Post, or Charles Blow, Paul Krugman, David Brooks, Maureen Dowd and Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times have cogently taken Trump apart on very serious matters since 2017, yet they leave their readers without the obvious conclusion -Trump has to go.  A clear daily peril to innocent Americans “I’m in total control”, why not try bleach, etc. The country cannot wait until January 2021 – assuming dictatorial Donald and his determined GOP don’t criminally suppress enough votes to postpone Trump’s departure until January 2025.</span></font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">,,,</font></span></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/american-evangelicals-rejected-a-reality-based-world-so-trump-was-able-to-reshape-them-in-his-own-image"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/american-evangelicals-rejected-a-reality-based-world-so-trump-was-able-to-reshape-them-in-his-own-image</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">. Mencken’s reputation has suffered in recent years as people have realized that his <a title="bigotry" href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/04/20/the-h-l-mencken-show/" target="blank" rel="external nofollow noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">bigotry</a> extended far beyond his famous contempt for Biblical literalists, but no one has revoked his reputation as a wordsmith. When he arrived in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925 to cover the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, he <a title="claimed" href="https://famous-trials.com/scopesmonkey/2132-menckenaccount" target="blank" rel="external nofollow noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">claimed</a> to be pleasantly surprised by the inhabitants:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The town, I confess, greatly surprised me. I expected to find a squalid Southern village, with darkies snoozing on the horse blocks, pigs rooting under the houses and the inhabitants full of hookworm and malaria. What I found was a country town of charm and even beauty….</font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But this didn’t mean he had any respect for their point of view on the teaching of evolution. Remarking on the influence of prosecuting lawyer <a title="Williams Jennings Bryan" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jennings_Bryan" target="blank" rel="external nofollow noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Williams Jennings Bryan</a>, Mencken showed his true feelings:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He has these hillbillies locked up in his pen and he knows it. His brand is on them. He is at home among them. Since his earliest days, indeed, his chief strength has been among the folk of remote hills and forlorn and lonely farms. Now with his political aspirations all gone to pot, he turns to them for religious consolations. They understand his peculiar imbecilities. His nonsense is their ideal of sense. When he deluges them with his theologic bilge they rejoice like pilgrims disporting in the river Jordan…</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;" /></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, Donald Trump is not the first American politician to hold these folks in his thrall. But, for former Bush speechwriter <a title="Michael Gerson" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/evangelicals-have-been-reshaped-into-the-image-of-trump-himself/2019/10/28/f37f5154-f9c0-11e9-ac8c-8eced29ca6ef_story.html" target="blank" rel="external nofollow noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Michael Gerson</a>, Trump’s influence is far more problematic. His most recent concern arose after he spent some time perusing the results in the Public Religion Research Institute’s <a title="2019 American Values Survey" href="https://www.prri.org/research/fractured-nation-widening-partisan-polarization-and-key-issues-in-2020-presidential-elections/" target="_blank" rel="external nofollow noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">2019 American Values Survey</a> and discovered some things that trouble him.</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans who are WEPs [white evangelical protestants] are the most likely group to say that immigrants are invading America and changing its culture. More than 90 percent of WEPs favor more restrictive immigration policies. They support the policy of family separation at the border more strongly than other religious groups and more strongly than Americans as a whole.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How have we come to the point that American evangelicals are significantly crueler in their attitude toward migrant children than the national norm? The answer is simple enough. Rather than shaping President Trump’s agenda in Christian ways, they have been reshaped into the image of Trump himself.</font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here are some more findings that make Gerson uncomfortable:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p class="font--body font-copy color-gray-darkest ma-0 pad-bottom-md undefined" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the PRRI poll, nearly two-thirds of WEPs deny that Trump has damaged the dignity of his office. Ponder that a moment. Well over half of this group is willing to deny a blindingly obvious, entirely irrefutable, manifestly clear reality because it is perceived as being critical of their leader. Forty-seven percent of WEPs say that Trump’s behavior makes no difference to their support. Thirty-one percent say there is almost nothing that Trump could do to forfeit their approval. This is preemptive permission for any violation of the moral law or the constitutional order. It is not support; it is obeisance.</font></p><p class="font--body font-copy color-gray-darkest ma-0 pad-bottom-md undefined" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An extraordinary 99 percent of Republican WEPs oppose the impeachment and removal of the president — which probably puts me in the smallest political minority I have ever had the honor of occupying.</font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the Scopes Trial, William Jennings Bryan’s political heyday was behind him. He had tried and failed three times to become the president of the United States, and he would ultimately die six days after the conclusion of the case.  But, for Mencken, he was still a powerful and charismatic spokesman who commanded the obeisance of his followers:...</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" style="" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></div>