When the NYT reporter asked DOGE about this their response was swift - they removed all the HTML data from the site so nothing could be checked.
Was a time when this sort of thing would have been important.
Let me correct that: There was a time when a Democratic administration doing that might have resulted in articles of impeachment. And no, that's not hyperbole, even if Republicans have shown a long tendency to hyperventilate and overstate their complaints about what's wrong with Democrats, women, homosexuals, "liberal Christianity", food relief, housing relief, health care, doctors, human rights, lawyers, unions, &c.
During the Obama administration, Republicans even complained about "unprecedented" presidential behavior in which the only thing unprecedented was that the president was black.
Billvon, as long as we've known each other, you've always run somewhere to the political right of me, and like many people who don't count themselves as right-wingers, or, in some cases, conservatives, there is a tacit hesitance in your approach to liberalism. My father was a Reagan Republican, came to loathe what conservatives were doing, but to the end remained guarded against Democrats. My brother is similar in that he never wanted to be called a Republican, despite supporting conservatives for years, and now that he doesn't, he still simply cannot take up a more liberal position than his old politics. It is as if people are holding out for a real conservatism to show up and rescue them from liberals and rightists alike. And the thing is, that's not going to happen; anyone selling them that idea was lying. There is no threshold at which a silent majority of conservatives will finally speak and set the GOP straight.
Another way of looking at it is to consider prominent nevertrumpers, like Bill Kristol, David French, Charlie Sykes, and maybe even Tom Nichols.
For instance, the idea that it's not racism, but just reality. Truth is that most nevertrump conservatives would still accept and even encourage disparate impact. This was the whole grappling with conscience that only took as long as, say, Donald Trump's nomination. Their whole problem with Trump's approach isn't the hatred or its impacts on people's lives, but that Trump kept saying it out loud. What we've learned over the period since is that it doesn't hurt the GOP to say those parts out loud.
Meanwhile, it was never about all that, but supporters had other reasons. Like the prosperity they never got never got from union-busting. Optimizing school funding never improved outcomes. Hardlining crime doesn't seem to make us any safer. In fact, following these routes seems to have made things worse, and it's easy for someone like me to wonder if that was the point. Even the great conservative policy idea of our time, the individual mandate, turns out to be something they never really believed in. However, what those arguments
did get them was the opportunity to feel empowered with mean spirit.
To suggest this is a conservative motive apparently remains shocking. Still, there is history: The Southern Strategy, for instance, can actually do a pretty good job explaining certain behavior. Moreover, this seeking of empowerment is evident in diverse conservative political issues.
And it goes beyond, say, Republicans. Think of thresholds: What is it that moves an atheist to stand shoulder to shoulder with notorious religion? What moves a skeptic to abandon science? Mythbusting is one thing, but when facts intrude on personal beliefs, conflicts arise, and here we might consider the
internal.
By contrast, lust can turn the pious man to sin, and the opportunity to markedly improve one's financial status can test the most communist or christianist or whatever among us. But this is different. I don't need to hate a black man in order to get laid. I don't need to hate transgender in order to win the lottery, or even sell my soul for financial return.
The difference is
empowerment to inflict, which is, in its way, a manner of true power. And if I suggest it is evident in American conservative politics in a way that it isn't in liberal, that has to do with what is doctrinal, catechismal, or archetypal, as such. In our historical moment, this empowerment to inflict goes beyond any one question.
It's one thing, for instance, if infliction was always present in a discussion like capital punishment, but American society has, in this Trump term, surpassed the informant and snatcher thresholds. And you know this ends with a body count; the administration is already testing habeas corpus to the point of refusing proof of life. Think back to, say, the Reagan years, and the tough-on-crime talk, or, later, Justice Scalia feeling personally affronted when his colleagues further curtailed the death penalty, twenty years ago. Were conservatives
always like this?
Because, yeah, I could have told you that, back in the day. And you, for instance, are someone already aware that sort of thing was customarily inappropriate. That is to say, sure, I could have told you, back in the day, but even before Godwin, it was considered out of bounds. Remember, that was a time when freedom was defined, in part, by censorship.
And that sense of empowerment, that solidarity through infliction, has been a constant feature: A core component of the Republican pitch over the years is who needs to be excluded, disqualified, refused, and punished.
For a child of the Cold War, like me, the strange contrast between the projected tyranny of the leftist spectre and the functional tyranny of the right has always stood out. It's like the saying, the last few years, that every accusation is a confession, except, come on, we're talking about the course of fifty, nearly sixty years. Once upon a time, they held back, stopped short, and understood the importance of not taking it so far.
The thing is, nevertrumpers like Kristol, French, and Sykes will, at first opportunity, return to the Southern Strategy, that it's not infliction, just the way of things, and it's not their fault who gets in the way of nature. All the mean spirit of the right has to do is let them come back. But that's the thing, isn't it? What happened ten years ago looks more like people finally got tired of keeping it to themselves.
Please consider, Bill, part of the reason you think I'm so rude and extreme is how I regard and respond to certain elements when I encounter them. Flip-side, please consider that while I might have a few reasons to recall the Anthrax song, "Keep It In the Family", that was also thirty-five years ago, and if the song applies today, it was also inappropriate and uppity and offensive in the same way, then, that some might suggest, today: "'Cause Daddy hated this, and Mommy hated that, and your own ability to reason's like a tire gone flat." It's been as true of these elements, throughout, as in its moment
thirty-five years ago.
And maybe I might try sarcasm, like, oh, how wrong of anyone to be so weary of yet another go'round the mulberry monte, but if that kind of logic worked we would be having entirely different discussions about different issues.
Thus, please consider that you have just had the experience, in the Rowling thread, of walking people through yet another iteration of a discussion that has been going 'round and 'round for over a decade, and might well, in that context, have been over before it started.
And, having just gone through it, what do you think: Did it take, this time? That is, compared to the last thirty-five years, at least, or even fifty to sixty years, did the underlying reality and principles click with them, or is this another occasion when they feel inflicted upon and frogmarched into unquestioning acceptance? You know, like that whole thing with political correctness and thought police, around forty years ago? Or, more recently, the
"intellectual dark web"↗,
silencing↗ and "cancel culture".
Like the old difference between tolerating the Coloreds because the law says so compared to actually recognizing the humanity and equality of a black person.
That is, here we are, seven weeks and forty pages later, and from that point of departure, what did we find along the way?
Inasmuch as you find my take on such issues extreme, you, Bill, can tell us something particular and important:
Do you think you actually got through in any constructive, durable way?
Because I don't think you did, and in that case there's something else you might be able to shed a little light on: How long can people stay on course before you accept that's really where they're going? Absolutely nothing new happened in the Rowling digression, so to me it's just another predictable episode in a never-changing story. But for someone still willing to try to take them by the hand and coax their prejudice back toward reality, maybe somewhere in there you saw a sign.
