The great majority of what Democrats claim today, the issues they suddenly consider of the utmost importance, were either ignored or outright lied about throughout recent history beginning with the mental capabilities of President Biden himself, what we might consider the original sin from which all loss of credibility flows.
While the opposition party opposes and we should not expect Democrats and their progressive allies to suddenly embrace President Donald Trump’s agenda, this doesn’t imply that all arguments against those policies are created equal, much less that the opposition should be taken seriously under all circumstances. Anyone that has followed politics for an extended period and watched the White House change hands between parties understands that there are some arguments that always seem to change hands as well. The filibuster, for example, is almost universally despised by the majority and praised by the minority for obvious reasons. Similarly, other procedural tools to slow or obstruct legislation are either a corruption of our democratic process or its essence, while executive orders are either necessary powers in the service of the people or tyrannical power grabs for undoubtedly nefarious ends. Outside the operation of government itself, both sides are prone to seize on whatever data supports them while their opposition denigrates the very same data point. Thus, the stock market is either a complete representation of the economy or a meaningless snapshot in time, the right and wrong track numbers either represent the will of the people or the recalcitrance of the opposition, consumer sentiment is either merely vibes or objective reality, and so on. While we might wish politicians and their supporters would be more consistent in their arguments, consistency alone doesn’t win elections, much less enact policy preferences, and a certain strategic hypocrisy has been standard for centuries if not since ancient Rome. At the same time, we can differentiate between procedural and situational matters that politicians believe improve their current positioning and more fundamental principles that drive their overall positioning. There is a difference between adapting your tactics to the moment and completely and totally ignoring everything you have said for decades or more. For example, loving or hating the filibuster is dependent on which stance will best advance a given agenda. The agenda doesn’t change; the means to achieve it does, but what happens when an entire party and their enablers in the media has been caught concealing the truth for an entire Presidency, or perhaps even worse, has become corrupted entirely by a desire to thwart one person, namely President Trump himself even at the expense of reality itself?
However you feel about President Trump personally or his various policies politically, you cannot separate the context of any specific criticism from the person making it. When you evaluate the veracity of a statement, any statement, you evaluate it at least partially based on the history of the individual in question, asking things like are they trustworthy in general? Would they be saying the same thing in another circumstance? What have they said about similar circumstances in the past? Are they saying this only because a specific person is involved? Unfortunately, for Democrats and their progressive allies, the great majority of what they claim today, the issues they suddenly consider of the utmost importance, they were either ignoring or outright lying about throughout recent history beginning with the mental capabilities of the President himself, what we might consider the original sin from which all loss of credibility flows. While last June’s debate permanently shattered the illusion that President Biden had all of his mental faculties and was capable of executing his duties as President, it’s become an open secret that Washington insiders, certainly in his political party and in high ranking media positions, were aware of his decline for a full year or more. Rather than simply tell the truth and demand another candidate replace him, even insist upon his resignation for the good of the country, they lied about at worst, ignored it at best. Books, in fact, are being written on the topic, coming out fast and furious in recent months, the majority of which attempt to rewrite recent history as if the authors were not participants in the saga. As The Guardian recently described it, “This month saw the publication of two books containing explosive reporting on Biden’s downfall, and coming months will bring two more: so far the picture emerging is a damning one for Biden, his top aides and the Democratic party…The books have detailed a president increasingly unfit for the task of taking on Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election and his top aides in denial about it, or actively seeking to cover it up, even as the administration warned about the existential threat Trump posed to American democracy.” Though The Guardian somehow refused to make the obvious follow up point themselves, they have the honesty to quote a Republican strategist who does, at least somewhat. Reed Galen, host of The Home Front podcast claimed, “Anyone who knew [about Biden’s decline] and did nothing, or knew and went to work for Kamala Harris’s campaign and didn’t let her run her own race, should never be given a position of responsibility again.” This is certainly true, but it doesn’t quite go far enough in my opinion: Forget a position of responsibility, and forget that many who knew about his decline still have positions of responsibility, how can you possibly take anyone who defended a man in obvious mental decline seriously, whether they were simply too blind to notice on their own, too partisan to care, or part of the cover up itself?
The principle works on a micro as well as a macro level. While we have ample reason to doubt either their veracity or their acumen in general, we also have reason to doubt their opinion on individual issues, many of which they seem to have suddenly discovered the same as President Biden’s lack of mental capacity. For example, the price of eggs began making national headlines immediately after President Donald Trump took office, but what were the same people saying when the same bird-flu induced price increases occurred in 2022 and 2023, while we had an incompetent Commander in Chief? Back then, the little coverage the topic received was generally focused on absolving President Biden of any and all responsibility, while at times veering into shooting the messenger. The New Republic declared, “No, TikTok, Joe Biden Doesn’t Control the Price of a Quarter Pounder.” They began by asking and answering a different question about the price of eggs, apparently to cover both bases, “What does the president of the United States have to do with the price of eggs? Nothing. But try telling that to social media.” They continued, “A story has been bouncing around on TikTok lately about a guy who went to a McDonald’s in Idaho in late 2022 and his meal came to $16.10. He posted the receipt, which went viral, and of course as the topic roared across the various social media platforms, a culprit was fingered. Beef producers? Nope. Potato growers? Hardly. McDonald’s itself? Are you kidding? No, it was all the fault of Joe Biden. Why? It makes no earthly sense, but in today’s America it makes all kinds of sense, because in today’s America all bad economic news is the fault of Joe Biden. The Washington Post reported on McDonald’s-gate last week, noting that the White House Office of Digital Strategy had to spend time fending off allegations that Biden himself had all but ordered the scandalous increase. This is just preposterous craziness for so many reasons.” Incredibly, immediately after pretending that consumers worried about prices as an incorrect use of the administration’s time, they proceeded to defend the cost of the Quarter Pounder even beyond the President’s role, explaining that all of this was normal, “I haven’t been to a McDonald’s in decades, but back when I did go a lot, which was roughly around the time when most of America was first learning the name Bruce Springsteen, I recall a then-new Quarter Pounder, fries, and a soda costing a little under $2. The government’s online inflation calculator tells me that would equal around $14 today—less than, but hardly out of line with, $16.10.” Meanwhile, the contrast to their more recent “reporting” couldn’t be more striking, as though they were now covering the planet Earth from another universe entirely. This month alone they have griped, “Forget Expensive Eggs. Here’s the ‘Bigger Picture’ of Trump’s Economy,” “Egg Prices Are About to Get Even Higher,” and “Egg Prices Soar to Record High as Trump Plays King.” This time, they began. “As Donald Trump enacts economic mayhem with his relentless tariff flip-flopping, eggs are still getting more expensive. The average cost of a dozen large eggs jumped 6 percent in March, now costing about $6.23 per dozen, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than double what it was a year ago. That price is up from $5.90 in February and $4.95 in January, when bird flu spikes were cited as the main reason for rising costs. More than 30 million egg-laying chickens were killed to stop the disease from spreading. In March, however, there were no bird flu outbreaks on chicken farms and the price of wholesale eggs dropped to $3 per dozen, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported,” clearly insinuating that something funny had to be going on. After accusing companies of price gouging despite that prices have dropped dramatically in recent weeks, they concluded, “With Trump’s unpredictable flip-flopping on tariffs and trade, eggs could get even more expensive in the coming months—a grim reminder that consumers are ultimately at the mercy of the president’s volatile mood swings and reckless economic decisions.”
What accounts for the radical difference? Why should we believe them now or care what they say when all of this was dismissed less than three years ago? (For the record, I certainly don’t, but a good portion of the country still does.) We see a similar situation on tariffs, where we can agree that President Trump may have gone further than recent occupants of the Oval Office to address trade imbalances by imposing import taxes, but understand that other Presidents have in fact gone there for exactly the same reason. None other than President Bill Clinton actually imposed tariffs on 100 percent of $520 million in European products on March 3, 1999. The underlying issue was, believe it or not, quotas on bananas, suggesting that Trump is correct and tariffs can be used to counter more than tariffs. President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama both imposed tariffs and quotas on China, accusing them of dumping cheap products to destroy their competition. Less than two weeks ago, however, President Obama appeared to blame his successor specifically for the price of eggs, saying, “I think this is one of the challenges that we have — and I saw this even before the last election. I think people tend to think, ‘Oh, democracy, rule of law, independent judiciary, freedom of the press. That’s all abstract stuff because it’s not affecting the price of eggs.” Well, you know what? It’s about to affect the price of eggs.” Progressive firebrand Bernie Sanders has also consistently advocated for tariffs, while slamming free trade. Recently, he described himself as “someone who strongly opposed disastrous unfettered free trade deals with China, Mexico and other low-wage countries, I understand that we need trade policies that benefit American workers, not just large corporations. Targeted tariffs can be a powerful tool to stop corporations from outsourcing American jobs. They can help level the playing field for American autoworkers or steelworkers to compete fairly against companies who have moved production to countries where they can pay starvation wages.” Ironically, he proceeded to claim that President Trump’s tariffs in particular would benefit only billionaires in the very same statement, insisting that we must be “clear about why Trump is doing all this: to give massive tax breaks to billionaires. These tariffs will cost working families thousands of dollars a year, and Trump plans to use that revenue to help pay for a huge tax break for the richest people in America. That is what Trump and Republicans in Congress are working on right now: If they have their way on the tariffs and their huge tax bill, most Americans will see their taxes go up, while those on top will get a huge tax break.” At the same time, we might consider this position lacking in credibility, but downright reasonable compared to The Atlantic, who as far as I can tell never had anything bad to say about tariffs until President Trump was involved. Now, however, they’re literally a Hitlerian policy, as in “Hitler’s Terrible Tariffs. By seeking to ‘liberate’ Germans from a globalized world order, the Nazi government sent the national economy careening backwards.”
How can anyone be expected to take this seriously, especially when I could go on? On the immigration front, Democrats are rallying around the idea that illegal immigrants need to be granted full due process rights whatever the situation and that no one can be deported without a fair hearing in a courtroom if not an actual trial. So committed are they to this idea that several high ranking Democrats in Congress have traveled to El Salvador to demand the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a suspected gang member and wife abuser, who was under a lawful deportation order, but was sent to El Salvador, where he is a citizen, instead of another country. The only problem: Presidents since at least Bill Clinton have all conducted millions of extrajudicial deportations without a word from any of these people. It’s only a problem in their mind if Trump does it. Certainly, we can understand that events tend to come at a dizzying pace in the Trump Era and as in any era, different happenings and data points tend to be disconnected, encompassing the expected and unexpected in both domestic and foreign affairs, but we can begin to see a familiar, overarching explanatory theme less than one hundred days into his second term: President Trump himself is always wrong and always to blame, whatever happens and whatever credibility, or lack of it, his critics have on matters large and small. I’d say this is no way to run a country and perhaps if the current President were anyone except Donald Trump, Democrats would be just a little more circumspect after supporting a candidate with obvious mental decline and covering for him on every possible issue, but what difference would that make? Like many things in life, this is likely to get much worse before it gets any better, if it gets better at all.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 