Posted on 12/18/2017 5:23:02 AM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
The Washington Post columnist stands out among Trump-obsessed zealots who add nothing to our discourse.
The era of Trump has been as hard on the mind as it has been good for the muscles in the chest. Ours is a moment in which millions rush breathlessly to exclaim. In defense! In resistance! In bloody-minded persistence! I will not back down! we are told, by people who have not been asked to, and could not be compelled to. They wont be intimidated either, nor silenced, nor bullied nor, it seems, pushed to any form of self-reflection. Indignation, not analysis, is the perennial order of the day, and the tone of our debates is ineluctably Twitteresque. Retweets are points on the board, and hyperbole gets you oodles of them. The worst. Ding! Insane. Ding! Crisis. Ding, ding, ding! Congratulations, you have been promoted to the next level. Time for some game theory . . .
From this self-laudatory funhouse has emerged a host of cynical entrepreneurs, each with the same approach to our dismal, fractious moment: Take no prisoners, brook no opposition, and never, ever step away from the umbrage. These people end their sentences with Really. or In 2017. or Let that sink in; they pepper their analyses with eschatology; and, as is apt for a cult, they are promiscuous with their accusations of heresy. Like Lewiss busybodies, they are convinced to a man that they are saving the country, and insistent that the dissenters are miscreants or weaklings. They have little sense of history, no instinct for context, and no meaningful faith in the system they want to save. They are marching in an army, and damn does it feel good.
Which brings us to Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Posts ostensibly conservative blogger.
Rubin is not the only example of this presidents remarkable talent for corrupting his detractors as well as his devotees, but she is perhaps the best one. Since Donald Trump burst onto the political scene, Rubin has become precisely what she dislikes in others: a monomaniac and a bore, whose visceral dislike of her opponents has prompted her to drop the keys to her conscience into a well. Since the summer of 2015, the many acolytes of MAGA! have agreed to subordinate their true views to whatever expediency is required to sustain Donald Trumps ego. Out has gone their judgement, and in has come their fealty; where once there were thriving minds, now there are just frayed red hats. During the same period, Jennifer Rubin has done much the same thing. If Trump likes something, Rubin doesnt. If he does something, she opposes it. If his agenda flits into alignment with hersas anyones is wont to do from time to timeshe either ignores it, or finds a way to downplay it. The result is farcical and sad; a comprehensive and self-inflicted airbrushing of the mind. How, I have long wondered, could Trumps unprincipled acolytes do what they do and still sleep at night? How can Jen Rubin?
If Trump is indeed a tyrant, he is a tyrant of the mind. And how potent is the control he exerts over Rubins. So sharp and so sudden are her reversals as to make effective parody impossible. When President Obama agreed to the Paris Climate Accord, Rubin left her readers under no illusions as to the scale of her disapproval. The deal, she proposed, was ephemeral, a piece of paper, a group wish, a nonsense that would achieve nothing. That the U.S. had been made a party to a covenant so devoid of substance, she added, illustrated the fantasy world in which the Obama administration lived, and was reflective of Obamas preference for phony accomplishments, his tendency to distract, and his bases craven willingness to eat up any bill of goods they were served. At least it did until President Trump took America out of it, at which point adhering to the position she had theretofore held became a senseless act, a political act, a dog whistle to the far right, and a snub to elites that had been calibrated to please the climate-change denial, right-wing base that revels in scientific illiteracy (a base that presumably enjoyed Rubins blog until January 20th, 2017). To abandon the ephemeral piece of paper, Rubin submitted, would materially damage our credibility and our persuasiveness and represent conduct unbecoming of the leader of the free world. One is left wondering how, exactly, any president is supposed to please her.
Or, rather, one is left concluding that Rubin doesnt have policy positions so much as she has protean cheerleading instructions, the details of which are set by whomever happens at that moment to be her coach. Take Jerusalem, a subject on which Rubin has rather run the gamut. In 2010, she praised Marco Rubio for arguing that Jerusalem is Israels capital, as the U.S. Congress has repeatedly recognized and lauded the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 as the concrete on which Republicans should walk. Two years later, in the midst of her self-appointed tenure as the president of Mitt Romneys fan club, she reversed herself, hitting Newt Gingrich for holding precisely the view she had previously recommended, while endorsing Romney for his relative judgment, restraint and . . . good sense in opposing her. It really is time, she submitted, to stop promising something that the U.S. cant and shouldnt deliver unilaterally. A few weeks later, when Romney began to sound more hawkish, she endorsed his new position, too, holding it up as a blow to the Obama campaigns frantic efforts to defend the presidents hostile stance toward the Jewish state, and insisting that,
Of course, Jerusalem is the capital. It was declared so in 1948. The Knesset is there. The disposition of its borders is a matter for final status negotiation, but only an uninformed or virulently insensitive administration would be unable to distinguish the two.
This stance lasted into the Trump era. In June, Rubin complained angrily that the White House was delaying its move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a delay, Rubin wrote, that was not only pointlesspresidents come to believe that the move would somehow prejudice peace talks (of which there are none presently) or inflame Palestinians, perhaps causing an increase in violence, she caviledbut that was indicative of Trumps tendency never to keep his word. The world, Rubin advised, is learning to disregard everything this president does and says a habit that will adversely affect everything from the war against Islamist extremists to trade opportunities. Trump, she concluded, looks buffoonish in his hasty retreat.
Last week, Trump announced that the United States would finally be recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital, and, in time, moving its embassy there. And what did Rubin say? That it was a foreign policy move without purpose, indicative of a non-policy-based foreign policy.
What, one wonders, happened in the interim? Did the benefits of the presidents keeping his word so lavishly and hyperbolically outlined just a few months earlier disappear upon the instant? Did a presidents view on this question cease suddenly to serve as a proxy for his stance toward the Jewish state? Or was it more simple than that: Was it that, just as Rubin couldnt bring herself to criticize Mitt Romney, she cannot bring herself to praise Donald Trump? As an affect, Jennifer Rubin writes as we. Has there ever been a more appropriately schizophrenic pronoun?
The illustrations are endless. In two years, Rubin has gone from arguing that the ludicrous, absurd Iran deal has to go and, indeed, that John Kasich was a fool for contending otherwise to praising those who believe it must remain in place as reasonable experts, and predicting that even to decertify would put American credibility at risk. In 2015, she wrote that if you examine the Iran deal in any detail, you will be horrified as to what is in there. In 2017, she characterizes this position as the emotional temper tantrum of an unhinged president. A similar metamorphosis has sullied her views on tax cuts, welfare, energy, and gun control (before, after), as well as her attitude toward Jews and anti-intellectuals, which once led her to defend Sarah Palin, but which now leads her to condemn Trump on almost all of the grounds she once dismissed.
The descriptions above Rubins byline have come to seem tragically misleading. Contrary to popular myth, she is not in fact writing from a conservative perspective, but as just one more voice among a host of Trump-obsessed zealots who add nothing to our discourse. In so doing, she does conservatism a sincere disservice. Whatever its shortcomingsand they are manythe American Right is too complicated and too interesting a force to be ruined or consumed by a single preposterous president. Conservatism in this country long predated Trump; for now, it is tied up with Trump; soon, it will have survived Trump. Rubins Jacobin willingness to throw the baby out with the bathwater suggests that she, like so many others in the conservative-nay-resistance does not much understand the philosophy at all. What, one might ask, separates her from possessed apologists such as Tomi Lahren? We deserve better critics than this.
My excitement of our country getting grasped at the edge of doom cant be contained.
This is what they may confuse as worship. They dont know what worship is anyway, so thisll do.
In our 11th hour we were basically saved from a lifetime of conflict and struggle. I went from planning my daughters survival training to teaching her how to play guitar. I thank God everyday for this turnaround.
I wouldn't be too quick to celebrate yet. Unfortunately at best, Trump is probably only delaying the inevitable. I hate to say it, but American and Western civilization is currently on the downward slide if history is any indication. Whether it happens quickly over a manner of years or more slowly over a few decades remains to be seen, but I would prepare as if it could happen at ANY time.
Jebbifer Rubin is still upset that her heartthrob Yeb! did not get to be the Designated Loser like was planned.
Now those disgusting deplorables might actually get to keep their country and wreck the GHW Bush Plan for North Mexico that both parties have been working on for 30 years.
He has much in common with Rubin. He doeth protest too much.
Thanks Robert A Cook PE. Yeah, Jennifer Rubin is just another partisan media shill for the Demagogic Party. It figures that she'd write for the Washington ComPost.
” wouldn’t be too quick to celebrate yet. ....but I would prepare as if it could happen at ANY time.”
This is more time to prepare, and time to prepare with cooler stuff.
And if the collapse should come, more good people on the right would be better.
I’m amazed at the high-end medical stuff I can get now. It’ll only get better in the upcoming years. Drones for hunting and perimeter defense for instance - just a few years ago this would have been sci-fi but now it’s here. We can actually buy 100 drones with cameras now. That’s amazing.
I just bought a satellite uplink. It’s still costly, but to think that I now have the ability... in my backpack ... to convert my cell phone to a satellite phone with satellite data is amazing. Amazing.
Seems like the author feels the need to compete with her over who hates Trump the better way....
Unbelievably lame excuse for an article. Filled with broad assumptions, heavily biased opinions, and bad conclusions.
That was a good climp of Tucker with Rubin. Thanks.
Climp - clip. : )
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