As long-time readers of this blog and Facebook page know, I don’t write very many articles myself. So many excellent writers out there are saying such good things, much better than I could possibly do, that I usually content myself with posting a selection of said articles with perhaps a short intro from me. But every now and then I feel compelled to weigh in a little more when I get particularly riled up, a reaction that often happens when I get some particularly outrageous comment on Facebook.
So I’ve had a couple of examples of whataboutism lately that just fried my shorts a bit. It never ceases to amaze me that people are still jumping up and down and screaming about the sins (both real and imagined—many are indeed real) of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, yelling, “What about them?” So here goes, for about the dozenth time, with an attempt to put the past records of those two people who are no longer in public office into their proper context:
1. I do not have to demonstrate that I’ve documented all of the egregious behavior of the above two people, or indeed any other people, in order to comment on the egregious behavior of someone else. This is a ridiculous standard. “How come you aren’t talking about Hillary, huh?” I’m not talking about her because she’s not the President. The attitude seems to be: “You can’t talk about anything Trump is doing without talking about all the things Hillary and Obama did.” Whyever not? And, as I’ve said and said until I’m blue in the face, I only started posting about politics in the summer of 2016, and only in response to the real danger I saw of installing a corrupt, greedy, ignorant, reckless con man with no governmental experience or knowledge in the highest office of the land.
2. I do not have to adhere to the ridiculous double standard that’s at work in many Trump supporters. This is old, old ground, but it seems to need re-plowing periodically, so let me state, once again, with feeling: THE MISDEEDS OF ONE PERSON OR PERSONS DO NOT EXCUSE THE MISDEEDS OF ANOTHER. I am at a loss to understand why it’s supposed to redound to Donald Trump’s credit that one of his political opponents did something similar to what he’s done. Shouldn’t the attitude be something along these lines:
Huh. Donald Trump’s selling out to Vladimir Putin in a big, big way, making a total fool of himself in front of the whole world and shaming America. He’s doing the same thing we Republicans/conservatives/etc. slammed Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for. (Also, if you were paying attention at the time, George W. Bush and his fatuous “gazing into Putin’s soul” remark.) So I guess he’s no better than they were in dealing with this vile, murderous thug. (I always have to get that phrase in somewhere when I’m talking about good ol’ Vlad.) Huh. Maybe I need to re-think my unquestioning support of and cheerleading for Trump.
Does the above ever happen? Most of the time, no. I am so gratified, though, that some Republicans, even Laura Ingraham, for heaven’s sake, found the Helsinki press conference to be more than their stomachs could stomach. I am very much afraid that the whole thing is going to die down, just as the furor over Charlottesville did. But who knows? Maybe some people are starting to have trouble sleeping at night. We’ll hope so. (I’ll know that the worm is finally turning when VP Mike Pence, Pence the pliable, Pence the pusillanimous, Pence the sickening sycophant, speaks up. That’ll be the day!)
Folks, let’s stick to the point and quit evading the issue. The fact of the matter is, THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR DONALD TRUMP’S BEHAVIOR. Something very, very strange is taking place right in front of us. I’ve said repeatedly that I doubt very much there’s some kind of actual conspiracy between Trump and Putin, mostly because Trump couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut about it for five minutes. But when you see this loathsome pandering to Putin taking place repeatedly, with Helsinki being only the most recent and the most egregious, well, you have to ask yourself, “What’s going on here?”
Don’t you?