The old saw about liberals and conservatives is playing out to be uncomfortably true: “Liberals fall in love, conservatives fall in line.” Conservatives like to mouth insults like “sheeple” without doing much thinking about what those words mean and, usually, that is just entertaining. Today, not so much. After the FBI raided their Führer’s palace in Florida, Trump fanatics are threatening civil war. It doesn’t matter to the Marching Morons that Trump had illegally taken and stored top secret documents in his treasonous rat hole. They are not only fine with der Führer’s close connection to Russian dictator and international criminal Putin, they celebrate their MAGA-wing’s common cause with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Their designated spokesman, Tucker Carlson, has become almost as popular in Russia as he is in the uneducated white power crowd in this country. How did a group so misnamed as “conservative” become so radically anti-American?
Easy. They fell in line.
Remember the “never Trumpers?” Yeah, I barely do too. It took so-called “RINOs” about a month to decide their usual out-of-control deficit spending, internal problems buck-passing to immigrants, racism, and pro-war money-grubbing would get a bigger pass with Donny than with an actual conservative. Donny knows how to speak to morons and Republicans are on most level not that bright. But one thing they have been for at least 200 years is “desperately seeking royalty.” The people who consistently vote Republican are also people who would have been Tories in 1776 and they would rather take a knee to a king than admit that their personal problems are due to their personal failures. They imagine that living in a dictatorship or under a king anointed by priests and other royalty would, somehow, solve their problems.
Back in late 2016, our Maytag dishwasher died, the 2nd unit of this model in 3 years, and I’d written a negative review about the product and company on a couple of big box hardware store sites. A woman from Maytag’s “customer service” emailed me to setup an appointment with a repair tech, supposedly at no charge to me. The guy who showed up for the repair was a sixty-something local driving a beat-up Ford van with his business decal flapping in the wind and a call tag from Maytag. He took a special interest in our dog and the opportunity to rant about how much better off the country was going to be with Trump in charge. We, obviously, disagreed, and I speculated that the country would be going through another economic disaster like the Reagan/Bush years and the end result would be an even smaller middle class, an even more obtrusive and invasive government, and a less secure nation. Just like the Reagan years.
The goober went into full worshiping rant mode about how grateful he was for Reagan and his economic policies. They guy claimed to have been a “mechanical contractor” in San Diego during the 80s and, if you know much about construction trades from the 80s you’d know they threw their lot in with Reagan to stop the metric conversion process. Reagan made all sorts of promises to protect unions, which won their support, and he betrayed those promises almost immediately without any penalty at all. He did kill metrication, which pretty much put the stake in US manufacturing's heart, so there is that. I guess construction workers would rather fall out of the middle class, suffer all sorts of economic instability, and see their futures limited to regular downgrading than have to learn a rational system of weights and measures. It’s good to have priorities.
“Devotion” is a word that most accurately describes the fervor Reagan and Trump culters exhibit. I used to wonder how and why people would fight for a king and now I know. Sort of. I don’t understand it at all, but I’ve sure seen it enough to recognize it. So, I know people will do that stupid thing and I have met them and do not understand their motivations at all. It is, apparently, akin to religion where people want to feel that they are part of something bigger, longer-lasting than just their own lives. Of course, they are wrong and we are all just insignificant specks of dust in an infinite universe that could not care less if we live or die. Reality sucks, so I guess the alternative is make up some crazy religion, pretend a god has chosen your Führer, and if you can do that you can probably imagine that the Führer is going to carry you to heaven/nirvana with him (as a servant) when he dies. I guess the “live free or die” thing has morphed into “live on your knees and beg” for these racist, sexist, incel libertarian-fascists?
Me and the wannabe Maytag tech argued a bit about politics and reality. Being a fanatic, changing any part of his locked-down mind was impossible and any real effort was pointless. I was mostly interested in observing his attitude toward his fluffy wimp of a “fearless leader.” He literally worshiped Trump and Reagan. His eyes got all glassy and his already pasty face got whiter. Of course, he charged me $60 to tell me my Maytag dishwasher was unrepairable. A few days later, I replaced the Maytag with an LG dishwasher that has been working reliably for the past 6 years.After listening to our conversation, my wife commented, "I used to think it was only 14-year-old girls who were that gullible. Now, I realize that some people never grow up."
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