“The thing that makes me sad [is] … a once-great party, a party that stood for something, stood for principles whether you agree with those principles or not, is now a party that stands for loyalty to one man. … Let’s look at where we are. A civil war [in our current time] isn’t what it was in the 19th century – it’s not state against state, blue against gray. It’s going to be armed groups against armed groups. Targeted assassinations, violence …”
- Then-U.S. IL Rep Adam Kinzinger on The View, February 22, 2022
Over the last several years, former President Donald Trump has made a number of incendiary comments inciting violence against those who oppose him, including his August, 2023, social media post “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” with regard to witnesses who might testify against him in his Washington, D.C., trial on charges that he sought to overturn the 2020 election, and his pronouncement this past weekend, “Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna [sic] be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it.” (I know; this latter comment could be argued to be no more than a poor choice of words uttered in the context of addressing auto industry competition with China. At the same time, given Mr. Trump’s behavior over the last eight years, it can just as credibly be construed as confirmation of the fears Mr. Kinzinger expressed over two years ago.) That said, what has most particularly drawn my attention is the venom Mr. Trump has displayed toward those still considering themselves Republicans but not whole-hearted MAGAs.
After winning the New Hampshire Republican primary, in reference to those who supported his opponent, former SC Gov. and U.S. U.N. Amb. Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump declared, “I don’t get too angry. I get even.” He supplemented those remarks on his social media site the next day: “Anybody that makes a ‘Contribution’ to [Ms. Haley], from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and will not accept them.”
Mr. Trump’s exclusionary sentiments, although directed at Ms. Haley’s campaign supporters, clearly encompass Ms. Haley herself and Republicans such as former Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. UT Sen. Mitt Romney, former U.S. WY Rep. Liz Cheney, former NJ Gov. Chris Christie, and Mr. Kinzinger, who have indicated that they will not support Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential bid; but I would submit that they have broader implications. Note Mr. Trump’s reference to “MAGA” in his January post. He does not consider himself a Republican; he considers himself a MAGA. The distinction is crucial. Those who have shown evident distaste for Mr. Trump but have nonetheless pledged to support him out of Republican loyalty — Senate Minority Leader U.S. KY Sen. Mitch McConnell being the most prominent — are fools. They are ignoring the Lesson of Ernst and Leon.
“[Adolf Hitler and Ernst Roehm were] two veterans of the Nazi movement who were also close friends (Ernst Roehm was the only man whom Hitler addressed by the familiar personal pronoun du). … [On July 1, 1934,] Hitler, in a final act of what he apparently thought was grace, gave orders that a pistol be left on the table of his old comrade. Roehm refused to make use of it. ‘If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself,’ he is reported to have said. Thereupon, two S.A. officers … entered his cell and fired their revolvers at Roehm point-blank.”
- William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
“[Vladimir] Lenin and [Leon] Trotsky were close both ideologically and personally during the Russian Revolution and its aftermath … Assessing Trotsky, Lenin wrote: “… from that time on there has been no better Bolshevik.” … On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked [by order of Joseph Stalin] in Mexico City by … a … NKVD agent, and died the next day in a hospital. His murder is considered a political assassination.”
- DBpedia
By citing the fates of Messrs. Roehm and Trotsky, I am not suggesting that those Republicans now pledging transparently lukewarm support for Mr. Trump need to fear for any physical retribution from any direct order of Mr. Trump if he is re-elected — although in their places, I would fear his political vengeance and danger from the impulse to violence among MAGAs that the former president has unleashed. Those supporting Mr. Trump purely out of Republican Party loyalty are choosing to ignore the glaringly obvious fact that Mr. Trump, despite donning the Republican mantle, accords no value to anyone being a loyal Republican; he’s dedicated only to himself. These traditional Republicans apparently believe that because they share MAGAs’ intense distaste for Democrats’ cultural philosophies and public policy positions, Mr. Trump is better than the Democrats. What they don’t see is that Mr. Trump and his MAGAs don’t think that they are any better than the Democrats; these traditional Republicans still fail to grasp that they will better protect genuine conservative principles by influencing conservative independents and moderate Republicans to vote for President Joe Biden this November.
In The Righteous Mind, Dr. Jonathan Haidt writes of what he calls, the “Loyalty Foundation,” that he contends we all have but is relatively stronger in those tending to vote Republican: “The love of loyal teammates is matched by a corresponding hatred of traitors, who are usually considered to be far worse than enemies. [In] [t]he [Islamic] Koran, for example … [f]ar worse than a Jew is an apostate – a Muslim who has betrayed or simply abandoned the faith. The Koran commands Muslims to kill apostates …”
I suspect that if they were able, Messrs. Roehm and Trotsky might advise those Republicans who support Mr. Trump out of fealty to their party but whom Mr. Trump and his followers may well hereafter nonetheless deem to be insufficiently slavishly loyal: Beware.
Pretty dark? Absolutely. Paranoid? Hopefully. Still, the most grievous error made by those opposing Mr. Trump ever since he came down the escalator in 2015 has been a lack of imagination.
“Grow an alligator at home in the bathtub, eventually he will outgrow it, escape, and eat your face.”
- @SykesCharlie
McCoy's Noise 