February 10, 2018
THE HIGH MORAL PRICE OF TRUMPBOTISM:
Trump's Loyalty Tests Are Uniquely Corrupting (David French, February 9, 2018, National Review)
We retain some limited sympathy for those reluctantly defending him because they feel they need to use him to advance the GOP agenda, but none for the enthusiasts who are all either anti-immigration, anti-Islam or, most often, both.There's a three-step process to moral corruption.First, there are lots of folks in Washington who are struggling to make the best of the Trump presidency. He might be a personal disaster, they reason, but we can still get some decent policies passed.Second, everyone knows that Trump demands loyalty. Everyone knows he's remarkably thin-skinned (even as he fires more than his share of verbal broadsides). So they know that any public critique carries with it a risk of being shut out -- of losing the president's ear and losing the ability to influence his policy-making.Third, so even while he does things they'd publicly condemn in any other president, politician, or public figure, they'll often stay largely quiet. Sometimes they'll even grant "sex mulligans" or praise his crass and crude public manner as "authentic." Thus, they retain their access. They retain their influence.Not only is this process cowardly on its own terms, it's remarkably short-sighted.
Posted by Orrin Judd at February 10, 2018 7:44 AM