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This is going to be an unusually personal thread but bears putting out there. It relates to the people who have been expressing in different ways their realization after yesterday that their dismissal of those who warned about Trump’s authoritarianism was wrong or naive. THREAD
I used to be a very politically active conservative Republican. Weekly Standard subscription almost from the very beginning, worked for NY GOP campaigns (Pataki, D'Amato, Dennis Vacco for AG), college Republicans, founding member of NYU Law's libertarian law journal, etc.
I was a passionate supporter of the Iraq War, which was launched my first year in law school, because I was committed to the neoconservative vision of bringing democracy to the Middle East. This led to arguments with classmates that increased as the U.S. occupation went on
I'd increasingly listen to friends and classmates allege that the U.S. was committing abuses and torturing Iraqis, and every time it happened my head would figuratively explode because I found the allegation unimaginable. I literally didn't understand how they made these charges
My certainty was theological in nature. Of course we weren't doing that. Of course this was a libel made up by liberals who hated their own country. We are the U.S., the greatest democracy in history - of course we don't commit torture! To even suggest it was insidious in my mind
And then Abu Ghraib was revealed, and it literally turned my world upside down. It was a crisis of faith and of intellect unlike anything I ever experienced and remains the definitive emotional moment of my life. I sat for days in a stupor, reading and unable to comprehend
I was certain that these liberals alleging American torture were naive idiots, but it turned out the naive idiot was me. They had been right and I had been wrong, despite my sneering moral and intellectual superiority. It led me to question everything I thought I knew.
My point here is this: there are lots of people for whom yesterday will be a shock and awakening. They didn't see this coming, and thought those who did were alarmist naive fools. Today, they no longer think so, and it will lead to reassessments of many thing.
Don't dunk on them, mock them, lord it over them. Save that for the people who today are still refusing to reexamine what they thought they knew and insisting that 2+2 does not equal 4. It's hard to give up deeply held priors, and don't underestimate just how wrenching it can be.
And to add one last thing: this is not meant to include WH officials who enabled all sorts of horrific things and are now walking away in the cynical hopes of saving their reputations, or claiming that “Trump has changed.” No he hasn’t. He was always this.
