I warn you it’s long, but every word is worth it. American columnist Anne Applebaum lives in Poland with her husband who has been in the government there and has had a front row seat to the devolution of that democracy as well as the tumult in Hungary. As the American Jewish wife of a liberal political operative, she has become the focus of conspiracy theories created by the illiberal political right wing in Eastern Europe that lives on resentment, conspiracy theories and delusions of grandeur. Sound familiar? It will. Wherever the right makes its play for power the same ingredients are in the very strange brew.

A Warning From Europe: the Worst is Yet to Come

What has caused this transformation? Were some of our friends always closet authoritarians? Or have the people with whom we clinked glasses in the first minutes of the new millennium somehow changed over the subsequent two decades? My answer is a complicated one, because I think the explanation is universal. Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all societies eventually will.

We Americans look at history as linear. Our 242 years as a nation give us the illusion we’re moving forward. But in Europe they’ve had too much damn history to see it that simply.  History is instead quite circular, always repeating patterns.

It’s pretty bad here already for people whose relatives, neighbors, spouses voted incomprehensively in 2016. Imagine hosting a New Year’s party in 1999 and then just 19 years later being estranged from most of the people who attended. Some of them have slandered and libeled you as they embrace conspiracy theories about you and your secret cabal (with George Soros, of course) to destroy entire nations.

Crazy. But real.

Conventional wisdom says that the middle is disappearing from American politics: The Republicans have moved far to the right, the Democrats far to the left, and woe to any moderate voters looking for politicians to represent their views.

Well, the conventional wisdom is wrong. The Democrats have not actually become radical leftists, or anything close to it.

David Leonhardt offers a very pithy rebuttal to the absurd bothsideism that says both sides are moving to polar opposites.  Anybody who can read should know by now that Democrats have not moved nearly left over the last 10, 20, 30 years as the right has moved right.  Starting with Reagan in 1980 Republicans nominated someone considered too right for the GOP just 4 years earlier.  They’ve been drifting further right ever since with big movements in 2010 and in the Trump era with actual fascists and racists being nominated.  Even with so called “socialists” like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being nominated in dark blue places like New York, and a general left movement among Democrats, there is no commensurate left movement on the whole by Democrats to compare to how far right the Republicans have gone.

I write this as I’m listening to a debate on radio wherein someone tries to say that both sides have gone off the rails.  The speaker hates the right for the obvious reasons.  But also chides the left for… what for it… toxic PC culture.

Yep, toxic PC culture.  That’s how the bothsidesers justify their a pox on both houses.  It’s not a policy, not a plank in the party platform, not even something that can or should be attributed expressly to Democrats, progressives or liberals but “toxic PC culture”.   And what constitutes toxic PC culture?   Well, don’t you think Roseanne Barr got a raw deal?  No. How about Louis CK?  um, no.  Should we be treating Al Franken the same as Harvey Weinstein?  Of course not, WHO IS??

The citation of “toxic PC culture” as a left movement is bullshit.

Let’s stick with actual policies and the metrics that can judge where the public is and where the politicians are on said policies, because it’s tough enough to intellectually assess that in any concrete way without having the entire debate weighted with cultural issues that do not emanate from legislation.  If people are less accepting of asshole behavior, that’s not a right or left issue except that the assholes need someone to blame for their downfall and blaming themselves is not an option.

In the real world this still controls:

For the most part, though, the Democratic agenda remains decidedly center-left: Raise taxes on the rich, and use the money to help the middle class and poor. Protect civil rights. Expand educational access. Regulate Wall Street, and fight climate change. Expand health insurance using the current system. And compromise with Republicans when necessary.

The radical agenda is the Republican agenda: Make climate change worse, unlike almost every other conservative party in the world. Aggravate inequality. Sabotage health-insurance markets. Run up the deficit. Steal a Supreme Court seat. Keep dark-skinned citizens from voting. Protect Trump’s lawlessness.

If you consider yourself a moderate — whether you lean slightly right or slightly left — your choice in this year’s midterms is clear.

Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty clear.  If you think, as these bothsidesists do, that some people agree with Democrats on many of the above issues, but are turned off by the “me too” movement, so they will vote for Republicans instead, I can’t help you.  Nobody can. Medication likely can’t.  There is no Trump Derangement Syndrome because there is no unacceptable level of anger at the threat he and his party present to our democracy.  However, if you have “Toxic PC culture” derangement syndrome, the cure is to get your head out yer ass.

Is the anonymous Senior WH Staffer a hero?  Or just another Republican asshole that has enabled a totally unfit maniac to wield more power than any other living human (of any color, including orange) and endanger us all.  They help him continue to endanger our lives, our freedom, our economy.   They help him continue to blow holes through our laws, our norms, our traditions – our cherished imperfect democracy itself.  The promise that they’re holding him back is pretty goddamn empty.

What’s the end game here for these people?  Is it to continue to restrain him through 2020, through re-election and then continue to do it for another 4 years?  Because those sweet sweet corporate tax cuts and deregulation of well, everything! is all worth it.

No.  You want to help, don’t help.  Go public in ways that force Republicans on the Hill if not in the hinterlands to recognize that this is unsustainable and the menace has to be put down.

More and more I’m looking at Trump and I see Enron – a corrupt, amoral, unethical, all decency be damned unrestrained id.  And the Republican Party plays the role of Arthur Anderson, the giant accounting firm that looked the other way, certified their financial chicanery before the IRS and the SEC and ultimately received the institutional death penalty for their abandonment of their duties to society.

It must never be lost for one second that the GOP was supposed to be the gatekeeper that would protect the public from a despicable and irresponsible nominee for president.  The party always stood aside waiting to see what would happen when the dust cleared as the contenders tried lamely to stop him.  The party offered only a half-hearted non-endorsement, not the full strength of its derision.  They of course created this monster by populating the countryside with rabid, deluded, torch wielding idiots ready to burn it all down.  Then when it was clear that the mob had chosen him as their glorious leader, they succumbed, grabbed tikis and got behind him.  They too deserve the institutional death penalty.