Just listen to this lying bastard, if you can bear to. The bastard. Here he is, being his quintessential self, repeating the feverish, hysterical old anti-abortion lie, previously mouthed mainly by wild-eyed fanatics at the low end of the IQ curve, that under the legal regime favoured by the Democrats, doctors would commit – indeed already have committed, as a matter of standard medical practice – outright infanticide, A.K.A. “Post-birth abortion”, A.K.A. “abortion after nine months”. Horrors! As the Twitter wags often say, huge, if true. No, seriously folks, this is how it works here in the Developed World: babies are being carried to term, delivered by licensed paediatricians, and only then are the parents deciding whether to keep them, while the doctors, unperturbed by applicable laws or any oaths they may have taken, are poised and perfectly happy to step in with their handy euthanasia kits if it’s a somber thumbs-down from Mom and Pop. I don’t even know where to start, I mean, Jesus Goat–herding Christ, this is a monstrous lie so at odds not just with reality, but also simple sanity, that goddam Joseph Goebbels would have whistled in admiration.
And the morons out there in the MAGAverse are buying it! They believe this shit! Why? Well, they’re morons. Morons who might, I suppose, be so hermetically sealed within their little Murdochian infotainment bubbles that nobody could ever get through to them anyway, but I contend they’re not the only ones to blame, and neither are the liars who peddle this appalling nonsense. The mainstream media is falling down on the job, and so are the remaining sane politicians. Nobody’s pushing back with anything like sufficient intensity.
Here’s what the headlines should have been in the Times, WaPo, and the rest the next morning:
TRUMP LIES THROUGH HIS TEETH ON ABORTION
The day after that it should have been:
TRUMP PERSISTS WITH UGLY ABORTION LIES
The next day, and every day after, it should have been:
TRUMP WON’T RETRACT VICIOUS ABORTION LIES.
Oh, and here’s one: TRUMP’S LIES SMEAR DOCTORS – WHERE’S THE AMA?
It should have been the top of every newscast, the only topic of discussion on the cable opinion shows, the only thing spoken about by Democrats on the House and Senate floors.
What did we get instead? The gentle chirping of crickets. The odd tepid commentary. I’m not saying that nobody reacted appropriately in the aftermath of Donald’s horrendous statement – there was some decent commentary on MSNBC, though it petered out after only one news cycle, and a few pundits, like Robert Reich (whose tweet is attached above) sounded the alarm – but look at the way CNN decided to report on the horror show:
Really, CNN? That’s your main takeaway? It was the same bullshit over at the Paper of Record:
Here’s the Washington Post:
Swear to God, I feel like I’m losing my mind. Yes, in his typically stilted video manifesto Donald did assert, among other things, that abortion should be a State matter, which is of significant political salience this election year because it’s an attempt to weasel out from under the blowback against his known (and ongoing) support for a national abortion ban enacted at the Federal level. He’s trying to sound moderate. That bears talking about, sure, along with all the usual horse-race bullshit that constitutes the bulk of elite political discourse these days.
On the other hand, he also claimed that people are murdering their own newborns, and doctors are helping them do it, and that’s why we need strict abortion laws.
Look, fellas, don’t bury the lede, that’s the old saying isn’t it?
You know, I had some hope, not certainty of course, but hope, that the mainstream media had learned something from the whole Hillary’s e-mails nothingburger, and how much their own ham-fisted coverage of Trump and his campaign rhetoric had contributed to the disaster of Donald’s ascension to the Presidency.
Nope.
I guess I forgot the first rule of confronting incipient fascism: Institutions will not save you. Which reminds me, where is the AMA anyway? Where are the doctors? Why have they gone to ground throughout this dismal misogynist Republican crusade against female reproductive autonomy, even when States like Texas pass laws requiring them to violate their oaths and deny their patients appropriate, and sometimes life-saving, medical care? Am I misinformed? Did that thing scribbled down by Hippocrates actually begin First, go along to get along?
207 days to go.
the needlefish 