Just about every time I bring up the president, I get the inevitable angry letter that tells me to “go get a job in a mine,” or something like that.
Well, to really flesh out the metaphor I’m named after, in this week’s lesson, the “mine” is discourse in politics, and the dangerously noxious gas is what we keep hearing from Donald Trump‘s die-hard supporters, starting with the windbag-in-chief himself.
How about Trump’s outlandish claim that Gov. Jerry Brown was responsible for California’s water “foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean,” casting blame for the Mendocino Complex Fire? While Brown is busy giving condolences to the families of firefighters who’ve died, something Trump hasn’t done, the president is starting a Twitter beef with him. Nice.
Trump is totally wrong that a lack of water is the reason that the blaze has surpassed the size of the Thomas Fire we suffered here in Santa Barbara County last year. But don’t take my word for it; Cal Fire said that firefighters have plenty of water, and pointed to the drought and climate change as a causal factor. I think I’ll take Cal Fire’s advice over the Donald’s on fighting wildfires.
But hey, accuracy, or just the truth even, isn’t something that seems to trip up Trump or his acolytes these days.
Take local Republican Congressional candidate, Justin Fareed, who contributed a letter this week (see page 12) focusing in on Rep. Salud Carbajal‘s (D-Santa Barbara) stance toward Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), taking a card out of Trump’s racist playbook.
This penchant for race-baiting nonsense was in full display earlier this year when Fareed pointed to a one-time donation to Carbajal’s campaign from the son of George Soros, the Jewish billionaire from Austria, and parroted the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Soros somehow profited off the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Soros was 14 years old when World War II ended, but that didn’t stop Fareed from calling him a “Nazi collaborator” in a fundraising email.
When called out, Fareed walked the statement back but only said the “Soros record is disputed and controversial,” and that he would let voters, “draw your own conclusions about it.” He didn’t say he was wrong, just that it was “disputed.”
That’s probably because Fareed knows plenty of his voters believe that lie about Soros and worse, like our friend Justin Ruhge, who also wrote in this week (also page 12) in response to Ken McCalip‘s commentary (“Misdeeds in La-La Land,” Aug. 9).
There’s a profound irony in a Republican saying that anyone who doesn’t agree with the president has “drunk the Kool-Aid,” or has “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I’m not so sure that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is something affecting Democrats and liberals rather than Republicans and conservatives.
At least Ruhge is honest about one thing: He doesn’t care that Trump and his gang have basically admitted to collusion with Russia to sway the 2016 election. Remember when they used to at least deny that any such thing happened? Now all we hear is, “Collusion isn’t a crime,” along with their greatest hit, “But what about Hillary?”
Ruhge also ended his letter with a very prescient question: “We are not all deranged, are we?”
No, Justin, we’re not.
The Canary can handle all the noxious gas. Send your thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 16-23, 2018.
