"One of the most annoying conversations on the internet goes something like this:"

Atrios:

Saturday, April 07, 2018

BURNNNNNN

One of the most annoying conversations on the internet goes something like this:


Me: This is bad.
Internet people: And this surprises you??????


I didn't say it surprised me. I said it's bad. I'm not exactly a sunny soul. Bad stuff usually doesn't surprise me. More than that, I'm usually not an idiot, and some bad things are completely predictable. They're still bad! It's worth pointing that out!

A related thing is people who always say things like, "Trump told us who he was on the campaign." Some people say that as a kind of sage, "all of this was foretold to those who cared to listen." And some use it as a weird justification, as if saying it on the campaign makes it ok. "This is what we voted for, now we just must accept it."

Neither is true, of course. Trump said a billion things on the campaign, often contradicting each other. That doesn't mean a reasonable person shouldn't have concluded that Trump Is Bad, but there is no straight line from campaign promise to action. His campaign promises were gibberish because the man's brain is gibberish and because he's a liar and because the press rarely tried to actually divine what President Trump might be like because they didn't think he would win and didn't care.

And this isn't how politics works. 'Well, he campaigned on this, so you have to shut up for 4 years and not criticize as he implements his agenda.'

[more]

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2018/04/burnnnnnn.html