revisionist history seeks to make Republicans who preceded Trump look better than they ever were

Residual Rancor and Rage for Reagan, Romney, Dubya, Cheney, and Other Wingers Now Credited With Being Better Than They Ever Were
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/86298

You may have noticed a bit of revisionist history going on that seeks to make Republicans who preceded Trump look better than they ever were. As we all know, Americans have very little sense of history. Even history that ain't that old fades fast. And with the glut provided by modern information systems, our memories get taxed beyond capacity to retain even stuff that happened a few weeks ago. Then, too, there are so many demands on our always flighty attention spans that most of us lose the thread, misplace the plot, and fail to keep track of the characters even as the narrative is still being written or played out.

So, is it any wonder that distinctly villainous people who turned up just a chapter or two ago can readily be re-drafted and transformed into versions of themselves we'd readily find unconvincing if we still had the tools of memory, history, or attention spans that would allow us to recall just what a bunch of venal or dishonest shits they were clearly shown to be when they first commanded the stage.

Remembering them at all might not even be that important except for the fact that all these (and other assholes) have been remarkably quiet during the incredibly crazy time of Trump. At a time when Dubya, and Dick, and Jeb, for instance, had almost nothing to lose by raising their voices about the threat Trump posed to the country they always claimed to love, they haven't said a damn thing. I mean, really, these guys already owed the country some serious acts of atonement what with the mess they left in their wake. From Katrina to the massive debt of the Iraq war, not to mention lots of people who died early and unnecessarily, the Bush bros and the Dastardly Dick Cheney should have been on Fox every fuckin' day telling their right wing brethren that nothing Trump was doing was going to make America great again. Au contraire, mes amis, Trump ain't on your side.

I guess they couldn't bring themselves to do that for the sake of their country because, though Trump wasn't really on the side of the rabble who turned out for his rallies, he was still delivering the goods to the rich and powerful, making it pretty damn hard for the rich and powerful to speak up or speak out, no matter the ultimate consequences or the disaster that was unfolding.

Back in the 90s, during the Clinton administration, Cheney was going around crying gloom and doom about deficits, but when he and George Herbert Walker Bush's son ascended to the White House, Cheney went around telling Republicans that "deficits don't matter." Then, when Obama was in office and had to try to dig us out of a deep hole dug by Bush, Cheney, and unscrupulous bankers, deficits began to matter a whole lot again, and Republicans were beside themselves with worry about the national debt, blaming Obama for reckless spending. But then, presto change-o, Trump was elected and deficits don't matter a damn again. Deficits are measured on a sliding scale, ya see. The right wingers spend like sailors on leave, about to depart for a war zone. The deficit balloons. Trump wastes money beyond the imaginations of most people, and nearly all the captains of commerce, corrupted politicians, con artists on K St., and Republican rats, active or recently retired, are quiet as monks who've taken vows of silence.

Just for the record, lots of the scoundrels who worked for Bush/Cheney also took jobs with Trump. Just for the record, Bush also tended to offer garbled and idiotic comments on a daily basis (Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.), though he didn't tweet, thank God, bird brain though he was. For the record, Dick Cheney spent much of his time defending torture, a pre-cursor to Stephen Miller and his ilk in terms of dedicated advocacy of fascist cruelty. And, just for the record, by the time Regan reached his second term, he was, like Trump, showing daily signs of severe mental deterioration. And, like Trump, Reagan was busy leaving a legacy of assaults on the environment through deregulation, veiled appeals to racism, and wealth redistribution benefitting the already-rich at the expense of the majority of Americans. Reagan screwed the country with an affable actor's smile while Trump fucks us all spitefully and sadistically, but the violation seems much the same. Victor Cantu, a writer friend of mine, describes Trump as "Miracle Grow for hatred," but Nixon was also a pretty good compound for growing hate and suspicion between Americans dating all the way back to his first political campaign when he painted his opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, as a subversive and a "pinko." (Younger readers may not know that a "pinko" was a right-wing fearmongering term that defined liberals as "reds," only slightly less determined to destroy us than the dirty Commies who were, lest we forget, mostly Russians.

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