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Op-Ed

Carnivorous Sheep

March 10, 2017

After 36 years of cowardice, Democrats are yammering — no, whimpering — that the voters who elected Trump are not to blame for our national disaster. That if we appeal to them, millions of morons might be lifted away from their slavish truculence and led toward the light, lashed by the whips and scorns of reality. Nothing could be more ridiculous.

Robert Kahn

By Robert Kahn

Deputy editor emeritus, Courthouse News

After 36 years of cowardice, Democrats are yammering — no, whimpering — that the voters who elected Trump are not to blame for our national disaster. That if we appeal to them, millions of morons might be lifted away from their slavish truculence and led toward the light, lashed by the whips and scorns of reality. Nothing could be more ridiculous.

Trump is the apotheosis of the inferior, resentful man. He represents — if a sociopath can be said to represent anything — people who are even stupider and more resentful than he is.

Trump, like the German corporal, intuitively understands their resentment, but dare not put it into words — if he even is capable of it. He and his crew have reached the height of world power, yet they act like bitter drunks in the back of the bar, nursing their ninth beers and muttering about foreigners.

Their idea of “greatness” is to push aside supposedly inferior people, and their followers’ dream is to watch them do it, and if they dare, do it in their own neighborhood. They are, as Winston Churchill said, carnivorous sheep.

And in what remains of our democratic system, the shepherds suck up to the sheep. But make no mistake: Sheep do not rule. Sheep merely provide wolves with the bathing milk of votes — and votes are easy to corral via scary commercials every other year and bombast every day.

What keeps our wolves in power, of course, is money, no matter where it comes from: their own congressional district, their dad, ExxonMobil or Moscow.

A one-vote majority on our Supreme Court — now tied 4-4 in extra innings — has declared that it is legal, and constitutional, for these 535 rapacious sheep, and anyone who seeks possession of the White House, to stuff their pockets with other people’s money.

The metaphor is not mine own. Republicans, far more often than Democrats, refer to citizens and taxpayers as sheep to be shorn, and to Congress and the Executive Branch as the ones with the shears.

And boy, are the sheep in for a shearing.

One hundred sixty years ago, in an introduction to Fleurs de Mal, Charles Baudelaire tried to explain why he wrote the book. But after reading the daily newspaper, the poet said, he felt “crushed by the weight of a thousand suns,” and understood the impossibility of explaining anything to anyone.

So it is today.

In the past week Trump has repealed worker safety rules and rules on tailpipe emissions; he accused President Barack Obama of felonies, with no proof whatsoever, then demanded that Congress “investigate” the crimes of which he declared his predecessor guilty; and he proclaimed that any investigation of his own ties with Russia, and its interference in his election, and his tax dodges, were “witch hunts,” though Trump’s own family has said for years that no one would lend him money except Russian banks.

Yet Trump is still wildly supported by his “base.” What a great word. Know what it means?

Still, Democrats are saying their path back to power is to suck up to Trump supporters, to see their side of things — things sheep cannot see at all, and are incapable of seeing.

Nothing Trump has proposed, or ordered, will bring more money or jobs to sheep. It will only redistribute money and jobs. And unlike water, money does not flow downhill. Nor does it flow to sheep. Except to a few really powerful sheep.

Democrats will never win over Trump supporters by appealing to their so-called reason, or so-called sympathies, or so-called religion. They must win them over the way Trump did: by showing them contempt and muscle. That’s what sheep call strength. That’s what appeals to them.

I’ve said it for years: Republicans are liars and Democrats are cowards. And Americans, with their backs to even an imaginary wall, will always prefer a liar to a coward.

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