MAGA Thinker
American Thinker, where I published my writing for years with pride, is now a full-fledged den of mindless Trump worship with an increasingly brazen undercurrent of white nationalism.
I cannot see into the souls of the publisher and his team of editors — and I suspect I’m much better off for lacking that view — but one need only scroll down the main page of the formerly best and most sober site in the “conservative media” to see plenty of evidence of a complete abandonment of principle for idolatry, a complete abandonment of principle for profit, or both.
Today (Thursday), the top article is more hero-worship of the MAGA Moron by Brian Joondeph. But my concern today is one Colin Flaherty, the author of yesterday’s top article, “The Lie That Will Not Die and the Truth about Black Mass Shooters.”
The entire article is a list of recent gun crimes involving black shooters, interrupted only for attempted witticisms from Mr. Flaherty, of which the following is representative: “So far, nary a crazed MAGA hat–wearing Caucasian to be found.”
And what purpose does this serve? I mean, why would such a list, along with occasional reminders that white people were not involved in the crimes selected, be interesting, informative, or thoughtful enough — remembering that the website featuring this item is called American Thinker — to warrant publishing it as the day’s top article?
Why? One need only read the readers’ comments accompanying this mindless abuse of statistics to find the answer. Here is a representative sample of those comments, from someone calling itself MMinLamesa:
Quite simply, if you live anywhere where there is more then an infrequent sighting of a black, you’re just asking for problems. There is ALWAYS trouble where ever they are. I’ve lived in small towns, mostly white, for over 30 years to avoid them. When/if social restraints are fully off(we’re close now) there is going to be a reckoning.
MAGA!
When I think of what American Thinker once was, and what its readers once were, I feel a combination of disgust and nostalgic sadness. I also feel a sense of microcosm. American Thinker’s fate is the fate of the conservative-Republican “movement” in America in general. From last holdout for reason and decency, to last call at the Not-So-O.K. Corral.
I think of my good friend and former AT fellow-writer Steve McCann, an immigrant to America who was shot as a child while trying to save a girl from being raped, who proudly recounts his young days participating in the 1960s civil rights movement, and who has more genuine American conservatism in any random bone of his body than the entire bag full of nuts who currently dominate AT can claim among them, collectively — and collectively is the right way to take that gang of anti-individualists devoted to their cult idol.
And yet McCann, who was once one of the most favored and popular writers at AT, for good reason, suddenly met nothing but hatred and vitriol when he politely objected to the early days of the Trump Devolution. Today it’s Brian Joondeph’s Trump-butt-kissing and Colin Flaherty’s pandering to the David Duke crowd heading up the show at AT. Another useful bit of microcosmic perspective.
