RedState After the Purge

A few weeks ago, RedState, one of perhaps only two popular American conservative news sites to have maintained a healthy presence of non-cult-friendly opinion on Donald Trump’s presidency, underwent a sudden pro-Trump purge, firing most of its writers associated with Trump criticism, including some of its more popular writers, and all of its best ones. Here is a brief report on the result: Yawn.

Early this morning, Korea Time, I made one of my first forays to RedState since it lost all its writers who had displayed any principle, courage, or thoughtfulness in assessing the Republican establishment charade that is the Trump presidency. What I found was exactly what I had suspected.

Of the nine articles occupying first page space at that moment, five were written by Streiff, the site’s most consistent and prolific Trump apologist and mouthpiece — since, that is, he decided, presumably in the name of career advancement, to reject all the criticisms of Trump that he himself had been making during the 2016 primaries. All nine of the articles were directly related to Trump’s policies, Trump’s critics, or Trump’s statements. And all nine presented his policies with rose-colored accolades, his critics as bumbling traitors, and his statements as hard-hitting leadership. 

In other words, the new official editorial position at RedState is that Trump can do no wrong — in fact that he does everything right — and that anyone who criticizes anything Trump does or says, from any position or on any grounds, is a subversive sore loser who doesn’t believe in making America great again.

In short, I’ve seen this transformation at other websites, including one where I used to be a very regular contributor, and what it amounts to, in the end, is a circling of the wagons for Trump, and a mass lynching of anyone and everyone who questions Trump’s judgment or policies about anything whatsoever. 

In even shorter, it means RedState is now a monolithic mouthpiece for the GOP establishment, with phony lip-service to “draining the swamp,” fighting “fake news,” and the rest of the administration’s blandly disingenuous, alt-right-baiting talking points.

Oh, and by the way, Donald Trump believes in the global warming propaganda farce, is a crypto-Democrat, and couldn’t think his way out of a paper bag. How do I know these things? I read them on the old RedState — no, not from the fired writers, but from writers currently working overtime on the new RedState, the Trump idolaters’ safe space.

As former RedState conservative commentator Streiff — no relation, apparently, to the current careerist cult spokesman of the same name — pointed out back in July 2016 (less than two years ago, when Donald Trump was already the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee):

In short, you are looking at a clinical diagnosis of narcissism and psychopathy. Unfortunately, we don’t even have the option of voting for someone who isn’t a psychopath this time.

Ah, the good old days, when so-called conservative commentators had not all sold their souls to the god of career success, under intimidation from the Republican establishment’s corporate manipulators.

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