The Wall Gets Higher
The day Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign, in the summer of 2015, a large chunk of irrational mass movement hatred broke off the old Tea Party constitutionalist ice cap, and that idol-worshipping chunk has been growing continually ever since, finally eclipsing its source in size, fervor, and power. Today, in as clear a rejection as possible of the principles that created the Tea Party in the first place, the Trump cult is in a flying rage at Senator Mike Lee. For Mike Lee, perhaps the only grassroots Tea Party favorite currently working in Washington who has yet to compromise every constitutionalist principle that made him a Tea Party favorite, has committed the ultimate sin in the bible of Tea Party 2.0: he has refused to squirm and grovel in reverence and deference to the least Constitution-minded member of the entire Republican Party, Donald Trump.
Lee, after urging Trump to renegotiate the terms of his so-called emergency declaration regarding border security — so-called, because there is no emergency, and Trump himself said so — has decided to vote against the declaration, seeing as how Trump was unwilling to budge. (The artist of the deal strikes again!)
So the worshippers and sycophants (that’s not name-calling by the way, just the most accurate literal descriptors I can find) are now in full hatred mode against the only man left in Washington who might almost, sort of, kind of, represent the principles and goals which the old grassroots conservative movement used to declare as its primary concern.
In short, they are all — from the online reader-commenters to radio host Mark Levin (of Liberty and Tyranny fame, if anyone remembers that far back) — out there now “proving” that Lee is wrong and a traitor to the cult, Trump is the one true god, and anything Trump wants to do is the right thing, because he is Trump. Oh, and it’s constitutional! How do we know? Because Trump wants to do it.
It’s so sad to watch adult Americans — many of them people I used to regard as allies and friends, and some of whom were even very supportive of me personally — turn themselves so abruptly into shameless teenage groupies.