Today's Must-Read: Transactional Ideologies

Interesting piece by Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo that articulates a few points I've thought about but haven't really solidified. It starts off with an OpEd by Michelle Goldberg:

"A longing for validation is underrated as a political motivator," explains Michelle Goldberg, exploring the seamy side of political social climbing.

Exhibit A is the "tawdry, shallow memoir" of a Jewish former employee of the Christian right:

It’s not exactly a secret that politics is full of amoral careerists lusting — literally or figuratively — for access to power. Still, if you’re interested in politics because of values and ideas, it can be easier to understand people who have foul ideologies than those who don’t have ideologies at all. Steve Bannon, a quasi-fascist with delusions of grandeur, makes more sense to me than Anthony Scaramucci, a political cipher who likes to be on TV. I don’t think I’m alone. Consider all the energy spent trying to figure out Ivanka Trump’s true beliefs, when she’s shown that what she believes most is that she’s entitled to power and prestige.

(As regards Ivanka Trump's entitlement, see this. It's because she's special.)

The whole idea of political affiliation as a means of validation is more than apt: as more people than I have noted, Trump's GOP is no longer a political party -- it's become a cult, with membership proving you're one of "us". It also explains why appeals to reality don't work with Trump supporters -- reality is what their leader says it is.

What struck me most was this part:

His/their relationship with the law and the Constitution is also transactional, and more about social power and status than principle.

Immigration opponents’ insistence migrants seek asylum the “right” way (at an American embassy or consulate, they insist wrongly) echoes T-party howls from a 2012 recount a Democrat here won by 18 votes. T-partiers objected to counting votes of college students, even though Symm v. United States settled that question in 1979.

GOP activists argued students’ votes shouldn’t count because the students didn’t really live at their school addresses. The Board of Elections chair read them the statute aloud from the code book. They were unfazed. The law should be what they wanted it to be. What the law actually said didn’t matter.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services states (emphasis mine): “To obtain asylum ... you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum status regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status.”

Immigration opponents do not care what the law actually says. The law is supposed to be what they feel it should be. The law carries weight only so long as it serves them.

That last short paragraphs sums up Trump's attitude toward the law -- the law should be what he wants it to be.

Sadly, the same applies to reality. If you don't believe me, ponder this:

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway claimed Tuesday that President Donald Trump's warnings of violent migrants making their way toward the U.S. were vindicated over the weekend by clashes at the Mexican border, even though no U.S. law enforcement officers were seriously injured amid efforts to block crowds of migrants attempting to cross the border into California.

"Everything that was predicted by the president and Secretary Nielsen and homeland security and others has come true," Conway told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday. "There are violent elements in this caravan. The mainstream media only wants you to see the children, the families. They're not telling you that most of the caravan are males traveling by themselves."

It occurs to me that Conway's role all along, both during the campaign and in the administration, has been to rewrite reality -- "alternative facts".

At any rate, read Sullivan's piece in toto -- it's very interesting.