Subject: Don't Let DT Take Your Soul, Too
In today's post at the Bulwark by Tim Miller, entitled "Don't Let Donald Trump Take Your Soul, Too", Miller writes:
1. The Temptation of LOLNMR
There was a phrase in vogue during the Pleistocene Trump years that became a rallying cry for professional Republican types who at the time were still trying to work through their comfort level with the party’s new overlord. It shielded them from having to really grapple with the moral compromises of their new station. If you were a Twitter addict, you will likely recall it:
LOL Nothing Matters.
In the chapter of Why We Did It in which I sketched out the different phenotypes of Trumpian enablers, I described these Republicans this way:
Then you had the LOL Nothing Matters Republicans. This cadre gained steam over the years, especially among my former peers in the campaign set. It is a comforting ethos if you are professionally obligated to defend the indefensible day in and day out. Their arguments no longer needed to have merit or be consistent because, LOL, nothing matters. . . . The LOLNMRs had decided that if someone like Trump could win, then everything that everyone does in politics is meaningless. So they became nihilists.
Seductive (I guess), but ultimately damning.