By Donald A. Collins | 21 July 2022
Church and State
As the hearings of the House Committee on January 6th near completion—given that more extreme dirt may result in further proof of the nearly successful Trump coup—one’s horror at the almost unanimous treason by the GOP to embrace what they knew was a hopelessly flawed villain—has been no better chronicled than in Miller’s expose.
Such cynical, sobering reality made possible only by a true GOP insider coming clean and naming names of the traitors, which for a substantial time included himself. He is a seasoned gay political consultant who knows from extensive personal contact and work with these Trump moral foldos!
So, who is Tim Miller? Amazon’s site describes him thusly:
Former Republican political operative Tim Miller answers the question no one else has fully grappled with: Why did normal people go along with the worst of Trumpism?
As one of the strategists behind the famous 2012 RNC “autopsy,” Miller conducts his own forensic study on the pungent carcass of the party he used to love, cutting into all the hubris, ambition, idiocy, desperation, and self-deception for everyone to see. In a bracingly honest reflection on both his own past work for the Republican Party and the contortions of his former peers in the GOP establishment, Miller draws a straight line between the actions of the 2000s GOP to the Republican political class’s Trumpian takeover, including the horrors of January 6th.
From ruminations on the mental jujitsu that allowed him as a gay man to justify becoming a hitman for homophobes, to astonishingly raw interviews with former colleagues who jumped on the Trump Train, Miller diagrams the flattering and delusional stories GOP operatives tell themselves so they can sleep at night. With a humorous touch he reveals Reince Priebus’ neediness, Sean Spicer’s desperation, Elise Stefanik and Chris Christie’s raw ambition, and his close friends’ submission to a MAGA psychosis.
Why We Did It is a vital, darkly satirical warning that all the narcissistic justifications that got us to this place still thrive within the Republican party, which means they will continue to make the same mistakes and political calculations that got us here, with disastrous consequences for the nation.
Just finished reading @Timodc's recent book "Why We Did It." Very few Trump era books will be read a decade from now but I suspect Tim's book will be among the few. It really is an insightful and entertaining read. Highly recommend: https://t.co/JkK1uOVVET
— Jamie Weinstein (@Jamie_Weinstein) July 17, 2022
These people even survive after the insurrection so it is especially important to understand that this coup attempt was just a warmup to what could easily surface again.
Being older I found his very hip vocabulary a bit confusing at times but his relentless naming of names of these Trump caver-inners with incisively plausible reasons never faltered in keeping me reading this 260-page book word for word—no fast scan reading—in less than one day! Reince Priebus, Trump’s initial Press Secretary got fired by a Trump tweet 3 minutes after he had be talking by phone with Trump, the same technique Trump used on FBI Director James Comey, while Comey was on a field trip.
He loves words such as solipsist or Schadenfreude. I confess I had to look their meanings up. Schadenfreude, thanks to Wikipedia “is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another. It is a borrowed word from German, with no direct translation, that originated in the 18th century. Schadenfreude has been detected in children as young as 24 months and may be an important social emotion establishing ‘inequity aversion'”.
Miller lists the almost total GOP cave ins to Trump’s evil behavior by personal categories. I will list only a few here. The Messiahs like Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, economist Gary Cohn and John Kelly, who joined DJT’s initial group and who soon found being there untenable but didn’t scream loudly enough as they left.
In "Why We Did It," Tim Miller explains how a slice of Republican officials had the greatest chance to stand up to a madman and, for the most part, sloughed off its duty. @jonathanchait writes https://t.co/0rW14D4VHX
— New York Magazine (@NYMag) July 12, 2022
Many of these betrayers of democracy fit into more than one label. One GOP worthy I cite here, fitted into three labels, Little Mixes, Team Player and Junior Messiah, former NY Governor, Chris Christie was “turned by Trump into a sniveling church mouse”. Christie gets 2 pages (136-137) of pitiful description about Christie’s kneeling to Trump and his likely willingness to help him with a future election.
Bottom line:
No doubt Democrats also play dirty politics frequently, but never combining as a party to overthrow by felonious illegalities the transfer of power by engineering a COUP!
This book truly frightens and panics anyone who like me naïvely believed good people would never sellout to such a flawed traitor, who most knew was a dangerous criminal. But the GOP did!
Just after the House January 6th hearings heard Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony on Tuesday June 28th, I wrote an Op Ed entitled “Will Trump’s GOP Flee Him? Of Course!” which you can read here.
Will Trump’s GOP Flee Him? Of Course! https://t.co/E0Ey5meMCy via @ChurchAndStateN
— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) July 21, 2022
A possible regret for me now is that these hearings may keep Trump from announcing his intention to run for President in 2024, which could be a further disaster for his disgraced GOP! Or would it? Most of these ass kissing brown nosers seem shameless after their perfidy. Even after reading Miller’s book, I am not so certain Trump would lose.
Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote” and “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”.“What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”: https://t.co/fHuh0CG6JD
“We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”: https://t.co/TA4j7cp1tE
“From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”: https://t.co/lkC2t3E1A9 pic.twitter.com/bQsL2mLBcO— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) November 1, 2021
“Why We Did It:” Fmr. RNC Spokesman on GOP’s Descent Into Trumpism | Amanpour and Company
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