Three anti-Trump-biased post-election pieces came to my attention today and yesterday. I guess “philippics” doesn’t exactly apply to all three of them, but I seldom get to use the words, it’s my blog, and so there. One is disappointing, one is disinformation and deflection, and the third is certifiably deranged.

Let’s start with Politico’s “Why Kamala Harris lost the election.” The answer, according to the authors, is this…

She never sufficiently buried Biden’s ghost, severely hamstringing her ability to sell voters on the idea that hers was the turn-the-page candidacy. It happened, simply, because Harris refused to make a clean break from the last four years when voters indicated that’s what they wanted. Worse, she hesitated to draw any daylight between herself and her boss on Biden’s biggest vulnerability — his stewardship over the economy — nor identify any specific way her presidency would be different from his tenure beyond naming a Republican to her Cabinet.

Is this denial or deliberate dishonesty? Either way, the authors, Christopher Cadelago and Holly Otterbein are covering for Harris, Walz and their party rather than providing truthful analysis to their readers. Harris’s problem wasn’t strategy. Her problem was Harris (and to a lesser extent, Ol’ Knucklehead). No strategy ever devised can make a metaphorical purse out of a metaphorical sow’s ear, and that’s what Harris was as a potential President: a pig’s ear. And not even a very impressive pig’s ear. She was unpopular and generally ignored as Veep, her past positions were radical if not insane, and she literally cannot speak coherently without a script or a teleprompter. To anyone who has a grain of knowledge of psychology, her manic cackle is a tell: she’s insecure, not exactly a quality we seek in our leaders. The primary (well, I shouldn’t use that word because she never offered herself to voters in a primary) persona she projected to the public, other than an empty suit, was that of a chameleon. She presented her position on the Gazan war diametrically differently to Jewish and Muslim audiences. She was pro-fracking and anti-fracking, she was 100% behind Joe Biden and everything he did, and a candidate of change. She was a law and order candidate who opposes “over-incarceration.” She said there had to be consequences for illegal immigration, then said those consequences should be citizenship.

Harris didn’t follow a bad strategy. She was a bad candidate and ran a terrible campaign. That’s why she lost the election. As Harris would say, “Let’s be clear.” Yes, let’s.

Phillipic #2, sent to me by reader Steve Witherspoon (Gee, thanks, Steve!) is a mouth-foaming hate-screed by progressive blogger Gregory Humphrey, who for some reason writes under the name of “Deke Rivers.” If I spewed such junk onto the web, I might uses a pseudonym too. But see, Greg, or Deke, the idea isn’t to use both names on the same page….

The title tells us the writer is deranged: “How A WWII Vet, Like My Dad Royce Humphrey, Would React To Donald Trump’s Facism Taking Hold In U.S.” Trump, for all his myriad flaws, has never done anything that could be called characteristic of fascists, but his opposition has. Never mind: Deke/Greg is rolling…

Donald Trump has a disdain for democracy, disdain for alliances, no understanding of NATO, no ability to work with others, and has proven to be a fascist and an autocrat…The future is quite unsettling, but one thing has to be solid in each of our minds. We do not give up. We do not bend to fascism, we do not cave to fascists, we will continue to fight…That is what we must keep in mind as we stand together, though dispirited and downhearted today, we must understand the fight is not over. Fascism and autocracy will not stand in our nation. We undertake this continuing fight, not only for ourselves but in memory of all those who fought so stridently and mightily so that we would never have to go down that road in this country. And we will not. We will fight like hell in the months and years to come.

This pitiful thing is typical of the junk I have been reading on Facebook from the Trump-Deranged. They don’t bother with any facts or evidence; they just assume that their audience is also Trump-Deranged, and will nod their heads, ignoring the rattling noise coming from inside their skulls. What real fascists do is fight to bring down elected leaders who get in the way of their plans. Once again, “fight” is a valid exhortation when the Trump-Deranged (or Kamala Harris) use it, but a dangerous coded call to actual violence when Trump does, like after he’s been shot.

This brings us to the most depressing of the three philippics. It arrived unrequested in my mail box, and the author is Ken White, former Popehat blogger, lawyer, First Amendment advocate, libertarian. Ken is a brilliant writer and a legal scholar; when it was active, Popehat was probably the blog I most often read and quoted. He once gave me some useful advice in a legal matter; I think of him as a freind, though not a close one (we have never met). But I knew that Ken had been infected with the Trump-Derangement virus: among other things, he hung out at the Axis propaganda factory, The Atlantic. I did not know, however, that the brain-eating micro-organism had burrowed so deep. Some excerpts…

Trump won yesterday, as I feared he would. I firmly believe America — and likely the world — will get significantly worse for at least a generation, probably more. I’ll spare you, for now, the why. Frankly, I think you either already accept it or will never accept it. The things I care about, like the rule of law and equality before it, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, free trade in service of free people, relative prosperity, protection of the weak from the strong, truth, and human dignity are all going to suffer. Bullies and their sycophants and apologists will thrive.

Then Ken says he has thoughts on what “we” should do…

Trump spewed loathsome bigotry and lies and ignorance and promoted terrible and cruel policies, many of which he may actually implement. The fact he won big doesn’t mean you were wrong to oppose those things and condemn them. Nor does it mean that you can’t win an election in the future by opposing those things and condemning them. Even if it did mean that — even if America as a country has gone so irretrievably wretched that ignorance and bigotry are essential to electability now — then it would be time for something new and different rather than the Republic we have now.

Sometimes I forget that Ken is an extreme libertarian. He likes an open border.

Do you need to be screaming and waving your middle finger in the face of Trump voters? Only if you want to. Live your best life. But please don’t be conned by the cult of civility and discourse, the “now is the time to come together” folks. You are under no obligation to like, respect, or associate with people who countenance this. We’ve all heard that we shouldn’t let politics interfere with friendships. But do people really mean that, sincerely? Do people really think you shouldn’t cut ties with, say, someone who votes for an overt neo-Nazi, or an overt “overthrow the system and nationalize all assets” tankie? I don’t buy it. I think everyone has their own line about where support of — or subservience to — a doctrine is too contemptible to let a civil relationship survive. For most of my life no major party candidate was over that line for me. I have trusted, liked, and respected people who have voted the other way for decades. But whatever my feelings about Trump in 2016 or 2020, Trump in 2024 is definitely over my line.

There’s a lot more, but you get the idea. This is wise man, an ethical man, historically informed and analytical. He must have the same virulent strain of the virus as George Will, Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol.

Maybe I’ll start wearing a mask after all…