Hypocrisy of the Right

Liberals have been the subject of accusations of hypocrisy by Conservatives for decades. Sometimes the accusation is deserved, like when college Liberals deny the free speech opportunities to Conservative speakers. However, their sanctimonious accusations about the personal morality of liberal concepts (e.g. gay rights, the right to choose, national security, etc.) now are exposed as nothing more than a pretense of a moral foundation. Evangelicals who condemned Bill Clinton for his affair unconditionally support Trump with a history of philandering, serial adultery and divorces, and misogyny and flagrant disregard of the gospels call to serve the poor. Conservatives literally were calling for impeachment of President Obama over his use of executive orders, now point to Trump’s use of executive orders as evidence of his “amazing accomplishments” in office thus far. What was “unconstitutional” for President Obama is celebrated with Trump. Hypocrites.

Perhaps the most flagrant evidence that Conservatives lack any moral compass has been their complicit silence on the Trump missteps on national security. If there was one issue that defined the Conservative brand it was national security, yet they remain essentially silent over the embarrassing embrace of Putin (including siding with Putin against our own intelligence and national security apparatus), revealing sensitive intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office. Conservative were silent after Turkish bodyguards brutally beat protesting American citizens literally blocks from the White House, silent at the lack of response to the death of a citizen after imprisonment in North Korea, silent with the ongoing targeting of American allies in Syria by Russian forces, etc. It is a catalogue of hypocrisy that dissolved the thin veneer of the moral superiority of American Conservatives.

What remains of the Conservative brand? The only issue that ever mattered to them: the redistribution of wealth. For decades, they have accused Liberals of trying to redistribute wealth, which was perhaps their only valid accusation. However, it is a critique that is just as applicable to Conservative policies which has been just as eager (and far more effective) at income redistribution than any Liberal program. Conservative programs leading to “free competition”, “de-regulation” and “trickle-down economics” have produced a massive shift of income from the working class to the top 1% of Americans. The conservative America of today has income inequality that is greater than many third world countries, at the cost of suffering by the most vulnerable Americans. Trumpcare as it is being proposed currently is another example: a massive tax break for the wealthiest resulting in a massive reduction of medical services for the poorest Americans. Billionaires earning hundreds of millions of dollars on Wall Street will get hundreds of millions more by taking away the medical benefits of Americans in poverty working up to 80 hours a week at minimum wage jobs. That is the morality of Conservatives in a nut shell: a thin veneer of moral diversions from an essentially amoral core. Perhaps the exposure of the hypocrisy of Conservatives on their holy dogma of national security and personal morality may be the greatest contribution of the Trump presidency.