2018 Proved How Broken Republicans Are

I was at a holiday party on Sunday and ran into a retired hog lot owner from Iowa.  He was displaying his "you really don't know anything, do you" Iowa charm.

The best way to describe "you really don't know anything, do you" people from Iowa (not all Iowans, just some of them, mostly rural) is how they constantly feel they have to prove they're right and everyone else is wrong, usually with a condescending and demeaning tone, no matter how minuscule and petty the subject. When I worked in Iowa radio, I'd always hear from them every time we got bad weather.  I'd announce "we got 3 inches of snow," and I'd get the call "I don't know what you're looking at, but MY snow gauge has 15 inches in it!"  We'd get 20 mile per hour winds: "I have no idea where you're getting your numbers from, but I have 45 to 50 mile gusts at MY place." It rained 2 inches over two days: " We had 40 inches at MY place!"  Their bragging about living on the precipice of a meteorological hell pit aside, weather issues were not their only jackass inducer.  Politics, day to day life, sports, parenting, and especially city life verses country life were all in their repartee.  Their 'I know EVERYTHING and you know nothing' attitude was unwavering, even when you presented them with irrefutable evidence to prove they were wrong.

After exchanging some polite chit chat, he mentioned how bad the Iowa hog business has been hurt with the trade standoff.  I mentioned the Minnesota soybean producers were also getting hit hard, an ominous sign for the Ag sector.  But then he quickly followed up my comment with this, "the good news is Trump will double our markets eventually, when he get's done with his brilliant trade negotiations."

I spit my eggnog about 20 feet.

Knowing facts, and also knowing exactly how to talk to "you really don't know anything, do you" Iowa guy, I went about systemically destroy every single point he was making about Trump and trade.  He brought up how the Chinese Market will come back, and I pointed out China is signing new Ag contracts with Argentina and Brazil, meaning they'll likely never come back like they once were.  He said Trump completely re-wrote NAFTA, making it a better deal which dramatically opened up Canada to American farmers, and I pointed out that not only was the new NAFTA deal pretty much the same as the last one, the only farmers who got a better deal were dairy farmers, and that was a minimal increase on certain dairy imports, AND to get that single concession, Trump had to allow the Canadians to import a million more Canadian made cars, so we really got screwed over on that deal in the long run.

You get the point.  He made an easy refutable pro-Trump statement, and I immediately destroyed him with facts.

He then said, "Brazil imports a ton of our ethanol."  There was nothing which explained why he said this.  It was a total stand alone statement.  With a puzzled look on my face, I said "okay..." He then made for the door.  It was the retired Iowa hog farmer version of a Batman smoke bomb.  He threw it down, and made his escape!

The remarkable thing about this entire conversation is his own self admission at the very beginning; Trump's unnecessary trade war had already cost him, and many other farmers, their margins, but he eagerly overlooked the red on his own ledger just so he could still believe Trump was right.  That's some Grade A hog $**t.

What I have learned in 2018 is that no matter how bad things get for Republicans, troubles they can directly trace back to Trump himself, they'll always insist Trump was right, and righteous!  They gleefully applaud Trump using themselves and their families as cobblestones for a new Trump highway, ignoring the pain of Trump's heels driving into their backs.  As long as they're convinced Trump's walk is a pleasant one, they'll steadfastly avoid admitting they were wrong.  For them to admit so would be (in their mind) a Democratic victory.  They hate Democrats more than they love their quality of life, health, religion, kids and their country, so they'll take Trump's heels driving into their backsides as long as they can imagine the air up by Trump's nostrils is sweet, and that it might eventually waft down to their noses.

In the last few days, since the Republicans buried the Hillary Clinton and the FBI investigation report which proved neither had done anything wrong, a report released late on the Friday night before the New Year's holiday, delusional Trump fan is coming at me hard on the social media pages. The Republicans, who desperately want to charge Hillary Clinton with anything they can legally justify, found Hillary innocent of all the crimes they've accused her of in their latest report.  They also determined the FBI doesn't seem to have a fundamental bias against Trump, and they stood by the Robert Mueller investigation.  They released this report when no one was watching, not to keep the information away from the Democrats, but rather to hide their findings from their Republican followers.  The GOP wants their voters to continue to think Hillary is guilty of something, that the FBI is all in for the Democrats, and the Robert Mueller investigation is fraudulent, even though they know the complete opposite is true.

I'm not obliging the right.  I have posted the findings of their latest investigation.  The Republicans failed to dig up anything on Hillary this time, just like every other Benghazi, Clinton Foundation, Uranium and E-mail investigation.  Even though the Right has yet to find anything, Trump fans aren't allowing the truth to get in their way.  They've found solace by returning to the classics, namely Vince Foster allegations and...(wait for it)...Pizzagate (you remember, the alleged pizza parlor which housed a child sex ring in it's basement, a sex ring overseen by Hillary and others, a crime so outrageous that a regular citizen came into the pizza place and fired off a gun, demanding the children being held in the basement be released, only to be told there was no basement to the building, leading to numerous pundits who had gleefully pushed that fake scandal to frantically distance themselves from any potential lawsuit by insisting they never said it was true, that they'd only heard about it from a friend?  Yeah, THAT pizza-gate).

The fact the Republicans are running back to ancient scandals as a way to keep their fires of Hillary hatred stoked just proves how incurable they are.  They will forgo proof of Hillary's innocence, and wait for the next Clinton investigation, all while wagging their fingers about how everyone KNOWS she's guilty.

Republicans are truly broken people. The facts don't matter.  Reality doesn't matter.  Their own well being doesn't matter.  I personally think they're a lost cause.  What we learned in Minnesota in 2018 is that you can win without them.  Let the Right stew in their cesspool of delusion they've convinced themselves is a hot tub.  We're better off by letting them wallow int he mud by themselves.