Aging Capriciously

What or who is a doubling down, double dealing douche bag?  Ever since Trump took center stage two egregious behaviors have become the norm in Republican politics.  The first is lying.  The second is doubling down on stupidity, arrogance and greed.  Trump set the bar on these behaviors and his loyal followers keep lowering the bar.  Many good hearted but naïve citizens of America are amazed with each new low and the media is constantly asking “How low can they go?”  There appears to be no low.  Lows with Republicans are like a black hole.  You can put an infinite number of lows into a black hole and never reach the bottom or fill it up.

I will save my comments on lying Republicans for another blog and today focus on doubling down behavior.  The latest example of this is Douche Bag Governor DeSantis and his ill-conceived and mean-spirited stunt of sending immigrants east to Martha’s Vineyard.  His followers think this is just grand behavior and applaud him when he responds to criticism with “doubling down behavior.”

DeSantis provides an excellent example of doubling down behavior:

“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday said he intends to use “every penny” of the $12 million his state budgeted to relocate migrants and set the expectation for buses and “likely more” flights full of migrants paid for by the state.” — CNN

No compassion.  No remorse.  No backing away from a cruel stunt that hurts the lives of others.  Did you know that the immigrants he sent to Martha’s Vineyard with lies and misinformation were not from Florida but were from his fellow Douche Bag governor’s state of Texas?

So, what does it mean when we say that someone is “doubling down.”

“The phrase “double down” means to put forth an additional effort or risk in a situation or argument, even if you know the outcome will be a mistake or will be negative.” — Wikipedia

Doubling down can involve putting more effort into an approach that has not yet worked or even an approach that seems to be working but needs more commitment.  Thus, there can be a positive connotation to the phrase “doubling down.”

Unfortunately, too often when it comes to Trump and his supporters, the behaviors that they are doubling down on have negative consequences.  This is because the efforts that they are doubling down on are either wrong or dangerous.  A few examples:

• Trump doubling down opposing masking during the Corona Virus
• Trump doubling down on assertions about a rigged election
• Trump doubling down about his executive privileges
• Trump doubling down on his appeal to White Power and privilege

When Trump and his followers double down it is because they know that they are mistaken or lying or corrupt.  The efforts of Trump and his sycophants have increasingly created a negative connation for the term “to double down.”  Why would any “good” person that we elect to help lead our country double down to support evil intentions?   Well, first it is because they are not good.  They do not give one red cent about morality or ethics.  They are pursuing what is known in ethics as a Utilitarian approach.  If the behavior is useful to their ends, then they will pursue it.  Obviously, doubling down is very useful to Trumpists.

How is Doubling Down Useful?

In answer to the above question, you must be ready to accept the peculiarities of certain people.  For instance, there are people who believe:

• The Trickle-Down Theory
• Tax breaks for the rich will help the poor
• Trump won the 2020 election
• There is no climate change
• The world is flat
• 9/11 was a CIA effort
• The moon is made from green cheese
• Elvis is alive and living upstairs in Graceland

Doubling down behavior somehow (do not ask how, it just does) convinces some of the people noted above that the douche bag engaging in pursuing lies and criminal behavior must really know what he or she is doing.  Lincoln said that you can “fool all of the people some of the time but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”  Doubling down behavior is designed to lull us into thinking that we are wrong and that the person doubling down is right. Why we ask ourselves would anyone keep pressing an issue if they are wrong?  Why would people that we think must be smarter or more knowledgeable than we are stalk mistaken goals and objectives?  The answer which too many of us fail to understand or believe is that some of the people we elect are more focused on their own self-interests and do not care one iota about their constituencies.  Unless of course, they want your money or vote.

We live in an age where the acquisition of things, the acquisition of power, the acquisition of riches and the acquisition of fame far override the value of the ideas that our Founding Fathers believed in.  If you add in the values that Jesus preached, you would not be able to recognize or understand what Republicans stand for.  They say they believe one thing, but then they pursue a completely different agenda.  The Republican Party today is the party of hypocrisy, lies and greed.  Lincoln would hang his head in shame at the behavior of his old party.  Jesus would probably throw most so-called Christians today out of his church just as he did with the money lenders.  As the song should go, “The Times they have a changed.”

“Pride can make one a stronger person in the one sense, or so it is often believed, when based solely on the surface, but in the other, and much more frequently, a stronger devil. When pride is undeniably found out of an evil, it saves face by doubling down.”  ― Criss Jami

Documents a chronology of the potential end of our democracy.

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2022

“I found this a difficult book to read because it shows how successful the republican party has been in destroying facts, reality, and our democratic foundation in order to move us towards an authoritarian minority rule nation. It was interesting to add up the number of related events through the decades since the onset of Newt Gingrich in 1994, that have been driven by lies, conspiracy theories, slander, and violence, or at least threatening it. Trump is truly a symptom of an underlying national decay that panders to the absolute lowest base instincts of human nature. Frankly, the book is harrowing and fatalistic in leading the reader to assume that the fix is in and our democracy in at least the near future is doomed. While we tried to “go high,” it seemed only to embolden the worst among us that going “low” was the path to their success.” — Richard Nelson