Reviews | Meet former Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema

Brett: There’s a special place in hell for Paul Ryan’s Republicans – let’s call them PRR. What I mean is a certain type of well-heeled, intellectually minded conservative who never liked the person or the policies of Trump and sometimes poked fun at his basest excesses, but who constantly made excuses for himself and his presidency while scorning Never Trumpers as a bunch of virtue-signalling assholes. These Trump-appealing PRRs were ready to defend him and vote for him again until the day after the midterm elections, when they finally realized he was a titanic political handicap.

Gael: Well, I really like this rant. Keep on going …

Brett: To adapt something Winston Churchill allegedly said to Neville Chamberlain after Munich in 1938: In 2016 the Tories were given a choice between electoral defeat and personal dishonor. They chose dishonor. In the end, they were still defeated.

Gael: You know, I’m going to ask who is a Churchillian choice in the Republican world. For example, Ron DeSantis was never a big friend of Trump, but I think that was only because he looked at his work.

Brett: So, oddly, I have much less moral objection to those Republicans, like DeSantis, who initially liked Trump, whether it was because they agreed with most of his policies or liked his thumbs-in-the-eye personality, or both. At least they came honestly about their support for Trump, without convoluted rationalizations and self-exculpations and various suspensions of disbelief. Of course, I do not agree with them, but I have long ceased to disdain them.

Speaking of disdain, do you have any opinions on all these revelations about Twitter’s speech policies?

Gael: Is there a way to make it illegal for the richest man in the world to own one of the biggest social networks? I guess not, huh?

Brett: Probably not, although I doubt Musk will profit from the acquisition.

Gael: I really felt sorry for the Twitter employees who found out Musk was putting beds in their workspace. And his wild political swing would ruin the influence of anyone not approaching a quarter of a trillion dollars.

But here we are, and I don’t have a grand strategy to get him to behave more responsibly when it comes to things like… keeping violent hatemongers off his platform. Have you a?