Paul Matzko Fails to be Vigilant, Calls Trumpism a "Version of Conservatism."

 I'm too busy for this, but an op-ed today by Paul Matzko is a perfect example of what I'm taking about in my recent blog post, "Stop Calling Republicans Conservatives:  It's totally false PR." (Sept 24, 2020)

The title of Matzko's article is "Talk Radio is Turning Millions of Americans into Conservatives": 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/opinion/talk-radio-conservatives-trumpism.html

In response to this title, No, it is not.  It is turning them into authoritarians.  Authoritarians are very different from conservatives.  By conflating the two, Matzko prettifies the danger we face.  He gives Republicans, both leaders and masses, the staid camouflage of an august intellectual movement that goes back hundreds of years.  

Trump wants to be a dictator.  His followers, authoritarians, want a dictator.  The writing is on the wall.  There is nothing conservative going on here.  This is straight-up anti-liberty, anti-tradition, anti-cautious headlong tyranny.  See my blog post, referenced above, for a point-by-point discussion:

http://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2020/09/stop-calling-republicans-conservative.html

Stop painting lipstick on a pig.  Tell it like it is.  The USA is in peril of losing its republic, and having it replaced by a totalitarian-praising narcissist.  

Please, Matzko, and all you other big-audience pundits, Stop pretending this is another chapter in the liberal vs. conservative dialectic.  Stop sugar-coating.

Digging his misconceptualization deeper--and perhaps, at least at some level of mind, realizing that what he is doing is shameful--Matzko tries to defend his shifty labeling:

The conservatism of talk radio only partly overlaps with institutional conservatism, that of right-wing Washington think tanks, magazines and the Republican Party itself. By the early 2000s, it had embraced a version of conservatism that is less focused on free markets and small government and more focused on ethnonationalism and populism. It is, in short, the core of Trumpism — now and in the future, with or without a President Trump.  

No, sir.  Trumpism is in no way conservative.  None.  Not partially.  Not even a fig leaf.   It is a personality cult that wallows in conspiracy theories.    

Mr. Matzko, Trump got on Fox News yesterday and called for Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and President Obama to be arrested for treason.  Is this a "version of conservatism" to you?    

STOP helping Republicans, including those in Congress, hide what they are doing.  No GOP member of Congress stands up to him.  They are bobble heads.  De facto collaborators.  Or willing collaborators.

See Anne Applebaum's great article for an incredible analysis:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/

They have acted like quislings and unless they condemn Trump, they are quislings.  

As we all should know, the following is just one example of so many:

I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president. (Trump, July 23, 2019)

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