The Commons
The Collaborators
What causes people to abandon their principles in support of a corrupt regime?, Anne Applebaum asked in the July/August issue. And how do they find their way back?
My wife and I (lifelong conservative Republicans turned unaffiliated after the party left us for Donald Trump) typically call the collaborators that Anne Applebaum describes “enablers,” and just tonight (before I read the article) we were discussing different reasons they enable Trump and what it would take for them to abandon him. We named some of the same reasons Applebaum did. Another we’d add is that because they’ve abandoned their principles and ignored everything else Trump has done to this point, they see no way they they’re offended or it’s too much to be able to support? Even as (we believe) most of them are realizing that Trump is dragging the party toward a blue wave, they can’t speak out. They’ve made their bed, and they’re stuck sleeping in it until at least Election Day. What annoys us the most is that many of these collaborators or enablers are going to pretend it never happened when Trump finally leaves the scene.
