Meanwhile, liberal hypocrites in Hollywood lecture us on ''women's rights'' and the evils of Trump while their industry is chock full of sexual predators. Where is your criticism of their hypocrisy? These people routinely help finance liberal campaigns, so you can't say they have no significant political influence.
if they are really only tolerating him to essentially milk what they can policy-wise, why are they going out of their way to be so supportive?
[/quote]
Many people have personal behavior inconsistent with their stated beliefs. Hypocrisy is far more the norm than the exception in human nature. We all fall short of moral perfection. In Christian terms, this is sin. But unpleasant as hypocrisy is, I can think of worse. The hypocrite at least recognizes the validity of behavioral standards higher than his own. A thoroughly evil person might recognize no such standards at all.
"Hollywood" has been infamous as a moral cesspool since the silent-picture era. But such has been the reputation of the stage, where money relates more to the expression of talent than to the production of tangible output like bread or steel. Command and control as is possible in manufacturing, corporate farming, or government agencies is far more difficult to maintain in entertainment. If you are 'Wanda Houston' and you work in a food-processing plant, then you can't get away with much in your personal life and must make hard choices on what you do without. If you are Whitney Houston you can get away with all sorts of indulgence, including cocaine, until the cocaine kills you. If you are 'Howard Weinstein' and you are a manager of a fast-food restaurant, then you can't get away with a 'casting couch' at your place of work. If you are Harvey Weinstein you could exploit your control over which actresses get parts in your usual cinematic successes.
We did not know this stuff until it was disclosed on news media. But so it is with a politician who rails at abortion and then is found having tried to convince a mistress heavy with child to have an abortion (now that is hypocrisy) or a gay-baiter who is caught soliciting gay sex (likewise). And don't forget the money scandals that have nothing to do with hypocrisy, as with bribe-taking.
One of the few reliable markers that distinguishes the entire Right from the entire Left is optimism in human nature in general. Liberals, democratic socialists, leftists, and Commies alike believe that goodness is the norm in human nature. They expect leaders (including themselves) to be morally better than the average because human goodness is essential to good leadership. They reject the idea that the best hope for Humanity is everyone for himself. In contrast, conservatives, reactionaries, and fascists believe that people are motivated solely by primal drives; success excuses anything. Humanity is 'fallen' or depraved, and we might as well see the world as does the pickpocket in
Casablanca: that the world is full of vipers.
People on the Right, including the Religious Right, expect to get burned in business deals, marital and family relationships, and bureaucratic dealings... and are quick to see themselves as helpless victims. People on the Left are more likely to look unsympathetically upon anyone who falls short of clear standards of decency. So it is with the trigger-happy cop, the tax cheat, the dealer on inside information, the spouse-beater, the bribe-taker or donor, and the sexual abuser of children.
There were plenty of warnings. The "grab her by the (crotch)" quote is practically an admission of sexual assault. Staffers beating up people who heckled him was another warning. (You turn to the cops to bust people for disorderly conduct). Ideological inconsistency applies to fools liars. At the level at which he operates in business or politics, those who say one thing to a crowd in San Francisco and its opposite in Amarillo are lying in one place or the other. Truth is not a convenience; it is all that we can reliably work with.
Donald Trump is a demagogue, and upon taking office a demagogue who has proved an electoral success must decide which promises to betray and hence which voters to betray. Of course we should have all known that a real estate tycoon was unlikely to govern against his obvious class interest. His business model depends upon getting rents as high as possible and costs (including school taxes) as low as possible in order to get maximal profits. He sold out the masses for plutocrats similarly egregious in putting their gain, indulgence, and power above everything else. This is a real-life J R Ewing, a cutthroat who wants to be loved by people who don't really know him.
But if he is a demagogue, he is a symptom of social depravity and not the worst of it. Complex as human relationships have gotten due to some wondrous technologies and lives that no longer fit the crude master-and-servant pattern, we need to make some adjustments. Does anyone still think K-12 education adequate for preparing people for dealing with human diversity, for making wise choices with time, for not making political decisions that blow up in their faces, for not falling with sophisticated con artists. When people could reliably expect to live satisfying lives as sharecroppers and industrial laborers in times of very low expectations, people could be satisfied with 'solid eighth-grade educations'. Today, mere K-12 education is inadequate for anything more than rigid functioning in jobs that allow only animal-level survival.
So we need some formal logic (philosophy), some basic understanding of the techniques of behavioral manipulation (psychology), and the reality of trade-offs (economics). People need to know that one gets no good results from overt contradictions, the dirty tricks of hstlers, and that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Philosophy, psychology, and economics are typically survey courses in the first two years of college. High school? I would not rush them.
