From Fox News 59, Indianapolis, Indiana,
April 2, 2013.
Teen says masked men forced him into van, drove him around until he
escaped
Indianapolis Metropolitan police are investigating a teenager’s report
that masked suspects forced him into a van and drove him around before
he escaped.
According to an IMPD report, the eighth-grade student was walking to
the Immaculate Heart of Mary School around 7:25 a.m. when the van
approached him near 57th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. According to
the teen, two people got out of the front, grabbed him and “tossed him
inside” the van, where a third suspect awaited.
The third suspect hit him “several times using his left and only and
held him” while the van continued on. The teen described the vehicle as
a white, full-size maintenance vehicle without any rear windows,
according to the report. The teen also said a partition with a small
sliding door separated the front passenger area of the van from the
back...
Administrators put the school on lockdown after the encounter. The case
remains under investigation.
Now masked thugs routinely snatching innocent people off the street, or just murdering them in front of a dozen witnesses, is the official policy of the Trump regime.
Step out of line or just get in the way and they'll not only blow your head off, they'll slander you from the highest offices in the land before your body grows cold.
"The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works." -- Clifford Stoll, 1995.
Why oh why must certain Liberals, certain Democrats, be so willful? So
obstreperous? So disobedient?
Why can't they see that our democracy is hanging by a thread? And that
our Awesome Democracy Coalition is the only hope of saving it?
And why can't they see that the only hope of keeping our
Awesome Democracy Coalition together is if we all play from from the same
playbook? And that playbook is the one written by [checks notes] a tiny
group of former Republicans and former Weekly Standard employees who
got run out of our own party by the monster they help create...and have since
been allowed to colonize the media to the point where Liberal voices might as
well not even exist!
And that playbook clearly states that various topics are off-limits --
especially topics that involve talking about the past. It
also clearly states that Neoconservatism was secretly awesome, that the
Extremes on Both Sides are the real problem, and, now that we control the Awesome Democracy Coalition narrative, certain Liberals, certain Democrats, need to
keep their heterodox thoughts to themselves and keep their whiny yappers
shut.
Part 1. Glorious Neoconservatism!
And, no, I'm not just talking about the godawful David Brooks' column --
The Neocons Were Right
Not about Iraq. But the moral tenor of their political writings could be an
antidote to Trumpism.
-- which The Atlantic paid him to write.
Instead, --surprise! -- your "allies" at The Bulwark had a merry old
time doing that Never Trump thing where they pretend Republicanism and
Neoconservatism are not what they manifestly were and are, but instead were what they wish they had been.
I mean, pointing at the Republican party -- which nominated Donald Trump for
president three times in a row, overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in the
last three elections, and managed to elect him twice -- and declaring that
this is not what being a Republican is all about is not just
patently ridiculous, it's insulting. It's gaslighting.
And yet, there was The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell doing exactly
that. Doing exactly what Blue Gal warned they would be doing all the way
back in August of 2016.
The Media is attempting to separate the Republican Party from Donald
Trump. Who voted for him again?
Have you noticed a number of media outlets calling the Republican
campaign for President, "Trumpism"?
It isn't Trumpism. It's the Republican Party. And it has been for far
longer than Donald Trump has been running for President.
The video above is from a year ago (July 2015). Alisyn Camerota asks a
focus group of Trump and leaning toward Trump voters why they like him.
Those of you who have watched any of these "average Trump voter"
interviews know their trademarks:
"He speaks his mind, and says what I am already thinking."
"Illegal immigration is the number one issue on my mind."
"He'll make America great again."
The reason the news media interviewed these particular people is,
they are registered Republican Primary voters.
They didn't just register to vote this year or fall off a truck into
the Republican Party. They voted for Bush, twice. They voted for
McCain/Palin. They voted for Romney. And they're tired of losing and
being embarrassed by their votes, so embarrassed that they fell for a
"Tea Party" rebranding just so they would not have to associate
themselves with Bush.
And then the establishment had the nerve to suggest they vote for
Bush's brother.
Donald Trump lies about a lot of things, but he is not lying when he
says he received more Republican Primary votes than any other candidate
in US history. That statistic is skewed by how many Republicans voted
"Not Trump," but the fact that the race boiled down to Trump versus
not-Trump is not helpful to the "Trumpism" argument. Republican voters
selected Trump as their candidate, in state after state after state.
The beltway news media is terrified that the Republican Party will be
forever tarnished by this Trump candidacy. Why? Because
Trump-as-Republican busts open their "both sides" myth, that "both
sides" of the political spectrum are equally bad, equally wrong and
right, equally to be blamed for the "mess" in Washington...
Then, after insisting that what 99.3% of Republicans think being a
"Republican" means is wrong...Ms. Longwell went on to do the same with
"Neoconservatism"
Longwell: ...people just say that things are Republican
or conservative, and what they mean is they're Trump. they're Trump and
Trump adjacent and whatever. Neoconservatism is very similar.
She then gives her own definition of what she wishes Neoconservatism had
been. Then moves on to what Trump is doing in Venezuela
Longwell: That is not neoconservatism, guys.
This is just it is the "Trumpro doctrine" or whatever.
...Anyway, so my point is... is like this is not neoconservatism by
in any of the ways that we've ever thought about it and that neo
neoconservatism itself has kind of lost meaning because people view it as
like just what Afghan... uh Afghanistan and Iraq what they were.
Um that was not that's not what neoconservatism was at
its roots. Like, we have lost the sense of what it is.
Then a little jokey joke about how we're not going to talk about Iraq and
neoconservatism on this show, and that's that. Done and dusted.
Before we ascend to the giddy heights of the Mountain of the Stupidest
Fucking Things Anyone Has Ever Said (Non-Donald Trump Category) to carve the
words
"Afghanistan and Iraq Was Not What Neoconservatism Was at Its Roots" up near the peak for all the world to see forever and ever, some thoughts.
First, to quote Batman Begins,
"It's not who you are underneath. It's what you do that defines you."
It doesn't matter what your dorm room fantasy of Neocons was. What
matters is
what the Neocons did.
Second, Sarah, have you ever met a guy named Bill Kristol? Y'know, Mr.
Neocon? The guy who was so cocksure of a quick, cakewalk victory in
Iraq that he used his monthly Neocon journal, The Weekly Standard, to
make sure that "Neoconservatism" and "Iraq" became inseparable. The
guy who was advocating the decapitation of basically every Islamic/Muslim/Arab regime in the Middle East back when you were fresh out
of Kenyon College and working for the conservative Intercollegiate Studies
Institute? One of the two or three most omnipresent Neocon warmongers
on the Sunday Shows for more than a decade? Son of Neocon founding
father Irving Kristol?
Ringing any bells?
Y'know, the co-founder of the place you work now.
Part 2. Will no one rid me of these turbulent Liberals!
Here's a riddle that's fun for the whole family.
Q: Thanks in no small part to our successful campaign to make anyone
trying to slip a "Both Sides Do It" cold deck into the conversation, how can
you tell when one of your "allies" is about to do exactly that?
A: Here is The Bulwark's Tim Miller doing exactly that:
Miller: Um I want to uh I'm going to tie two items together
that are in the news. And I just want to say very clearly upfront, I'm not
creating an equivalence between these two people. I just want to talk about
two news items in the context of identity politics and and the dangers of
identity politics.
It beggars belief that Mr. Miller really not understand what it means to
"tie two items together".
Anyway, he then goes on to talk about some of the straight-up Nazi shit that Elon
Musk is saying. It's horrifying. Genocidally racist. And
right there out in the open, coming from the richest man on Earth, Donald
Trump's largest donor, and, via DOGE, the man who will probably go down in history as
being directly responsible for the deaths of more human beings than anyone
else in Trumpworld.
Then, this.
Miller: ...there's also a scandal going around one of Zoran
staffer[s] much... much less prominent person but... but I just want to use
this story as kind of a way to talk about something I have concerns about.
See, the Daily Mail and the New York Post had dug
through the Twitter account this Mamdani staffer, who is white, and found
some old Tweets of her excoriating white supremacy and white privilege and
property rights.
Tim recited all of it.
And then...
Miller: I'm not saying that it's Cea Weaver's fault that Donald
Trump's top donor and adviser is a white supremacist. I'm not. But I... I...
I think that we have... get into a very... we live in... we get into a very
dangerous spot. I think sometimes with folks on the Left who get very
comfortable in the identity politics space and then start just throwing
around pejoratives about white people all the time.
A week ago this story didn't exist.
Then the Daily Mail and the New York Post went digging.
Then came the "Mounting criticism...." and Ms. Weaver crying in public.
Then came the right wing pile on. Anything to not talk about Venezuela
or the Epstein files, right?
The same day Renee Good was murdered by
an ICE thug in Minneapolis, this is what Megyn Kelly and her pal Mark
Halperin decided to talk about.
And once it'd been elevated to the status of Important News by the Right's
gargantuan media megaphone, Tim Miller had another hippy to
punch.
Because in case you hadn't noticed, nary a single Bulwark podcast ever goes
by without one of your new, former-Republican "allies" making a point of
finding something or someone somewhere -- real or imagined -- which can be
used as a prop to scold "folks on the Left" for our naughtybad
ways.
Because in case you hadn't noticed, this Awesome Democracy Coalition is all
about making Republicans feel comfortable. And to do that, they need
to be constantly reassured that they need not give up a lifetime of loathing
Liberals that has defined their political identity, no matter how
objectively delusional and frankly fucked-in-the-head that loathing may
be. And to do that, The Bulwark needs to constantly reassure
them that, see! see! you can trust us because we think Liberals are awful
too!
So, to stress test this theory that the Awesome Democracy Coalition is all
about making Republicans comfortable no matter what horrid shit they
believe, while telling mouthy Liberals to shut up and sit down, let's put
that shoe on the other foot.
Instead of a lefty saying mean things about white people and property rights
and capitalism on Twitter years ago, let's posit a Republican saying
genuinely awful things about Democrats.
And not some mayoral staffer that you'd never heard of two weeks ago, but a
very prominent Republican.
In fact, let's make it a Republican from one of the most famous Republican families in modern
history.
A Republican who had been in the national spotlight for decades. A
Republican who was one of the most powerful people in
Republican leadership.
Let us further posit that the horrendous things this prominent Republican
was saying weren't potshots on Twitter, but were stated publicly, on
camera, as the official position of the Republican party.
Let us further posit that the horrendous things this very prominent
Republican was saying were bold-face lies: lies that imputed to Democrats the very
worst things human beings can do. And that these lies weren't just a one-off, but
something this very prominent Republican repeated on a number of
occasions. And that this particular horrid thing was just the cherry
on top of an entire political career built on slandering people us in the foulest ways possible.
And rather than retracting and apologizing for what they said, as Cea Weaver
has done -- even bursting into tears over it, as Cea Weaver did -- let
us further posit that this very prominent Republican never shed a tear or retracted or
apologized for any of it.
Of course we don't have to put on our Imagination Hats to posit any of this, because this is exactly what
happened with Liz Cheney. And the lies good ol' Liz calmly told about
Democrats over and over again -- that Democrats murder live babies, that we are the "face of pure evil" -- were orders of magnitude worse than anything
some mayoral staffer ever said on Twitter.
And we don't have to guess what Tim Miller's reaction to these horrific lies would be, because he and everyone else at The Bulwark rolled their eyes and dismissed them as some minor disagreement over abortion policy that those loony Liberals were obsessed over for no explicable reason.
Tim Miller has a new book all about how awful the Republican party is and his part in making it so.
I haven't read it, but have read *about* it, and the reviews are mostly positive.
So when then Tim Miller showed up for his regular spot on The Bulwark podcast, I expected it to go roughly the same as it has gone everywhere else he has shown up promoting his book. Scathing stories. Regret. Anxiety about the future. And so forth. A Bay-area, Gen X hipster version of Stuart Stevens' It Was All a Lie.
And there was some of that...until Charlie Sykes' steered the conversation right into the one subject he always steers every such conversation into: his seething contempt for the Left and the "Progressive media".
That's you and me, kid.
So, after 20 minutes of talking about Tim Miller's book and what a shit Mick Mulvaney is and how, unless you read Tim Miller's book, you will always be caught by surprise by how awfully the GOP base and leadership behave...
Sykes: If you don't have this template, a lot of what's going to happen will feel incomprehensible.
... Sykes performs the inevitable hard pivot over to what really obsesses and infuriates him: Why aren't we filthy, ungrateful Progressive peasants building statues to Liz Cheney?
Sykes: Let's flip the card a little bit though. How do you explain the psychology of -- and you... you... you... alluded to this -- the psychology Progressives activists including people like Don Winslow, who's a filmmaker, y'know, and, like, anti-Trump Progressive novelist and everything. Y'know, big Twitter guy who is obsessively -- I mean obsessively -- attacking, right now, Liz Cheney. It's like this is the moment when Democrats are facing a wipeout in the midterms...
And then they we're off to the races.
Because the only way The Bulwark'sAwesome Democracy Coalition Awesome Media Corporation can continue to prosper is if Republicans are be made to feel as at-home, shoes-off, lemme-get-you-a-beer cozy there as possible no matter how objectively awfully they may have behaved, while at the same time making it clear that certain Liberals, certain Democrats, had damn well better keep our heterodox thoughts and memories to ourselves, and keep our whiny yappers shut.
No kidding. This is from Margaret Sullivan's newsletter:
Journalists should be telling these disastrous and consequential
stories with clarity, tough reporting and a reliance on verifiable
facts.
Thankfully, some of that is happening, and I’ll give a few examples in
a moment. But first, I have to draw your attention to — and express my
disgust at — the way the Jan. 6, 2021 anniversary was portrayed on CBS
Evening News. It was almost kissed off altogether, but the attention it
did get was rife with appalling “both sides are equal” commentary.
“President Trump accused Democrats of failing to prevent the attack.
Hakeem Jeffries accused Trump of whitewashing it,” was the summation
by newly installed anchor Tony Dokoupil, as images of the Trump
faithful hoisting banners that thanked him for their pardons played in
the background.
That’s what this is about? Both sides equal?
“SHAMEFUL,” was the response of Larry Sabato, who runs the nonpartisan
Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
He’s right, of course. And the broader context makes it even worse.
“Dokoupil’s disgraceful framing served as a reminder that Larry
Ellison, the billionaire Oracle co-founder who bankrolled his son’s
takeover of CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, assisted Trump’s
efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election,” was the apt reminder from
Jon Passantino of the Status newsletter.
My Guardian colleague Jeremy Barr looked at the anchor’s first week on
the job, which was mostly an embarrassment to the legacy of the storied
network, despite his relatively strong interview with border czar Tom
Homan.
On the one hand, it's possible that all of these Damascene awakenings are
too little, too late. On the other hand, it's been damn lonely out
here on what, for a very long time, were the disreputable, and roundly derided
"Both Sides Don't!" fringes of journalism, so the companionship is welcome,
even though, more often than not, our new companions have no idea that we
exist, and believe they're stepping out onto the untouched
terra incognita of media criticism.
My hope for them is that they'll lose what appears to be some lingering
timidity, because we all need people with much larger platforms than this
one calling out the guilt parties by name, title, profession and
corporation.
For example, Margaret Sullivan did a fine job here calling out Tony
Dokoupil and CBS under its new MAGA overlord, Larry Ellison. But
before she retired (and moved on to the Washington Post for a few
years, and thence on to the Guardian and newsletter writing), she was
The New York Times' public editor for four years. And, without
any doubt, the Times is one of the prominent and defiantly
Both Siderist media corporations left in American.
And while Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. is never going to return my call, nor is
his assistant, nor his assistant's assistant, nor his assistant's
assistant's intern... Margaret Sullivan worked face-to-face with the man for
four years. And since she almost certainly still has the publisher of
the Times on speed-dial, imagine what a service to civilization it would be
for her to do what 99.9% of us cannot do: call him directly and get him to either speak on the record...or refuse
to speak on the record... about why so many lying, equivocating hacks and
Both Siderist trolls are employed by him to write under his
masthead.
What a great service that would be.
Similarly Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman here.
At around the 20:19 mark, HCR and Freeman go on a long tear about
"both-sidesism" that was so blunt and lucid you'd think you were listening to [checks
notes] The Professional Left podcast from 15 years ago :-)
But seriously, it was so... what's the word I'm looking for?
Soothing? Nah. Reassuring? Thrilling? Close. Affirming?
Near enough. It was so affirming to hear someone with millions
of readers and listeners, speaking the truth so plainly and
clearly.
From Wikipedia:
Letters from an American (2019–present)
In September 2019, Richardson began writing a daily synopsis of political events associated with the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Originally posting late every evening or in the early hours of the next day on her Facebook page, Richardson pivoted to writing a daily newsletter, entitled Letters from an American. The newsletter deals with contemporary events she explains and relates to historical developments, with a focus on the health of American democracy.
As of December 2020, Richardson was "the most successful individual author of a paid publication on . . . Substack" and on track to bring in a million dollars of revenue a year. The newsletter received a "Best of Boston" award for "2021 Best Pandemic Newsletter" from Boston magazine. By January 2024, the newsletter had about 1.3 million people reading each edition. The Nation described her journalistic voice as "sincere, humble, approachable, and jargon-free."
Continuing, here's a small excerpt from the aforementioned YouTube:
HCR:And it made me think about the way that we are covering
the small steps toward dictatorship. And people saying, "Well, you
know, let me... let's take a look at at... really, they say... the ICE
guys say that this happened." And it's like they have been lying to
you all along. It has been proven in court that they are lying to you! Why
are you still saying that, you know, taking what they say at face
value?
And that's true across this across this administration. They get out
there, they lie, and the newspapers put it in there as if this has the
same kind of weight as a video taken at the time that shows something very
[different]. It is making my head explode.
And it is time for us to say no, we're not going to look at we're
not going to sit there and... and both sides these things.
We are marching toward a dictatorship. This is the bigger picture. And
when that bigger picture happens, the way you push back is the way the
United States used to push back against fascism. By calling it
out.
Freeman: And... and here's the thing. And here's
part of the way I think we...
we got to the long trail of both sidesing murder and everything else
that's being both sides right now.
I think casting our mind back in time, if you're thinking about a small
"d" democratic mentality of... of tolerating more than one point of
view. We were primed to at least allow for there to be more than one
side, right? That that felt like what you're supposed to do as a small "d"
democratic thinker is allow tolerate other points of view. So that felt
like, way back in time, "fairness". And I think it... it hung
on longer than it should have because of that because of that link.
Well, we're being fair.
We're allowing both sides past the time when that should have been there
because then it... it hung on. It hung on long past the time when the
other side was no longer feasible or possibly good in any way and people
didn't necessarily see that or want to see that.
But... but there was like a residue of that idea clinging. Now we have
people both sidesing in part because it allows them to kowtow to the
regime in one way and also it allows them to claim no responsibility for
anything. And they're just, you know, "Here we go. Uh... there are
two ways of looking at it. Thank you very much. We're going to go back now
and print out our newspapers. It's a cop out. It's a double copout.
It's a copout of not wanting to take a stand. It's a copout by folding to
the people who have power. Uh and it's, you know, a failure uh at
just the moment... and again, the moment that we're in, there are no two
sides.
It goes on quite a bit longer than that, and kudos to both women for saying
what they said.
Except...and it kills me to point this out because I really don't want to come
across as "Yesterday's Enterprise" Picard --
...except this is how HCR began her critique.
HCR: You know, I was looking today as I [do] every
morning. I read all the papers across the country -- all the [ones]
from the major cities -- and I'm not going to call this large famous
newspaper out by name -- but they're both sidesing what happened on the
streets of Minneapolis.
But you have to call them out by name, Heather. By name, title, profession and corporation.
You absolutely have to.
Because, respectfully, anything less at this perilous moment is simply not good enough.
This is a pic of the bros who make up a YouTube channel with the user-friendly
name, The Common Sense Conservative.
Because who can argue with common sense?
And this is the bio of the guy who runs the site:
I'm just a normal guy working a normal job trying to make a living for my
normal family. I have never been rich, I have never been bought and paid
for, and I have never just followed the talking points. As a nation, we are
quickly losing the ability of reasonable thought and common sense. My
biggest hope in doing this job is to bring some of that back into our
society. I hope to do this by filming events that the mainstream media
purposefully ignores, and providing my thoughts and perspective on current
events. I do this so that people may just take a moment and reflect on
what’s really going on in this country, and at the very least, walk away
being a little better informed.
Utterly anodyne stuff, right? Like the Amazing Randi's famous astrology
debunking demonstration --
-- it's written in a way that could plausibly apply to anyone of any political
stripe. He's just a regular, normal Murrican just like you! Who's
a-skeered that Murrica is losing its ability to do common sense and rational
thought, juts like you! And we all know there's stuff out there the
media won't talk about, right? But he will, and isn't that great!
But then we fire up the January 7, 2026 episode of The Common Sense Conservative and we find something very different.
Two of these meatheads were clearly reluctant to commit their opinions about the
murder of Renee Good by an ICE thug to a publicly viewable medium.
But one of them was not. Chris Wyatt, who ran for the Pennsylvania state
legislature back in 2024. From the York Dispatch, March 14, 2024:
Five Republican candidates make cases at state 92nd House District
debate
By and large, the policy positions of the five Republican candidates
for the 92nd District in the state House didn't differ much during their
debate Wednesday night.
Holly Kelley, Matthew Davis, Marc Anderson, Zachary Kile and Chris
Wyatt all said they'd defend the Constitution. All said they were
staunch supporters of the Second Amendment. All said they would push for
voter ID and in-person voting. They all proclaimed themselves pro-life;
while they called it a sensitive topic, several said they'd ban abortion
unconditionally if they could.
Turns out, Mr. Wyatt has a lot to say about Renee Good's
murder. And all of it exactly what you'd expect. This is my own rush, partial transcript, so any errors, typos or omissions are mine.
And I've added emphasis where I felt like it.
Wyatt: Well I have watched multiple footage of it...and there
were a lot of characters out there. What appears to be the case is
that ICE was in a neighborhood and these
Leftist Radical Insurrectionists Anti Rule-of-Law people had
blocked the road and obstructed Justice Department ICE from conducting its
mission...
You can see where this is going, right?
Wyatt: ...as they pulled forward they drove into an ICE
agent. Now people are refuting this, but if you see it from
different angles you can clearly see
his life was in jeopardy. And he drew his weapon and fired
four shots...
Wyatt: Some odd photographs with these
lunatic professional agitators out there... running around
screaming "Murderer! Murderer!" Now look, it's a
tactical decision by the agents on the ground so I will not fault them,
but there were dozens of ICE agents out there...they didn't form a cordon
or security perimeter, they allowed these idiots to run through -- this
one woman screaming ran down all the way up the to vehicle, within inches,
contaminating crime scenes, yelling "Murderer" and
"What the 'F' you doing".
In my view there should have been some better command and control.
These people should have been zip-tied and muzzled and locked up and
arrested for inciting a riot, and for interfering obstructing law
enforcement. They should be in federal prison
after conviction for obstructing law enforcement. That's my take on
it.
This assbag is so horny for Trump to declare open season on Liberals to he
can haul out his arsenal and go bag his limit that you can practically taste
it though the screen.
Wyatt: And we're hearing uh first the governor of of of
Minnesota
makes a threatening statement saying we need to get out there and protest this instead of using a rational voice saying, "Listen, let's not get this
situation overheated. Uh we'll have to see if this was justified, if it was
inappropriate."
Please note that, as been true of all fascists everywhere, "protest" =
"threats" and "incitement".
Wyatt: But instead of that,
he's not a real leader. Stolen Valor. Tampon Timmy.
He's a scumbag. And he incited violence. After he realized what he'd said, he comes back and tries to calm the
situation down, but it's too late.
But it's even worse than that. The
useless, scumbag mayor of Minneapolis said, uh, ICE, y'know, "Get
the 'F' out of Minnesota".
You know what buddy? I got a message for you. Get the 'F'
out of America. Why don't you go to Ontario? That's a nice place for people
like you.
Cohost McKinley tries to interrupt, but Wyatt Supremacist is all up
in his feels now.
Wyatt: Hold on! We're not done!
The slimy former Obama dirtball, Keith Ellison -- the
Criminal-in-Chief of Minnesota. He is out there inciting violence,
telling people to protest and obstruct federal law
enforcement.
And on top of that, Ilhan Omar opened her cake-hole up and put
herself in a box -- I think she's gonna find herself being removed from
the House of Representatives before too much longer because o her
shenanigans.
But all these officials are inciting violence.
Inciting... upping the temperature, and then blaming the federal
government for no cooperating. The federal government is trying to
cooperate.
You refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement. That's what
has caused this problem.
And you shoulda seen the mob out there!
These are insurrectionists! We have an insurrection which started in Minneapolis with George Floyd
and his come full circle back to Minneapolis. These people are not
Americans! They don't respect the Constitution! They
don't respect the law enforcement! They hate America! Just
deport them! I don't care if they were born here or not.
Deport them to Canada. It's a nice place for them to go.
Chalk this up as a real world object lesson in why it's pointless to try to
reason with MAGA meatbags.
It comes down to the unbridgeable chasm between how MAGA meatheads see of
themselves especially when they're talking among themselves -- normal,
reasonable, Common Sense patriots -- and what they actually are -- our own, home-grown fascist
meatheads with itchy trigger fingers who have been steeping in Hate Radio and
Fox News hate and lies for so long that they are beyond saving.
...this is what your Crazy Uncle Liberty was watching on his teevee.
As I wrote
15 years ago, our modern house divided against itself cannot stand.
...we cannot endure permanently half-Fox and half-free.
...we will become all one thing, or all the other.
And as of this writing, the Fox half of our nation has installed a fascist
madman in the White House for the second time, runs every branch of the
federal government, has shredded the Constitution, is invading sovereign
nations to steal their resources and saying so out loud, and shooting anyone
who gets in their way.
I don't like cilantro. I'm one of those people who are genetically wired
to register "soap" when I taste cilantro. Yes, I know. I
suffer terribly.
But some people love it. They add it to everything. Whatever the
dish it -- fish, pizza, mashed potatoes, oatmeal, Aunt Hattie's 90th birthday
cake -- in goes the cilantro. They can't get enough of that soapy ass
devil's weed.
And some of them assume that, if it tastes foul to you, well, you probably
just had one bad experience and you know what, it probably wasn't even
cilantro's fault! Or perhaps you just don't understand cilantro, man. Like on a deep, spiritual level.
Either
way, the solution is to keep trying it until you see the light.
Or maybe the problem is that you're slow; maybe they haven't explained the
glories of cilantro simply enough or a sufficient number of times for you to
get it yet.
Yeah. Maybe repetition is the key. Maybe the problem
isn't that they've used too much cilantro, but too little.
Maybe adding it to fish and pizza and mashed potatoes and oatmeal and Aunt
Hattie's 90th birthday cake wasn't enough to persuade you of its subtle
majesty. Maybe they need to throw every other spice away.
Put it in coffee. In fried chicken. In Coke.
If only there were some way to make it universal...
If we could all live, united, in a great Cilantroverse...
If you would just relax.
Sleep.
Let the pods do their work.
Then you would awake in a world where you will finally understand the glories
of cilantro.
Nope. Still tastes nasty.
And thus we arrive, at last, at the January 9, 2026
New York Times column by Mr. David Brooks. Which is, by my count,
1,507th column since he began his tenure at the at the Times in which he has
ham-fistedly shoved his Both Siderist cilantro down his reader's throats...if
that cilantro were ideological hemlock.
Date, time, subject -- none of that matters. This is literally the only
thing Brooks writes about. Or, more accurately, this is the only thing
the Sulzberger family pays him to write about The only thing
The Atlantic pays him to write about. The only thing PBS and NPR
book him on to talk about.
Two days ago, federal ICE goons carried out the cold-blooded, state-sanctioned
murder of a woman named Renee Nicole Good on the streets of Minneapolis,
Minnesota. Since many citizens were filming this from several different
angles, the facts are not in doubt: it was murder, pure and simple.
And before the body was cold, the Trump administration lies were flying thick
and fast.
DHS posted their lies on social media. They posted that she was a
violent rioter who weaponized her vehicle. That was a lie. That
she attempted to run over law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill
them—an act of domestic terrorism. That was a lie. That the ICE
officer fired defensive shots save his own life and that of his fellow
officers. That was a lie. That multiple ICE officers were hurt. That was
a lie.
And finally, who does the fascist regime blame for their public execution of
an innocent American citizen to blame for all of this? "Sanctuary
politicians" who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law
enforcement.
All of it is a lie.
And then of course, Trump himself began lying about it, calling her a
"professional agitator", driving the car in very disorderly, obstructing way
who then "violently, willfully, and viciously" ran over the ICE Officer. It's
hard to believe that he's even alive! But he's now recovering in the
hospital.
And who is to blame? It’s the Radical Left!
All lies. Every bit of it.
On Fox News, Jesse Watters highlighted that Renee Nicole Good, the woman
killed by ICE, had "pronouns in her bio". Fox News as usual is stunted
whenever a victim of these kind of incidents is a white person. They
lose much of their vocabulary.
And as this terrifying moment in American history was unfolding in real time,
what did Mr. Brooks choose to write about?
Take a wild fucking guess.
The problem is that the populists on left and right [in the work of fiction
Brooks is referencing]
are disgusted by the social order and values Rustin embodies, and they tear
it down...
That order and those restraints are now being destroyed.
People on both left and right decided that the old neoliberal order
was a hypocritical pose elites had adopted to mask their own lust for
domination...
Brooks then blats on for several paragraphs about “The Children of Light and
the Children of Darkness.”
The children of darkness have advantages in their struggle against the
children of light. They know what they want and don’t have to worry about
nuance. It’s easier to destroy a social order than to build one. They
capitalize on an elemental human reality: Humans fear death and their own
insignificance. They compensate for their fears of insignificance by
asserting their pride, by seeking power and control, if only vicariously
through some strongman.
And who exactly are the Children of Darkness?
The left progressives and the right populists who seek to tear down
the neoliberal order are being shortsighted — idiotic, frankly.
Every example of malice, intolerance, ideological arson and open fascism
Brooks cites -- every single one -- is drawn from the Right. And yet
because Brooks is so utterly hollow -- a bespectacled wraith so in love with
his dead and discredited ideology that, for 22 years, he has used his
New York Times column to prop up its corpse and wave its arms around
-- all he can think to write about at this game-changing moment in American history is what a rough time Awesome Moderates are having because of the
Extremes on Both Sides.
Because, as I noted a few paragraphs back, that is literally all Brooks ever writes about.
This is from me, back in 2010 ("How To Write a David Brooks Column"), telling any "Young Writer out there exactly how you too can learn to write
a New York Times Opinion Page Editorial just like America's Last Reasonable
Conservative, David Brooks!"
In just 10 Easy Steps you'll be punditting like a pro!
1) Pick a subject. Any subject. From Tasseled Loafers to Torture, it literally does not matter.
2)
Quote extensively from one person or group on the subject. It's OK to just
more-or-less copy and paste in big hunks of what
whatever-you-happen-to-be-reading-at-the-moment to flesh out your 800-word
column. Here at the Times we call that "research"!
3) Quote from
some other person or group on the same subject who appears to hold a
different opinion. If no actual opposition exists, just put on your Magic Green Jacket and invent an opposing opinion.
4) Although such is not
the case with today's subject, as often as possible, try to impute these
fictional distinctions to the different hemispheres of the political
Universe. So no matter how bigoted, reckless or just bugfuck crazy the Right
behaves, you just go right ahead and blandly assert with no supporting evidence whatsoever that the Left is equally and oppositely bad in exactly the same qualities and quantities. Here at the Times we call that
"seriousness"!
5) Discover in your final paragraph or two that --
amazingly! -- the precise midpoint between those two completely artificial
positions on an imaginary spectrum just happens to be exactly the Right and
Reasonable answer!
Oh boy!
6) Rinse and
repeat. No matter what the subject, no matter how false or bizarre the equivalence, just rinse and repeat.
Twice a week.
7) Every week.
8) Year.
9)
After year.
10) After year.
Long ago this stopped being a "style", and started being a fetish, Mr. Brooks
And now? 15 years later? Living under a lawless, murderous,
fascist regime spawned and midwifed into existence by David Brooks' Republican
party and David Brooks' conservative movement?
