...was the work of unreconstructed torture pimp and Trump fanboy Marc Thiessen?
Practice, kids, Years and years of practice.
I only lacked the imagination to guess that he co-created this filth with Danielle"Lauren Boebert with a thesaurus and smart girl glasses" Pletka.
Because I guess it took both of them to drag a notion this bad up from the bottom of the Pit of Terrible Ideas and flop it onto the pages of the Democracy Dies In Our Boardroom paper.
Understand the procedure now? Just raise the price of eggs, tell them fairy tales about Haitian immigrants are eating their pets, feed them lies about transexuals...repeat this to them over and over again as "news", and then you just sit back and watch the pattern.
They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and the Pittsburgh suburbs, east, west, south and north somewhat.*
Can we, at long last and for the sake of Mighty Koalemos, the Greek god of stupidity, finally be done with this ridiculous, billion-dollar snipe hunt for "decent" Republicans who, if we ask them real purdy and promise them a cookie and a parade, will maybe-maybe-maybe hold their nose and lower themselves to voting for a commie, baby-killing Democrat?
As it minimum, it would be a great kindness and a service to American democracy for all of those Never Trumpers who never understood the doomsday machine fascist party they spent their professional lives creating, and still don't fucking get it (such as) --
A Good Country’s Bad Choice
And what I got wrong about the 2024 election, By David Frum
-- to finally stand down, vacate their positions in the elite media and turn them over to those Liberals who never had any illusions about who Republican voters were and what their real agenda was.
This, of course, will never happened because it is impossible for any Never Trumper to take a long, hard look in the mirror and conclude, "I actually suck at the one thing I get paid to do." And it is equally impossible for media executives to contemplate the idea of hiring people who would show up for work on day one loaded for bear with embarrassing receipts dating back to the Before Time.
*In case you are unfamiliar with the quote.
* [Prologue: If you have never read Jonathan Swift's excellent 1729 satire "A Modest Proposal" please understand that this missive of mine is delivered in that spirit. Onward.]
Sure, abolishing gay marriage may sound "controversial:, but hear me out.
The one thing the Centrist Big Brains and Never Trumpers with media platforms all seem to agree on is that Democrats lost because something something "culture". They're all very careful never to explain exactly what "culture" means, but they are all very clear that Democrats must dump the words and the people and who make "Americans" feel icky.
Example.
This is Bill Galston, nearly 80, completely out of touch reality and very hard to listen to since literally every third word out of his mouth is "y'know" on the Never Trump Beg to Differ podcast:
...the [Democratic] party is going to have to go through a hard process of dumping overboard the ballast that threatened to sink the ship.
This is Sam Harris, smug contrarian asshole who has been driven right 'round the bend by trans stuff, on the Never Trump Bulwark podcast.
The Democratic party is a... is a this very rigged, uh, Rube Goldberg device of death. Which is just, y'know, rigged to destroy, to... to cancel the reputation of anyone who touches the wrong gear or lever. And, uh, we have to... we have to tear it down to the studs. I mean it's just like this... is there... Actually has to be a purge of the activist class in Democratic politics. Otherwise, y'know, this... no one we put forward will be electable.
All lines on the pundit electoral map converge here: Democrats have to go all-in on peeling off some of the cow-dumb mouthbreathers who make up the margins in these very close elections. The goofs who have no idea how anything works, what anyone stands for, who pay zero attention to the news and who broke late for Trump this year by a wide margin.
You know, the clueless mopes Jay Leno used to interview during his "Jaywalking" bit.
The cast of Idiocracy.
The Kallikaks.
America's ambulatory, unprocessed Soylent Green.
We who remember All in The Family need to stop mentally shaking our heads ruefully at the millions of Archie Bunkers who now control this country, and instead bend every oar in the service of convincing at least some of those racist dum-dums to vote Democratic.
Because, for you Robocop fans out there, the Great Wad (as my friend, the late Harlan Ellison used to call them) does not admire the bespectacled kid working a night shift at a filling station while studying plane geometry:
They Great Wad hates that guy. Instead, they admire the asshole on the motorcycle who mocks the idea of being a "college boy" and takes what he wants by force.
Those are the ones we need to somehow bamboozle into the Big Tent. And believe me, I understand how uncomfortable this might make some of you. In fact, way back five minutes ago I wrote a lot about madness of credulous Liberals, who had been right all along, to allow themselves to be shoved into a corner (again) and control over the public conversation about what the hell had happened to the GOP ceded to the likes of recently-former Republicans like Rick Wilson and Charlie Sykes and Matthew Dowd and Joe Scarborough.
Ceded without the slightest hint of genuine confession or repentance or atonement. Ceded without any acknowledgment that we Liberals even existed, except as wild-eyed straw men impeding the fortunes of this new "Pro-Democracy Alliance" the Never Trumpers were somehow now in charge of. As this tiny handful of recently-former Republicans began to completely colonize the print and teevee media, I was told, repeatedly and in no uncertain terms, to sit down and shut up.
For God's Sake, driftglass, don't you realize that the Fate of American Democracy was at stake!
[Fun Fact: Turns out that handing whatever was left of the "Liberal" media over to a bunch of recently-former Republicans accomplished nothing. And yet there they still are. Still useless, still wrong, and still telling us what to do.]
So believe me when I tell you that I well understand your revulsion at the idea of pandering to meatheads for votes, but for God's Sake, don't you realize that the Fate of American Democracy is at stake!
And keep in mind that the attitudes of the bigots and imbeciles are set in concrete, so you can forget about changing them or persuading them with "facts". They're completely immune to that. Instead, just like Republicans, we need to focus on a few their odious prejudices and deranged conspiracy theories and pretend like hell that, A) we agree with them, B) they are very smart for believing what they believe, and C) we promise to make whatever they're mad at go away.
Also keep in mind, they have the memory of a mayfly, so it doesn't matter if we actually deliver on those promises. This is a great big hammer that foolish Democrats keep leaving in the tool box. In the New Politics, it only matters that the meatbags think you delivered on your promises. Donald Trump built a couple of shitty miles of his stupid wall, Mexico laughed at the thought that they were going to pay for any of it, and yet the meatbags think it was a huge success.
After all, if God hadn't wanted them to be greased, fleeced and decreased, She would not have made them chumps. Seen that way, not scamming them may even be sacrilegious.
We'd be doing it to Save American Democracy. And is there a nobler cause to be found in this broken old world?
But we have a lot of catching up to do, since Republicans have already picked the Hate shelves nearly clean, which is no surprise since they've been at it for so long that Hate has become the sole binding force that keeps their volatile coalition of bigots, imbeciles, gun nuts, xenophobes, homophobes, misogynists, christopaths and grifters together.
Consider that, with Barack Obama, Democrats offered the Right a compassionate, polymath, scandal-free constitutional law professor. A family man with family values. With a strong, beautiful wife and amazing kids. A man who wanted to roll up his sleeves and help America get back on it's feet. And who obsessively tacked to the ever-shifting Fake Center in hopes of finding partners in fixing America's real problems on the other side.
What the hell were we thinking!? And a woman of color? That's twice as bad!
This is not what Republicans want in a black person. They do not want someone they have to look up to. Who is in charge of things. Or funny. Or smart. Or competent. Or articulate. No, no, no. Republican want a black man who knows his fucking place. Republicans don't want black folks gone; they want them servile and deferential. Bowing low to white power like they did back in the good old days.
And that's what they got in men like Michael Steele who happily groveled for Rush Limbaugh's approval because Mikey Mike knew his fucking place. Like grinnin', clappin' Tim Scott who went so far as to marry his "Canadian girlfriend" for a shot at the highest office in the land, running in a party that never had any intention of giving it to him. And now they have Byron Donalds right out front, smiling and lying and happily eating all of Donald Trump's shit and asking for seconds, and getting absolutely nothing in return.
No way we can match that.
Republicans have also already stripped women of their basic civil rights, and most of the white ladies didn't care. Didn't care that Trump was a rapist. Didn't care that he was besties with Jeffrey Epstein. Instead, what they know for damn sure and certain is that Obummer was a Kenyan mooslim, Hillary drinks baby's blood and had Vince Foster murdered, and Kalama Harris is tranny loving commie furriner just like her father!
So we can't compete with them for the incels, the bro-vote, or the self-loathing women. And unless we run Tony Montana next time --
-- the male Latino voters who bailed this time -- because a woman's place is either decorative arm-candy or in the kitchen making dinner and in the bedroom making babies -- are unlikely to return.
This election proved we can't compete with Republicans in demonizing Haitians or Puerto Ricans either.
Republicans in Michigan and Pennsylvania showed they could run anti-semitic ads in one state, and anti-Muslim ads in another, and cash in on both, so they pretty much own hating both of those groups.
And no matter how frantically our Never Trumper and Centrist "allies" insist that it's not too late to get in on that slagging transexuals action, Republicans -- led by Failed Botox-and-taxidermy experiment, Nancy Mace -- own that now too.
So who is left out there in the land of the free for us to target? Some group that the bigots and imbeciles already hate enough for at least some of them to consider hooking up with the Dems next time? The Irish? Italians? Canadians?
Nope. Sorry, but none of those get the blood boiling enough or fire enough berserk lightening into the amygdala to get the meatheads off their asses and to the polls for Democrats.
C'mon people, the answer is right there in front of us. Who do the meatheads both hate and about whom (and this is the important part) do they feel they're being cruelly oppressed by the Woke Mob and prevented from blabbing their hatred in public?
It's the Gays, stupid.
You think these assholes have evolved on that subject in the 20 years since Matthew Dowd and Karl Rove used it to help get Dubya re-elected in 2004? Are you high? Once again, wake the fuck up: these mopes still haven't gotten over Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865.
The New York Times, February 24, 2004
Bush Backs Ban in Constitution on Gay Marriage
President Bush said today he supported a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, declaring that such a measure was the only way to protect the status of marriage between man and woman, which he called "the most fundamental institution of civilization."
In an announcement fraught with social, legal and political implications, Mr. Bush urged Congress to act on the amendment quickly and send it on to the state legislatures. Quick action is essential, he said, to bring clarity to the law and protect husband-and-wife marriages from a few "activist judges."
"The voice of the people must be heard," Mr. Bush said in a brief White House speech that Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, called an attempt to find "a wedge issue to divide the American people."...
Of course it was "a wedge issue to divide the American people." In the New Politics, there are nothing but wedge issues, because the meatheads we need to win elections do not give one tiny shit about anything else.
I tell you, out here in the Real World where I live, the meatheads are dying to go back being able to openly mock the "queers" and "fairies" and the "dykes". Go back to telling "fag" jokes in public without fear o censure or side-eyes from their fellow church goers, which is why Democrats must go after the Sodomites with as much zeal as we speak about climate change.
And it'll be so easy. Targeting gay school teachers. Railing against Hollywood's Gay Agenda ruining America. And you know it's The Gays who are driving housing prices out of reach of real Americans. And for gosh sakes, my kids can even enjoy watching Saw III without seeing commercials for gay couples doing laundry and pickout out furniture! What about a spirited campaign to have Anita Bryant, Robert Mugabe and Phyllis Schlafly put on American postage stamps? All the old triggers and stereotypes are still there, lurking just below the surface of oppressive Woke-enforced civility, and for once maybe we can beat the GOP at their own game.
And the first step is the abolition of gay marriage. And we need to go all-in on this. Some of us can get away with merely writing pseudo-scholarly contrarian articles in respected journals ala degenerate gambler Bill Bennett and high-class bigot William Buckley explaining how The Gays sap the moral strength of the nation. This will not be a problem: if the Times will publish Tom Cotton, they'll publish any filth as long as it draws flies.
Others will need to take a lower road: maybe going full Westboro Baptist Church -- waving the Bible and screaming about Leviticus -- if that's what it takes. But we all need to get behind this thing and push.
Or don't you care about Saving American Democracy?
Maybe we can even lure some of the Log Cabin Republicans into our Big Tent -- they certainly seem self-loathing enough to go for it.
Now I am not blind to the hardship this will impose on The Gays (Note to self I: commission a focus group the find out if beating up on blind people would win us any votes in Pennsylvania. Or hating handicapped people generally. Note to self II: Especially people with mental disabilities -- the meatheads are nearly as thirsty to reintroduce "retard" into the MAGA out-'n-proud lexicon as they are "fag".) nor am I unsympathetic, but sacrifices must be made. Remember, people, to impress the meatheads and get enough of 'em on our side to swing elections, purges must be done. Ballast must be jettisoned.
I understand that coming out loudly against gay marriage may disorient some people. I, for one, will be saddened to see the marriages of prominent gays and lesbians like Pete Buttigieg, Tim Miller and Sara Longwell legally annulled and their children taken away, but what choice do we have?
Personally, I enjoyed seeing Mayor Pete on Fox running rings around the hosts, and I'm sure that Miller and Longwell meant well when they insisted that the path to victory was for Dems to climb into bed with Liz Cheney, but let's look at the cold, hard facts.
Sending Mayor Pete to Fox News accomplished exactly nothing except impressing some liberals who were going to vote Democratic anyway. And let's face it, the Never Trump "movement" has also accomplished exactly nothing except salvaging the careers and bank accounts of a handful of elite misfits who were run out of their own party gby the monster they created.
It's all very sad, but sacrifices to the bigotry of the meatheads must be made. Tribute to the paranoia of the meatheads must be paid. After all, in this Kobayashi Maru moment, the Salvation of American Democracy hangs in the balance. And how selfish and self-destructive it would be to value the civil rights of the few over the Salvation of American Democracy for the many.
Look, we probably won't actually have to do most of this. Remember the thing about the MAGA memory being Etch-a-Sketch sketchy. We'll just need to promise to do it, then publicly emmiserate the families of a few prominent gays, then declare victory over the Gay Agenda. Republican voter are morons. They'll forget.
And if it should come to pass, after years of winning elections and successfully fundraising off of this stuff, that we must actually deliver on it, well, this Supreme Court is clearly ready and willing to ignore stare decisis, eradicate decades of precedent and strip away the civil rights of certain groups of American citizens. And if that's not enough. that same Supreme Court has granted the office of the president godlike powers and immunity from everything, so we'd have that in our back pocket too.
As I said, this would all be very sad, but surely a small price to pay to Save American Democracy.
Update: For the record, the graphic at the top of this post is not a parody. It's an actual relic from a Conservative ad from 2005.
The ad was produced by USA Next, a conservative group that supports creating personal accounts within Social Security and has aggressively criticized the AARP, which disagrees about the Social Security reform.
More here:
In February 2005, USA Next hired the advertising agency behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign that attacked 2004 presidential candidate John F. Kerry. The group gained instant notoriety late in that month when they placed an advertisement on several conservative web sites and blogs. This advertisement depicted a large red 'x' over a picture of a soldier and a large green check mark over a picture of a just-married homosexual couple.
First, a little background. This was Tim Miller, on his Bulwark podcast, November 21, 2024:
Also this:Miller: I've stayed on "X" part because of my addiction, that's not as bad as [Elon Musk's] but is... is real and something I'm reflecting on. But I... I refused to go into a liberal bubble social media. I was on Threads for one week it was unbearable. I, like, if this podcast conversation we just had... if any sentence of it was put onto Threads you would be overwhelmed with people, like, shaking their finger at you and telling you how wrong you are.
PSA: Not going to Bluesky or squib or Meatspace. If you want to do that, cool, you can find my stuff at https://t.co/F6fA5UlPNV / Youtube.
— Tim Miller (@Timodc) November 12, 2024
I find Elon mostly terrible but I don't think siloing is healthy for our discourse or useful for my job/understanding of our politics. TL;DR pic.twitter.com/OH4gOH8Ifv
And here is Tim Miller four years earlier, in October of 2020, on Elon Musk's Nazi shithouse he will not leave because he values open and honest exchanges which -- boo hoo! -- he can't find on a "liberal bubble social media".
At the time, he had been bitching that he was impatient with Republican fence-straddlers who kept hemming and hawing, pretending they weren't sure who Trump "really" was, because, he said, we know who Trump is.
True enough. However, I had the temerity to I point out to him on that it had been the Left which had actually been right about the Right all along.
Here was his reaction to that open, honest exchange.
So why bring it up?
Because you may have noticed that the virtual MSNBC subdivision which The Bulwark has become really, really doesn't want to hear from Liberals. At all. They have one, tame, in-house lefty who can get as dark and depressing as anyone else, but there is a palpable aversion to putting anyone behind a microphone who might bring receipts from the Before Time to the party.
Might use the "T" word -- "trajectory" -- when talking about the Republican party.
Can't have that. No, no no.
Instead, Tim Miller brought on the insufferable Sam Harris, who came roaring in with one goal in mind: angrily deploy every straw man in the troop carrier to explain why Kamala Harris was unable to persuade a mob of unpersuadable lumpen MAGA goofs. Because, I guess, insufferable slag-they-Left-without-ceasing assholes like Sam Harris are much closer to The Bulwark spirit than any liberal, anywhere.
I will translate what I heard into human language.
Kamala Harris lost the election because... of the completely insane Left's complete domination of "the culture" [Translation: Speech codes and other dumbfuckery on a handful of elite universities.]
Kamala Harris lost the election because... of all the trans stuff.
Kamala Harris lost the election because... of "Latinx".
Kamala Harris lost the election because... of, OMG, the pronouns!
But she didn't run on any of those things. Joe Biden didn't say or do any of those things, or govern in any way that reflected any of those things.
Sure, but Harris didn't disavow any of those things hard enough or loud enough! Harris needed to "Sister Soulja" them tranny weirdos!
Also Kamala Harris lost the election because of the wokety, wokety woke woke!
So should Trump have disavowed any of the thousands of obvious, deranged, hateful lies he has spewed? Should he have had to explain the many promises he broke, or policies he reversed?
Oh fuck no. Voters just laugh that shit off.
Sam Harris flatly claimed there is an "epidemic of double mastectomies among 16-year-olds”, which is wildly untrue,. and that we are “watching biological men punch women in the face in MMA contests or anywhere" which is Trump-level lying.
Honestly, I was waiting for Harris to angrily insist that part of the reason Kamala Harris lost was that she wouldn't sign Grover Norquist's No-Tax-Increase pledge, or her flag pin was crooked, or she refused to agree to put Ayn Rand's picture on the $20 bill.
Actual Sam Harris quote:
Harris: The Democratic party is a... is a this very rigged, uh, Rube Goldberg device of death. Which is just, y'know, rigged to destroy, to... to cancel the reputation of anyone who touches the wrong gear or lever. And, uh, we have to... we have to tear it down to the studs. I mean it's just like this... is there... Actually has to be a purge of the activist class in Democratic politics. Otherwise, y'know, this... no one we put forward will be electable.
Tim Miller's mighty pushback to this tantrum was:
Miller: Yeah, um, yeah I don't know... I mean.. I... some of that is maybe a little overstated for me. Certainly having a candidate who could speak about it, uh, off the cuff and speak about it deftly and I...
Another Sam Harris quote:
Harris: Black Lives Matter was clearly a a highly corrupt operation, uh, and a grift...
Harris came spring-loaded and ready to spend an hour raging that Kamala lost because of my pet issue, which makes me wonder about the rarified, well-appointed bubble these assholes live in. Do they know any actual humans? Except to stop for gas and take a piss and complain about the weak WiFi, have any of these people ever spent more than five minutes in places like where I live? Around a lot of actual Trump voters?
Because, take it from me, nothing is more futile than trying to persuade these reprogrammable meatbags of anything they don't wish to hear. If you spent a week, slowly debunking the nonsense around trans issues, they'd just switch to some other rationalization for doing what they were going to do all along anyway.
Finally, after the third troop transport full of straw men landed and Harris had gotten so high on his self-righteous dudgeon that he was in danger of being clouted on the head by orbiting space junk, even Tim Miller hadda say, now wait a minute.
Miller brought up the Nancy Mace example, and suddenly master-debater Harris began equivocating and back-pedaling. He hadn't heard all the details, y'know. And he wasn't so sure Tim was explaining every nuance of the situation, y'know. And he wasn't really up on the topic, y'know.
Really? Because based on his obsession with this one fucking subject, I'd have thought this was the only topic he was really up on. They he began spinning out "answers" like solving this "problem" "architecturally". Y'know, just build more bathrooms and make them gender-neutral. Democrats could just go ahead and do that by themselves, right?
Tim pointed out that overarching all of this was the problem of the huge double standard here: Democrats are held to high standards, while Republicans are held to no standards at all.
Harris responded by taking out his invisible meerschaum philosopher pipe, and mused that, yes, this was a problem Puzzing. Very puzzling indeed. Then he walked himself backwards up the same twisted path he had just come down, negating pretty much everything he had just said and musing that this was indeed a vexing problem. Perhaps one that could not be solved by politics at all because Republican voters, y'know, are blood oath members of a personality cult, and, as such, basically lost to reason.
And then it was over.
And you know what?
I'm beginning to suspect The Bulwark only values certain kinds of open and honest exchanges.
Anyone care to bet on the outcome when Donald Trump dispatches Seal Team Six to "persuade" the Supreme Court Nine that his novel interpretation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, or the 22nd Amendment, or prima nocta, or whatever is the correct one?
All of which would be completely constitutional under Supreme Cult's own MAGA majority ruling in Trump vs. The United State ruling earlier this year.
Of course, all the usual scum and quislings on the court will need no persuading, but a unanimous decision would look so much better -- so much more "bipartisan" and "centrist" -- for the history books, don't you think?
And Trump's heavily-armed praetorian guard wouldn't even need to be in the room with the "justices". They could be stationed outside, providing "security", because you know how dangerous those Liberal thugs are.
Just a phalanx of Murrican patriots protecting the important work of the high court from the commie, baby-killing Left.
Making sure no one enters or leaves until the court has come to a decision.
The right decision.
Who could argue with that?
