What with the Beltway media reduced to curling into a collective, catatonic fetal position and shouting random poll numbers, and the Republican Party overrun by the zombies and hobgoblins it used to keep stashed in the basement, as a Liberal you usually have to really strain to see any signs of the truth of our current condition flickering in the background of the wasteland of our political media.
But every now and then a small platter of exquisite Truth with a capital "T" gets served up during the shank of the evening by one of Comcast's more disobedient stepchildren.
Don't get me wrong: where our broken and complicit media is concerned, we are deep into the weeds of Kremlinology these days --
During the Cold War, lack of reliable information about the country forced Western analysts to "read between the lines" and to use the tiniest tidbits, such as the removal of portraits, the rearranging of chairs, positions at the reviewing stand for parades in Red Square, the choice of capital or small initial letters in phrases such as "First Secretary", the arrangement of articles on the pages of the party newspaper Pravda and other indirect signs to try to understand what was happening in internal Soviet politics...
-- and any outfit that give Joe Scarborough his own show and routinely hands its cameras over to the liars and hacks of Mark Halperin, Ann Coulter, Dana Loesch, Michael Steele and Hugh Hewitt is clearly not involved in the telling-you-the-truth business in any way.
However, respect must be paid to Mr. Chris Hayes for putting former Obama speechwriter, Mr. Jon Lovett, on teevee to say some of the truest things you will hear anywhere (outside of the vituperative Liberal blogosphere where we have been saying such things every day for years) during this election cycle:
...how can anyone continue to act surprised that the average Trump voter is a proudly and irredeemably ignorant shit-for-brains?
And where do the paid masterminds of this disaster get the fucking nerve to congratulate each other on finally growing a conscience because the fires they deliberately set on my side of town so they could take over my country have now spread to their back yard?
To use a phrase Brad DeLong coined at least 13 years ago to frame his incredulity that any "grownup Republican" could possibly be thinking about voting for George W. Bush given the...
Aging True Conservatives -- who spent the last quarter of a century mocking and deriding the filthy Liberals who were begging them to stop playing with matches -- high-fiving each other for finally "looking with alarm" at a disaster they worked so very hard to create.
You know what else never gets old?
Conservative charlatans throwing around words like "respected" and "journalist" when they obviously haven't got the faintest idea what either of those words mean.
Which is why at this point the only meaningful response to these meat puppets jabbering nonsense is...
"@ron_fournier: Sitting b/w ferns isn't how you get millennials to vote. Transparency. Authenticity. Teamwork. Choices. Change. Purpose." pic.twitter.com/D0C3w7bMIh
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, Mr. David Brooks has spun another fabulous tale of those Awesome True Conservatives Of Tomorrow who will definitely be arriving to rescue us from those horrid not-at-all-Conservative reactionaries any day now.
While everyone else was busy gaping at the sight of Hillary and The Great Orange Clusterfuck, David Brooks snuck out behind the bushes to poop out another deplorable chapter of his Great Project:
First, the Bad Guys, who are miraculously distributed evenly across both sides of the American political spectrum, but are completely absent from the Acela Corridor Quiet Car which whisks Mr. Brooks from one end of the bubble in which he lives to the other, and back again, in silent, sleek, 21st Century climate-controlled comfort:
Reactionaries, whether angry white Trumpians, European nationalists, radical Islamists or left-wing anti-globalists, are loud, self-confident and on the march...
Soon, they believe, a false and decadent consciousness descended upon the land...
"Decadent" is one of Mr, Brooks' cuddle-words, like "on stilts" and "luxuriate" -- apparently the meanest things anyone at The Weekly Standard cool kid's table could ever think up. In Mr. Brooks' world, bad people are bad people, but really bad people are always decadently so. For example, some of you might remember way back when Mr. Brooks thought that merely standing athwart the Bush Administration's mad rush to send our kids off to die in the wrong war and saying "No" was the lowest kind of decadence (from The Weekly Standard, 2002 emphasis added):
For example, on September 19, a group of peaceniks took out a full-page ad in the New York Times opposing the campaign in Afghanistan and a possible campaign in Iraq. Signatories included all the usual suspects: Jane Fonda, Edward Said, Barbara Ehrenreich, Tom Hayden, Gore Vidal, Ed Asner, and on and on. ... The entire exercise is a picture perfect example of moral exhibitionism, by a group of people decadently refusing even to acknowledge the difficulties and tradeoffs that confront those who actually have to make decisions about policy.
"Peaceniks"?
Wow. I can definitely see why the New York Times snapped him up and handed him a job-for-life.
“Reactionaries are not conservatives,” [Mark] Lilla continues. “They are, in their way, just as radical as revolutionaries...
Reactionaries are marked by a militant, apocalyptic mind-set, a crisis mentality. They are willing to take extreme, violent action to turn back the clock. In their narcissism, they think they alone understand the crisis and are in a position to reverse the trends.
The paranoid style of conspiracy-mongering has become the lingua franca of the internet...
God damn you, internet!!!
"Conspiracy" is another Brooks cuddle-word. Of course, conspiracy-mongering does exist and these days is the major export of Conservative America, but in this context, Mr. Brooks is trying to draw a sharp contrast between those who are in Mr. Brooks' Very Serious Beltway Persons club and those who are not. For example, thoughtful, well-reasoned opinions such as "The Iraqi War is over and we kicked ass!" and "Ignore that idiot Trump, because Marco Rubio will definitely be the Republican presidential nominee" are the province of Very Serious Beltway Persons such as Mr. David Brooks.
"Peaceniks" and other Liberal degenerates, on the other hand, know only from conspiracies. Dark and dire delusions, based on nothing but their own, oh, let's say "decadent" impulses. Like for example back when "peaceniks" and other Liberal degenerates were standing athwart the Bush Administration's various derangements and saying "No", Mr. Brooks was describing us like this:
Finally, there is the dream palace of the American Bush haters. In this dream palace, there is so much contempt for Bush that none is left over for Saddam or for tyranny. Whatever the question, the answer is that Bush and his cronies are evil. What to do about Iraq? Bush is evil. What to do about the economy? Bush is venal. What to do about North Korea? Bush is a hypocrite.
In this dream palace, Bush, Cheney, and a junta of corporate oligarchs stole the presidential election, then declared war on Iraq to seize its oil and hand out the spoils to Halliburton and Bechtel. In this dream palace, the warmongering Likudniks in the administration sit around dreaming of conquests in Syria, Iran, and beyond. In this dream palace, the boy genius Karl Rove hatches schemes to use the Confederate flag issue to win more elections, John Ashcroft wages holy war on American liberties, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and his cabal of neoconservatives long for global empire. In this dream palace, every story of Republican villainy is believed, and all the windows are shuttered with hate...
Except, as it turned out, Rove really was a monster.
And Conservatives bigots rallying to the Stars-n-Bars really is a thing.
And Haliburton really did loot the treasury.
And Dick Cheney really did get glut himself decadently on Iraq War blood money,
And Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and that whole "cabal of neoconservatives" scumbags really did long for global hegemony.
Also opposition to Bush Administration policies was not "brainless and self-destructive" because -- surprise! -- those policies really did wipe out the Clinton surplus, run up a gargantuan deficit and put Social Security under the gun.
And so forth. And so on. And so forth.
But enough about the inconvenient past, because here comes the glorious future! And wouldn't you know it, all the Good Guys are Conservative!
The best weapon against the reactionary is not bubbly, blind optimism. It is, frankly, temperamental conservatism.
The conservative looks fondly to the past not as a paradise to return to but as a treasure trove of experience to borrow from...
The conservative seeks to revive, restore and reconstruct — to use the gifts of the dead to make the present a little sweeter and deeper...
Actually, Mr. Brooks, the "best weapon against the reactionary" is not one more dose of the toxic Imaginary Conservative patent medicine you have been peddling for decades.
The best weapon against the reactionary would be an honest accounting of our actual history.
The best weapon against the reactionary would be an honest reckoning of who was right, who was wrong, who was faithful to the nation, and who was a fraud who sold that nation out to advance his career.
In other words, the best weapon against the reactionary would be just the sort of blunt and honest performance evaluation which you could not possibly survive.
Last night, somewhere beneath the unsanctified ground, curled into a fetal position in his True Conservative crypt and weeping scalding loser tears, the next-to-least qualified lying lunatic to run for the Republican nomination in 2016 rethought his last-minute Come-to-Wormwood decision to lash his political fortunes to the Trump Hindenburg.
The "soul's midnight" must be weird for someone who has no soul.
However this morning, Lyin' Ted dried those tears and got right back to work as most nakedly depraved hobgoblin in American politics. From Politico:
Cruz: Trump had 'the strongest debate performance' yet
By POLITICO STAFF 09/27/16 10:39 AM EDT
Hillary Clinton “did not have a good performance,” according to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump had “the strongest debate performance he’s had in this election cycle.”
Cruz, who recently endorsed the man who beat him in the Republican primary after months of refusing to do so, embraced his new role as a Trump surrogate in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, dinging Clinton as “tired” and “formulaic” while praising Trump for drawing “strong contrast.”
Some of my tweets from debate night, which I delivered to you the consumer until it became such a comprehensive beat-down that I had to just sit back and marvel:
Check, check. Mike check. "Forget it Jake, it's...Chinatown". Check, check.
Too many "H"-sounds in your first sentence, Holt. Watch it!
Hillary sneezing into her hand before shaking was a nice touch
Hillary Clinton talks Sensible Policy. OMG, this is the most boringest debate ever!
Donald Trump: China. Mexico. Winning fight. So many of them. I have a friend. He has a plant and is taking Ford with him.
Donald Trump: They're stealing our jobzes! I'm going to cut taxes like mad.
Hillary Clinton: I believe in helping the middle class.
Donald Trump has the sniffles. Bad. Like glue-sniffing bad. Uh oh.
Hillary busts out The Maths. No fair!
Donald Trump: Solar power is a disaster. The Sun is a lie! Coal, bitches! Coal and whale oil!
Hillary drops the "F"-bomb. "Facts". How dare she.
Donald Trump: Hillary's tax program gives ISIS all our secret plans! She has been supporting ISIS her whole life.
Trump: Nobody ever learned nuttin' from tax returns. Many friends of mine say so. Many. Tremendous. Friends.
Tax returns, schmax returns! You tell 'em Donald! -- Al Capone
Trump: We need law and order. I love Charlotte. I have a lot of money there. Also that other city where that other thing happened.
Trump: Gangs of roving bands of armed immigrants. Cops are refusing to enforce the law. Cats and dogs living together!
Trump: In Chicago, Barack Obama is stalking the streets. With Hispanics. And I have a lot of money there!
That thing on Donald Trump's head looks unhappy. Very unhappy. Wants out of there. Now. Big time.
Donald Trump rode this racist birther pony all the way to this stage tonight & now he wants to shoot it & move on. Hey, fuck you, scumbag
How big a racist meathead do you have to be to looking at this lying lunatic and say "Yeah! This guy!"
Trump: Curtis LeMay loves me. Loves. Me.
Trump: My son loves his computers. What with the internet and the cybers and such.
Trump: ISIS uses the internet. Damn you, Obama!!!!!!!
"Take the oil." This shit again? Really?
Finally someone mentions the Bush Admin SOFA that set the rules for withdrawing troops from Iraq.
Trump: For fuck's sake why won't anyone call Trusted Newsman Sean Hannity. He was there. He helped me bury that hooker!!!
Donald Trump just said that blowing an Iranian ship out of the water in a fit of pique wouldn't start a war. Jesus.
Trump: I was almost a giant asshole. Almost. But I decided not to. Because I am a great man. Possibly the greatest.
If you were taking a shot every time this lying POS bracketed his lies with "Believe me" you'd h/b dead an hour ago.
Trump kept showering himself in napalm. Hillary kept handing him matches.
The media lowered the bar into the dirt for Trump and he still garroted himself on it and burst into flames.
Random typing chimp nearly generates single coherent sentence. Media swoons.
Over in Fox, Howard Kurtz's verdict was that Trump went "90 minutes without any major gaffes". Mistah Kurtz knows damn well who signs his checks.
Soon-to-be indicted human compost heap Chris Christie is spinning for Trump on MSNBC. Because apparently there are no other humans left on Earth to talk to.
Trump won't lose any votes because Trump voters are infinitely reprogrammable meatheads.
Time to shift the discussion to the fundamental incompetence of the Trump voter to participate in our democracy.
Trump: Lester, I'm gonna use one of my lifelines and call Sean Hannity.
It is long past time to shift the discussion to the fundamental incompetence of the Trump voter to participate in our democracy.
So with NATO, suddenly Don the Con gets fussy about people honoring their contracts.
Waiting for the Hugh Hewitt spin on the Trump sharting himself to death in from of 100 million people.
If you were taking a shot every time this lying POS bracketed his lies with "Believe me" you'd have been dead an hour ago.
Trump die-hard on MSNBC typical of the breed -- just repeating "Benghazi!" because that's how these racist morons live with themselves.
Has anyone ever completely immolated himself in front of more people than Donald Trump is doing right now? #askingforafriend
A merciful referee would have stopped this after the third round.
