Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Steal This Schnook


Dubya's Extreme Makeover

Years ago, the elder sages of Left Blogylvania predicted that once the full, breathtaking, pandimensional scope of Dubya’s serial crimes, treasons and fuckups began to swim into focus, the Conservatives would find themselves in a terrible bind.

First, they have made Saint Ronnie the Ur-Conservative. Have made it an article of faith that the closer one moves to perfect Gipperhood, the closer one moves to a pure, noumenal Conservative form.

But when you air the room out of all the smoke from Peggy Noonan’s ideological hookah and get down to Reagan’s Legacy as defined by its results, you find the following:

1. A reckless foreign adventurism in the name of that Manifest Shining City Jebus Pax Americana thingie they all believe in…as long as it is other people’s kids who spill their blood.

2. A penchant for first manufacturing tyrants and terrorists and then feigning shock when they behave like tyrants and terrorists.

3. Proudly presiding over the transfer of as much wealth and power as possible into as few hands as possible.

4. A contempt for the Poor and the Middle Class, and an evil enthusiasm for pitting one against the other to consolidate their power.

5. A contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law.

6. A barefaced reliance on lies and propaganda, and a converse contempt for a free and aggressive press.

7. A firm belief that government which helps people is Evil, while intrusive government which sides with corporate and fundamentalist interests against individuals and helps punish people from their workplace to their bedroom is Good. Government that punishes people in the name of Jebus is Extra Super Good.

8. A reflexive answer of “More tax cuts for rich people” to every problem. If the problems persist – if the tax cuts themselves are what has blown a hole below the waterline of the Ship of State -- you need to drill a bigger hole!

9. A giddy eagerness to give and get electoral reacharounds from the scum of the Segregationist South and the Religious Right.


So, second, by mapping these results-based-Reaganometrics over the record of the Crawford Dauphin, any idiot can see that Dubya has embraced each and every one of these core tenets of Modern Conservativism with a bloody vengeance.

That Dubya is, in fact, the Greatest Fucking Conservative Evah!

Third, the Right has spent most of its ink, bandwidth and lung capacity for six straight years ferociously defending their Dear Leader against any hint that he might be anything short of All Knowing, All Wise and All Benevolent. Anyone who takes sides against The Family gets thrown under the bus. Anyone who whispers a discouraging word gets the Full Rove. Anyone who simply points out that what the Dear Leader said last year is in direct contradiction to what he says now is a Liberal America Hater.

Anyone who dissents is a Traitor.

So after six years of relentlessly vicious slander against anyone who even respectfully disputed the Bicycle Chief Brilliance and his Mad Conservative Skillz, I laughed to myself at the suggestion by the sages of Left Blogylvania that the Conservatives would try to claw their way out of their intractable bind by attempting to distance themselves from Bush.

By actually resorting to disavowing him using the same universal epithet they use to hex away All Evilness Everywhere: by declaring him "Liberal".

Nah, I thought. They’ve gone all-in on their Dear Leader and, I thought, there just is no way they can back down now.

But of course I forgot to factor in the fact that the core of the GOP is now almost entirely composed of the reprogrammable golem of the 27%.

And the 27% are congenitally incapable of even entertaining the idea that their dogma can possibly fail. Dogma trumps blood. Trumps the Constitution. Trumps causality. Trumps truth. Trumps Reality itself, because like the Stalinists they so eeriely resemble, burned onto their motherboards is the ineradicably fanatical belief that Conservativism cannot Fail; Conservativism can only Be Failed.

These are junk citizens. Democracy’s Left Behindmost, and if you tell ‘em Dubya is the Second Coming of Reagan on Monday, they’ll cheer until their throats burst.

Then turn right around on Tuesday and tell ‘em he is a Sekrit Liberal, and they’ll boo just as loudly.

Tell ‘em on Wednesday that Dubya never existed and that Democrats are somehow magically to blame for Iraq and they’ll spaz out in wingnut ecstasy, jizz their Underoos, and start speaking in tongues.

Tell ‘em on Thursday that we are at war with Eastasia -- that we have always been at war with Eastasia – and they will march this country into the sea singing “Let The Eagle Soar”.

And so it has been on the Right for months now (example here) but, you might well ask, what Useful “Liberal” Idiot, could possibly be relied on to fall into line with this latest Conservative Lie so that the rest of the scuttlefish Right can stand on their hind legs and howl “You see! Libruls think Dubya’s a Librul too!”?

Why none other that Richard “I know funny and Stephen Colbert is not funny” Cohen.

Let the revisionism begin!

Bush the Neoliberal
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, May 29, 2007; A13
Years ago, someone coined the term "neoliberal." I was never sure what it meant, and it has since fallen into disuse, but whatever the case, I'd like to revive (and mangle) the term and apply it -- brace yourself -- to George W. Bush. He's more liberal than you might think.

You recoil, I know. After all, the conventional wisdom is that Bush is the most conservative of all presidents, an advocate of limited government, minimal taxes and, when it comes to the quintessentially liberal concern with civil liberties, the man who gave us the twin black eyes of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It's an appalling record.

But consider this: An overriding principle of conservatism is to limit the role and influence of the federal government.


No. It’s not. It used to be a thousand years ago before the GOP was swallowed whole by Christopaths, Corporatists and Segregationists.

To continue to pretend otherwise says vastly more about the incredible intellectual dishonesty of Mr. Cohen than is says about anything having to do with what Liberal or Conservative means in the 21st Century.

Mr. Cohen then waxes rhapsodic about George Bush’s “liberal” attitudes towards education (Since when has a fetish for harshly conformist, uniform, teaching-to-the-test approach to learning been “liberal”?) and immigration, until finally his laserlike vision lands on Dubya’s Iraqi Catastrophe and why his motives were really “liberal”.

Cohen continues...


Allow me to make the case that this is also true when it comes to Iraq. I acknowledge that the war is a catastrophic mistake and was incompetently managed. But if you don't think it was waged on behalf of oil or empire, then one reason for our involvement was an attempt to do some good -- rid the world of a really bad guy and make life better for Iraqis and others in the region.

This "liberal" intent may have left Dick Cheney cold and found Don Rumsfeld indifferent, but it appealed to Bush and it showed in his rhetoric and body language.


"But if you don't think it was waged on behalf of oil or empire..." ?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Who but the most diehard wingnut believes that we went to war primarily for other, nobler reasons? Who but the most hard-core Bush regime dead-ender could parse the despicable lies we were told to trick us into Iraq and reach any other conclusion?

Cohen then completes this bleat-and-switch by awkwardly swiping the disaster that is Bush Presidency from the Temple of Ronnie,

running like hell, and lobbing the stinking, unequaled failure that is this Administatration’s record into my back yard.

Bush's neoliberal instincts have come a cropper across the board.


Fuck you, Cohen.

Nush/Cheney was the proud choice of the Right in 2000. They eagerly rode Dubya's Cornucopial Codpiece to victory in 2002, and knowing exactly who and what he was, they stood loudly and proudly with him in 2004 while he used every filthy scam in Conservative Karl Rove’s capacious witchbag to jam the worst Administration in American history back onto the throne.

And for good measure, Conservatives sent him back to complete his project of destroying the Federal Government with yet another rubber stamp Ultra Conservative Congress to drive the getaway car and act as his loyal footstool and bidet.

Starting with the Southern Strategy, Consertativism in American has long since devolved into nothing but braying, militant Ignorance, Racism and Fear plowing an arrow-straight furrow towards fascism in harness with Christopathic Fanaticism.

Reagan is their God. Dubya is his Prophet.

And, Mr. Cohen, the kindest thing that can be said of anyone who tries to gin up some ridiculous red herring that makes it easier for Conservatives to slip out of the noose they themselves spent 30 years weaving is that he is a blithering idiot.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you drive though the country, you will find that in big stretches there are only wackos on the radio. AAR is aimed at the coasts - obviously. So why is the US left so content to just talk to itself?

driftglass said...

rootless2,
Hate Radio has been in continuous national operation for about 23 years.

Air America has been up and running (barely, off-and-on) for 2-3 years.

Liberals made the cardinal error of assuming that no one would actually be stupid enough to believe the loony, racist shit Hate Radio (and later, Fox News) slings.

Liberals were dead wrong. Thought they would play fair and square with True Believers. And were nearly too late in coming to terms with how intractibly Archie Bunkerish millions of Americans really are.

Also Liberals are just fucking cheap.

Over the years the Right has poured billions in wingnut welfare into newspapers and magazies, books, teevee, radio, blogs, think tanks etc.

Liberal writers by-and-large must be part-timers and /or survive on grants, stipends, ads and digital bake sales.

Anonymous said...

The liberal foundation world seems to be about finding jobs for nice people who know Mother or who went to Harvard. The rightwing foundation world is about winning at all costs.

One of the previous blogs I almost got banned from was Firedoglake when I rudely asked Soros why he spent so much money and time pretending to be Karl Popper instead of buying radio stations and cable networks.

jurassicpork said...

3. Proudly presiding over the transfer of as much wealth and power as possible into as few hands as possible.

Kinda reminds me of Eugene Debs' definition of investment: "The dreams of many in the hands of one."

Talk about a chilling scenario. God bless Reaganomics and pass the ammo so I can blow my fucking brains out.

As usual, a great screed.

Phil said...

On fuck no you don't!
Cohen can pull his lips up over his head and burp before he can lable Bush ANY kind of liberal.
And instead of apologetically trying to turn the turd into a lovey dovey bewildered bumpkin, he can sit down and drink a fifth of tequila while he contemplates his sins.
Fuck you is right.

Blader said...

"So why is the US left so content to just talk to itself?"

Because we don't have preachers who tell us the hate radio jizbags are channeling God?

BitterHarvest said...

BOO-yah! That was a winner, D. The two best lines:

...like the Stalinists they so eeriely resemble, burned onto their motherboards is the ineradicably fanatical belief that Conservativism cannot Fail; Conservativism can only Be Failed.

Starting with the Southern Strategy, Consertativism in American has long since devolved into nothing but braying, militant Ignorance, Racism and Fear plowing an arrow-straight furrow towards fascism in harness with Christopathic Fanaticism.



You tell 'em, D! Nobody on the interwebz whups those republicans like you do.

Dubya's legacy will be something they will want "to thrash and worm out of harder than a vampire strapped into a tanning bed," as you once said, but it won't work. The Worst President in American History is going to be their albatross for a generation, and if anybody tries to forget it we will be there to necklace them with it every time.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry, did someone just cite getting banned from firedoglake as illustrative of something?

It's a kickass blog, but they're sorta famous for having trigger-happy moderators. I'm pretty sure you can get banned for saying "I agree" without enough exclamation points.

Anyway, what was my point? Oh, right, Cohen. Criminy, whadda tool. Credit where credit's due, the Post is edging out TNR in the Intellectual Dishonesty Olympics--no small feat, that.