Fundraiser Day One: The Last Simperer

Who is this man's clout?

In his NYT-column-for-life, the Mustache of Understanding did as he always does.

Lie.

And not particularly well.

"Indeed, Obama’s decision to respond to G.O.P. extremism and the failure to conclude a Grand Bargain, by moving to the left rather than to the center, was a huge mistake."

At some, vegetable-level of consciousness, Friedman is obviously aware that the Right has devolved into an absolutely intractable crew of saboteurs: every decision, every action, every spin calculated to inflict maximum damage on the government and the economy of the United States with the stated goal of making Barack Obama "a one-term President":

When the G.O.P. presidential candidates were asked during their debate on Aug. 11 whether any of them would accept a budget deal that involved $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases — and they all said no — the Republican Party officially became a danger to itself and to the country.

The G.O.P. became a danger to the country because it announced, in effect, that it would not be a partner for the kind of Grand Bargain that many economists believe we need...

It is a slow-motion bank robbery being carried out in broad daylight by criminals who no longer bother to wear masks.

Because why bother?

No matter how clear the Right makes it using itsy-bitsy words that their mission is to make the United States u-n-g-o-v-e-r-n-a-b-l-e, Flathead Tom will not leave the safe confines of his lying gated Centerville and admit that that is the problem:

The G.O.P.’s refusal to contemplate any tax increase, added Cowen, “has brought what seems to be an extreme Democratic response: President Obama’s latest budget plan is moving away from entitlement reform and embracing multiple tax increases on the wealthy. We may be left with no good fiscal options.”

Instead, in column after column, and on stage after stage Friedman traffics over and over again in the same godawful, transparently-dishonest bullshit.

Had Christie — a moderate on gun control, climate change and immigration who has also backed Simpson-Bowles — run and won significant support, he would have forced Obama back to the center.

And that's what is so damn creepy about it.

Because he and his very, very rich cabal has "branded" Centrism and are deeply committed the delusion that a Common Sense Third Party which will never exist is the only solution to the problem that vex us.

And so, like Iraq, because he and his fellow cultists have gone all-in with a flagrantly dishonest world view, for no other reason than they have a shitload of money, week after week we get Friedman's tireless, drooling, hackneyed campfire stories about a party that does not exist, in a political context that does not exist, in a country that does not exist are just dead fucking wrong:

Then, instead of a race between the Democratic left and the Republican right — in which the whole country would lose because the winner would not have had a mandate for the real change we need — we would have had a race between the Democratic center, independents and the Republican center.

And that is what it so damned creepy about it: the fact that EVERYONE knows they are lying.
This utterly talentless piddler just rolls on and on hawking the same patent medicine to the same circle of media Splunge-Monkeys

in venue after venue...and never is heard a discouraging word.

Such it the clout behind this lie that normally fearless callers-of-bullshit like Jon Stewart and Lawrence O'Donnell have been reduced to grinning, nodding Home Shopping Network sidekicks ("You mean Friedman Brand Centrism reduces deficits, creates millions of jobs AND will give me a boner? Tell me more!") in it presence.

What Friedman is selling is "economic slavery" tarted up by a genuinely terrible writer in transparently ridiculous, New Age-y threads:

We can't just go to to work anymore; we have to be able to create our work. [Friedman] repeated this bromide, pretty much word for word, in his column on Sunday: a promise of economic slavery, done up in the trappings of personal — or technological — freedom, to the point where he actually seems to be rooting for the robot. Now, this message should have sent audiences and readers rushing to join their nearest labor union; Friedman is guaranteeing roughly 80 percent unemployment, after all. But labor unions aren't part of the American center that Friedman and his ilk are promoting; they're part of the past, and they're beholden to party as much as party is beholden to them. No, the American center that Friedman conjures likes to think that it is self-sufficient, intellectually and otherwise, and so the people who listen to his lectures and read his columns like to think that they'll be the ones who will be able to invent their jobs. They don't like to think of themselves as the working stiffs who will inevitably get left behind — as the fatties whom Friedman's fad diet is really addressing.
...

Like Iraq, there are no WMDs here. No nuclear program. No yellow cake. No anthrax-spraying drones. No secret ties to Al Quaeda.

And our ruling class knew.

There is no Center.

There is no monolith of Sensible Independents to which Centrism sounds like a great idea.

There is nothing approaching equivalence between the Psychotic, Implacable Right and the Exhausted, Disgusted Left.

And our ruling class knows it.

Like Iraq, those that are getting the Great Centrist Fraud horribly, horribly wrong will never lose a job or miss a meal or be demoted for being horribly, horribly wrong, because our system never punishes Villager stupidity or incompetence or outright lying, but punishes only those who have the temerity to embarrass our Villager by calling attention to their stupidity or incompetence or outright lying.

However unlike Iraq, this time Friedman's foundational lies are not going to collapse under the weight of inconvenience reality, because Friedman's foundational lies are never going to be permitted anywhere near inconvenience reality.

Instead -- freed of the need for any measurable congruence with the real world -- we get very, very rich people flatteringly circle jerking each other

about the virtues of the global gated community they are creating for themselves.

Fundraiser is on and the dough goes here!