Monday, September 30, 2013

They Built This -- UPDATE


In which I make Four!-Count-'em!-Four!, absolute, mortal-lock predictions about the upcoming mole-rat bad-whiskey bar-fight over how much of the American economy and government the GOP will be permitted to destroy, how much of the middle class they will be permitted to shaft and how many poor, young, sick and elderly Americans they will be permitted to boot-stomp in order to achieve their goal of making the Kenyan Usurper cry.

But first I have to quote a couple of regulars as proxies for all of those recently outcast Conservatives who now make their living running around screaming "OMG!  OMG! Republicans are, like, Craaazy! Amiright?"

All in all, it's hard to see any positive outcome emerging for Republicans from this confrontation. Yet the party is charging forward anyway. Why?

The short answer is a breakdown in the party's ability to govern itself. It can't think strategically. Even when pressed to do something overwhelmingly likely to end in disaster, as this shutdown looks likely to do for Republicans, the party has no way to stop itself. It stumbles into fights it cannot win, gets mad, and then in its anger lurches into yet another fight that ends in yet another loss.

Republicans who want to fight smarter are called squishes; Republicans who wish to fight less are called RINOs—and both have been hunted pretty near to extinction. Instead of effective opposition, we see those doomed spasms. And out of these spasms, Obamacare looks sturdier than ever—and any hope of negotiating to fix its worst elements seemingly further out of reach than ever.
This is not about Obamacare. It is not even about politics. It is about a form of revolt against the very country they live in.
My predictions?
  1. No matter how bad things get, no Conservative will admit to the simple fact that the GOP is performing exactly as they designed and built it to perform.

  2. No matter how bad things get, Professional Beltway "Both Siderists" will continue to opine furiously about the intransigence of "both sides" and how "Washington" is broken.  

  3. No matter how patently ludicrous Professional Beltway "Both Siderists" claims become, not one of them will suffer any reduction in professional status due to their non-stop lying.  In fact, the most intractable of the Denialists will find their prospects considerably enhanced during whatever brief respite we have between this round of GOP sabotage and the next.

  4. Most especially, at no point during the upcoming wingnut mole-rat bad-whiskey bar-fight will anyone like Andrew Sullivan or David Frum or anyone else within shouting distance of a network microphone or national op-ed column bother to point out that, once again, the Left was right about the Right all along.
As if to Sharpie Three-Line Underscore point #4, digby points out (h/t Alert Reader IR) how Your Establishment Media just skips right the fuck over the last several years of spiraling Conservative madness and increasingly frantic warnings from the Left to point out how awful it all is (emphasis added):
Premature anti-freakshow

by digby

I said this on twitter earlier, but  realized I needed to provide some examples. Many of the mainstream pundits who eye-rolled and tut-tutted bloggers and activists for failing to understand the ways of the world are now commonly recycling ideas we were discussing half a decade ago. 

What’s happening here ain’t exactly clear. But I have a notion: The Republicans are finally having their ’60s. Half a century after the American left experienced its days of rage, its repudiation of the political establishment, conservatives are having their own political catharsis. Ted Cruz is their spotlight-seeking Abbie Hoffman. (The Texas senator’s faux filibuster last week reminded me of Hoffman’s vow to “levitate” the Pentagon using psychic energy.) The Tea Party is their manifesto-brandishing Students for a Democratic Society. Threatening to blow up America’s credit rating is their version of civil disobedience. And Obamacare is their Vietnam.

Remember when they all had the vapors over Marcos calling his bookAmerican Taliban? Check out the Village Miss Manners Ruth Marcus calling the same folks "tiny terrorists"?


Ruth Marcus...

I won't even mention those who spilled gallons of ink deriding liberal bloggers for being radical partisans just a few years back who are now lauded as oracles for their columns writing exactly what those liberal radicals were writing at the time.

I guess this is one of those times to remind yourself that nobody is ever rewarded for being the first to be right. I certainly won't hold my breath waiting for an apology.  In the end it's a good thing.  Still you have to wonder what might have happened if the mainstream media and the liberal establishment had paid closer attention before it got to this point. We were running around with our hair on fire and they told us hippies to go take a shower and get a haircut...
For the historically and analogically-impaired, let me risk stating the blindingly obvious by reminding everyone that nobody ever handed the SDS a global economy to use as their personal pinata. 

Nobody ever came within a skajillion miles of electing Abby Hoffman to anything, much less a position of real power within the Worlds Greatest Deliberative Body.

And Vietnam really was an unspeakably awful disaster.

And just for the Hell of it, maybe someone within slapping distance of Mr. Keller can ask him how he always managed to find room on the op-ed pages of the New York Times for the likes of Bill Kristol and David Fucking Brooks, but never someone like digby? 

25 comments:

WereBear said...

If anything, the lying weasels of the MSM will have to work a bit harder to make the CrayCray look sensible and intelligent.

But that is, after all, their job. It might be STUPID, but they're going to do it!

Anonymous said...

Two things:
1. Fuck, you are a good writer. A craftsman.
2. You are right.

Kathleen said...

Pamela: Indeed. Though "it's not their job" to report Rethuglican lies, is it too much to ask that they 1. State ACA is now law, and not a "bill"; 2) State that it was upheld by the Supreme Court? Of course, I would NOT expect them to state that the party who proposed the legislation won the Presidency by a resounding margin in 2012. That would hurt delicate Rethug fee fees and give them an excuse to compare themselves yet again to the Civil Rights marchers beaten in Alabama. And, DG, you have nailed it yet again. Thank you.

Monster from the Id said...

(Back to an old favorite nom de Web.)

The good news: The Dinocrats need only watch the Reptilians commit seppuku, remembering the wise words of Napoleon Bonaparte:

"Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake."

The bad news: The Malefactors Of Great Wealth (aka "The 1%") no longer need the Reptilian Party, having captured control of the Dinocratic Party as well.

Unknown said...

Keller's not just a couple of decades late to the concept of a radical right, his analogy is as muddleheaded as his judgment was giving Judy Miller free rein. Hoffman was a clown, a satirist whose larger purpose beyond the anarchist pose was to free the system of racist and capitalist corruption. Cruz wants to institutionalize bigotry and corruption and make self-government a figment, which makes him effectively the spokesman of the new Republican establishment. He's not an aberrant outsider trying to throw the bums out; he wants the bums to take over.

Unknown said...

If the Malefactors had truly captured the Democratic Party, there would be no government shutdown; also, there would be no ACA.

Anonymous said...

Keller's not just a couple of decades late to the concept of a radical right, his analogy is as muddleheaded as his judgment was giving Judy Miller free rein. Hoffman was a clown, a satirist whose larger purpose beyond the anarchist pose was to free the system of racist and capitalist corruption. Cruz wants to institutionalize bigotry and corruption and make self-government a figment, which makes him effectively the spokesman of the new Republican establishment. He's not an aberrant outsider trying to throw the bums out; he wants the bums to take over.

Anonymous said...

If the Malefactors controlled both parties there would be no fight over the debt ceiling or the budget or the ACA.

Damian, Pink No More said...

Unknown, don't bother with the name-morpher. He's a Both-Sidesist of the worst sort and utterly refuses to realize that DG is talking about him as well when he brings up the stupidity of the Both-Sidesists.

DG, you'll be pleased (I hope) to know that your name has come up quite often on other sites while discussing this very issue. You've been saying for years that these people are nuts and we small folks, at least, have been listening.

Frank Stone said...

Nobody wants to be first, but everybody wants to be second. And then they want to convince the rest of us that they were actually first.

And, sadly, they usually get away with it.

Monster from the Id said...

Unknown--you seem to be assuming that the Malefactors don't want the ACA.

Why would the Malefactors not want the ACA, since it serves as a crumbs-from-the-table, corporate-friendly substitute for the single-payer health care which an actual left-wing populist party--something the Dinocratic Party is not--would support?

Anonymous said...

And the Both-Sidesing continues!

DG is still right: The folks who have only despair and nihilism to peddle never seem to tire.

Neo Tuxedo said...

Edward Morbius' id skrev:

Why would the Malefactors not want the ACA, since it serves as a crumbs-from-the-table, corporate-friendly substitute for the single-payer health care which an actual left-wing populist party--something the Dinocratic Party is not--would support?

Emphasis added because, to the extent I can understand their psychology without needing to take my brain out and throw it in the washing machine, I think that's why the Malefactors wouldn't want the ACA. It's still something, which is more than nothing and thus too good for poors.

Also, anon, it appears to me that the Malefactors do in fact control both parties; they just don't have complete control of the Dems yet. (They have one of the largest stakes in the Repukes, and enough control of the Bought-and-Paid-For Media to steer the agenda for now.)

Horace Boothroyd III said...

Where's Lumpy? I keep expecting him to show up and denounce ACA as a fraud because, deep in his heart, Obama would rather kill us all with drones.

Compound F said...

No doubt, both sides "do it," i.e., fuck average Americans, to different degrees. Sure, Republicans do the dirty deeds before Democrats, such as Clinton and Obama, write the playbook (e.g., financial industry), but the question that remains is, Why? Wherefrom "Reagan Democrats?" Wherefrom "Obama?"

I think the following "American Thermidor" thesis by Stirling newberry cuts through both phony and sincere forms of partisan hackery considerably:

http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/53403:stirling-newberry--american-thermidor

Compound F said...

Please, don't get me wrong: My gut feeling is to hit Republicans with a baseball bat repeatedly, but looking at the histories, of say, nafta, cafta, and Obama's tpp; throw in peak oil and global warming, as well as our recent adventurism in the ME, and well, get real. This is NOT a story of republicans and democrats. It is a story of a species running up against the limits to growth, and once you swallow that, the indigestive process takes its own course.

You'd like to focus your attention on partisan squabbles, but I, amongst growing numbers, don't buy it. Shit is fucked up and bullshit beyond your ken, apparently, or at least beyond what you'd like to admit.

Compound F said...

to put it yet another way, love may come in through the eyes, but it is memorialized through the liver.

Monster from the Id said...

Neo Tuxedo raises a good objection.

I would guess that a preponderance of the Malefactors (I recognize they are not always monolithic) have decided that they can't get away with denying health care to us peasants altogether, so they chose to settle for the HC system friendliest to plutocracy. The Reptilians are supported by the minority of Malefactors (the Koch brothers come to mind) who still think they CAN get away with Full Metal Neo-Feudalism.

Anonymous said...

I remember when Obamacare was called the Heritage plan.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I remember when Obamacare was called the Heritage plan.

Yeah, back when there was no chance it would ever pass.

So, if these so-called Malefactors are all so pleased with the ACA, why did they fight hammer and tongs to deny it, successfully in the Clinton days and unsuccessfully now?

Have you paranoid purity patrol types actually met any of these rich fucks? Do you think they could jump-start a Ford, let alone plan and execute such wide-ranging conspiracies as you posit?

don't get me wrong, I realize they throw uncounted amounts of money in the vague direction of people they think will give them short term gain. But they are all basically like Steve Ballmer thinking the Zune is the future. The only thing they have going for them is scads of money; which is usually enough, true.

But they aren't Bond villains, meeting weekly over a 30 foot long chrome table outfitted with electrocution chairs. They're dumpy balding white guys who inherited wealth.

Anonymous said...

All Malefactors are low IQ semi-morons. Good to know.

Monster from the Id said...

If the Malefactors, on average, are as stupid as ZRM thinks them to be, then how have they managed to hang on to their wealth and power, and even to increase both of those?

If the answer be "hired brains", then at least les aristos are smart enough to know they need to hire people smarter than themselves.

Anonymous said...

Et al above:
There are two ways to play the Both Sides game: the way the media plays it and the way the purity patrol plays it. It's the same result: false equivalence. The media describes a fight where both sides are incapable of seeing the other's point of view, which is plainly idiotic. The PP proposes to describe a kind of orchestrated, hair-trigger-timing theatrics of the sort seen only in a Cirque de Soleil production, where near misses are just part of the choreography and any contact is aberrant.

kfreed said...

DG:

"1.No matter how bad things get, no Conservative will admit to the simple fact that the GOP is performing exactly as they designed and built it to perform."

So what? Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. The fact that Republicans are RIGHTLY pointing at their own for this mess is enough to run with. Do what they do, collect it all and wave it in the faces of every right-wing loon you come across online and off: SEE??? Republicans are the problem. Republicans say so. Wall Street says so. The U.S, Chamber of Commerce says so.

Finally! Get it? Let's get to it. You expecting an ingraved invite or what?

kfreed said...

I just made the mistake of reading your comment section, the same purile stupid ("Obamacare is the Heritage plan") that landed us in baggerville is still percolating. Tell that to the people signing up for health care for the first time in years. They don't give a shit. They now get medical care. Ya'll need to wise the hell up already.

BTW, DG, your Anon peeps don't smell particularly kosher to me.