Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Silly Shit Andrew Sullivan Says, Ctd.

Vanity_Fair
I’m waiting for Ross [Douthat] to unload on the GOP, which he should, given the rationale of his post. But he appears to be rhetorically lying low – the position “reasonable” Republicans have taken as their party has become more and more galvanized by the crazy.
-- Andrew Sullivan, October 8, 2013

And I'm waiting for Andrew Sullivan to admit that Liberals were right all along, which he should, given that much of "The Dish" now consists of post after post after post detailing the atrocities of the Crazy Right in framing and vocabulary lifted straight from the Liberal canon of the last 20 years.
There is effectively no Republican party any more. There is a radical movement to destroy the modern American state and eviscerate its institutions in favor of restoring a mythical, elysian, majority-white, nineteenth-century past. This crisis is proving that more powerfully than even watching Fox. We need to see what is in front of our nose: a cold civil war has broken out between those properly called conservatives, defending the credit of the government, empirical reality, and adjustments to modern life and those properly called radical reactionaries declaring our current elected president and Senate as illegitimate actors, bent on the destruction of America, and therefore necessitating total political warfare, even to the point of threatening to destroy the global economy. 
There is a really tough choice for the president to make – almost as tough as the choices Lincoln had to make.
But he appears to be rhetorically lying low, billing this as an apocalyptic struggle between those noble few who "properly called conservatives" and the "radical reactionaries."

Like black people on "Seinfeld", or gays on "Father Knows Best", nowhere in the dramatis personae of Mr. Sullivan's holy war against the "illegitimate actors, bent on the destruction of America" is there any room for of those millions of inconvenient Liberals who have already been down in the mud of that long, twilight struggle for decades.

So it looks like we're all in for a long wait.

Everybody might as well get comfortable.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The only way Sullivan will ever come remotely close to doing what you want is to move him. Get his ass out of NY and DC, and make him live in say Kentucky and blog from there.

Make him spend a year in an area that has no crazy hippie liberals and conservatives are more like Palin instead of David Brooks.

As long as he is sitting pretty here with us on the East he's never going to change. Because his day to day life is filled with responsible conservatives, responsible (read centrist) Democrats, and crazy liberals. Plant his ass in flyover land with the tri corner hat brigade and he will have to change.

Horace Boothroyd III said...

@Geese Howard has an excellent point. Your affluent conservative loves the ambiance of liberal enclaves where the quality of life is primo as the result of liberal policies.

Confine Sullivan to a conservative hellhole, such as Colorado Springs or Augusta, and he'll be reduced to shrill unholy madness within a month.

olandp said...

Hope you don't mind I posted a link to this post over at http://joemygod.blogspot.com/

You wouldn't believe the crazy defending him. I love the podcast, I listen every Sunday instead of Meet the Gregory, and wish I could send money, but I'm hoping for some of that Obamacare with a subsidy.

steeve said...

"he'll be reduced to shrill unholy madness within a month"

Still not remotely close to admitting he was 30 years behind the curve.

Anonymous said...

@Geese
Kentucky? I say put him around some Mississippi rednecks. He'll not only put some base in his voice, he'll stop calling himself conservative. I believe all moderate repubs and some dems should spend time in those hellholes.


Vic78

Jack said...

That Sullivan really is something, isn't he?

We had a pretty interesting discussion about him in another thread on this blog last week. One of the points we talked about was Sullivan's willingness to criticize today's GOP, but his flat refusal to admit the GOP and conservatives *themselves* are the problem, and that liberals have been right for several decades.

So, I was just over there at his site browsing, and found this gem:

"The purge has worked, hasn’t it? There is effectively no Republican party any more. There is a radical movement to destroy the modern American state and eviscerate its institutions in favor of restoring a mythical, elysian, majority-white, nineteenth-century past. "

I completely agree with the non-bold part of what he says, but the bold statement really shows the depths of his denial.

Jack said...

Oh, Jesus. I should have kept reading before I posted that comment. I stopped at the point I quoted and only continued reading afterwards.

This is what Sullivan goes on to say next. This is totally pathological:

"This crisis is proving that more powerfully than even watching Fox. We need to see what is in front of our nose: a cold civil war has broken out between those properly called conservatives, defending the credit of the government, empirical reality, and adjustments to modern life and those properly called radical reactionaries declaring our current elected president and Senate as illegitimate actors, bent on the destruction of America, and therefore necessitating total political warfare, even to the point of threatening to destroy the global economy."

He has it completely turned around -- the opponents of the conservatives are "properly called conservatives," and the conservatives themselves are really "radicals."

Wow.