...the single defining characteristic that binds all Conservatives together -- the Reagan wig and Confederate flag clown pants big enough fit both Andrew Sullivan and Sarah Palin -- is their truly otherworldly ability to implacably ignore objective reality when it conflicts with whatever silly-ass nonsense they are lying about this week.
As I may have also mentioned once or twice or 3,114 times over the last 11 years:
...once our political, social and media institutions decided to preserve their status and fiscal well-being by playing make-believe with ugly truths about themselves and their own behavior, they become hostage to the habit. And once it became clear that media personalities and politicians could openly and repeatedly lie to the public without swift and brutal consequences -- once they gave themselves permission to flush their own incompetence, cowardice and complicity down the memory hole with impunity – we were well and truly screwed.Because after all, from what position of factual, experiential or moral superiority would people who lie more-or-less continuously about the last 30 years of American political and cultural history pass judgment on people who lie about where the President was born? Or Death Panels? Or…anything?Once you take that Faustian bargain, it doesn’t matter how fine your suit is or how surgically superior your tits may be; you’re just another grifter, straining a different grade of ethical sludge for krill.And so we find ourselves drowning in a vast conspiracy of forgetting....
Heck, I even coined an annoying little term for this phenomenon, which I have used once or twice or 778 times over the past 11 years:
Republican Strategic Forgettery
Never stops.
Over at "New York Magazine". Jonathan Chait notices how Willard Romney's entire campaign strategy has devolved into nothing more than completely rewriting his own immediate past, over and over again, in real-time.
...
Regular readers of this blog know that massive, ongoing Conservative historical revisionism is not is not a bug in our political process.
It is Conservatism's main feature, reclaimed-virginity metaphor and all... ("Like a Virgin" from 09/11/09.)
And so comes now former Bush speechwriter and teevee's emergency-backup-David-Brooks, Michael Gerson, who is just a'fussin' and a'frettin' over the future of his Platonic Burkean Ideal Republican Party should Donald J. Trump somehow end up as its standard-bearer:
Trump’s nomination would rip the heart out of the Republican Party...the worst outcome for the party would be the nomination of Donald Trump. It is impossible to predict where the political contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton would end up. Clinton has manifestly poor political skills, and Trump possesses a serious talent for the low blow. But Trump’s nomination would not be the temporary victory of one of the GOP’s ideological factions. It would involve the replacement of the humane ideal at the center of the party and its history. If Trump were the nominee, the GOP would cease to be.
And why would a Trump nomination be a disaster for the GOP?
Wait for it.
Wait...for...it...
Because, sez Mikey Gerson, Donald J. Trump is not!not!not! a real Republican, no matter what those filthy Liberals would have you believe!
Liberals who claim that Trumpism is the natural outgrowth, or logical conclusion, of conservatism or Republicanism are simply wrong. Edmund Burke is not the grandfather of Nigel Farage. Lincoln is not even the distant relative of Trump.
What more can I say that I have not already said?
As we have seen over and over again, Conservatives are addict-loyal to anyone or anything which promises to protect them from ever facing their own, humiliating past and that is the simple, irresistible compact Trump offers them: you overlook all the shit he has done up until now, and he will never remind you that you not only voted for Bush twice but you cheered him on as he fucked you over again and again. Vote for Trump and he will build you a big, beautiful wall to shield you from annihilating self-knowledge that you are just a grubby little fascist halfwit.
For a very long time, running dog Conservatives like Gerson have gotten away with playing fussy little Burkean mad lib parlor games in the penthouses of the Republican Party because far below in the bowels of the American Fascist Party, hundreds of others like Lee Atwater, Rush "Majority Maker" Limbaugh and Karl Rove did the dirty work of whipping up those grubby little fascist halfwits and pointing them at the ballot box. And now that the mob which helped made Gerson a wealthy man has finally lumbered up the stairs and is pounding on his door, he wants nothing to do with them. Instead, like Lot in the Bible --
As we have seen over and over again, Conservatives are addict-loyal to anyone or anything which promises to protect them from ever facing their own, humiliating past and that is the simple, irresistible compact Trump offers them: you overlook all the shit he has done up until now, and he will never remind you that you not only voted for Bush twice but you cheered him on as he fucked you over again and again. Vote for Trump and he will build you a big, beautiful wall to shield you from annihilating self-knowledge that you are just a grubby little fascist halfwit.
For a very long time, running dog Conservatives like Gerson have gotten away with playing fussy little Burkean mad lib parlor games in the penthouses of the Republican Party because far below in the bowels of the American Fascist Party, hundreds of others like Lee Atwater, Rush "Majority Maker" Limbaugh and Karl Rove did the dirty work of whipping up those grubby little fascist halfwits and pointing them at the ballot box. And now that the mob which helped made Gerson a wealthy man has finally lumbered up the stairs and is pounding on his door, he wants nothing to do with them. Instead, like Lot in the Bible --
Look, I have two virgin daughters. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do with them as you wish.-- all Gerson can do is offer up Lincoln and Liberals to the mob and beg them to go away and leave him alone.
Well it is absurdly long past time that parasites like Gerson were (to borrow a phrase) ripped from their decadent nests and cast out into the world, which is precisely why real Liberals are not allowed anywhere near them on radio or teevee.
Because the veneer that covers their bullshit has gotten so brittle and thin that all it would take to punch it to dust would be a few solid blows landed by someone who knows how to fight.
And that cannot be allowed to happen.
Behold, a Tip Jar!
8 comments:
Looks good on them, doesn't it. It's terrifing and horribly hilarious all at the same time. If I could just carpet bomb FOX and their imitation human beings, it might even be bearable for the next eleven months.
There hasn't been a Republican remotely like Lincoln since Teddy Roosevelt bolted the party of stodge in 1912 (and his likeness to Lincoln was remote indeed). Abe himself was of course pretty much a Marxist avant la lettre:
"And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that [all] such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government." (1847, a year before The Communist Manifesto)
Burke invented conservatism in 1789 after the taking of the Bastille, when he turned from somewhat sensible though incredibly partisan Whig to terrorized reactionary dominated by fear of an imminent takeover by the bloodthirsty mob. That terror is what they all have in common with the emotions Trump inspires. It's the only content they have, publicly. Privately, of course, they have the aim of protecting the worst, most criminal elements of the ruling class to pollute and exploit and destroy. Trump and Rubio and Cruz and Bush seem different in the kinds of terror they evoke, but they're all alike in the matters they care about, deregulating the activities of the rich and shifting the tax burden to the poor.
Conservatives like Gerson have gotten away with playing fussy little Burkean mad lib parlor games in the penthouses of the Republican Party because far below in the bowels of the American Fascist Party, hundreds of others like Lee Atwater, Rush "Majority Maker" Limbaugh and Karl Rove did the dirty work
To the extent they think about it at all, the Eloi think they can eternally ignore the role the Morlocks play in making their idleness possible. But the Morlocks will have their due, and Eloi are starting to get snatched.
One of your best, I think. So very incisive.
Interesting bit of trivia: I finally looked up the source of the clip with Joey Bishop, "The Guide to the Married Man". The movie has a comedic cast almost as wide as "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" and was directed by Gene Kelley!
"...humane ideal at the heart of the party..."
That's some major league denial there.
Driftglass,
"Clinton has manifestly poor political skills, and Trump possesses a serious talent for the low blow." Was Gerson really trying to say that Trump gives a better blow job that Clinton? Inquiring minds want to know. Does Gerson have photos or personal accounts verifying his claim to this age old political skill, that he claims Trump has a leg up on Clinton in the world of Presidential political fellatio.
What a maroon.
Think of all the imaginary folk lore of Ronaldus magnus Reagan.?
He never raised taxes, named airports, Navy ships and schools after him.
Reagan never cut and ran from Lebanon.
Reagan so loved guns that he made surface to air hand held rockets legal to open carry.
The Right seems to make claims of ownership to everything. They are the party of God. Party of War. Party of jobs. On and on.
It is imbedded into their skulls that,
Republicans are;
Sugar and spice and everything nice.
and Liberals; are Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails.
There is a definate conservative conditioning that causes a GOPer selective hearing,
This is why even scientific facts are ignored. And the GOP provide the leadership to "proudly deny" any of it.
Take the refusal to have the CDC collect data on all gun related injuries and deaths.
This data would naturally allow to make better decisions in the future.
If the best decision is not what your after, the information becomes blasphemy.
"Money trumps peace", GW Bush.
One of the best analogies I have read on the Conservative forgettery disease was written by this guy named Driftglass. titled "David Brooks fills out police report".
But then, memory is a dangerous thing in the hands of people.
Conservative evidence of forgettery is fatally evident in the news reports of how many extremely safe gun owners shoot themselves while "cleaning their guns".
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