Monday, August 29, 2016

Shall We Stop This Bleeding?



Conservatism is done, sir.  It is done.  Whatever dreams of glory you had back in the heyday of St. Ronald Reagan when you sowed the seeds of your own downfall, those dreams are dead. And whatever sad band of bigoted miscreants, imbeciles and con men may still remain after this election -- drowning in their own lurid lies and pathetic alibis, dancing on Lincoln's grave -- the Republican party is over,

From Business Insider"Donald Trump broke the conservative media":
...
One of the chief problems, [Wisconsin Conservative talk radio host Charlie] Sykes said, was that it had become impossible to prove to listeners that Trump was telling falsehoods because over the past several decades, the conservative news media had "basically eliminated any of the referees, the gatekeepers."

"There's nobody," he lamented. "Let's say that Donald Trump basically makes whatever you want to say, whatever claim he wants to make. And everybody knows it's a falsehood. The big question of my audience, it is impossible for me to say that, 'By the way, you know it's false.' And they'll say, 'Why? I saw it on Allen B. West.' Or they'll say, 'I saw it on a Facebook page.' And I'll say, 'The New York Times did a fact check.' And they'll say, 'Oh, that's The New York Times. That's bulls---.' There's nobody — you can't go to anybody and say, 'Look, here are the facts.'"

"And I have to say that's one of the disorienting realities of this political year. You can be in this alternative media reality and there's no way to break through it," Sykes continued. "And I swim upstream because if I don't say these things from some of these websites, then suddenly I have sold out. Then they'll ask what's wrong with me for not repeating these stories that I know not to be true."

Ziegler said he faced much of the same problem.

"If you are a conservative talk show host, which I am, if you don't accept that it's likely Hillary Clinton has taken part in multiple murders, or that Barack Obama is a Muslim extremist sympathizer who was probably born outside this country — if you don't accept those two things, it's almost as if you're a sellout. You're a RINO. You're somehow part of the liberal elite. It's nuts. It's making my own show very difficult to do. It's almost where to the point where we are not able to function."

He continued: "It's almost like it's a disease, and it's taken over people. I don't remember this being the case four years ago. But something has happened. Something snapped. But now all of a sudden, if a story comes out, and it's not on Breitbart or endorsed by Drudge, it can't be true. Especially if it's about Donald Trump. Which is flat-out ludicrous."

Asked why none of his criticism of Trump seemed to put a crack in the real-estate mogul's armor, Beck paused.

"I think that people are very lost, and they don't know what to do at this point."
...
Of course you don't remember "this being the case four years ago", because our years ago, you were inside the bubble, asshole. And from inside that wingnut event horizon, everything always looks superfuckingawesome!  But by it's very nature, the bubble is always constricting and as one Conservative holder-of-opinions after another has rudely discovered, those ever-shifting boundaries are constantly patrolled by the heresy hunters.  And one Leftist Devil once saidonce purity itself becomes all you care about -- once it becomes a distillery race to see who can get to 100% -- the chicken farmers are never far behind:
The main Islamist group in Algeria, the GIA, ended up being led by a Mr. Zouabri, a chicken farmer, who killed everyone who disagreed with him. He issued a final communiqué, declaring that the whole of Algerian society should be killed, with the exception of his tiny remaining band of Islamists. They were the only ones who understood the truth.
Frankly, if I had my way, should Hillary Clinton be elected President in November, I would urge her to forget about holding her inauguration on the western front of the United States capitol and instead, have it right on the front porch of the Appomattox Court House in Virginia just to make the point absolutely crystal clear.

Of course you can fight on for a good long time -- you have an impressive stockpile of crackpot billionaires apparently willing to underwrite any ludicrous misadventure, and millions of obedient Fox News cannon-fodder "patriots" who are dumb and desperate enough to napalm their own dicks on Donald Trump's command.

The bleeding can go on for a long, long time if you refuse to have it any other way.  But your cause is lost, sir, and the war is over.




14 comments:

trgahan said...

Poor Sykes and Ziegler...sucks for them to witness the expiration date pass for "Inside Voice" conservative propagandists. Here's a gold watch, hope you invested your blood money wisely.

Maybe one day all these Conservative holder-of-opinions will wake up and realize they were cannon fodder too. A slightly higher form of useful idiots not much different than the idiots they were paid to lie to on a daily basis.

Because it was never about "conservative governance," building a generational majority, supporting a political party, or even simply defeating Democrats specifically or liberalism broadly.

What they are part of is a deliberate, well funded, concerted effort to break our Constitutional Republic to the point it justifies a right wing authoritarian dictatorship along the lines of Putin's Russia, Franco's Spain, Pinchot's' Chile, or the junta's of Argentina.

RUKidding said...

I always said that Trump was horning in on the GOP's grift, which is why many of the PTB got mad and huffed away in a snit. This weekend I heard a blip from Trump's "speech" in Iowa where he was yelling about closing down the EPA and getting the gubmint out of citizens' lives. Loads of cheers for that. Do these Iowans even know what the EPA is (Trump used the acronym) and what it does? And why do they want it out of their lives?

Digby referenced a Mother Jones article: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/trump-white-blue-collar-supporters

Arlie Hochschild spent 5 years around "Tea Partiers" in Louisiana. "Louisiana is also home to vast pollution, especially along Cancer Alley, the 85-mile strip along the lower Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, with some 150 industrial plants..."

These deluded GOP/Tea Party/conservative voters have been so brainwashed by the likes of Sykes, Ziegler, Beck, Limbaugh, Fox that they are delusional and unable to actually take in factual reality. Hochschild's "take" on why they go for Trump is that Trump is blaming all ills on the "other" - women, minorities, Muslims, etc. While these poor whites in places like LA have totally lost ground, are making crap wages and working in shitty conditions, they've been mesmerized into believing lies about "liberals" and Democratic politicians, all while having their egos stroked that they are at least "better" than the blacks, the browns, the Muslims, the femi-nazi's... all while watching their standard of livings drop, losing everything, having their marriages ripped apart, their kids on drugs and worse... but they can "feel better" than minorities and blame their problems on Muslims and "illegals."

It's an interesting, but rather depressing, article. These people have been brainwashed not to think for themselves and to let themselves be taken advantage of by rich white people because that's better than making common cause with the darkies to fight for their rights and a better life.

I don't know where we go from here when people are this deluded. That Sykes, Ziegler and Beck are talking about this state of delusion is, I suppose, interesting, but I still don't see any of them taking any responsibility for their actions, their words, and the big fat paychecks they accepted from the .001% all in service to ripping off the rubes for the betterment of those at the top.

Where we go from here is anyone's guess. As most of us have said at one point or another, the nanosecond Clinton wins, the rightwingnut-o-spehere and all of the M$M will simultaneously erupt in Worst & Most Criminal President EVER!!!111 And I'm sure Impeachment papers have already been drawn up.

The GOP's next wave of obstruction will make it seem like they were BFF's with Obama. Count on it.

Sadly, the heavily propagandized rubes in places like LA and IA will continue to agree that ALL of their ills and rotten luck is soley because Clinton is a Crook and the blahs, the browns, the illegals, the Muslims are getting tons of freebie good things and doing all of the crime all of the time.

Where does it end?

KenRight said...

Clinton is going to do a Lincolnesque/Goldwater Girl war to save Ukraine to justify and prompt a rally round of her Trump-damaged-from-the-inception presidency?

bluicebank said...

The growing cavalcade of Conservative hand wringers is pathetic in its lack of self awareness and sense of responsibility.

By way of analogy, they're like the Dog Whistle Consortium crying foul over Big Megaphone cornering the market over Pavlov's Rabid Dog Pack. Please, bitches, you trained the dogs in the first place.

bowtiejack said...

What trgahan said.
Heartily recommend anything by Bob Altemeyer who's done yeoman work on unmasking authoritarian lunacy. They're not going to go away.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Neo Tuxedo said...

RUK skrev:

I don't know where we go from here when people are this deluded.

I'm pretty sure only an extinction-level event would do any real damage to the bubble.

RUKidding said...

Oh. I see. We didn't even have to wait for Clinton's election to have Nay Sayers scurry forth to adjure us hapless dirty hippies about how very very wrong we always are because, of course, Clinton is far worser than Trump x elbentyzilliongazillion so there!!!!11!!!11

Illuminati! NWO! SJW! Clinton's a Crook! Trump Tells it Like It Is!!11!! Emails! Benghazi! FBI! Trump's not a racist; you're the racist!

sigh

bt1138 said...

It's not complicated.

Trump tore the mask off the clown.

He pulled the curtain back on the Wizard of Oz.

Yes it's been going on for 20 years. But thanks to Trump, all are finally forced to profess:

-->Yes That Emperor is Not Wearing Any Clothes at All.

He is doing us all a favor, you know. He's tearing it all down. (I think that is what Bill Clinton instructed Trump to do when they had the secret phone call where Bill incited him to do this thing.)

Unknown said...

Conservative opinion-havers are the densest, least empathetic, least self-aware people on the fucking planet. They only realize something is bad when the bad happens to them personally. Gay marriage? OMG NEVER. That's perversion! [finds out nephew is gay] Ohhh, I had a change of heart, after deep reflection. Well lah deee frickin dah, asshole. Or when that asshat ManCow prattled on and on about how waterboarding was no big deal and only sissy hippie commie pinkos had a problem with it. Until he volunteered to get waterboarded just to prove himself right. And then he was like HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT'S FUCKING TORTURE OMG OMG OMG. (Well, credit where it's due, at least he had the stones to go through with his little experiment, even if it was borne out of being a typical conservative blowhard)

Same thing here. I mean I'm glad that Sykes and some others are edging their way out of the closed-information loop and all. Every little bit helps. But they're only bravely speaking out about this shit because they themselves became inconvenienced by it. That's the only goddamn reason. As our fearless host pointed out, they don't think anything like this was happening FOUR years ago. You know, back when an idiot carnival barker was bellowing about needing to see the President of the United States' birth certificate. And when the GOP nominee for the presidency built his entire fucking campaign on one neverending run-on lie about Obama's record that he repeated no matter how many times it got fact-checked into oblivion. And when said GOP nominee doesn't even bother to write a concession speech because he chose to believe the Unskewed Polls dipshit over the overwhelming weight of the evidence showing Obama winning with room to spare. Yeah, sure, back then there was no right wing bubble. Sure, guys. Sure. Fucking morons.

And Paul "Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver" Ryan is so blind in his demented desire to screw over as many non-rich non-right-wingers as he possibly can (by killing Medicare, and if he's really lucky, Social Security) that he'll excuse or allow himself to be complicit in the Trumpocalypse, no matter how gruesome it gets.

I sure hope the war is lost for these nitwits. But they're like a fucking zombie phoenix Terminator. Whenever I think they're done for, they just keep staggering on.

Robt said...

It has become clear
Donald Trump needs to fire Pence as his VP.
Governor Paul Lepage of Maine is definitely the Gary Busey fit.

Get a hold of Donald's son Damion and inform him of this omen.

Let's say Trump loses the election. Does the Donald stay on as the GOP lead standard bearer or does he just move on? If he moves on, what does the 2020 election for the GOP look like?
Does it go more ALT right? Does it take the conservative turn toward Bob Dole, HW Bush?

Fiddlin Bill said...

Doing the Inaug at Appomattox Court House would be delightful, but keep in mind that after the original surrender the locals moved the whole damn town up the road to Appomattox Station (ostensibly because the train stopped there, but in fact because they could not face defeat). Appomattox Court House is a National Park now, not a real town. The house where the surrender actually occurred was reconstructed--for decades it had been stored at the Smithsonian. America's unwillingness to face historical facts, such as the fact that the country was founded on human chattel slavery, remains the driving force for close to half of our electorate. This is Trump's horrible power.

Lit3Bolt said...

Sociopath Horrified To Discover He's Surrounded By Sociopaths. News at 11.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Sykes can eat a bag of dicks. I've watched as he has aided and abetted, through his Baby-Limbaugh schtick, in the piecing and selling off of Wisconsin being performed at ALEC's orders by a dim-witted gang of loons, penny ante con men, and D+ grade school bullies.

You're responsible, Sykes. This is YOUR goddam Trumpster fire. Suck it up, take some goddam Personal Responsibility. You're all too willing to use that as a club against liberals, the poor, minorities, women, or anyone who isn't Charlie Sykes.

Chan Kobun said...

When Harley Quinn has a lucid moment and realizes she's surrounded by crazy people, drops the Joker like a hot potato into the Batman's lap, and turns herself in, it doesn't absolve her of her crimes.

Just a little illustrative example from the pages of fiction, for our friend Mr. Sykes.