Friday, December 02, 2016

Muscle Memory


From Brother Charlie Pierce:
The only true resistance to whatever comes next is sadly confined to a civic and political imagination that has grown stunted and crippled, and a commitment to truth and to political involvement that long ago surrendered to distraction, flash, and meaningless intellectual junk food. The democratic muscles needed for pushback have atrophied almost to the point of uselessness, and that's alright because the institutions through which those muscles could be used are shells of themselves. Get ready for four (or eight) years of empty spectacle in the service of destructive policies that the president-elect doesn't care enough to understand.
Yeah, but here's the thing.  There are plenty of us out here in Liberal Coventry who are definitely bone-tired and nearly broke from years and years of trying to unstupid the country while at the same time doing whatever we can to keep the meatheads from starting fires.  However for our labors we have slowly developed the political equivalent of what used to be called ditch-digger muscles. 

Muscles hardened by use, day after day for years.

And we have noticed something interesting.   While most of the institutional strength needed to push back against the Marching Morons have indeed atrophied to the point of uselessness, there remains one institutional muscle group that is more toned and well-defined than ever, because it too gets a hard workout every single day,  

I'm referring, of course, to the level of diligent, deliberate effort and moral flexibility that is required by our mainstream media to keep those of us who live out here in Liberal Coventry -- those of us who have been right about the Right all along -- the hell away from virtually ever mass media outlet in the land.

Just an observation, made in passing.

And now back to the ditch for me.  

7 comments:

RossK said...

There is another thing to consider about you folks on the outs...You all know how to give money, dollar-by-dollar, that adds up to the real thing when you see the real thing (see, for example, Sanders, B).

trgahan said...

Like the week after 2004, things are bleak right now.

But the Bush Administration with its cabinet and congress of even dumper zealots and ideologues than the first four years took its "mandate" and promptly swallowed its own tongue.....and that was before Katrina hit New Orleans. And it only got worse. To the point the media had to start being honest about Iraq, pundits became "independents," people could say bad things about Rove on air, and liberals were even, briefly, given a microphone.

I am probably full of it, but the Trump administration could just as likely enter the oval office on January 21 DOA. Republicans have fucked up such electoral victories and the media's, however collaborating its being, 24/7, top of the fold, breaking news coverage of the transition is only going to have adverse effects.

Like Bush, he will never lose that 30%, but, like 2004, that 30% that put him in that office could quickly turn on him when the constant tweets, the emboldened white nationalists, the establishment-pro-corporation-fuck-everyone-else appointments, the campaign promises that didn't last 10 days, his FUCK YEAH red meat victory tour, and the tooth and nail resistance to any recounts starts adding up.

Don't forget, he still needs to give an inaugural address and if it goes like his convention speech did.....

duquesne_pdx said...

Those are some serious guns, there.

Keep up the good fight.

Randle Aubrey said...

The soundtrack for the apocalypse:

Sam Cooke - Chain Gang

bluicebank said...

@ trgahan: Yeah, there is that silver lining, that the coming clusterfuck has a fair chance of gravitationally imploding upon itself. Unfortunately, not many of us are far enough from the blast radius. Even us in California, holding the fort as it were, are under no illusion.

But as Drift points out, the likes of us have been digging in for so long we're almost used to the damn trenches.

Confusion to the enemy.

jim said...

Liberal media abounds on the Interwebs - & not even Trump with Obama's brain in a jar could craft a cunning enough America First Online Liberty Act to put it out of circulation.

Progressive liberals in America might now find in municipal & state politics the success that they just got chumped on nationally, exploiting the fundamental advantages of a bottom-up full court press on governance... a mere several decades behind the GOP.

Gretchen said...

Bluicebank: That's my fear: That we're all in New Orleans with Katrina firing up. Just the calling foreign leaders on his unsecured cell phone without bothering about State Dept. briefings scares the daylights out of me.
I am grateful to you, Driflglass, for coining the term "dumpster fire" to describe situations like this. I think it will be impossible to talk about the next four years without it.
Actually, I don't think we're looking at four years. I think that we're looking at such a dumpster fire of incompetence, corruption, betrayal, narcissism, and national security risks, that he won't last through half his term. I just hope the rest of us last as long.