Monday, December 19, 2016

Sunday Morning Comin' Down: The Fight For The Future


“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” -- George Orwell, 1984
Our normal Sunday Morning Comin' Down feature has been preempted because it was just the same ocean of empty, awful sludge shot through with floating chunks of liar.

Instead, I want to take another opportunity to remind you that, as part of Operation Memory Hole the rewriting of the Obama Years by the Right has already begun in earnest, and that this ongoing process of obliterating inconvenient history should be where Liberals concentrate their fire.

From Senior Writer at the increasingly-irrelevant Weekly Standard:



Unsurprisingly a new poll finds that the same number of meatheads thought the Kenyan Usurper stole the election in 2008 also believe that their Dear Leader won a smashing popular vote victory.


And even though The New York Times' David Brooks was too busy chasing his Confirmation Bias Spirit Animal across the continent to type 800 words, the New York Times' incestuous Both Siderist stable is plentiful enough to summon up an infinite number of pasty, middle-aged, white, hand-wringing Reasonable Conservatives from a Reputable Think Tank to fill an op-ed with Both Siderist concern trolling.  This Sunday it was Peter Wehner's turn (from Wikipedia):
Peter Wehner is an American writer and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative think tank.
...
Wehner served in the last three Republican presidential administrations (Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush). Wehner was a speechwriter for Secretary of Education William (Bill) Bennett before becoming special assistant to the director at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Wehner was then executive director for policy for Empower America, a conservative group that was founded by Bennett.

He served George W. Bush as deputy director of speechwriting in 2001, and became the head of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives in 2002.  After leaving the Bush White House in 2007, Wehner joined EPPC as a senior fellow. In 2012, Wehner served as senior adviser to the Mitt Romney presidential campaign.

Wehner is the co-author of two books: City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (with Michael J. Gerson) and Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism (with Arthur C. Brooks). In City of Man, published by American Enterprise Institute Press, Wehner and Gerson argue that the free market and capitalism, when properly functioning, act "as a civilizing agent" that improves society's moral condition in key ways by prizing "thrift, savings, and investment" and discouraging "bribery, corruption, and lawlessness." The title of the work was suggested by Yuval Levin.
For those of you playing wingnut welfare bingo at home, please mark the following boxes on your score-card:
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
George W. Bush
Arthur C. Brooks
Bill Bennett
Michael Gerson
Yuval Levin
Mitt Romney
American Enterprise Institute
And what does Mr. Wehner have to add to our understanding of what just happened to our country?

Glad you asked.  From The New York Times (emphasis added):
Moderation, then, is out of step with the times, which are characterized by populist anger and widespread anxiety, by cross-partisan animosity and dogmatic certainty. Those with whom we have political disagreements are not only wrong; they are often judged to be evil and irredeemable.
...

The concern some of us have is that even before Mr. Trump set foot on the political stage, America was becoming a bit more like the Sahara or the Arctic Circle than a temperate zone; that moderation was passé in both parties and that no politician would defend it as a political virtue...
Of all the human trash that clog the arteries of our body politic, Fake Moderates/Both Siderists like Mr. Wehner are arguable the worst.  The fact American writer and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), Peter Wehner, had to literally unperson President Barack Obama -- who spent eight fucking years practicing the political virtues moderation and civility as he was relentlessly and methodically slandered and sabotaged by the entire Republican Party -- in order to make his stupid theory work should certainly disqualify Mr. Wehner from ever being asked to express an opinion on any subject ever again.  

Of course it won't. because Operation Memory Hole is a massive and costly enterprise and it needs all its soldiers. 

But all the braying from the Right and Both Siderist goo from the Center cannot undo or wish away this one, stark and unalterable fact: After a campaign that lasted 18 month and laid bare the unalloyed depravity and reckless, pathological dishonesty of Donald J. Trump, on November 8, 2016 tens of millions of Republicans bellied up to the fascism bar and ordered a double in a dirty glass.

And for this they can never be forgiven.  

8 comments:

Ok said...

Seems like Wehner the loser put one of Miss Brooks' "columns" through a shredder then fed it to Moral Hazard and waited for the resultant product to hand into the NYT.

trgahan said...

"...it was just the same ocean.."

I don't watch the Sunday shows, but based on my morning local new's 4 minute summation the Beltway has turned CIA's reports on Russian hacking into just allegations made by Democrats that, if it even happened, had nebulous effects, but Hillary sucked so Trump would have won anyway.

So clearly the order of the weekend was make the Russian story go the fuck away.

Regarding Mr. Wehner:

I have noticed that the Right's post-2012 fascistic ascendance in western democratic governments keeps getting labeled as "populist" even though, like Trump's appointments and Mr. Wehner's own pedigree, it is anything but. I guess oligarchical ratfucking of representative governance is too many words to keep printing.

I assume this is setting up for the "This is all your fault! You people wanted this!" bunker moment when petro-finance focused, crackpot billionaire, Randite authoritarian governance breaks the western world.





dinthebeast said...

"Those with whom we have political disagreements are not only wrong; they are often judged to be evil and irredeemable."

No, only the evil and irredeemable ones. It is not my fault that their numbers are so large in the Republican party.
When you don't care at all that your policies are going to kill and sicken poor people, you are evil. As for redeemable, that's up to each of them, but I'm just not seeing any of it.

And as for the populism label, they are confusing it with "popular". Molly Ivins was a populist. Donald Trump is a parasite. Again, it is not my fault that a lot of people like having him as a parasite. Words still mean things, and populist does not mean Donald Trump.

-Doug in Oakland

XtopherSD said...

I would just add...

"And for this they can never be forgiven and never be allowed to forget."

Unknown said...

"It's Obama's utter lack of intellectual curiosity that grates"

WTF?! How can one adequately respond to that?

Bush? Trump? Sandwiching the smartest President of my lifetime?

Ok, here's a response:

"HEY! SETH MANDEL! YOU'RE A FUCKING MORON!"

Seriously, what a hack.

- lifeat45rpm

John said...

The war is over, and we lost. We can either return to the fray and get really, really beat down, or we can figure out a new tactic to beat the Republicans at their own game. It's a hard rain a-gonna fall, fer sure.

Robt said...

Another person caught performing rotten deeds in the name of Neegan. When asked, says he is Neegan and that were all Neegan.

It is what they have to do and what they were ordained to do and what they were assimilated to do in which provides the divine superiority to abuse in the name of.

Just as Governor kaisich signs his media claim to fame abortion law. He knows his daughter or Trump's family or the Koch Brothers family have the resources to leave the state of Ohio's laws boundaries to have an abortion if they "want" to. Of course they say they never would because, "their personal beliefs". But that is only reality in the world of fake news.

Like the imprisonment of an armed robber vs the fine a Goldman sachs executive may force his company to pay. For the deaths of those who died after losing what savings they had. Which left them with nothing to pay for medical treatments that were life sustaining. The Armed thief who took some cash vs the CEO or Banker that steals life savings.
Sen Warren hit on this profoundly and that notion should not die in the overall news cycles until resolve is achieved.
I see no difference in Bernie Madoff's business entrepreneurship and Wall Street Banks and AIG's Free Market profiteering the economy into peril for everyone but a billionaire? Do you?

Davis said...

Seth Mandel's tweet illustrates something about conservatives that I see over and over. Obama has no interest in conservatives ideas. Boo hoo. Having to right to freedom of speech is not enough. They demand respect. Attention must be paid!!!