One of the leitmotifs of my little blog at the edge of respectability is the subject of memory. Specifically, how the modern Republican Party would simply cease to exist without a massive, ongoing and lavishly well-funded campaign of warping and mutilating the memories of the Pig People.
As every professional sporting lady has known since the beginning of time, success in that oldest of professions depends on figuring out what your client wants to hear and then pouring it on. The weakling wants to hear what a stud he is and the dolt wants to believe he's brilliant.
And Trumpkins, being a horde of cowards, imbeciles and bigots, are willing to pay any price to hear someone pretty or smart-looking say that they are brave, brilliant patriots. In fact, they'll hand the country over to monsters over and over again as long as those monsters promise to keep their heroic delusions comfortably upholstered.
But there's a catch: when you make prattling delusion your master, you make memory your the enemy. And whether it's David Brooks selling smooth, top-shelf Both Siderism to Upper East Side plutocrat shut-ins, or Hate Radio schlock merchants slinging Birtherism and Benghaaazi alley juice to the meatheads of Sisterfuck, Arkansas, the game remains the same: keep up the fantasy at all costs and make unremitting war on anyone or anything that threatens to monkey-wrench the scam.
Which is why, for the whole wingnut syndicate, the past itself has become the boogie-man; the terrible beast that lives under their bed. It's why there is a Beltway Iron Rule of David Brooks in the first place, and why all of them -- from Brooks and Limbaugh to Jeff Zucker and Roger Ailes -- really hate Liberals.
Because we go around all day remembering shit! And saying it out loud! Willfully and with premeditation!
Almost ten years years ago when I wrote of the Right's mental affliction as the "...inability to form any new political memories after 1997" I wasn't kidding.
And seven years ago when I borrowed from 2 Maccabees to explain that the Right had become a lunatic machine designed to blot out it's own past by sheer force of rage and decibels, I wasn't kidding, nor was I kidding when I said that "where yesterday has been exiled, memory is rebellion". Because by my back-of-the-envelope estimation, the process of Conservative self-delusion had become self-sustaining right around 2005. Back when the wheels really started to come off the Bush Administration and both the lapdog Beltway Media and the base of the Republican party were so desperate to duck out on righteous judgement of history that they would seize on any fairy tale no matter how patently ludicrous if it could be used to cast blame away from themselves.
The Beltway media hurriedly erected the High and Holy Church of Both Siderism -- a Safe Space in which everyone agrees that everyone is always equally to blame for everything, and so no one (and certainly not them) is ever specifically to blame for anything.
The Right flung itself into the arms of Freedom Works, Dick Armey and their Fabulous, Tea-Baggulous Bush-Off Machine which magically zapped their entire inconvenient Bush Administration record out of existence leaving them free and unencumbered to get on with the important business of hating Barack Obama for shit they were making up out of whole cloth every day.
And 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 helping to drown your own country in a vast conspiracy of forgetting. And that road only leads down and down and down...
...which brings us to Fox News lunatic Judge Jeanine Pirro and the Blue Gal challenge (h/t Crooks & Liars.)
You see, in order to sell the legitimacy of Il Douche and his entourage of madmen, Russian dupes and plutocrats, it has now become necessary for the American Fascist Party to pivot 180 degrees, completely unremember the last eight years, and roll out a new and wholly false narrative about the Obama Administration. And that project begins with Fox News meatbags like Pirro announcing to the Pig People what the New Party Line is damn well gonna be.
And Blue Gal double double dog dares you to make it past the first minute of this video without shutting it off in disgust.
Here is a bit of the transcript:
We have a new president elect…. His name is Donald J Trump. So move over Barack. Move over Hillary, Harry, Jill and all you namby-pamby pathetic losers still crying in your grande double shot skinny lattes...There was a time in this country when we united behind the flag in celebration of America's new president, our new leader. We all did so in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected.
We had high hopes for a united country, irrespective of our politics.
And it’s time for the left, assuming they are capable, to show the same dignity and class to the 45th president-elect.
Operation Memory Hole is indeed now in full effect as Fox News once again finds itself at war with Eastasia because Fox News has always been at war with Eastasia.
That whole Caucus Room Conspiracy thing? It never happened.
Neither did Potato Day...or any of the other unhinged wingnut freakouts captured in this vintage Daily Show montage from the first 10 week of the Obama Administration.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Baracknophobia - Obey | ||||
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Nothing is a more terrifying threat to a political and media regime built on the shifting sands of ever-more-ridiculous lies than the simple act of remembering the past as it really happened and speaking that truth out loud.
Which at the moment makes freaks like you and me the most dangerous people in America.
13 comments:
One of the characteristic traits of a psychopath, cough, Donald Trump, cough , is pathological lying.
One of the characteristics of a culture dominated by psychopaths, cough Fox News , right wing media, cough, is that other people mirror traits like pathological lying.
However, other people, cough, Jeanine Pirro, cough do not need to mirror anything or be dominated by any culture as they are natural born liars. Just saying.
"We had high hopes for a united country, irrespective of our politics."
Go FUCK yourself Jeanine.
In 2008 Fox News had people on air saying electing Barack Obama was going to cause brown people riots in white neighborhoods as they would come demand more handouts since the President was one of them.
This fact is burned in my memory not only because I saw them do it, but also because it was one of the last conversations I had with my father before he died. Nothing like having some of your father's last words be right wing propaganda.
But Mr. Driftglass, I thought for damn sure the Pig People had ingrained in them hatred of the godless commies. So how in the name of all that is good and wholesome did they collectively forget that anti-communism was the milk they suckled from their mommies? It was in their DNA.
The rooskies jacking into our election? Trump being butt-buddies with ex-KGB and now strongman horse-humper Vlad the Impaler? Dumpster-fire hiring on "fellow travelers" with the Red Bear whom Jesus hates? How in the fuck do so-called Conservatives forget the entire Cold War which they had for breakfast since they were in short pants?
"Yes, the long memory is the most radical idea in this country. It is the loss of that long memory which deprives our people of that connective flow of thoughts and events that clarifies our vision, not of where we're going, but where we want to go." Bruce "Utah" Phillips 1935 - 2008
I loathe these people. Jeanine Pirro, go fuck yourself good and plenty with a spiked dildo. After watching the absurdity of the Bill Clinton right wing lynch mob turn to the horrific and moronically awful GW Bush presidency, to the paranoid, thinly veiled racist and conspiracy laden obstinancy of the right during the Obama years, this Trump thing, whatever the fuck presidency type situation it'll be has kind of broken me. I don't know if I have much outrage or righteous fire and will to deal with this tsunami of Trump's "republican"ism. As another podcaster said (with all respect to The Professional Left which I listen to religiously), Trump is like a tennis ball machine..thwip, thwip, thwip, thwip go the tennis balls of lies, manipulations, hate and all around complete and utter horse shit. One after another, hour after hour, day after day. No checks. No balances. No arbiter of truth to put the hammer down and smash this smorgasborg of mutant right wing greasy feces that's now painting the cultural and political landscape. It's enough to make me question my sense of right and wrong. Sure I grew up instilled with the requisite Judeo-Christian morality where lying and cheating and stealing were mortal sin type things. I believe that...I think...I mean..at what point do the 'bad' guys get theirs? At what point does lying and manipulating at a whole order of magnitude deeper than what we collectively have been taught to believe is acceptable, lead to comeuppance? Is the timeline for justice just too long for my anger and patience? Or is there a greater reality at work that my morality keeps bumping into that my consciousness refuses to accept? I don't know what to think anymore and I'm tired. But again...fuck Jeanine Pirro.
Great post. The Trump proposed cabinet is a National Lampoon satire except that it is also Trump's Celebrity Cabinet. Winners! The man is probably in early dementia though it is hard to distinguish from his narcissistic/psychopathic personality choice. I predict the Trump presidency will collapse within 6 months and I will take money on that. But then we'll be left with Pence who's even worse.
To paraphrase a Tool song:
Fuck all you wingnuts and fuck your short memories.
-Doug in Oakland
I met BG's challenge.... Once on C&l and again here.
so I went and treated myself to a victory - grande double shot skinny lattes.
Thanks, Jeanine. While you were dating your way through college. I was being shot at in war for this country full of Americans which she seems to loathe and despise.
Then there is,
"We have a new president elect…. His name is Donald J Trump. So move over Barack. Move over Hillary, Harry, Jill and all you namby-pamby pathetic losers"
-----She displays her failure to note what any Judge named Jeanine would. Which is that Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Ben Carson, Chris Christie and every blind vampire bat lost to Donald Trump. Trump who was not really the conservative.
So they are all Losers as well............. She didn't say if Romney or Christie should have lattes to cry in? Poor journalistic skills that only FOX could hire.
"There was a time in this country when we united behind the flag in celebration of America's new president, our new leader. We all did so in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected.".
-----Yes there was a time perhaps. But even Benedict Arnold had his patriotic delusions like Jeanine for someone who has so much more media air time than she should (if it wasn't for her Roger Ailes favors). With all her media time, she is hard pressed to find footage of her off her knees speaking respectful words of Obama.
"We had high hopes for a united country, irrespective of our politics.".
---- When she says "WE" who is she speaking about or for?. All Jeanine has to do is provide the video footage where she (we) was irrespective of politics especially derogatory ones between the years 2008 to 2016.
" And it’s time for the left, assuming they are capable, to show the same dignity and class to the 45th president-elect."
-----Actually the time is not till January. We still have a president and Jeanine, you haven't stopped trying to smear him yet. Show some respect if you are even capable?
Just because Roger Ailes made her play "lick the lollipop little girl" when she pretends she didn't like it. Doesn't allow her God's gift to spit fire and brimstone at her enemy (the American people). She is easily silenced by the volume, on/off control or changing the channel. That is how powerful she is.
Good morning, Mr. Glass.
I once emailed you a link to "Batman: The Killing Joke," where Joker monologues about memory.
Turns out they made a film of it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mm_rOfQosI
Be seeing you.
I was in college in 2008. I remember the Colorado republican party handing out fliers for Halloween right before the election that made Nancy Pelosi look like satan and had Barack Obama portrayed as a monkey. Not some petty local volunteer group, the state party.
I took the Blue Gal challenge. I made it to 1:02 when her big "But NOOOOO" caused me to shut it off. You can tell her from me that I'm gonna back charge her for the amount of brain drano it's going to take to get that shit to stop ringing in my head.
I've been on the road for the last several years, away from my beloved Pacific NW mountains and coast. I'm currently working in the northern midwest, in a small farming town near a major power plant (where I work for the time being) and a football stadium. Most everyone is small town nice. There are even some politically reasonable people here.
Then there are the ones that voted for derp fuhrer. Memory? History? Facts? What're those? Fascist gotta mandate, dontchano? Fascist is gonna make everything better! Fascist is gonna create jobs! Fascist is gonna get rid of that awful Obamacare! Fascist is gonna do somethin bout those islamics terrorists comin over here for our jobs! Fascist is gonna build a wall, you betcha! Fascist is gonna change DC and fix government!
I’ve stopped trying to explain reality and facts and history to these people. I just ignore them as best as I can and try to stay away on the off chance that their stupid is contagious. They don’t *want* to remember, and they don’t care that the crap that they repeat is completely different than it was just a few weeks ago. They’re just happy that they’re the victors now.
I failed the Blue Gal challenge just reading the galling title of the video. trgahan, that is shitty the reason the facts are burned into your memory is a personal one. What bluiceblank says. We can't let this Russia shit slide. These people were born and bred anti-Russia, and that's some next-level doublethink ignoring one's breeding. Donald trump may be in bed with Putin, indebted to him in some way perhaps? and we don't even have to make anything up, just follow the news and repeat it, questioning the patriotism of anyone who is not suspicious of this. This is a talking point that we should and can win; question the patriotism and cast suspicion on Trump's Russian connections (which is horrifying and dangerous, and this news should be on everyone's lips _anyway).
The judge is right. We need to afford Il Douche the same respect and support the RW gave Obama. We need to have the same deference for Melania and Donnys spawn as was given to Michelle and the daughters as well. Glad to oblige.
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