Sunday, December 08, 2024

Professional Left Podcast Episode 860: Special Comment


"If I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly way and say, 'Sir, I made an honest mistake.'" -- H.L. Mencken


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Thursday, December 05, 2024

Professional Left Podcast Episode 859: The Memory Hole That Is America


"Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness." -- George Bernard Shaw


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Wednesday, December 04, 2024

Remember Kids, Hippie Punching is *Always* In Season.

And you will always find your Never Trump "allies" leading the charge.

Also, that narrative "settled in" about 50 years ago, and Right, the legacy media, and the spineless Center have been dining out on it ever since.  


Burn The Lifeboats




Tuesday, December 03, 2024

Professional Left Podcast Episode 858: Pardon This, Republicans


"Fight the fight you're in." -- Unknown


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Monday, December 02, 2024

The Trolley Problem vs. The Trolly Problem




No Half Measures



Remind Me Again, Who Gave These Mopes The Conch?*


Have you noticed how Republicans are always willing to sacrifice other people's kids to their own, failed political fantasies?

Have you noticed how Never Trumpers are still trying to con their audience into thinking that if we could just catch Republicans lining up to support Trump commiting one more crime, or one more act of treason or spewing out one more monstrous lie...then we could torch 'em!  And all our Never Trumper superiors require of us stupid Democrats is that we behave flawlessly at all times, and never put a foot wrong!  


On this subject, Nichols really went all-in.  Mounting his high horse Contrarian Indignation and riding it all the way out to where Jesus lost his sandals.  You and me, kiddos, we're just like MAGA.  

So, are we still supposed to ignore the Never Trumper's open, seething contempt for us and never never say a discouraging word in return because something something the enemy of my enemy is something?  Is that ridiculously one-sided deal which we never agreed to still in force?



Hey look!  A two-fer!  One smug, contrarian asshole reposting another smug, contrarian asshole.



Simply posting his own fury and contempt for us stupid Liberals obviously did not slake Nichols' thirst for shitting on us.  He hadda go scrounging for other people to tell us how terribly wrong we are.


Hey look!  Another two-fer!


What a coincidence!  I had just left a lecture by Tim Miller about how our ridiculously high Liberal standards and ridiculously stringent Liberal litmus tests are holding us back...


And Sara Longwell citing Josh Barro is certainly peak ... something:


I get the strong impression that ol' Tom would have relished the job of being an asshole contrarian judge writing dissenting opinions on the Nuremberg court.  "Ladies and gentlemen, the actions of these Nazi judges were in complete accordance with Nazi law, which were enacted by the Nazi government.  To hold these men accountable for their actions would be a slap in the face of the sacred idea of the Rule of Law!"


For his many sins, Tom has been gifted a byline at The Atlantic from which he can clutch his tiny pearls and scold the Left to much larger audience, and you haven't, so there you go.





From the undisputed king of bad political advice...


From the shoutiest shouter of shitty political advice...


And, inevitably...


This is just a small sampling of what the Never Trumpers who have colonized the media are saying about us and about our president.

But what about those savvy professional Democratic podcasters?  Y'know, the kids who used to write jokes 'n such for president Obama and are now podcast moguls?  Yeah, they, too, can, in the words of the late Kurt Vonnegut, “Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.  Go take a flying fuck at the mooooooon.”




Because you know the corollary to the No Fair Remembering Stuff rule, right?



On the one hand, it would probably be rude and uncivil of me to reiterate for the hundredth time what an act of incandescent idiocy it was to hand over what little is left of the "Liberal" media to a small handful of recently-former Republicans who had previously spent their entire professional lives hating our living guts, opposing everything we believe in, and building the very same Republican monster factory that eventually drove them out of their own party and onto MSNBC.

Instead of, y'know, promoting actual Liberals who have actually been right about the Right all along.

On the other hand, I have never pretended to be anything other than  rude and uncivil.


No Half Measures



*In case you don't get the "conch" reference.

Sunday, December 01, 2024

I Am So Confused

One hears a great deal these days about Democrats failing because we don't talk like "regular people".  

For example, here is John Fetterman being quoted by Fox News...which, in turn, is quoting The New York Times.  Which is all just super helpful.

Fetterman says Democrats lost male voters by being insulting, condescending

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., believes the Democratic Party has turned off male voters by being "insulting."

In a new interview with The New York Times, the lawmaker stated that liberals turned off male voters, who supported President-elect Donald Trump in droves. 

"Telling them that ‘I know better than you do,’ that’s not helpful," Fetterman said, characterizing what he saw as the party’s approach to courting men.

This genus of punditing is currently in vogue and to be found everywhere.  Like "Joe is too old!" and "But her emails" and 'Why won't Obama lead?" and "It's going to be Rubio!" and "Live, from this Ohio diner...", it's every two-bit opinion-haver's cheap and lazy way to fill column inches, but it leaves me very confuse.  So I'd appreciate it if someone would explain it to me.

Slowly.

Using little words.  

As if I were a Florida Republican.

First, well, this isn't really a question.  It's just that I can't help but notice how so many of the people hectoring non-specific "Democrat" and "Liberals" as being too snobby and condescending are themselves some of the most condescending humans extant.  Looking at you, panel of Mona Charen's "Beg to Differ" Bulwark podcast.  Looking at you, Ezra Klein, and the Time's op-ed page.  Looking at you, Pod Save kidz.  And Morning Joe has every flavor of condescension you could ever want.  The braying, talking-over-everyone condescension of Joey Scabs himself.  The mousy condescension of his sidekick.  And whole chorus of condescension from their regular panelists.

Second, I've also noticed how quickly you, John Fetterman, jumped from condemning "the Democratic party" to slagging nonspecific "liberals", and then back to "the party" again.  Put a pin in that: we'll get back to it.

Third, if arrogant and dismissive and outright repulsive language is so damn off-putting, John Fetterman, I gotta ask: have you ever actually heard how the Right talks about us America-hating, terrorist-loving, filthy, socialist, commie pedophile baby-killers?   Because it may surprise you!  Of course you may have missed it since they've only been talking about us this way, very openly, for the last 30-40 years.  

On the radio.  

On teevee. 

In print.  

On podcasts.  

Shall I go on?

So, fourth, why it's only condescending and off-putting when Democrats hit back?

Fifth, how is it every two-bit opinion-haver in Murrica is always very lavish condemning "the Democratic party"and/or "liberals" generally, but can never seem to get around to identifying any specific Democrat or liberal by name or title?   Who are these people, John Fetterman?  Where do they live?  What do they do for a living?  If you've got specific names and addresses, I'd be happy run over and tell them to cut it out.  Y'know, one condescending liberal to another?

Sixth and last, just exactly how does Slack Jawed Cletus from Sisterfuck, Arkansas know what the hell liberals are saying about him, or about anything, anyway?  Are there liberals with sound trucks rolling through the shitty, potholed streets of Sisterfuck, Arkansas, promiscuously shouting big words and smarty-pants phrases  like "epistemic" and "counterfactual" and "bounded rationality" and "disenthrall" just to make the locals feel stupid?  Are liberal women swarming the local pickup bars, quoting Bell Hooks and making fun of the male denizen's tiny penises? 

Or, as is 1000% more likely, Slack Jawed Cletus from Sisterfuck, Arkansas has never actually  encountered a real-life snooty, condescending liberal in the flesh.  But Cletus watches a lot of teevee.  NewsMax, mostly, with some Fox for Sean and Jesse and the hot ladies.  And when he's out on Cletus business, he listens to one of the three local station, all of which carry sports and Conservative talk.  

And all of the media Cletus has consumes all day long, every day, for decades, tells him that, out there somewhere, millions of uppity, condescending liberals are plotting against him and laughing at him behind his back.  

Cletus' media will include tiny snips of actual Democrats saying crazy, insulting things like "the 2020 election was not rigged" and "Donald Trump is a criminal" and "January 6th was an insurrection"  and "inflation is coming down" when everyone knows none of that is true!  And Cletus knows that everyone knows that none of this is true because all of it will be repeated over and over and over again, in different ways, on all the garbage propaganda Cletus gobbles up like Christmas ham.

Inevitably, the outraged bellowing from Sisterfuck, Arkansas will slop over into the legacy media and a fleet of Zeitgeist Media Action Vans will be dispatched from the East coast to interview a whole passel of Cletuses in a bunch of local diners.  From there, Cletus' down-to-earth, recited-by-rote wisdom will make its way into the comments of quotable, high-profile people who won't scold Cletus for being a dumbass who listens to liars, but will instead blame Democrats and liberals for being pompous and highfalutin.   

And the circle of life will once again be complete.

If you would like a blueprint of how this process works, including a complete list of materials and tools, just send $64 to the...  


Burn The Lifeboats Fund

Or you could just go here ("Joe Walsh and The Triumphant Return of Joey Tabula Rasa") to a post in which I wrote about a specific, traceable example of this phenomenon.  A fragment of a speech by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm was taken wildly out of context by one conservative asshole.  It was passed upward through the Conservative media digestive system until it was allegedly overheard by one of Joe Walsh's many, nameless, imaginary just-plain-workin'-folk friends who, like Tom Friedman's many imaginary cab drivers, always just so happens to say exactly what Walsh wants to yell at Democrats about on any given day.

And on this particular day, Walsh transmogrified that entire daisy-chair of fiction, fake outrage and nonsense into yet another tirade about how out-of-touch Democrats are with the just plain regular American proletariats.  

In that post I break down that whole process, and you can go read it for yourself for free.  However, if you are inclined to send along $64 or more, I wouldn't think less of you.   

UPDATE:  Jim from the comments makes an important point.  When you consider the vast, empty expanse of all the things about which Cletus is dead-rat ignorant -- "Cletus doesn't know Trump is a convicted rapist. Cletus doesn't know Trump spent $160 million on NFL TV ads bashing TWO (that's right 2) trans prisoners who continued their transition treatments in prison following the TRUMP Administration's guidelines. Cletus also doesn't know Trump is convicted on 34 felony counts." and so forth -- how is it that Cletus doesn't know fuck all about anything, but is 100% for damn sure that some college professor out there at Hah-vahd spends all his days and nights cackling about Cletus not using the right pronouns.