in the morning
It smells like...Medicare. (I have temporarily run out of adjectives to describe for the 1,000th time what a truly pernicious cultural phenomenon David Brooks has become, but thanks to blogenfreude we learn that the NYT had to cut comments on Bobo's odious column off after 25 when it became clear that the general reading public had an ample surplus of harsh language for Our Mr. Brooks and was not afraid to use it.)
It has almost ceased to matter what the perceived problem-of-the-day actually is, what really caused it and what all the options really are, because in the Bizarro World where we now live 24/7, we all know the rules:
1. Behind the tiny, transparent figleaf of fixing the problem, he Right breaks out its All-Occasion, Randite Playbook and begins radically tampering with something really, really important. While screaming "FREEDOM!". At 120 decibels.
2. Liberals warn them -- repeatedly and loudly -- that they are about to badly clusterfuck one of our body politics' vital organs, possibly irreparably.
3. Liberals are told to shut the fuck up. Liberals say a naughty word. Liberals are never seen on teevee again because, y'know, how rude! Liberal warnings go unheard and unheeded because, yee-HAW, we're gonna put a boot in someone's ass!
4. Time passes.
5. The terrible clusterfucking the Liberals warned would happen comes to pass. The Right is found at the crime scene, squatting over the corpse, murder weapon in hand, while wearing a tee-shirt that says "I Killed Dis Here Guy and all I Got Was Dis Lousy Tee Shirt" which is covered in fresh blood.
6. Our elite media carefully scrutinizes the evidence and determines that both the Right and Left are obviously equally to blame.
7. While Liberals are rendered temporarily, Billy-Budd stunned into a b--b--but stammer over this latest travesty, the Right slips out the back way, showers off, picks up pair of clean jackboots, a tri-corner hat and a "Don't Tread on Me" flag from their friends at Koch Industries, and returns the same way they came in swearing they had nothing to to with the corpse that is now starting to reek on the floor.
8. Having been spared by the righteous judgment they so richly deserve, the Right begins to scream that Big Gummint Liberal Socialists are somehow the real culprit here, and anyway somebody really ought to get rid of that reeking corpse.
9. On the pretext of getting rid of yon reeking corpse, the Right breaks out its All-Occasion Randite Playbook and begins radically tampering with something really, really important.
While screaming "FREEDOM!"
At 120 decibels.
How does this keep happening?
It keep happening because the Reasonable Center keeps being frog-marched ever further into the depths of Crazy Town as demonstrated by the following from awful, awful "Weekly Standard":
Rush Limbaugh on Ryan's Budget: 'It is Substantively Superb and Politically Brilliant'
11:46 AM, Apr 5, 2011 • By MARK HEMINGWAY
It seems to me that when Paul Ryan can get both David Brooks and Rush Limbaugh enthused, he's really on to something...
Of course, this latest upgraded iteration of Basic Wingnut Truth is currently contained in the "Weekly Standard" Bad Idea Contagion testing facility, but it won't stay there for long.
Because it never does.
And unless the Left fights back -- as one and hard -- sooner that you'd believe, these will become the parameters of acceptable public debate, set in unalterable Elite Media cement: Limbaugh defining the Right, Bobo defining the Left, leaving Paul Ryan's "Logan's Run" budget
as the Middle, and leaving the public to choose between being hit on the head with a hammer...or being hit on the head with an anvil.
Because no matter what the problem is, for the Right it is always one more opportunity to invade the wrong country, or slather the wealthy with more tax cuts, or spank the living shit out of poor, the weak and the dispossessed with an axe.
Which their enablers in the Mainstream Media will then obligingly gift-wrap in economic, cultural or religious scripture and call it Sober and Serious.
Pull Newt's finger and help Fight the Crazy...
3 comments:
Love the Billy Budd reference, Driftglass!
And Brooks, shirtless and basking in martial aroma - disconcertingly excellent work. . .
I guess we'll see if the middle class will disengage from Dancing With the Stars long enough to notice that Ryan's so-called Medicare reform, well, isn't; it's a wholesale destruction.
I know plenty of people in my age group (50 to 54) who were not only counting on Medicare, they won't survive without it. Time to step it up people, or be permanently and totally stepped on, forever, or until you die, which given the new landscape they are preparing for us, will be a whole lot sooner.
Slightly OT, but my favorite Jenny Agutter moment was in some western about 30 years ago where Warren Oates is talking to Jenny's love interest and tells him, "As long as I have a face, she'll have a place to sit down." Cue fistfight.
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