Welcome to Limbo

lim·bo

1    /ˈlɪmboʊ/ Show Spelled[lim-boh]
...

a place or state of oblivion to which persons or things are regarded as being relegated when cast aside, forgotten, past, or out of date:


2    /ˈlɪmboʊ/ Show Spelled[lim-boh]

noun, plural -bos.
a dance from the West Indies, originally for men only, in which the dancer bends backward from the knees and moves with a shuffling step under a horizontal bar that is lowered after each successive pass.

Consider the two meanings of the word -- a dance with a bar that is constantly being lowered and a dancer who must bend over ever-further to continue to compete...and a place reserved for those-who-do-not-belong-anywhere-else -- and then consider this from Andrew Sullivan, who makes a very fine living as one of America's Leading Conservative Public Intellectuals:

My take on Republicanism's evolution into a religion with doctrines, not a political temperament with policies, is here. My book spells all this out and did so in 2007, when the rest of the right was in aggressive denial.

Well shut my fool Liberal mouth, if that dazzling demonstration of fearless Conservative intellectualizing just turn me right the fuck around.

You know who else wasn't in aggressive denial in 2007, Andrew?

Or in 2004?

Or in 2001?

Or in 1998?

Or in 1994?

Or in 1991?

Or in 1981?

Every Liberal in the fucking Universe.

Or as you still refer to us in a post on genocide

"The double standards, perpetuated by ageing lefties, are repellent".

Hmm.

Well, I am aging. And I am a Leftist. But I honestly don't know a single apologist for Stalinism.

Really, not one.

I do know several Leftists who have kids, go to church and temple, work jobs (often more than one), pay their taxes, struggle to pay their bills and live in terror of the one, big expense that will undo everything.

But double-standard Stalin-lovers? Nope.

You know, on the one hand, I kind of pity poor, aging Useful Idiots of the Conservative Movement like Sullivan: everything he has ever believed has turned to shit, and everything he has mocked and belittled has turned out to be right.

Perhaps an acceptable record of attainment for, say, a semi-literate squirrel fluffer...living in a tiny, backward country far far away...in a previous century...but not exactly the kind of "Can-Do, Motherfucker!" achievement you'd expect to come screaming out at you from the first paragraph of the resume of one of America's Leading Conservative Public Intellectuals.

Like so many of his Conservative expatriate brethren, Mr. Sullivan's understanding of American culture and politics seems to have come straight out of the pages of "Maggie Thatcher -- Action Hero" comics, and never had much to do with the real, on-the-ground Conservative or Liberal actions or attitudes in real America.

Of course, while his Tory manchild with a crush on Reagan and obsession with pounding the square peg of the politics of his native land into the round hole of America Liberal and Conservative histories made Sullivan the perfect dupe for the real American Conservative movement, now that the Movement has left him behind, that same blindness continues to make it impossible for him to comprehend the real world as it really exists now.

Which puts Andrew Sullivan right back doing the only job he really knows how to do: repeating as breathless epiphany stuff thoughtful Liberals have been saying for 30 years.

One more Useful Idiot, all used up.

That's on the one hand,

On the other hand, clowns like Sullivan did a huge amount of damage, and still profit handsomely by exploiting the contacts and affiliations they garnered during their long, reckless and incredibly destructive joyride through the heart of my country.

So fuck 'em.