Sunday Morning Comin' Down

"The Secret Levers of the World" Edition.

On weekends -- when the major media flies its political flags at full-mast and every drive-by cosmopolite checks the "Good American Staying Informed" box on their American Citizen checklist by wetting their beak in the fizzywater of pop-cult politics -- we are now truly three, distinct and barely overlapping political nations.

On MSNBC, we have eight hours of unrelenting smart spread over two days.  Nourishing, fact-dense, and sparking with irrepressible wonk-joy and focused passion, "Up with Chris Hayes" and "The Melissa Harris-Parry Show" are both exemplars of the kind of teevee you can do when you give a damn about the truth and when showing that you give a damn is not considered shrill or unprofessional.

Shows that ask, once again, what exactly is so funny about peace, love and understanding?


At the other end of the spectrum we have Roger Ailes' Hermit Kingdom: that down-the-rabbit-hole tin-pot media banana republic where outright lies roll off the authoritarian assembly line like so many 'Nilla Wafers and where "quality control" is a matter of making sure that a particular line of partisan smear is effective with no regard for its basis in fact whatsoever.  It is a domain based entirely on people telling comforting lies to bigots for money, and while the specific junk each Fox News employee it throwing on any given day doesn't interest me much, the shape and direction of their lies can be instructive.

For example, the latest Republican lie continues the GOP's generation-long project of jettisoning any pretext of responsible governance in favor of completely aligning their Party with the bigotries and paranoia of its Base, so that now, the Sekrit Kenyan Second Term Conspiracy ravings of the NRA towel-boy for America's "Ready! Fire! Aim!" gunslaughter-culture... .


..are virtually indistinguishable from the Sekrit Kenyan Second Term Conspiracy ravings of Baron Grifthausen, the GOP's leading amateur paleontologist and "Definer of civilization, Teacher of the rules of civilization, Arouser of those who form civilization, Organizer of the pro-civilization activists and Leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces"


(From this week's Fox News Sunday [please note how Newt's Sekrit Kenyan Second Term Conspiracy ravings are not even challenged by Brit Hume, but merely accepted as fact before explaining how the Sekrit Kenyan Second Term Conspiracy might be mitigated by GOP control over Congress]):

GINGRICH: We really see, we're both grandparents, we really see this as a fight for future of our grandchildren's country. And we really see this as not just defeating Obama but change in Washington is really, really central to the future of this country. I mean, this is the most important election in some ways since 1860. Barack Obama is a genuine radical. And if he gets reelected with this economy and these gas prices and this deficit, who knows what he'd do in the second term.

HUME: Well, he'd be constrained of by the Republicans who control at least one House and possibly two.

 GINGRICH: Well, this is president who exploits every advantage of the presidency to minimize constraint. You know, when you have a secretary of defense who says we don't need Congress' approval to go to war as long as we have the U.N. --

HUME: Right.

GINGRICH: I mean, this is -- this is not an administration I would rely on the ability of Congress to constrain very well.

All of which is now, in turn, virtually indistinguishable from the newly-minted stump speech of the GOP's de facto nominee:



Romney, Gingrich, LaPierre and the rest of the Conservative Brain Caste understand their Base extremely well: they are a mob of selectively lobotomized political paranoid/schizophrenics for whom the fact that Obama (for example) did not seize anyone's guns or propose a single piece of gun control legislation in the last three years is merely iron-clad proof of the existence of an Even Deeper and More Diabolical Sekrit Kenyan Second Term Conspiracy under which seizing everyone's guns (along with setting up those concentration camps!) will be Barack Obama's first order of business.

From the Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman by way of the "Freethoughts Blog":

Fraudulent Fears of a Second Term

...
Whenever you hear about a psychic being arrested, the natural question is: Why didn't she see that coming? Conservatives who raise dire alarms about what will happen in Barack Obama's second term face a similar problem. They need him to lose so their predictions will not be exposed as products of raging paranoia.

Rick Santorum says the defeat of Obama is imperative "so that future generations do not say about America, 'When men were free.'" After Obama was heard telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev he would have "more flexibility" on missile defense after he's re-elected, House Speaker John Boehner accused Obama of planning dangerous "unilateral concessions."

Former Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen laid out "the top ten disasters that would befall America if Obama were re-elected"—notably defense cuts so huge that "America will no longer be a superpower."

But no one can match National Rifle Association official Wayne LaPierre, who in February warned that Obama's plan is "get re-elected and, with no more elections to worry about, get busy dismantling and destroying our firearms freedom." ...

His detractors forget that even if he were a crazed leftist, Obama has limited powers. He can't shred the Second Amendment, because the Supreme Court—dominated by conservatives now and for the foreseeable future—won't let him.

He can't gut the Pentagon budget, because Congress has the last word on spending. He can't sign Munich-like arms treaties with Russia, because the Senate wouldn't ratify. He can't bring about the demise of freedom in America, because ... oh, let's not be ridiculous.

Oh, and one more hitch: He hasn't shown the faintest desire to do any of these things.

...

(As an aside, let me say how incredibly frustrating it is that every double-wide denizen of Sisterfuck, Arkansas apparently has a direct line to the very heart of the Great Saul Alinsky Librul Conspiracy -- knows every little step they are planning in dazzling detail -- while I, as a member in good standing of the Sekrit Kenyan Second Term Conspiracy, can't even get some low level administration flunky to look at my resume :-)

Which brings us at last to the third (and arguably the most destructive) domain on weekend political conversation teevee; that vast, floating island of Beltway Centrist garbage which exists to cut any fact-based conversation off from oxygen and sunlight.

Dr. Krugman calls them by their true names here:

...
What’s going on here? The defenders of Ryan come, I’d argue, in two types.

One type is the pseudo-reasonable apparatchik. There are a fair number of pundits who make a big show of debating the issues, stroking their chins, and then — invariably — find a way to support whatever the GOP line may be. There’s no mystery in their support for Ryan.

The other type is more interesting: the professional centrist. These are people whose whole pose is one of standing between the extremes of both parties, and calling for a bipartisan solution. The problem they face is how to maintain this pose when the reality is that a quite moderate Democratic party — one that is content to leave tax rates on the rich far below those that prevailed for most of the past 70 years, that has embraced a Republican health care plan — faces a radical-reactionary GOP.

What these people need is reasonable Republicans. And if such creatures don’t exist, they have to invent them. 

...

Fortunately, while our Centrist media algae bloom may be as wide as David Gregory's ego, it is only as deep as David Brook's comprehension of American history, and as loosely held together as Peggy Noonan's grip on reality. So for all their sound and fury, the clowns at the Mouse Circus are an incredibly weak and timid bunch -- one good punch and they shit themselves and run away, which is why not one of them has the guts to square off publicly with anyone like me.