We're here.
We're Liberal.
Get used to it.
First, the self-evidently not-stupid part:
This is indeed a party more extreme than any other right-of-center party in the West, a party whose social policy is dictated by the Bible, whose foreign policy is directed by the furthest-right faction in a foreign country (Israel), and whose economic policy is based on the notion that if you cut taxes massively and boost defense spending and only cut entitlements in twenty years, we can best tackle the debt.
But its candidate - who has ensured there is no daylight between him and the more rabid parts of his party - is neck and neck with a president still in the world of reality. The GOP's degeneration is its own fault;...
Now the very stupid part, with emphasis added for your enjoyment:
...but that such a degenerate, irresponsible, ideologically extreme party is now, I believe, the favorite to win this election is a reflection not on them, but on us.
What the fuck is this "us" business, Andrew?
"We" did not create this monster and set it loose. You did.
You and David Frum And David Brooks. You and Ann Coulter. You and Hugh Hewitt. You and Ronald Wilson Reagan. You and Jerry Falwell. You and Karl Rove. You and Lee Atwater. You and Rich Lowry. You and Thomas Sowell. You and Phyllis Schlafly. You and Newton Leroy Gingrich.
You and tens of thousands of others, all pulling on your little oars, each contributing your time and energy to setting this horror in motion.
You. Fucking. People.
And then there were those other people, Andrew. The Liberals. The ones who have been putting their backs and hearts and wallets into reversing the course the Party of Reagan has been on for 40 years; to stopping this long, grotesque and premeditated slide into an emiserating Conservative Dark Ages of ignorance, superstition and fear.
The ones you used to call "fifth columnists" until the wind shifted and started blowing your shit back back down your throat.
And you know. in a way the social issues of 2012 bears some eerie similarities to the Iraq War circa 2004-2005. Once again, the GOP has painted itself into an ideological corner that is violently at odds with reality. Once again, to get out of the noose, the Party of Personal Responsibility resorts to and all-out campaign of slander and lies. Once again the spineless press simply transcribes and transmits the slander and lies verbatim. Once again, the roof they have thatched together out of pure fraud and bullshit works for awhile...and then starts to collapse right on top of their victory parade.
And then comes the Holy Shit moments as the scam falls apart.
Holy shit, there really were no WMD!
Holy shit, there really were no nukes, no mobile bio-labs, no secret bunkers, no anthrax-spraying drones!
Holy shit, they really are torturing people!
Holy shit, these incompetent fuckers really are did let an American city drown!
Holy shit, Terri Schiavo!
And a few people noticed -- far too few noticed -- that, holy shit, the Liberals were right all along.
Of course that particular revelation would fry every circuit in the Conservative skull so, unsurprisingly, after it all went sideways on you -- after it all blew up -- Conservatives like you simply wrote us out of the picture, didn't you? Because we were a constant and horribly irritating reminder that we were right and had been right all along, and people like you were wrong and had been wrong all along.
And so we jump into the big, Hope and Change bobsled and sail in the Year of Our Lord, 2012, where we find ourselves waist deep in the sour backwash of three solid years of Republican slander, lies and sabotage. And as the media swings the Big National Spotlight down Tampa-way, people here and there are once again briefly popping out of their political comas to discover...
Holy shit, they really are bigots!
Holy shit, they really do think the Earth is 6,000 years old!
Holy shit, they really still listen to Rush Fucking Limbaugh!
Holy shit, they really do hate science!
Holy shit, they really do think woman are chattel and vaginae are full of scary sorcery!
And again, a few people are noticing -- far too few -- that, holy shit, the Liberals were right all along.
This is a big deal for us Liberals because the default status of being a Liberal in Andrew Sullivan's America is a little like being gay in Pat Buchanan's America: absolutely invisible most of the time, mocked and ridiculed the rest of the time.
As a Liberal in Andrew Sullivan's America, I am not permitted to exist except as a straw man projection of the fears and ignorance of others. I am hauled out and punched around whenever some wingnut halfwit needs to prove his bona fides, or some douchbag Centrist needs to prop up the forever-collapsing walls of their Both Sides Are Equally Wrong cloister. To be a Liberal in Andrew Sullivan's America means that I constantly have motives imputed to me that are simply lies. It means that I am told -- emphatically told, every single day by every wingnut goon with a microphone -- that I believe all kinds of things that I do not believe and that no Liberal I have ever met believes.
The converse of all of this is that, as Liberals in Andrew Sullivan's America, neither you nor I will ever be given a chance to rebut any of this on a large scale, because to be a Liberal in Andrew Sullivan's America means that you are never allowed anywhere near that Big National Spotlight.
Because once in that Big National Spotlight -- even for a moment -- there is always the risk that you might rudely point out that "we" are not the problem.
Because, as I explained to the well-meaning Bob Herbert back in 2008, there is no "we" anymore: there are the people who have gotten everything fucking wrong, there are the people who have opposed the people who have gotten everything fucking wrong, and there are the people who are too lazy or foolish or cowardly to perceive the difference:
Dear Bob Herbert,
...I could not help but note that the technical term for people who tried to suggest any of [his very reasonable ideas about fixing our national problems] at any point over the last couple of decades was "Dirty America-hating Liberal".
A group roundly hated, ignored and demonized by the Real Murricans on the Right, and their enablers in the press.
And in November, while nearly 69 million of us surveyed eight years of debt, theft, blood and failure and ran screaming in the opposite direction, over 58 million of those Real Murricans looked at exactly the same shattered landscape and voted for “More Please, and with Extra Palin Sprinkles!”
Truth is, Bob, there is no “we” anymore; there are those of us who look at your laundry list as a reasonable assay of our challenges and changes…and there are the Pig People, their panderers, exploiters and ringleaders.
A major reason we are still at great peril, Bob, is not that nobody knows what the problems are, or even how to tackle them, but that Conservatism’s meaty thumb still rests heavily on the cultural scales.
Here is a belief system that has proven beyond any doubt to be a oligarch’s scam -- whose adherents are botched, cartoonish failures as citizens – and yet inexplicably continues to be treated with respect. Even deference. As if bleeding with leeches were still considered to be a legitimate substitute for heart surgery, or casting out demons was still discussed as a valid, competitive alternative to psychotherapy.
Failure by failure, lie by lie, after 30 years Conservatism deserves nothing but publicly mockery as a noxious witchbag of bad religion and bigotry it has always been, and yet when I flick past C-Span this evening, who do I see but George “Macaca” Allen…
...being fĂȘted by the Heritage foundation…
...urping up one Conservative talking point after another
...and smiling that big, fatuous, shit-eatin’ good-ol’-boy grin that is ceremonially Dremeled onto the front of every wingnut politician and preacher’s skull they day their balls drop.
- Just lock criminals up longer instead of letting them out like Liberals wanna do.
- Burn more coal.
- Don’t listen to “pompous elites”.
- Global warming is a lie.
- Americans are not addicted to oil; Americans are addicted to freedom.
- Etc. ad nauseum
...Once the wingnuts are electorally neutered and driven into the political sewer, and once the Centrists who prop them up are collecting unemployment, then we can start discussing how "we" are going to get ourselves out of the troubles they got us into.
Postscript: This is also unintentionally revealing --
"It's Orwellian propaganda. Chris Matthews was righteously indignant yesterday about the revival of Atwaterism - but the real scandal is that a major campaign is running a race-baiting ad based on nothing."
re·viv·al (r-vvl)
n.
...
2. A restoration to use, acceptance, activity, or vigor after a period of obscurity or quiescence.
Andrew, as a point of simple fact, you cannot "revive" something which has never gone away.
23 comments:
That We needs to be banned. I keep seeing it come in discussions like We need to have a serious discussion about the debt, or We need to have a national dialogue about war, or We need to talk about the real issues affecting the American People (another phrase that should be put to rest). Who the fuck is this We fella? I know of group of people called Liberals who have been seriously discussing civil rights, economics, and foreign policy for years now. The people who have to start being serious are those crazy fuckers who think you can't get pregnant from rape.
Dude, Driftglass, you are SUCH A GOOD WRITER...I mean, I really admire your skills. JUst wanted to say that.
Two comments, along a similar vein, surprisingly.
First, "and vaginae are full of scary sorcery!"
Dude, you're saying that to a gay guy. Trust me when I say the response will be, "They're not?" ;-)
Second, "is a little like being gay in Pat Buchanan's America".
That is actually a surprisingly good analogy for a very specific reason. If you ask any GLBT* individual who was politically aware in the late 80's / early 90's, and who was aware of the goings on in Christianity, will probably remember this. That was a time then non-discrimination ordinances were being put to a vote in many cities, and being opposed by many churches. The religious right was making a lot of money banging their drums about the "militant homosexualist agenda". Public poling eventually started to show a shift in public opinion, but it was one against the religious right. The turn was due to what people saw as bullying and meanness towards the gay community. People were turning against the religious right out of distaste of them being bullies with a miasma of cruelty about them.
So, the response was marketing. That is when the 700 Club and Focus on the Family started the marketing meme that Christians are a persecuted minority being bullied by liberals, secularists, and the militant self-avowed homosexualist agenda. They would get all weepy eyed about how they were just trying to bring the love of JEEzuz into the conversation, and protect children, won't you think of the children?, but those mean and nasty homos were *oppressing* them just because they were born Christian!
This was more successful than I think they ever expected. It ended up blending in perfectly with their aggrieved martyr-hood and Dominionism. Now is is part of the standard cognitive dissonance that 'Murica is a Christian nation founded by Jesus for Christians, and yet Christians are a persecuted and helpless minority crushed under the heel of secularism, science, and Big Homo.
The "is a little like being gay in Pat Buchanan's America" is a perfect analogy because that proved that playing the victim *works*.
Mike.K.
Congratulations sir, you just won the Internet!!!
Lone Ranger: Tonto! We are surrounded by bloodthirsty red skinned savages..I don't think we can make it.
Tonto: What you mean we white man?
But, beyond that do you catch the subtle attempt to change the narrative Andy makes? "I believe, the favorite to win this election is a reflection not on them, but on us."
Really? They are the favorite to win now? Last night, Chuck "repub testicle cozy" Todd, said: A slew of polls now show Romney leading" accompanied by...one poll. (Washington Times I believe Romeny 49 to Obama 48)
What you mean we indeed, duplicitous mealy mouthed, war whoring, traitor to your sexual orientation, balding...white man?
If we were to treat this like a game and applying Game theory, we all know how this game will be played,
If Romney Looses,
"I blame the crazy right wing! They simply went too far, Next election the true conservative base has to show up and push for a more conservative leader for us true conservatives"
If Romney performs a miracle,
"Well we true conservatives showed up and now we have a conservative mandate, I just hope we can put the crazy behind us and move on to do some real serious conservative stuff, first up is abortion you say? Well I'm sure we will get to some real conservative stuff after we have banned sharia and exiled the gay"
HitAndMiss:
"after we have banned sharia"
Actually, I was talking about that with someone recently.
The "Family Values" religious right coalition started with two pillars, fighting communism and fighting abortion. Those are the two items on which their fundraising and voter rallying were based.
When communism fell and was viewed as a failed ideology, their backup plan of fighting the gay was pulled to the foreground. The two pillars became fighting "militant self-avowed activist homosexualists", and abortion. The two items around which all their fundraising revolved were the gay agenda and banning abortion.
Now, social values are changing for the better, and they are on the loosing side of "the gay". Since conservatives lack creativity, they went back to what they were doing and re-branded communism as Sharia.
It is the same fear-based blithering devoid of meaning. You can't "fight communism" by sending money to a church in Kansas any more than you can "fight sharia" that way. Fighting the gay will go back to a back-burner issue, and a word-replace will change all their old mailers from "communism" to "sharia law".
Mike.K.
"You and David Frum And David Brooks. You and Ann Coulter...etc."
Don't forget the despicable Paul Weyrich. NEVER forget Weyrich: founding father of ALEC and godfather of the right wing voter suppression movement. Like Lee Atwater he's dead but his untruths go marching on. Search his quotes on YouTube, bastid made Buchanan look avuncular.
Also, somewhat OT, but another shadowy figure I don't hear enough about given his vigorous handiwork ever present: i highly recommend an online article from January 2012's AMERICAN PROSPECT titled 'Citizen Bopp', connecting the dots between big money, pro-life zealotry and the Citizen's United ruling.
I agree with Ufotofu9, drift. You are a fine writer and I admire and envy your skill set. That's why I keep reading your blog, despite the fact that I fundamentally reject your perspective. It's why I often cite your prose (with full attribution, as I encourage others to give you a look) even though I believe you consistently overlook the even uglier context within which the dissemination of phony Centrist poison operates. You seem to fail to recognize that the greater role of the wingnut Right and their marshalling of the willfully ignorant over the last forty years has been to provide cover for a corporate establishment allied Democratic Party which, under Carter, Clinton and Obama, has helped to push our government apparati so far to the right that it would shame Nixon, if he were still alive. Put the rhetoric in the dumpster, where it belongs, and just look at the actual enacted policy of the last four years. Sure looks safer than our imagined nightmare of a nation under McCain/Palin doesn't it? Until you stop to acknowledge that any hope for a national health care system designed for the benefit of the American citizen, rather than the profit of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, has been kicked down the road for at least two more generations under legislation spawned by the Heritage Institute. Unless you consider that the handful of concerned citizens who were uppity enough to publicly question and protest the adminstration's underlying motives for an economic policy that primarily provided both a Get Out Of Jail Free card and Pass Go and collect $$$ to the Wall Street pirates (the consequences of whose predations on the rest of us have still not been fully manifested) were beaten, pepper-sprayed and arrested into quiet submission. Or stop to think that POTUS has now assumed the perogative to have me summarily executed with no obligation, legal or moral, to reveal his reasons or explain the need for my elimination to my wife and kids. Expect things only to get worse until those of you who identify yourselves as "Liberals" abandon the political organization that has repeatedly and consistently betrayed you and worked against your interests and values ever since it torpedoed it's own nominee in 1972. Change can only begin when good people like yourself come to acknowledge and publicly call out the prevailing Bad Cop/Good Cop collaborative political dynamic that has burdened and restricted our national dialogue for far too long. The time is long overdue to expand and diversify our electoral options.
What the fuck is this "us" business, Andrew?
"We" did not create this monster and set it loose. You did.
...To paraphrase something I heard long ago, "...What you mean 'We', Pale-Face???"
Anonymous mentioned Big Homo....? Is that like Big Pharma? If so will it be covered under Obama-care? I hope so because the homosexual agenda is expensive (a meticulously restored craftsman and proper stemware are so NOT cheap). I'm sure the mocking and ridiculing would be covered as preventative services. Most importantly, when Obama forces us all into getting gay married, will the reception expenses be deductible? That could make a big difference on the champagne selection.
But in response to the topic at hand, Bob (the well meaning indeed) Herbert in 2008 was, as you bloggers say, part of the Village and you can't blame him for still holding out hope that the unhinged right could be reasoned with (when did the tea-bagging start?). A lot of us knew we were truly fuct when dubya plowed headlong into Iraq and we saw the deficit blow up. It took the centrists a few years to get it.
I like to tell the story of running into an old commercial fisherman in Home Depot about 2 months after O's inauguration. A 70-ish guy who I'd spent many days on his boat listening to him flap on about past adventures, but never a peep on politics. Suddenly the national debt was about to destroy our country and it was all Obama's fault. He had some frightfully inaccurate numbers...i.e., the Iraq war only cost 80 billion. With that, I knew the fix was in and the long term strategy was tax cuts, spending increases, wait for the democrat to get in office, then drown the earned benefits in the bathtub. We're on that raggedy edge with this election.
I believe the first assemblage of Tea baggery occurred a scant 21 days after the usurper was inaugurated. Replete with misspelled signs and O. with Hitler mustaches and all...
I know, I started hearing about how he was destroying he nation in between the time he was elected and when he actually took office. As the criminals donned new clothing and escaped the scene of the crime....
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/08/a-conservative-who-asks-why-not.html
"In his farewell post on David Frum's wonderful blog, Noah Kristula Green gives us a taste of what American conservatism might be if it were not tied to its current extremism. It's a great list - and note where it starts:
Why couldn't the Republicans and conservatives:
-Embrace gay marriage...
-...renounce Austrian economics and support monetary stimulus in an emergency? (As Milton Friedman would have done.)
-Could the pro-life movement change priorities from criminalizing abortion to working to find effective ways to disincentivize it?
-Can Republicans acknowledge that a Tax Credit is just as bad a subsidy?
-Can Republicans learn how to do the effective ethnic outreach needed to win minority groups in elections?...
-And is it so hard to admit that Fox News is clearly produced with an eye towards the geriatric population and that it doesn't do a good job of speaking to Americans who are not yet 50?
At some point, the GOP will have to do all these things if it wants to survive as a national party. The reason it can't? Religious and political fundamentalism. I remain of the view that the core conservative problem in America is that conservatives have become their own nemesis: ideological rather than pragmatic, pursuers of the perfect as opposed to the good, deeply uncomfortable with the modern world, and more at ease with the politics of resentment and radicalism than the politics of inclusion and moderation."
Bouncing Burke on a pogo stick. If only burning stupid really did hurt, and willful denial left a visible mark, so that the rest of us might know to publicly shun people who actually believe such naive crap.
Thanks Driftglass! I'm going anvil shopping!
OMG OMG OMG!
This one from Sully has to be noticed
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/08/live-blogging-tampa-day-one-kinda.html
10.37 pm. Well, I don't see how she could have done much better than that. But observe what she is really saying: Trust Him. He Will Not Fail. It's a form of leader-reverence, devoid of substantive content. Of course her job was not to talk policy and she definitely humanized her husband. But there was a sense of very Mormon deference to the leader.
Of course, you don't have to let this post if you don't want..but as you probably know, Mr. Peirce is burning down some barns in Tampa...and this is some amazing stuff:
"But the Republican Party did something remarkable at its convention on Tuesday. It set out on an experiment to see exactly how much unmitigated hogwash the American political system can contain on a single evening. The Republican Party has set out at its 2012 convention in search of the Event Horizon of utter bullshit. It has sought to see precisely how many lies, evasions, elisions, and undigestible chunks of utter gobbledegook the political media can swallow before it finally gags twice and falls over dead, leaving the rest of America suckers all the same. What you didn't see in primetime, from Arthur Davis to Ted Cruz, and from one 2016 contender to another, was the GOP embarking upon the task of seeing exactly how much nonsense it could produce at top volume before democracy screams and gives up, like Noriega in Panama when they played the metal music at him.
It was something to see, I'll tell you. An entire evening based on a demonstrable lie."
= Charlie Peirce from the RNC Convention
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/#ixzz24ucbJsw1me great stuff:
"
I'm still waiting for some braniac scientist to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is a genetic defect that causes this particular form of retardation.
This can't be completely laid at the feet of environmental conditioning, there HAS to be some physiological aberration.
These pig fuckers come out of the womb ignorant and strive their entire lives to remain that way and celebrate each others ignorance publicly.
Yer damn fuckin' straight there ain't no "we".
It's been us VS. them for over a generation and the dumb bastards just keep coming with the same fucking playbook and taking our lunch money.
It's long past time for us liberals to get right back in their faces and play just as fucking dirty as they do.
When that happens, we fucking win.
RE: Convention
I never tire of hearing "the government never did anything" from people who've devoted their lives/want to devote their lives to said useless government. It makes me think of a job interview for a teaching position.
"So tell me why you want this job."
"I hate kids. I really really hate kids. I need to destroy them. Hire me."
"Excuse me?"
"Yeah, kids are fucking horrible. I really fucking hate them. If you hire me, I will make sure that these useless kids can't ever do a damn thing right again."
Bustednuckles:
You ask, science answers.
1) Open your web browser of choice and go to Google, the great omniscient font of knowledge.
2) search: amygdala
At least skim the wiki entry
3) search: +amygdala +conservative
4) bask
Mike.K.
Gawd, I love the internet.
THANK YOU, Mike!
Now we just need to mass produce some kind of neural implant and forceably install it into these cretins.
I recommend we start rounding them up well in advance of such a break through just to speed up processing later.
I suggest we fence off Texas and ship them all there until such a day comes,sometime in the next millenium.
Now now, Mr. Driftglass, no need to be so mean to Andrew. He's been a good boy for a long time now. He's atoned for his sins. Not very Christeean of you, sir. Are you really that tribal? Andrew's live blogging the convention, if you noticed was actually a slightly-toned-down version of Charles Pierce's screed -- they don't disagree in the least. Not to mention, Andrew has no doubt converted thousands more to the Dem side that you could ever dream of doing, not because only 23 people read your blog, but because his writing consists of more than throwing tantrums. Cheers.
The 100% fact of The Bible
IS
"Without Serpent/Satan The Bible would end on Page 2 with something as this...
"And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed and they lived happily ever after
THE END."
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