According to Big Time Hollywood Actor Nick Searcy, these people do not exist.
Or they are Liberals.
In fact, according to Big Time Hollywood Actor Nick Searcy, Strom Thurmond -- the outspoken segregationist/white supremacist and one of the founders of the short-lived, segregationist/white supremacist Dixiecrat Party and that Party's candidate for President in 1948 -- spontaneously stopped being a racist and joined the GOP just to put as much distance between himself these people.
These people who will tell you to you face that they "Voted for the White Guy".
Because that's what ignorant bigots do.
But facing the grotesque reality of what Conservatism has become -- has been turned into by design -- is completely unbearable for Conservative Denialists who run the professional spectrum from Big Time Hollywood Actor Nick Searcy to Big Time Conservative Public Intellectual David Brooks.
Which is why they lie to themselves.
Sometimes they lie to themselves in bland, taupe fairy tales.
Sometimes they lie to themselves in unhinged, purple rage.
But they all lie to themselves.Sometimes they lie to themselves in bland, taupe fairy tales.
Sometimes they lie to themselves in unhinged, purple rage.
All the time.
UPDATE: Dr. Krugman explains this old phenomenon very civilly here:
...Obviously fraudulent arguments get made; get knocked down; and soon pop up again, as if the original discussion never happened. This makes a gentlemanly issue-centered discussion essentially impossible.If someone says the sky is green, you prove that it’s actually blue, and the next day he comes back once again insisting that the sky is green, and this happens repeatedly, you eventually have to acknowledge that mannerly debate about the color of the sky just isn’t enough; you have to go meta, and talk about the fact that this guy and his friends just aren’t in the business of honest discussion.Inevitably, there are some people trying to turn the conversation meta in a different direction, and make it all about civility. But bad-faith arguments don’t deserve a civil response, and if the attempt to be civil gets in the way of exposing the bad faith, civility itself becomes part of the problem.
7 comments:
Lying to themselves is a time honored tradition. Its like the dirt poor (pun intended) Confederate privates who gladly were ready to die to protect the slavery system of those rich plantation owners - aristocratic land barons who used those same slaves to put them into the poor house in the first place. But its not just the centuries old bigots & bible thumpers of the Confederacy that will hamstring our nation going forward.
Forty years of the Powell Doctrine (spawning think tanks, lobbyists, conservative-funded university chairs, etc), thirty five years of co-opted evangelical & mega churches, twenty five years of Rush & hate radio, fifteen years of Roger Ailes & Fox News (conceived as Republican TV under Nixon) - all have expanded the base of people ready to follow the orders of their Corporatist/Fascist/Evangelical/Conservative leaders. Its not just southern rednecks in trailers. And yes, these people have been conditioned to hate the "enemy" - whomever is defined as such.
If the Republicans lost the Congress in 2014, the White House in 2016, even most state legislatures & governors by 2020, if we have all manner of progressive ideas implemented - it wouldn't be enough. What Conservatism done to a huge chunk of our population will hurt this country for decades to come. Perhaps more damaging than the actual actions of Reagan, Bush, Wall Street & the rich right wing puppet masters these last thirty years.
When I see people that look like Mr. Searcy muttering to themselves in public, I generally ignore them.
I caught mu8ch of your interaction with Searcy the other night on twitter as it was going on.
To put it mildly you have the patience of a saint. (Or you're a Sadist shining sunlight through a lens on that ant-brained Searcy)
There are days when I am sure we deserve oblivion
"and if the attempt to be civil gets in the way of exposing the bad faith, civility itself becomes part of the problem."
I wonder if this just spelled out the rationale for DFB's Yale humility class.
After the class, when someone confronts him with a laundry list of his lies, he can reply with, "Well, *I've* taught a class in humility at a prestigious Ivy-league university... and in my most informed academic opinion, you're being a prick." One one hand, it lets him dismiss his detractors on terms of "civility" and "humility", which are Left-leaning traits, which makes him look "centrist". On the other, it gives him the academic authority to dismiss on grounds of civility any counters that would be too difficult for him to simply evade or outright ignore. He's not simply calling his detractors names to avoid their arguments, he's weighing in with an "academic" opinion.
He can go from an evasive lair to simply dismissive, and make it look like his academic clout is evolving as a serious centrist.
Mike.K.
It's a shame, because Searcy is quite good on "Justified."
Fox-Scrambled Brain Syndrome.
Love him as Art Mullen, but he's politically an embarrassment to himself.
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