Monday, August 31, 2015

Today In "Both Sides Do It": Ron Fournier

Because whatever the hell the disaster is, and however many Conservatives you find gathered at the crime scene, covered in blood with machetes and broken bottles in their hands screaming "Hell yes we did it!", some disreputable hippie somewhere must always, always, always be blamed for at least half of the mayhem.

Or, as one disreputable hippie somewhere wrote a long, long time ago:
...In your weird fetish to be “objective”, the Republicans learned the little trick that makes you dance like organ grinder monkeys. Whatever goofy-assed idea they came up with, you’d reflexively cede them half the distance between the truth and their goal.

There was a book I loved when I was a little driftglass called, “Half Magic” by Edgar Eager, about a talisman that granted the user exactly half of what they asked for. Wish to be ten times stronger that Lancelot, you’ll get five. Wish for a million in cash, you get 500K. In the Mainstream Media, the Right Wing of the Republican Party found their Half Magic Charm. And each time you met them halfway, they moved the goalposts another twenty yards again...and you jogged right on along behind them, ten yards at a time.

The “compromise” between the truth and a lie...is a lie. The “compromise” between science and superstition...is superstition. Now, would you care to guess what the compromise between tolerance and bigotry is? Between knowledge and ignorance? Between Ann Coulter and Paul Krugman?
...

For over 20 years, the Right Wing has gotten fat and rich and powerful running the same scam on you buffoons over and over again. No matter how batshit crazy their position is, you’ll concede half the stage, half the clock and give them the benefit of the doubt. Which give them an automatic victory. They showed up at the table with little more that bad-acid delusions, and now the control 50% of the battlefield because you defaulted it right into their laps.

And when you don’t completely capitulate to 100% of their insanity, they turn right around and feed that into their own Pravada Media as Further Proof of the evil left wing media conspiracy.

“Victim,” they shriek. “Anti-religious Bigot!” They rant this from the rooftops because of the tiny bit of sane ground you did not surrender...and you jellied eels dependably cave in even more.

And thus they have led you – and the rest of the nation you whose common interests you were supposed to be serving -- by these half measures, right into the foyer of your own slaughterhouse.

It’s really quite an amazing story. Too bad we don’t have a press anymore to report it.

The only thing that has changed in the last 10 years is that any remnant of the myth of Beltway media's ignorant complicity is now completely gone.  By now it is clear that deliberately flogging the Big Lie of Both Siderism no matter what has been their business model all along.

11 comments:

Bazzer said...

I get it. I know both sides don't do it. But the left (or maybe not "left," but just liberal or moderate) is responsible for not holding those responsible responsible. When Obama came into office and said he was looking to the future and not the past, it signaled that no one would be held accountable for Iraq, for the financial meltdown, for stolen elections, or for any of the massive crimes that the Republicans had done in the preceding 8 years. And few on the left called Obama on it. Many didn't want to create the circular firing squad that had doomed the left time and again. I disagreed with this position; without accountability, there's nothing. But those on the left who abandoned accountability do share some blame, even if it wasn't they who destroyed everything.

Chan Kobun said...

And here we go. Question, Mr. Both Sides: Under which law should PBO have prosecuted the "banksters"? Keep in mind that they made sure the laws were re-written to make their actions legal.

And if your answer is "but they stole", you're an idiot who missed the question, and if it's "we would have found something", you're no better than a fascist.

Bazzer said...

Fraud was and still is a crime.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

[snark]

For shame, Mr. Mauer! Don't you know the Good Cop is your friend? He would never collude with that nasty Bad Cop!

[/snark]

Unknown said...

"By now it is clear that deliberately flogging the Big Lie of Both Siderism no matter what has been their business model all along."

Too many don't get that or don't care, even as they are subliminally programmed by the spew.

Unknown said...

At this point in the progression of his illness, Ron "Severe Dementia" Fournier makes tweets like these involuntarily - it's a muscle spasm.

Chan Kobun said...

Typical non-answer, backed by yet another bit of false dilemma from the peanut gallery.

Chan Kobun said...

As for Fournier, hey, free tip Ronnie: ONly one party regularly puts racist screeds front and center in its party, and despite what the guys handing you your paycheck want you to believe, it ain't the Dems.

The media makes sure there's no penalty for crazy, and even provides a handy narrative to ward off any sudden attacks of truth-telling that come along - "both sides", "accountability", they do it too".

Anonymous said...

As my blogmistress Athenae said:

"Yes. Liberals bear equal responsibility for a xenophobic whackjob making a mockery of the already mock-worthy electoral process because liberals somehow “abandoned hope for change” while ushering in universal health coverage, marriage equality, two more women on the Supreme Court and the end of two damn wars, while conservatives were busy debating just how many blood draws it would take to get $200 a month in food stamps for your hungry children."

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

@Mauer: It sounds like you, the same as I, are as weary of "Hold Your Nose And Vote For The Lesser Evil" as Drifty and most of his regulars are weary of "Both Sides Do It".

"Evil Lite--All the plutocrat-fellating buccaneer capitalism and callously homicidal imperialism without that embarrassing shoutycracker bigotry!"

Quite some time has passed since I felt like leading cheers for Evil Lite, which is just as well, since I don't look good in one of those short skirts anyway. ;)

Bazzer said...

The point is that liberals bear some responsibility for treating the Republican Party as a "normal" political party instead of as a radically right wing anti-democratic criminal organization propped up by a massive and dangerously deluded cult. The denial on the left -- the failure to see how bad things have really become and to take the necessary actions to correct them -- is a serious problem, just as the denial on the right is a serious problem.

Democrats occasionally address policy concerns such as health care, marriage equality, and so on, but the underlying problems are structural and ideological. Without profoundly changing the structure and ideology of the society, the Democrats' policies are being built on sand. Because there was no accountability about American war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, there is nothing to prevent the next war in Iran, Yemen, etc. Because there is no ideological agreement on social contract, there is nothing to prevent the next administration from shredding health care. Because campaign finance is out of control, there is no way to protect our political system from predation by the rich. Because there has been no accountability for the financial collapse of 2008, there is nothing to stop the next one.

The Democrats, and liberals in general, have been pushing policy and treating Republicans as either potential allies or obstacles, but they have not yet realized that they are not dealing with an opposing political party any more, but with a dangerous criminal cult.