Not Fixing The Hole Where The Insane Gets In

In the tonier precincts of American Conservatism there is a broadly held and increasingly hysterical belief that...

...even though Donald J. Trump was obviously created by the terrible Kenyan wizardry of Barack Obama...

...and turned into a Republican candidate by the powerful mesmerism of Hillary Clinton...

...for the sake of Saint Ronald Reagan, someone, somewhere inside the Party has to nut up and politically crucify this sonofabitch...

...despite the fact that three days after each previous attempt to bury him...

..he has risen in the polls..

...in fulfillment of prophecy.

So what to do?

Well, there is always the danger that the four or five Serious Public Intellectuals still rattling around inside the Party of Jefferson Davis might actually take a professional risk on behalf of the greater good and conduct a searching and public moral inventory of the colossal failings of the Republican party with an eye towards fixing what is actually wrong with their party (Hint:  It's full of bigots and imbeciles and fascists because you built it that way.)

But not to worry, citizens: the possibility of that happening is purely theoretical.  Here in the real world, what passes for Conservative public intellectuals would not dare to poke the real problem with the GOP  (it's full of bigots and imbeciles and fascists because you built it that way) with a barge pole.  This is because they are intellectual cowards who are deeply invested in preserving the lies out of which they have feathered their professional nests over the years. And so I predict that they will continue to hide under the bed, get drunk on peach schnapps, spinning comforting bullshit about the past (Ross "Chunky Bobo" Douthat in the New York Times) --

Since that president [Obama] is a Democrat, since his own foreign policy choices have contributed to the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and in Libya, and since his immigration policies look to conservative eyes like they’re heedless of unintended consequences...

... many of those voters lived through the George W. Bush presidency, when a Republican president combined an idealistic attempt to spread democracy in the Muslim world by force of arms with a firm repudiation of any suggestion that Islam writ large might be a problem...

-- and rambling sideways gibberish about the internal mechanisms of some imaginary Republican party which exists entirely within their imagination (David "Original Bobo" Brooks of the New York Times):

There are two types of Machiavellians in politics, Selfish Machiavellians and Kind Machiavellians...

In Washington and maybe in life, there are many more Kind Machiavellians than Selfish ones. But Ted Cruz has always stood out for being nakedly ambitious for himself...

...with the election of Ronald Reagan, the conservative establishment split into two. There was the regular conservative establishment, filled with mainstream conservatives who wanted to use the inside levers of power that Republicans now controlled.

But there was also a conservative counter-establishment. This was populated with people like Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, Brent Bozell and others who were temperamentally incapable of governance.

Today the conservative community still has at least two establishments, or three if you want to throw in the young Reform Conservatives...

I'm now 100% sure that Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times has no clue what the word "establishment" actually means (hint: look in the fucking mirror) -- 

...the existing power structure in society; the dominant groups in society and their customs or institutions; institutional authority!

-- but do please go on!

The Old Right Counter Conservative Establishment has grown in recent years. For example, the Heritage Foundation, which used to be more or less conservative establishment, has gone more Counter Establishment...

The Counter Establishment is now nearly as financially flush and institutionally entrenched as the mainstream establishment.

Ted Cruz is surging as the figurehead of the rich and interlocked Counter Establishment.

I'm sure that this Big Endian/Little Endian dogma slapfight reportage sounds to Beltway insiders like Exciting!Dragaway!Action!With!Don"TheSnake"Prudhomme!And!Shirley"ChaCha"Muldowny!

But to the rest of us, out here in the real world, who know perfectly well how the Pretty Hate Machine works, and have watched pundits like David Brooks and Ross Douthat dedicate their professional lives to its preservation even as its constituent components -- various factions of angry, paranoid bigots and imbeciles lashed together and used as a battering ram by demagogues and oligarchs -- have been laid bare right before our eyes, the infighting over who gets to bilk the wingnut chumps out of their money and votes this time around looks a whole lot more like...

(Not safe for work)

And there is no way in the world the Right will ever cure itself of the poison that is killing it if even its best and brightest dare not speak its name.