Tuesday, June 07, 2016

Today In Both Sides Do It: Michael Gerson Swings For The Fences


Former George W. Bush chief speechwriter, senior policy adviser and reliable Beltway stalactite, Michael Gerson, has spent a couple of columns crying in his beer about those millions and millions of bigots who suddenly appeared out of thin air, snuck into the Party of Lincoln and ruined the place while his back was turned.

Dammit, now he'll never get his deposit back!

Anyway...

So having used up a few hundred words scolding the entire Republican party for letting him down so terribly, it was time for Mr. Gerson to level-up his Beltway street cred by lurching awkwardly to the Both Siderist Center.

And boy howdy, does he ever!

Observe how Mr. "Smoking gun/Mushroom cloud" kicks any pretext of honesty and subtlety to the curb, lumbers straight through the barricades and makes a bee-line for furthest precincts of Ron Fournier country (emphasis added to suit myself):
In the age of Trump, a plea for pluralism
...
If there is any unifying theme in our degraded political discourse, it is the belief that the other ideological side is mainly responsible for degrading the discourse. Both hard right and hard left argue that the other guys started it and act with greater ruthlessness, and that the time has come, by gum, to take off the gloves, play by the other guys’ rules and finally kick some ideological . . . assumptions. We are seeing a perfectly symmetrical belief that the provocations of politics are asymmetrical.
And like that, we are off to the fucking races boys an girls! 

Sure, the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party is a lying, racist shit...
Donald Trump supporters have finally found a candidate willing to speak the language of conservative talk radio, even though he is not actually a conservative. The tone of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter is enough. No more of that politically correct rubbish about civility, mutual respect, reasoned argument, honesty, policy sophistication, ethical rectitude and basic decency...
But what about them damn Dirty Hippies?  Huh?  Huh?
On some progressive college campuses, restricting the speech and associational rights of people you don’t like has become a school-sanctioned club sport. And it is hard to throw a dead hedgehog without hitting an academic who will argue that all morality is a linguistic game...
And so, inevitably...
Tolerance, humility and patience are not the ornaments of a democracy, they are its essence. They allow us to live at peace amid deep disagreement. Those on the right or the left who undermine pluralism and dismiss democratic values are, in fact, bullies. And there is no real freedom lived at their mercy.
Without  respectable, enabling degenerates like Mr. Gerson working the front parlor of the GOP whorehouse, those millions of bigots who Gerson claims to deplore would never have been able to slip in through the side door carrying Donald Trump on their shoulders.

So while Mr. Gerson can never be forgiven, he can certainly be well-paid.

9 comments:

RUKidding said...

I read something recently about what appears to be an extremist approach to political correctness on some college campuses. It appears that even President Obama spoke out against it, something about coddled students. I confess to being rather ignorant about it, but I guess it's going on.

But, yeah, like, that's exactly like - the same thing, in fact - three plus decades of Hate Radio, Fox, the entire rightwing noise machine, countless rightwing "think" tanks that send out hateful lying screed emails and Facedump posts, ongoing propaganda campaigns, etc.

Yeah - a few coddled kids on campuses demanding some extreme version of political correctness totally equals decades of Lee Atwater inspired, Rupert Murdoch finessed, rightwing 1% funded media propaganda blitz on steriods, all helped by the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine.

Yep. Both Sides. Like, So Totally, dude, I'm so sure.

bowtiejack said...

OMG!
Brookianism is the Fletcherism of our age !
People don't chew enough!
OMG!
If only it made sense.[You know,like Fletcherism]

dinthebeast said...

What RUKidding said. I saw that Obama speech too, and I was thinking about it the other night when an old and trusted friend of mine went off on a rant about how climate change wasn't real, and wouldn't respond to any logic or reality I tried to bring up. I thought, OK, I have listened to his ideas, now what? See, there isn't any debate moderator in the real world to fact check and call bullshit on false claims or stop the proceedings to explain how dangerous or damaging any particular lie is. That kind of evil doesn't need the kind of cover Gerson and his ilk are providing for it. There are plenty of otherwise functional vectors walking around spreading it. So tell the stalactite that he can un-pc those unnamed liberal college campuses to his heart's content the instant he starts calling out the right wing lies that could actually do measurable harm to society and the viability of our species on this planet. Or not, he wouldn't listen to reality any more than my friend did, and that's really the whole point, isn't it?

-Doug in Oakland

Lawrence said...

I think the bit about 'restricting the speech and associational rights of people you don’t like' is a two pronged attack at PC culture and the BDS movement. I read today that Andrew Cuomo is trying to strongarm BDS. Asshole.

Jimbo said...

WaPo does itself no good to have former W speechwriters being cast as some sort of analyst. Greyson is no better than Fournier, Brooks, Frum and all the other GOP Conservative apologists embarrassed that their richly reactionary private lives have now been exposed by Trump. At least in the DC Metro area no one is fooled, except possibly Fred Hiatt

Unknown said...

Sure, Trump is a fascist, racist and totally unfit for the office of president but all the GOP will vote for him. Party before country, every time.

Unknown said...

Holy shit. This is like...the most ridiculously rote and pathetic "both sides do it" bunch of word vomit I think I've ever, EVER read. Even Ron "Severe Dementia" Fournier works a little harder to cloak his idiotic, GOP-enabling both-siderism in some sort of minimally defensible intellectual premise. He fails, of course, but he tries. Gerson didn't even try. Just monumentally pathetic.

It's going to be a long few months. Please, fearless host, get your rest, eat healthy, and keep doing what you do. We're going to need you more than ever to get through what is shaping up to be the most absurd few months of intellectually bankrupt and dishonest both-siderism we've seen yet.

Gretchen said...

Chuck Todd just blamed Both Sides. Obama called Romney to congratulate him on winning the nomination. Bush sent Kerry an email to congratulate him. He has no idea whether any emails were or will be exchanged between the candidates, but he's sure there won't be because Both Sides have polluted our discourse.

Ed Cooper said...

Kudos to RUKidding and Doug in Oakland for what they have laid out far better than I am able to do. I find when "friends" become so unhinged there is no way to communicate, so it would appear that I am running out of friends. The problem is that I am contributing as I see it to the further polarization of our society. On the other hand I am not going to subject myself to the aggravation these people engender in my life. I don't have that many years left, living them in constant state of pissed off is not an option