Monday, August 01, 2016

Everything Is Coming Horribly True


In a way, the joke’s on the Republican Party: After decades of masquerading as the “stupid party,” that’s what it has become. But if an unapologetic ignoramus wins the presidency, the consequences will be no laughing matter.

Even if we can avoid the calamity of a Trump presidency, however, the G.O.P. still has a lot of soul-searching to do. Mr. Trump is as much a symptom as a cause of the party’s anti-intellectual drift. The party needs to rethink its growing anti-intellectual bias and its reflexive aversion to elites. Catering to populist anger with extremist proposals that are certain to fail is not a viable strategy for political success.

--  Max Boot, professional Bush Regime Dead-Ender,
writing in the New York Times today

Ten years ago, the late Steve Gilliard succinctly summed up Max Boot as follows:
Max Boot writes middle class war porn, Why would anyone take him seriously.
Ten years later, Gilly is gone and Max Boot is invited to contribute to the New York Times.

Ten years later, "Right about the Right all along" Liberals are still pariahs, but now, at no additional charge, we get to watch from the sidelines as the media creates a bull market in the confessions of tortured 11th-hour wingnut apostates whose orthodoxies --
Scholarly policy makers like George P. Shultz, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and Bill Bennett held prominent posts in the Reagan administration, a tradition that continued into the George W. Bush administration — amply stocked with the likes of Paul D. Wolfowitz, John J. Dilulio Jr. and Condoleezza Rice.

In recent years, however, the Republicans’ relationship to the realm of ideas has become more and more attenuated as talk-radio hosts and television personalities have taken over the role of defining the conservative movement that once belonged to thinkers like Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and George F. Will. The Tea Party represented a populist revolt against what its activists saw as out-of-touch Republican elites in Washington.

There are still some thoughtful Republican leaders exemplified by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who devised an impressive new budget plan for his party. But the primary vibe from the G.O.P. has become one of indiscriminate, unthinking, all-consuming anger.
--  are every bit as horrifying as the heresies they now denounce.

For my money, America's leading tortured 11th-hour wingnut apostates have not been tortured nearly enough.

11 comments:

duquesne_pdx said...

"There are still some thoughtful Republican leaders exemplified by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who devised an impressive new budget plan for his party."

Seriously? It's a good thing that I wasn't drinking when I read this, because I'd need a new monitor.
They're already setting up for the "the reason Trump lost is because he wasn't a real conservative" excuses, aren't they?
Keep up the fight, Driftglass.

Rehctaw said...

Ten years later, "Right about the Right all along" Liberals are still pariahs, but now, at no additional charge, we get to watch from the sidelines as the media creates a bull market in the confessions of tortured 11th-hour wingnut apostates

Lest we forget, we were, are and will continue to be blamed for everything, with no possibility of rebuttal from an actual liberal. Sure, we have you, but...

Lit3Bolt said...

In the future, all political commentary will sell Sleep-E-Zee Mattresses.

dinthebeast said...

Wow, that's an impressive list of Republican frauds, I mean intellectuals, no god damn it, I can't do it. I can't pretend this rogue's gallery is what it isn't. Paul Ryan's budget was neither impressive nor new. It was the same wingnut wish list for ruining the country for everyone not already wealthy they have been passing around since Ronnie told them they could.
Perhaps there is an anti-intellectual bent to steer the base away from the idea of critical thinking so as to facilitate them believing this obvious horse shit.
Hear ye O Democrats and sane folks of every stripe: Get out the damn vote, because if we fail to do so, there will be Republican majorities in both houses of congress and Trump will definitely sign Paul Ryan's budget.

-Doug in Oakland

trgahan said...

Republican's have spend the 30 years and billions of dollars telling their base that intellectuals can NOT be trusted and are the enemy with secret agendas. The media let them get away with calling their disinformation campaign as "intellectual" when it could be juxtaposed against Communism.

The rise of "...talk-radio hosts and television personalities (WHO THE HELL WAS WILLIAM BUCKELY THEN?)....defining the conservative movement..." coincided with the fall of the Soviet Union and American Business outsourcing all manufacturing to China.

At that moment Republican's lost the ability to paint anyone who said something they didn't like as "Red" though you still see visages with these media nitwits today pretending there are any Democrats (much less the party as a whole) embracing Neo-Marxist ideology.


Unknown said...

You had me at "thinkers like . . . George Will."

Maybe that was/is and will be the problem

This party didn't abandon its ideas, ideals; its thinkers and its conscience. Their thinkers were/are/will be morons. And their ideas were/are/will be little other than plutocrat porn and dorm-room Ayn Rand fantasy. Their ideals and conscience? Huh. I can't seem to find a foothold to conjugate those.

RUKidding said...

After decades of masquerading as the “stupid party,” that’s what it has become.

Boot had me at this line. What's his definition of "masquerading"? Hasn't the GOP always been the party of stupid? Or, at least, it has been for most of my life time, and I'm getting pretty long in the tooth these days.

Unknown said...

To borrow from an old Jethro Tull tune, "and the Devil cried 'More!'"

Unknown said...

His list of "intellectuals" left me queasy, like you know something bad is about to happen. Then I got to the last graph and bingo, not only the granny starver, but his f'king budget. All hell broke loose.
Whether it's the foundation conservative thinkers like Hayek et al. or the priest-kings of the GOP, I've yet to read one that gave me pause to consider his writings as worth contemplating. Conservatism is a knee-jerk reaction to the evolution of mankind, and the "scholars" of this are cynical thugs.

SamB said...

As Driftglass knows, if you want to learn about Paul Ryan's "impressive new budget plan," search the web for Paul Krugman Paul Ryan.

It is truly annoying that liberals' ideas only get in the press when conservatives say them.

Marion in Savannah said...

The only bright side to Boot's mewling in the Times is the fact that he was torn apart in the comments for calling ZEGS "thoughtful."