Sunday Morning Comin' Down

"First They Came For The Dirty Hippies" Edition.

We on the Left are blessed and cursed with a long and functional memory.

For example, we actually remember what it has been like to be a Liberal in American over the last few decades.

We remember the Right dropping whole houses on anyone who spoke out against the Bush Administration during the run-up to the Iraq Debacle:

And we remember having to bury our most outspoken comrades in secret because of credible threats from Real Murricans.  From the "In Memoriam" column for Mr. Steven Gilliard, in the New York Times, December, 2007 (emphasis added):

...

It was a life both short and loud. What began with a bad cough just after Valentine’s Day became a spiraling infection that ravaged Gilliard’s vulnerable heart and kidneys, and he spent most of his last four months hospitalized. The identities he kept separate for most of his 42 years collided in the days after he died; the few dozen mostly white bloggers who came to Harlem for the funeral saw for the first time the stark urban setting of Gilliard’s childhood, while his parents and relatives groped to understand what kind of work he had been doing at that computer and why scores of people had come so far to see him off. They must have been confused when Gilly’s online pals, sickened by the way some right-wing bloggers were gloating over his death, advised them not to disclose where he was buried, out of fear that someone might deface the site. The grave, like Gilliard himself, is known only to a few.

We remember it all because stalking us, demonizing us, dehumanizing us has been the Conservative stock-in-trade for as long as many of us can remember.

We remember it all, in vivid detail because for decades, slandering the Left us has been the Comstock Lode -- the Banana Stand -- for the laziest, stupidest, most deeply dishonest and talent-free idiots and con men in America:

The Right -- carefully and deliberately -- turned the act of feeding, accelerating and amplifying the madness of the mob into a highly profitable, multi-platform media empire.  

They turned hate into a business and for a long time business was good.

But then the beast they invented to lead a mob they had created started speaking in the uncoded language of the mob, and that was not supposed to happen.  Trump began regurgitating their own bestial, unhinged, racist drivel out loud at 1000 decibels; so loud that even the Right's most craven media collaborators (Looking at you, Halperin) could no longer pretend that everything was OK.  

And as they started to slooowly sidle away from the monster they had made, the meathead mob they had created started to detect unauthorized movement at the periphery of the Glorious Cause!  Suddenly some of the Right's most successful slanderers and demonizers were tossing around words like "principle", but not to blast some dirty, commie pinko terrorist-loving Libtard, but to distance themselves from the Great and Powerful Trump.  

And then, just as one dirty, commie pinko terrorist-loving Libtard predicted would happen long ago, the Little Red State Fundy mob did exactly what they had been trained to:  Attack!Attack!Attack! anything that smelled like heresy.

This is where Nicole Belle from Crooks & Liars (Welcome back, Nicole.  We missed you! And thanks for the video, Heather!) picks up the action with just the sort of story I woulda written had I not been [Insert Your Own Damn Walking Dead Spoiler Here] last night with middle child.  

Conservative Figures Out Libs Were Right All Along: The Alt-Right Is Scary 

By Nicole Belle

Back in June of this year, alleged Republican "kingmaker" Bill Kristol (the man responsible for inflicting Sarah Palin on the national dialog) was horrified at Donald Trump's march to the Republican nomination and toyed with launching an independent run to challenge Trump as the head of the party he's been manipulating behind the scenes for decades. His candidate of choice? David French, a senior fellow with the National Review and an Iraq War vet. The Trump campaign took very little time to try to intimidate him out of such a run and within a few days, French bowed out.

But Trump's alt-right minions weren't satisfied with just eliminating the potential rival candidacy. French needed to be punished for daring to consider the possibility at all and continuing to be a vocal #NeverTrump proponent. The harassment he received is not at all unfamiliar to those of us on the left who have come across these alt-righters on social media...

That is legitimately fricking terrifying and I don't want to sound callous about it at all. NO ONE should be subjected to that kind of treatment, full stop.

But I do want to point out that the left HAS been warning people of this kind of treatment. Women have routinely spoken to how unsafe social media is to them. Ask People of Color how the right has responded to "Black Lives Matter". Ask Muslims and Hispanics how they've been treated during this primary season. Even Jewish journalists feel assaulted by Trump supporters...

The monster the Right made can never be destroyed until the necromancers, poisoners and other dark conjurers are brought to book for the crime of bringing it to life in the first place.

Meanwhile, in "Hillary will not have a mandate because [Fill In The Blank]" news, professional Centrist bromide extruder, Matthew Dowd, is so desperate to straddle the hell out of every fence in Christendom that he manages to argue himself to a draw on network teevee.

First, Hillary will not have a mandate because so many people don't like her (emphasis strewn about to amuse myself):

DOWD: Well, I -- you know, this is the thing. This, as I mentioned earlier she's going to be re-elected on Election Day where half of her voters aren't voting for her. They're voting against Donald Trump that she's disliked and distrusted by the country. There's not a mandate on a series of issues because this hasn't been argued over issues in this...

And then some incomprehensible, Both Siderist shit about "the moon", because hey, why not show up to work drunk?

DOWD: I think Donald Trump, for all the things that we've said about Donald Trump and the buffoonery nature of it, he is like the guy that's pointing at the moon, and you look at the guy until you see the moon, right? Donald Trump is pointing at the moon which is a very frustrated working class part of the country, the same thing that Bernie Sanders pointed at in the Democratic primary...

Like, have you ever looked at your hand, man.  I mean, really looked at it!?

OK, cowboy, time for you to have a lie-down.

In fact, the only way Hillary Clinton will ever be able to claim anything like a mandate is if she personally unites the entire country:

DOWD:  Hillary Clinton has to figure out in a very divided country in a very demographic diverse country and a country that doesn't like her. What -- is she a transformational leader and does she do that? The final two weeks in this, she has an opportunity to become her as well just like Donald Trump didn't do to become something that people perceive as not, which is a transformational leader that can speak to the whole country. 

But -- at this is where it all breaks orbit and becomes high comedy -- because Mr. Dowd is desperate not to get sucked out of his teevee gig and onto the unemployment line by disagreeing today's iteration of Beltway Received Wisdom, just moments later Mr. Dowd is forced to admit that the Trumpkins are unhinged goons who Hillary Clinton should not even bother to talk to:

DOWD: I think the issue is -- I think the issue is, is Paul Ryan is going to have to make a decision, Republican leaders is going to have to make a decision on election night. And that's what I think the moment they -- they should have and could have been principled much more principle to try to grasp a hold of where the country is. But I think one of them has to stand up on election night and be the designated driver and take the car key as way from Donald Trump and concede and on his behalf and say enough is enough. It's time that we --

DOWD: I don't think she should go and talk to Republicans actually.

VANDEN HEUVEL: I agree with Matt.

DOWD: Because I think they're -- I think they're all tainted with this. Donald Trump is not the cause of this. Donald Trump is a symptom of this.

VANDEN HEUVEL: Absolutely.

So, to recap, Hillary Clinton cannot have a mandate unless she unites the country, but she cannot unite the country because the Republican Party to which Mr. Dowd devoted most of his adult life is fucking de-ranged.

So how in the world can Hillary Clinton ever hope to accomplish a task which Mr. Dowd himself has said is impossible?

Easy!

DOWD: Donald Trump arrived -- and she has to address the symptom. I think she needs to talk to independents, talk to independent leaders around the country and build something new.

Yeah, screw those Republicans.

If Hillary Clinton wants to fix a broken country and get her mandate on, her only hope is to take the wise counsel of "independents".

Like, say, Matt "Why won't anyone believe I'm an Independent?" Dowd.

The mighty Athenae (wise and good) at First Draft succinctly sums up my own feelings:

...

All due respect Madam President, but no, you don’t have to heal shit.

You and your party were not the ones out there screaming about locking up political opponents.

You and your party were not the ones tongue-kissing Putin and talking about the upsides of Saddam Hussein.

You and your party were not calling for the murder of journalists, using Nazi terminology or the word “cunt” as a comma.

You don’t have to heal nothin’.

Once and for all time, the onus of political healing is on THE PEOPLE WHO FUCKED UP. This country did not “become” divided because of “both sides” doing it. This country did not naturally develop a culture of political obstruction like a cold front rolling in, with nothing to be done but bundle up, and no one to blame but the gods.