Sunday Morning Comin' Down: The Fight For The Future

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” -- George Orwell, 1984

Our normal Sunday Morning Comin' Down feature has been preempted because it was just the same ocean of empty, awful sludge shot through with floating chunks of liar.

Instead, I want to take another opportunity to remind you that, as part of Operation Memory Hole the rewriting of the Obama Years by the Right has already begun in earnest, and that this ongoing process of obliterating inconvenient history should be where Liberals concentrate their fire.

From Senior Writer at the increasingly-irrelevant Weekly Standard:

Every POTUS is partisan. Our system is partisan and he is in it. My point is that I've found his style of partisanship especially grating.

— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) December 18, 2016

It's Obama's utter lack of intellectual curiosity that grates. He knows less than nothing about conservatism and wants to keep it that way. https://t.co/W8bMdN95um

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) December 18, 2016

Unsurprisingly a new poll finds that the same number of meatheads thought the Kenyan Usurper stole the election in 2008 also believe that their Dear Leader won a smashing popular vote victory.

In 2009 we found 52% of Republicans thought ACORN stole the election for Obama, only 27% thought he won fairly https://t.co/lmbxylm8uD

— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) October 19, 2016

A new poll shows an astonishing 52% of Republicans incorrectly think Trump won the popular vote https://t.co/PyIHuOeVSH

— Monkey Cage (@monkeycageblog) December 18, 2016

And even though The New York Times' David Brooks was too busy chasing his Confirmation Bias Spirit Animal across the continent to type 800 words, the New York Times' incestuous Both Siderist stable is plentiful enough to summon up an infinite number of pasty, middle-aged, white, hand-wringing Reasonable Conservatives from a Reputable Think Tank to fill an op-ed with Both Siderist concern trolling.  This Sunday it was Peter Wehner's turn (from Wikipedia):

Peter Wehner is an American writer and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative think tank.

...

Wehner served in the last three Republican presidential administrations (Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush). Wehner was a speechwriter for Secretary of Education William (Bill) Bennett before becoming special assistant to the director at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Wehner was then executive director for policy for Empower America, a conservative group that was founded by Bennett.

He served George W. Bush as deputy director of speechwriting in 2001, and became the head of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives in 2002.  After leaving the Bush White House in 2007, Wehner joined EPPC as a senior fellow. In 2012, Wehner served as senior adviser to the Mitt Romney presidential campaign.

Wehner is the co-author of two books: City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (with Michael J. Gerson) and Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism (with Arthur C. Brooks). In City of Man, published by American Enterprise Institute Press, Wehner and Gerson argue that the free market and capitalism, when properly functioning, act "as a civilizing agent" that improves society's moral condition in key ways by prizing "thrift, savings, and investment" and discouraging "bribery, corruption, and lawlessness." The title of the work was suggested by Yuval Levin.

For those of you playing wingnut welfare bingo at home, please mark the following boxes on your score-card:

Ronald Reagan

George H. W. Bush

George W. Bush

Arthur C. Brooks

Bill Bennett

Michael Gerson

Yuval Levin

Mitt Romney

American Enterprise Institute

And what does Mr. Wehner have to add to our understanding of what just happened to our country?

Glad you asked.  From The New York Times (emphasis added):

Moderation, then, is out of step with the times, which are characterized by populist anger and widespread anxiety, by cross-partisan animosity and dogmatic certainty. Those with whom we have political disagreements are not only wrong; they are often judged to be evil and irredeemable.

...

The concern some of us have is that even before Mr. Trump set foot on the political stage, America was becoming a bit more like the Sahara or the Arctic Circle than a temperate zone; that moderation was passé in both parties and that no politician would defend it as a political virtue...

Of all the human trash that clog the arteries of our body politic, Fake Moderates/Both Siderists like Mr. Wehner are arguable the worst.  The fact American writer and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), Peter Wehner, had to literally unperson President Barack Obama -- who spent eight fucking years practicing the political virtues moderation and civility as he was relentlessly and methodically slandered and sabotaged by the entire Republican Party -- in order to make his stupid theory work should certainly disqualify Mr. Wehner from ever being asked to express an opinion on any subject ever again.  

Of course it won't. because Operation Memory Hole is a massive and costly enterprise and it needs all its soldiers. 

But all the braying from the Right and Both Siderist goo from the Center cannot undo or wish away this one, stark and unalterable fact: After a campaign that lasted 18 month and laid bare the unalloyed depravity and reckless, pathological dishonesty of Donald J. Trump, on November 8, 2016 tens of millions of Republicans bellied up to the fascism bar and ordered a double in a dirty glass.

And for this they can never be forgiven.