Mr. Andrew Sullivan -- who is definitely not blogging -- wants to make it very clear right from the start that he is not blaming Liberals for the existence of Trump's very own malformed H.R. Haldeman homunculus, Stephen Miller:
No, I’m not blaming liberals for Miller’s grim fanaticism.
And then he goes on to explain how, you know, when you really think about it, you know what? Liberals really are to blame for the existence of ambulatory Conservative malignancies like Stephen Miller.
I feel like I know him because I used to be a little like him. He’s a classic type: a rather dour right-of-center kid whose conservatism was radicalized by lefties in the educational system....Before too long, they start adopting brattish and obnoxious positions — just to tick off their SJW peers and teachers. After a while, you’re not so much arguing for conservatism as against leftism, and eventually the issues fade and only the hate remains....
And then, as he rambles on a little further into this definitely-not-a-blog-post about how Liberals are to-blame/not-to blame for Stephen Miller, Mr. Sullivan gets around to blaming us for Laura Ingraham.
And Ann Coulter.
And Milo Yiannopoulos.
Think Ingraham and Coulter and Yiannopoulos. They are reactionaries in the classic sense: Their performance-art politics are almost entirely a reaction to the suffocating leftism that they had to endure as they rose through the American education system.
...I think of Ann Coulter, whom I met recently, backstage at Bill Maher’s show. What struck me was her sincerity, searing intelligence, and grasp of the facts. In another universe, she could have become a reasoned defender of a sane conservatism. Instead she ended up writing In Trump We Trust. In exactly the same way, Miller really is a product of Santa Monica and Duke — their living, breathing, raving antibody.
And then of course, there is the -- ahem -- money thing,
Of course I knew better — and could have made a decent argument for deterrence instead of behaving like a brattish dick. But I didn’t. I wanted to annoy and disrupt the smugness around me. If you never mature, this pose can soon become your actual personality — especially when you realize that it can also be extremely lucrative in the conservative-media industrial complex.
Andrew Sullivan; still putting the "ass" in passive aggressive.
Longtime readers might remember that I have written once or twice about how the extremely morally flexible Mr. Sullivan bailed out of the lucrative "Apologist for the depravity of Conservatism" business when the market for it started to crash under Dubya, and, along with his pals David Brooks and David Frum and Ross Douthat (and all the rest of the usual suspects) got into the lucrative "Blaming Both Side for the depravity of Conservatism" business before the paint on the walls of the High and Holy Cult of Both Siderism was dry.
And just like Brooks and Frum and Douthat and all the rest of the usual suspects, Mr. Sullivan did it all without ever once taking any responsibility for the monsters his movement has spawned, or daring to mention that we dirty Liberals had been right about the Right all along.
Also according to Mr. Sullivan's latest non-blog post, Steve Bannon is a very bad hombre, and The Young Pope is a good show.
Which only begins to scratch the surface "Things no sane person needs New York Magazine to pay Andrew Sullivan to tell them."
13 comments:
hear, hear!! great post, thanks!
I am so offended by your attempts to be kind to your fellow man that I had to resort to unbridled hate. And that is a sign of my intelligence and principled resistance to kindness and humanity.
Exactly driftglass. Republican party does something stupid, venal, and destructive, like say, to keep it topical, attempt to eliminate the ACA. Liberals pipe up: that's a stupid, venal, and destructive thing to do. Republican response to the Liberal response to the stupid, venal, and destructive Republican thing: you've called us names, our feeling are hurt, now we've no choice to double-down on the stupidity, venality, and destructiveness. It's the Liberals fault, because we're mean and point out the stupidity, venality, and destructiveness. That somehow works as an excuse in this country's political discourse. 'Well, I mean, Ann Coulter had no other recourse but to become a hissing gorgon of hate, those mean liberals made her watch Sesame Street when she was a kid.' Sure, Sullivan, why don't you go back on vacation.
Yes, yes and more yes.
Sometimes even the obvious needs to be stated clearly and loudly.
The very heart of modern Republicanism ( can it be even referred to as conservatism any more? ) is a knee-jerk, immature, over-exaggerated reaction to being told what's good for them.
Liberals say:
Vehicle emissions are bad for the environment :
Conservative reaction : Let's roll coal! http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/07/rolling_coal_conservatives_who_show_their_annoyance_with_liberals_obama.html
Liberals say : Global Warming is coming!
Republican reaction : Let's kill the EPA!
http://gizmodo.com/florida-republican-proposes-bill-to-eliminate-the-epa-1792024005
Liberals say : Mass shootings would be redueced by limiting access to guns and limiting magazine size
Republican reaction : Don't blame guns, blame mental illness
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/262192-after-shootings-gop-pivots-to-mental-health
Liberals : Okay, let's give the FBI access to mental health diagnoses for background checks..
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/are-the-mentally-ill-being-unfairly-targeted-by-the-fbis-gun-list/2016/01/14/2157a026-b957-11e5-99f3-184bc379b12d_story.html?utm_term=.2e22082aaaa3
Republicans : Nice try, Lib! Guns for everyone!
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/3/14496774/congress-guns-mental-illness
If Conservatism is standing athwart history, yelling stop, then Republicanism is chaining an anchor to their ankles, performing an akanbe and an upthrust index finger and shouting 'You can't tell me what to do!' while pickaxing for coal in the submerged bottom of our collective boat'
"Andrew Sullivan; still putting the "ass" in passive aggressive."
Awesome.
I bow before you.
"reaction to the suffocating leftism that they had to endure as they rose through the American education system"
I went to Arizona State, so I don't know what this means. Nor can I imagine what it could actually mean. Apart from "I'm such an asshole I decided to form my entire identity as a reaction to being asked to be less of an insensitive boor."
holy flaming shitballs.
"suffocating leftism that they had to endure as they rose through the American education system."
what the fuck would that british turd know about ANYTHING students ACTUALLY encounter while being educated in america?
i mean, really. ANYTHING other than the shit that the trust-fund treacle-brats mighta whined about during CPAC?
and yet THIS turd gets to go on the tv.
drifty, i dunno how your head doesn't just explode like lo pan's thug, thunder at the end of big trouble in little china.
ah yes, the cliché I-Was-A-Conservative-Hero-From-The-Cradle-Creation-Myth that douches like Miller and Sullivan convince themselves must be true, because otherwise they have to admit they were just self center, mean spirited, greedy children who didn't like being corrected by people they didn't respect.
"....radicalized by lefties in the educational system."
In high school, all the TV's in the cafeteria were on for Bill Clinton inauguration.....as broadcast by the Rush Limbaugh Show(remember he was on TV then). So my "leftie" teachers and school administrators had us watch the inauguration narrated by a man saying "There is it folks. American held hostage, day one. We are now under occupation by a foreign power."
There may be something to liberals accepting blame for some enabling of the fanaticism on the right.
A few points;
* When Nixon was allowed to resign instead of full impeachment. What was Nixon's real price of accountability? What did it imply to future presidents?
* When the SCOTUS took the Florida Case of Bush v Gore and in essence chose our president and overrode state rights of elections. What did the liberal leaning minds do about it?
* As everyone that has even a novice attention span to elections. Are aware of all the voter suppressions from Voter ID hoops, closings of voting places to gerrymandering. Not to exempt the North Carolina republican legislature passing laws to make it unlawful for a democratic Governor to govern (unlike the republican governor's ruling allowance.
* How citizens United and corporations are people and people are subservient to corporations by law continues to fester and more accepted.
* Blocking of a SCOTUS nomination for a year. With proud GOP voices making official statements that if the Dem is elected president they will block any nominee from that Dem President for 4 years.
-We have politically minded folks that believe strongly that only republicans can govern this country. That it is their highest calling to undermine America in every essence in their opposing views.
* we see even those T-Potters that were elected now denying town halls that they themselves received in the apex of their anger. Now refuse to provide that very town hall.
* Watching the GOP congress people meeting with Chamber of Commerce (paid activists) in every aspect. Refuse to meet with those they can only "accuse" as paid activists any voice. They meet with donors and lobbyists and snub the conce citizen voter who was replaced by citizens united ruling.
A blessing of Scalia to the GOP who are no poised to replace Scalia with a true right wing activist judge that views corporations and wealthy as people and the masses of citizens as the corporate sign on the door says, "Human Resources".
You know what else is a human resource, Soylent Green....
Like in Iowa, the GOP controlled legislature has decided that public worker unions are more of a danger and threat than ISIS, Sharia law and Muslim terrorist acts.. So they legislated against the people organizing and used tax dollars to fund the likes of the corporations organizing with their Chamber of Commerce or even ALEC.
-So I think there is some lack of defiance and confronting those now above the law that now say the Constitution is in the way of great things, and under the title of business should they have their way with you as a owned resource.
For Sullivan,
he should be on the SPELLING BEE circuit and competing with Jonah Goldberg whose outstanding outcoming piece that cause him to rise to fame was,
Writing how if the North would have only purchased the slaves from the South instead of that other violent inconsiderate northern liberal elitist way they did.
The Civil War would never have been fought. Goldberg didn't write this in terms of Fiction mind you. It was his political opinion of a alternative conservative business free market mumble jumble utopian dreams that never come true. And always leaving one praying for something to resolve.
Folks like Sullivan, Goldberg, Brooks, Friedman et al have never (from my perched viewpoint) provided validations to their nightmares put to scribe.
Fuck Andrew "Why Can't We Have A Merit Based Argument About Whether Black People Are Genetically Inferior, You Mean Liberals" Sullivan.
Actually, when you read his piece, he thinks it's in a defense of sane, principled conservatism, but instead it's Own-Goal after Own-Goal of himself and his "principles."
First admission: Conservatism is a void of real principles, but is instead an anti-liberal reactionary movement, defined only in opposition to liberals.
Second admission: This reactionary movement is financially motivated by a "conservative-media industry." Somehow, I doubt any liberal boogymen and "educational leftists" are responsible for that cash flow. I doubt Andrew meant to say, "our liberal educations forced us to be reactionaries who made huge amounts of money for our performances to fellow reactionaries" but there you go.
Third admission: They could make reasoned arguments for their positions. But they deliberately choose not to. It's an implicit admission of the limited appeal of conservatism.
Fourth admission: The Trump/Putin connection is dangerous. But what Andrew Sullivan will not, can not, and shall not do is call American conservatism, in its pig-ignorant hovels in the shit hollows of Middle America, a Fifth Column.
But that is what it's becoming.
Fifth admission: Catholicism is full of weird social misfits who have issues.
Sixth admission: On Steve Bannon: "It's the 1950s versus jihad..." Kind of like how the Bush administration utterly and totally failed in Iraq, right Andrew?
Next UP: Another SEARING HOT TAKE of how Conservatism is masturbatory political narcissism, is motivated entirely by money and refusal to grow up, and is entirely the fault of Mrs. Sanders in the 3rd grade who told me to apologize to the black boy who pushed me in the line to go to recess.
"...eventually the issues fade and only the hate remains."
Do tell. Could that perhaps be so because you were, whatchacallit, wrong about the issues, and all you ever really had was the infantile hate? But mostly, hate is not the inevitable, inescapable result of inconvenience you make it out to be. You're an adult. Hate is an extreme reaction. Adults don't default to it each time they think they haven't gotten their way.
Also, you suck.
-Doug in Oakland
Republicans are the Reavers in the Firefly Universe because they run their starship engines with no radiation shielding, since they were told that the nuclear fusion drive emissions are bad for you.
Great post indeed! I partially blame Andrew Sullivan for the well-earned hatred I have of conservatives -- they drove me to it. The difference is they have no justification for their feelings about liberals while we have every justification for thinking they are scum. So if you think about it we liberals are just the middlemen and its actually all Sullivan's fault.
By the way I will forever feel nothing but disgust for dishonest Englishman Sullivan coming to MY country and accusing me of treason because I wasn't as gullible as he was on WMD and Iraq. He showed his true colors that day and he does not deserve a place in our nation's discourse ever again.
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