Tuesday, May 02, 2017

The Amazing Disappearing Republican Party



Remember back in 2009?  When the bulk of the Republican Party mysteriously disappeared and were replaced by tens of millions of identical body-doubles who were definitely independents and not Republicans, and who had never supported or even heard of George W. Bush?

The greatest missing persons mystery in American history is not D.B. Cooper or Joseph Force Crater or even the Roanoke Island colony.

No, the greatest missing persons mystery in American history happened sometime between the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 when somewhere between 15 and 30 million Republicans all quietly vanished without a trace.

One day they were there, braying about how they had won and we had lost so "Shaddap!" and yapping loudly and patriotically about how deficits don't matter anymore and besides, anyone who doesn't pay reverent deference to President Cuckoobananas during war-time was a traitor because Freedom and also 9/11 Changed Everything...

...and then they were gone.  Just gone.  Leaving nothing behind but the disasters they had championed, the failures they had authored, the institutions they had torched and moldering mountains of "Bush/Cheney 2000", "Bush/Cheney 2004" and "McCain/Palin 2008" buttons and tee-shirts and bumper stickers and yard signs stretching from one end of the country to the other.

This was the party which David Brooks had assured us was doing just fucking great in 2005 except for some Liberal whiners who were trying to bring President Drydrunk McStagger down with wild tales of conspiracy (excerpted from an actual David Brooks column in the New York Times for which he was paid money)
...

That party was just up and fucking gone by 2009.

Well, the Brain Caste of the Republican Party is at it once again.

Former George W. Bush chief speechwriter, senior Republican policy adviser and reliable Beltway Republican stalactite, Michael Gerson, has written a very serviceable column which, with very minor modifications, would be indistinguishable from the work of any dirty hippie blogger who has been pointing this shit out since back in the day when Michael Gerson was teaching Dubya to pronounce "mushroom cloud".
Trump’s 100th-day speech may have been the most hate-filled in modern history

For those who claim that Donald Trump has been pasteurized and homogenized by the presidency, his sour, 100th-day speech in Harrisburg, Pa., was inconvenient.

"Those"?  

Who, specifically are "those" people. Mr. Gerson? What are their names?
Trump used his high office to pursue divisive grudges (Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer is a “bad leader”), to attack the media (composed of “incompetent, dishonest people”) and to savage congressional Democrats (“they don’t mind drugs pouring in”). Most of all, Trump used his bully pulpit quite literally, devoting about half his speech to the dehumanization of migrants and refugees as criminals, infiltrators and terrorists. Trump gained a kind of perverse energy from the rolling waves of hatred, culminating in the reading of racist song lyrics comparing his targets to vermin. It was a speech with all the logic, elevation and public purpose of a stink bomb.
And the Pig People who have been the reliable base of your party for your entire adult life sopped that bile up with a biscuit and asked for seconds didn't they?
The only thing more frightening than Trump’s speech — arguably the most hate-filled presidential communication in modern history — is the apathetic response of those who should know better.
Once again, Mr. Gerson, who, specifically are the morally bankrupt ghouls whose response to President Stupid has been "apathetic"?  

What are their names?

But instead of naming names, Mr. Gerson quotes the late Vaclav Havel.  Which is all well and good--
Havel surveyed the post-communist politics of his time and found leaders willing “to gain the favor of a confused electorate by offering a colorful range of attractive nonsense.” Sound familiar? His diagnosis continues: “Making the most of this situation, some characters with suspicious backgrounds have been gaining popular favor with ideas such as, for instance, the need to throw the entire government into the Vltava River.”
-- but ultimately pointless.

Because while Havel called for taking a risky and moral courageous stand, cossetted Conservative Beltway stalactites like Mr. Gerson prefer wringing their hands, shaking their impotent fists at President Stupid and citing lovely prose instead of actually doing what is professionally risky and necessary to turn back the tide of racism and malignant ignorance that Mr. Gerson and his party have unleashed on this country.

Then, of course, comes the razors in the apple, which have been highlighted by me for your reading pleasure...
Read the whole essay — a Czech giving voice to real Americanism. It is certainly not the spirit of Trumpism, which exemplifies the moral and spiritual poverty Havel decries...
...

The alternative to Trumpism is the democratic faith: that people, in the long run, will choose decency and progress over the pleasures of malice. The belief that they will choose the practice of kindness and courtesy. The conviction that God blesses the poor, the hungry, the weeping and the stranger. Faith in the power of the truthful word.
There is no such thing as "Trumpism", Mr. Gerson, and you damn well know it.  Just as there was never such a thing as The Tea Party.

There has only ever been "The Republican Party" behaving exactly as it was engineered to behave by men like Michael Gerson.   Raving and sneering and gleefully stuffing themselves with poison from the Fox News/Hate Radio dumpster exactly as they have been doing every day of my adult.

6 comments:

Yastreblyansky said...

Actually quoting Havel is pretty relevant, in the sense that if you wanted to study techniques by which an entire political party could disappear overnight, Czechoslovakia in 1989 would be a great place to look, and that's exactly what Havel means by "some characters with suspicious backgrounds".

Pablo in the Gazebo said...

...life.

trgahan said...

Gerson gotta be Gerson cause that is how he gets paid....My question is, what editor looked at this (if any did) and said ok, print it.

Trump's at 43 percent approval. Of those approvers 90+ percent are self-identified Republicans and all would not change their vote if given the option.

How much clearer does it need to be exactly WHO, using Gerson's words, is choosing the moral and spiritual malice of Trumpism before Gerson et al. are stopped from pretending Trump voters are some one time anomaly as an intellectual stance?

Robt said...

HEy , gather 'round.

You know how the much of the media has been reporting on how Trump voters are rock solid and feel he needs more time. At Donny's age he may not have that sort of time left).

So how are those NAZI / fascist Trump voters (we are told are only 7 people total?) That not all are that way. But many are and too many enable it. Let those others be crazy violent and threatening racists, for me. Seems to be the conservative disguise. I mean, after all the dog whistling for all these years that have come out of the closet like a Log Cabin republican.
Go to this link. Scroll to the video near the bottom. Watch the NAZI's trash Trump for not bringing back the ovens in the first 100 days like he promised.
I mean this is the Trump base leaving him............!
here
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/30/neo-nazis-anti-fascist-protesters-kentucky-pikeville?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=224039&subid=19773679&CMP=GT_US_collection

Disclaimer; the video is of graphic ugly living beings imitating human life.

RUKidding said...

The alternative to Trumpism is the democratic faith: that people, in the long run, will choose decency and progress over the pleasures of malice. The belief that they will choose the practice of kindness and courtesy. The conviction that God blesses the poor, the hungry, the weeping and the stranger. Faith in the power of the truthful word.

I agree that there's no such thing as "Trumpism." Trump *may* have had intentions of doing something "different" when he won, but he clearly - for whatever reasons - is now just proceeding as a bog-standard, everyday, ordinary Republican.

Gerson can provide all the nice pretty words from someone like Havel and then spew forth a paragraph like the one quoted, but to what end? Every d*mn thing that Gerson's done and written about has led to this particular, long predicted by the horrible LIEbruls, end game in which we find ourselves now.

It began with Dan Quayle, proceeded with W the dumber, picked up the pace with Tundra Trash Quitter, and the apogee now is Trump. A know-nothing, dumber than a bag of rocks, incurious, supremely entitled, word-salad spewing, narcissitic, incompetent, worthless POS who's all in favor hurting, starving, mistreating all the usual suspects: blacks, browns, Muslims, slutty women, kids, grannies, gays, poors, etc.

What's new? Nothing, abso-effen-lutely nothing. Thanks, in part, to shill-whores like Gerson. Go eff yourself, Gerson.

Davis said...

So Gerson believes that Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes have been minor influences in the Republican Party over the last 30 years?