The Madness of the Right

For Liberals on a budget, one cheap, reliable and infinitely renewable source of entertainment is taking daily note of all the big time professional Conservatives pundits who are now repeating virtually verbatim the very same critique of their Republican party for which we Liberals were attacked by those very same professional Conservatives pundits just a few years ago, and for which we were banished into permanent exile by the mainstream media,

Today's laughing-stock is Kathleen Parker: a nationally-syndicated Serious Conservative columnist who suddenly discovered the existence of the actual Republican party back in 2008 and who wrote about what she was seeing in her Serious Conservative nationally-syndicated columnist.  Note how McCain/Palin's 2008 Angry White Republican Asshole crowds are indistinguishable from Trump/Pence's 2016 Angry White Republican Asshole crowds.  Also note how "Obama went to a lunch at Bill Ayer's house!" used to be a reliable attack line for the same meatheads who now have no problem with Steve Bannon sitting at the right hand of President Stupid:

At which point her loyal wingnut fans wheeled on her overnight for pointing out the plainly obvious state of the actual Republican party and attacked her like she was just some shitty, low-life America-hating Libtard!  She found this absolutely stunning.

Then, like most of her colleagues, she lapsed into a long, cozy David Brooksian Both Siderist political snooze in which the actual travesties of the GOP were safely balanced out with an equal number of imaginary Obama Tan Suit transgressions.  And save for an occasional and transient frisson of "This Time They've Gone Too Far!" outrage over another of the Right's predictable atrocities , she mostly went back to forgetting about what the actual Republican party was actually like.

And then her party birthed the very monster for which the Modern Republican party had been carefully engineered to produce...

....and suddenly Ms. Parker is back to feigning shock the terrible terribleness of it all in language which I defy you to distinguish from that of the lowliest Liberal blogger.

To illustrated my point, here is a sample of writing from the lowliest Liberal blogger I know:

...These people have whipped themselves into permanent state of rage-drunk, ideologically bunkered-down, loaded-for-bear readiness...

...but in defense what?

And there's the rub.

Because while they're all well-trained to vomit out whatever the Approved Wingnut Talking Points are for this week (Whitewater! Vince Foster!  ACORN!  Kenyan Communist Usurper!  Death panels!  Email!  Benghaaaazi! Etc!) the sad truth is, the rank and file of the Republican Party doesn't actually believe in a single god damn thing.

No kidding.  The meatheads have no fixed principles whatsoever. They are completely hollow except for the steady diet of Fear!Fear!Fear! the get from Fox News and Hate Radio and a barely sublimated sense of self-loathing from which they find temporary relief by flinging themselves into the arms of any con man who promises to make up Libtards cry.

No principles,  no memory, and their responses to even the simplest questions about policy, history and their own fucking words from 10 minutes ago are, like Trump, invariably weird, circular bullshit.

This is why it's pointless to try to reason with them.  Because their "conservatism" is not an ideology.  It's a dissociative disorder:

Dissociative disorders (DD) are conditions that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity, or perception. People with dissociative disorders use dissociation, a defense mechanism, pathologically and involuntarily. Dissociative disorders are thought to primarily be caused by psychological trauma.

Like Ganser Syndrome:

Ganser syndrome is a rare dissociative disorder previously classified as a factitious disorder. It is characterized by nonsensical or wrong answers to questions or doing things incorrectly, other dissociative symptoms such as fugue, amnesia or conversion disorder, often with visual pseudohallucinations and a decreased state of consciousness. It is also sometimes called nonsense syndrome, balderdash syndrome, syndrome of approximate answers, pseudodementia, hysterical pseudodementia or prison psychosis. This last name, prison psychosis, is sometimes used because the syndrome occurs most frequently in prison inmates, where it may represent an attempt to gain leniency from prison or court officials.

Ganser is an extremely rare variation of dissociative disorder. It is a reaction to extreme stress and the patient thereby suffers from approximation or giving absurd answers to simple questions. The syndrome can sometimes be diagnosed as merely malingering, but it is more often defined as dissociative disorder...

Anyone who has bothered to pay honest attention to American politics for any length of time cannot fail to notice that Republicans “core principles” routinely flip 180 degrees week to week, year to year depending on who is in the White House and what Fox News and Hate Radio tells them to believe...

An here is nationally-syndicated Serious Conservative columnist, Kathleen Parker writing in the Washington Post today:

Is Trump making America mentally ill?

...

When many of those around you seem to be suffering from some sort of group mania — believing what isn’t true and defending what isn’t defensible — then the officially “insane” offer some strange solace. At least there’s a rational explanation for their disorder.

Today, about a third of the nation’s population seems to be suffering from a reality discernment malfunction. Have they been ingesting mushrooms plucked from bull dung? Drinking water spiked with credulity-enhancing chemicals?

Thus, when President Trump speaks in his fourth-grade, monosyllabic, syntax-challenged verbiage, they hear lyrical lucidity. When he brags that he has accomplished more than any other president, save for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his starry-eyed minions nod their approval. Exactly no major legislation has been passed by Congress since Trump took office.

As Trump himself said, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they’d still love him...

.Now, hold that moment in your mind and consider another group of barking mad goofs on the same spectrum -- the nationally-syndicated Serious Conservative columnist who keeps insisting that just around the corner, or under the surface, or chained in the basement is another, completely different bunch of Republican who are just fucking supercharged with noble principle and purpose.  And if their attention could just be rallies and their consciences sufficiently pricked, they would come a'rushin' and a'gushin' out of the basement where they're currently incarcerated and take control of the situation.

Or something.

And so let us meet our second laughingstock of the day, the insufferable Matt Lewis writing in the Daily Beast to urge all of those stubbornly invisible "good" Republicans to step up and take on the "bad" Republicans.

OK, Patriotic Republicans: It’s Time to Quit Making Excuses for Trump

Yes, fellow Republicans, the camel’s back is at the breaking point. And if the president fires Mueller… crack. Time to walk the walk, people.

But or course, but outside the imaginations of the habitues of posh Beltway opium dens there are no "Patriotic Republicans" anymore.

There is just the same. old  toxic and terrifying army of re-programmable Republican meatbags on the Right.

And the Left, who have been right about the Right all along.