Our National Milgram Experiment Rolls Savagely Along

The only thing that has really changed since I wrote this ten years ago -- 

Our National Milgram Experiment

-- is that, a decade ago, Republican base voters felt at least some obligation to keep up some public pretense that they weren't just a mob of sadistic, racist ghouls.  

And the leaders of the GOP would at least make the occasional empty gesture in the direction of caring about our government, our country, and our world.  

It was always a fraud, of course, and everyone on the Left knew it and said it over and over again, but who listens to dirty Libtards anyway?  And the Party of Bigots and Imbeciles was at willing to put up enough of a half-assed Potemkin front so that their enablers in the mainstream media could have some pretext go right on swearing that the GOP wasn't devolving into a raving shithole right before their eyes.

That it's all the fault of those horrid Extremes On Both Sides!  From David Brooks in January 2004:

There's something else going on, too. The proliferation of media outlets and the segmentation of society have meant that it's much easier for people to hive themselves off into like-minded cliques. Some people live in towns where nobody likes President Bush. Others listen to radio networks where nobody likes Bill Clinton.

In these communities, half-truths get circulated and exaggerated. Dark accusations are believed because it is delicious to believe them. Vince Foster was murdered. The Saudis warned the Bush administration before Sept. 11.

You get to choose your own reality. You get to believe what makes you feel good. You can ignore inconvenient facts so rigorously that your picture of the world is one big distortion.

And if you can give your foes a collective name -- liberals, fundamentalists or neocons -- you can rob them of their individual humanity. All inhibitions are removed. You can say anything about them. You get to feed off their villainy and luxuriate in your own contrasting virtue. You will find books, blowhards and candidates playing to your delusions, and you can emigrate to your own version of Planet Chomsky. You can live there unburdened by ambiguity...

And now, ten years later, the Republican base has been liberated!  They no longer feel the slightest need to pretend to be anything other than the rage-drunk, pig-ignorant goons they have always been.  Reprogrammable meatbags who sway and squeal and alternately proclaim and jettison their deeply held "principles" based entirely on what President Stupid's Twitter stream says today, or what they hear on Hannity tonight.   

Ten years later, they'll tell you to your face that they like torturing the person on the box.  Hell, they love it.

And now, ten years later, the leaders of the GOP no longer feel any need to pretend to be anything other than the mobs of hypocrites and fascists and cowards they have always been.  A gang of con men and lunatics who gave up on the idea of fair and representative government long ago, and have now given up bothering to keep up any appearance to the contrary.

Ten years later, they'll they torture DACA kids for kicks, threaten to rob poor children of their health care for kicks, and then laugh their asses off as Democrats try to protect the weak and vulnerable from their predatory sadism.

And yet no matter how horrifying the situation becomes, our Both Siderist media will go right on inventing imaginary fences to straddle and conjuring fictional High Horses out of thin air from which they can go right on scolding The Extremes On Both Sides for the screams of the victims coming out of the Republican Milgram box.

Behold, a Tip Jar!