See if you can spot it. Without Googling, ya lazy fucks.
From The New York Times, November 13, 2016:
Donald Trump, AuthoritarianDonald Trump is going to talk for a while now, and thoughtful citizens will be well advised to listen. As long as he is in the throes of post-election gloating, Mr. Trump cannot avoid providing useful glimpses of the personality and policies with which he modestly proposes to reshape America.
His language is as revelatory as it is familiar. He describes himself as a battler against liberal elitists and the media. He will restore order and middle-class values. Welcome to President-elect Trump's Retro-World. Mr. Trump has reinvented the political landscape of his youth -- a White America where politicians communicate in the venerable code words of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace.
The code words, of course, originally had much to do with race; Senator Goldwater and Governor Wallace bandied them, after all, in a battle for Deep South electoral votes. This dialogue swirled around a younger Donald Trump as he was inventing his public persona. But this race-based, anger-charged politics mutated in Mr. Trump and some others of his generation into a more generalized moral authoritarianism. Mr. Trump wants to be obeyed, both within a Republican majority that exists mainly to rubber stamp his legislative menu and within a country where behavior would be regulated by a "society that is emphatic about right and wrong."The authoritarian undergirdings of Mr. Trump's politics show not only in the conventional ways... It is even more tellingly revealed by the areas of individual social behavior Mr. Trump wants to bring under control. Schoolchildren will be required by law to seek their education in classrooms where prayer is imposed by the will of the majority. As soon as he gets the votes, medical decisions on abortion will be taken from the hands of women and physicians and the treatment itself proscribed by the state.
Implicit in Mr. Trump's condemnations of his enemies, expressed in one terview after another is the idea that intellectual dissent is unpatriotic and infuriating. It is not just President Obama's policies that irritated him. It is the fact that they were touched by some patently sinister force called "deep state". As for the "fake news media," it is their intellectual rebelliousness that angers Mr. Trump. In his preference, they would have listened passively to his convention speech and failed to mention that its ideas were a threat to civil liberties, racial justice and religious freedom....
Unfortunately, Mr. Trump learned something besides how to draw an audience in his years on television. He learned how to invoke a fictionalized vision of the American past and how then to whip the nostalgia for that nonexistent past into voter anger. Mr. Reagan first perfected this trick, but somehow with Mr. Trump, it has a meaner, more intolerant edge. Democrats have felt the edge; so in due time will the Republican legislators who are about to be called upon to stand and deliver for their new boss.
Did you spot it?
Yes, it is from The New York Times.
And, yes, it is from November 13.
But it's from November 13, 1994.
And the subject of the article is not Donald John Trump, but the Newton Leroy Gingrich. Which, with only the most minor tweaks --
Newt Gingrich, Authoritarian
Newt Gingrich is going to talk for a while now, and thoughtful citizens will be well advised to listen. As long as he is in the throes of post-election gloating, Mr. Gingrich cannot avoid providing useful glimpses of the personality and policies with which he modestly proposes to reshape America.
His language is as revelatory as it is familiar. He describes himself as a battler against McGovernites, liberal elitists and the media. He will restore order and middle-class values. Welcome to Speaker Gingrich's Retro-World. Mr. Gingrich has reinvented the political landscape of his youth -- a Sun Belt where politicians communicate in the venerable code words of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace...
-- could have been written about President Stupid at any time in the past year.
My point being, for decades it has been perfectly obvious to even the most casual, honest observer that the GOP was an authoritarian shithole of bigots, imbeciles and con men. And yet for decades, the overwhelming majority of the mainstream American media has taken it upon itself to lie to the public about this simple and obvious fact.
24 years ago I got in hot water with my genteel Liberals friends in Chicago for saying out-loud and without apology that Democrats were going to keep losing ground until we started going after the actual authoritarian thugs who ran the Republican Party and their media enablers with the same kind of 24/7/365 knives-out focus with which Gingrich and Limbaugh were going after imaginary hippies and the imaginary Liberal Media Conspiracy.
24 long years later there is absolutely no excuse not to have learned this lesson.
Behold, a Tip Jar!
5 comments:
wow. just fucking brilliant, Driftglass!
It has been noted that it's telling that the Republicans were instantly ready to go with "Democrats enable illegal immigrant killers" ads, but that the Democratic party are never willing to go with "Republicans enable child killing by removing health care."
Because both sides do it, don't they?
As has been said, the media enablers need to the first against the wall cause:
Hillary got SSSLLLLAAAMMMMED for her deplorables statement and the media made sure it go brought back up anytime she had any semblance of momentum.
The Trump administration just ran an ad saying liberals love FoxNew's imaginary brown horde coming to murder white people....and half the media is equivocating over who exactly "approved this message", while the other half wishes we'd all just shut up about it.
Well, I agree wholeheartedly with trgahan above, and that's one of the reasons I see the Russiagate thing as a desperate and successful effort to divert attention from the fact that the leadership of the current Democratic party does not want to "go after" the thugs and authoritarians in the Republican Party, because they believe exactly the same things. Read Al From's book. He says clearly that they decided back during Carter's administration that the New Deal and the "social safety net" were outmoded, old-fashioned," and had to be cast aside so Democrats could regain power. He doesn't seem to say anywhere in the book that the only legitimate reason for wanting to regain power would be to advance the goals of the New Deal and strengthen and extend the social safety net. He just wants them to seize power. Speaking of the Russiagate thing (off topic), I don't see those people who insist that "the evidence is all around you and plain to see" saying so much. They still aren't admitting there's nothing there, but they still have not put forth any evidence and hardly anybody listens to them.
"They still aren't admitting there's nothing there, but they still have not put forth any evidence and hardly anybody listens to them."
Who is "they"?
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