Burn The Lifeboats

I have been asked frequently by my betters why oh why I have so little patience or faith in my New Special Never Trumper Allies?  Those stalwarts who, with head-snapping speed, have all simultaneously scampered away from their previous profession -- making money calling people like me muddle-headed America-hating alarmists -- to their new profession -- making money all writing the same fucking book.

Whither is your oat milk of human kindness, driftglass?  What happened to that bottomless Liberal larder that is supposed to be full of Campbell's instant forgiveness and compassion for people who have spent a lifetime kicking you in the teeth?  Where is your fair-trade hemp hanky to blot up their crocodile tears?

The only answer I have for them is that I have been to this rodeo before.

In fact, the last time I was at this rodeo I wrote about it.

Extensively.

So come with me now to the Year of Our Lord 2005 for one of the many, many posts I wrote addressing the issue of Moderate Republicans trying to wriggle from the jaws of last monster they created.

From me, 14 years ago.

You bought it.


Now live in it.

This morning, rolling along into the Loop, full of dying flu virus, I almost felt the meekest, most theoretical peek of pity for the poor Moderate Republican coming on.

Not, of course, the Fundy CHUDS who shame the good name of Christ with every breath they draw.

Not the three-toed, chittering Failed Men who make up the vast George Wallace wing of that Party.

Not the soul-dead, globe-fucking, petro-borgs like Cheney.

But for the Mods...and for only one reason: whatever Santa Claus delivers come Fitzmas morn, in five short years, the Moderates have lived to become everything they detest. Every word of clucking reproach they yelped in snickering glee during the Clinton Age has gotten caught up in the Bush Treason Cyclotron, sped up to light-speed, and is now coming screaming back at them like a sack of radioactive ax-heads.

Their worst nightmare is in the process of coming true, big as a mountain in stilettos, carrying a sledgehammer in one hand and a 40-foot-long straight razor in the other, and there is not shit all they can do about it. Because everything they believed or touted or crowed about or tried to rub in our faces is in the process of coming down around their ears.

Every. Single. Thing.

Every justification that they were fed about their Great Ay-rab Safari is now spilling out into the sunlight and can clearly be seen -- even from High Earth Orbit -- to have been a willful lie.

The leaders who swore to them it was holy and justified to scream their lungs bloody in ecstasy at the thought of their two dearest fantasies -- piles of dead brown people and Low! Low! Gas prices -- coming to pass in One Glorious War are outed as a Confederacy of traitors and liars and fools.

Their pet media, nothing but perambulating pustules, refilled with hate and mendacity every night by White House messengers.

That they have never been anything to the GOP but chumps: little sacs of cash and votes and “mandate” to be squeezed dry with impunity, because Moderates are basically beat-down whores who will always go wriggling back to their abusers.

But now it’s not one thing that’s melting down; it’s everything. The serial cons that have kept the grubby Mods goggle-eyed and heroin-loyal are all falling apart simultaneously and there’s nothing but decibels left in the Shiny Object Bag to keep them from noticing the awful truth.

That their Leaders are traitors.

Their heroes are liars.

Their dogma is a joke.

Their President is a feeble-minded creep who has fucked up everything he has ever touched.

It’s as if their mothers suddenly ripped of rubber masks and have shown themselves to be the spree killers they’ve always been.

How terrifying that must be. I mean, I’m wrong about a lot of stuff...but everything?

Every God Damned Thing?

And worse – so very much worse – not only were they utterly wrong about everyfuckingthing, but the Evil Liberals were right all along.

The big picture. The fussy details. The arithmetic. The real, racist heart of the GOP. The various myriad, casual betrayals by the Bush White House.

All of it.

The Liberals were right, and the Moderates had been given no fewer than 30 years of warning that this is precisely where their idiocy would land us.

I can’t even imagine how it must feel to know at some level that your whole world is a farce, and your whole belief system is a Ponsi Scheme run on you by thugs who never gave a shit about you, or your family or your dearest peon dreams.

Which is why I felt the merest shadow of pity falling on my shoulder today...

...until I flipped past the closed-circuit channel of the Fuhrerbunker, and accidentally stepped in a big, steaming pile of, “Wall Street Journal Report – The Journal Editorial Report.” Where John Fund, Paul Gigot, David Henninger -- three, low-rent, PBS, wannabe Weird Sisters of the GOP (and one, standard-issue, blond, female Republican Pleasure Droid) -- ply their filthy trade unmoored to Reality in any way whatsoever.

And here is what they said, with a little emphasis added by yours truly.

GIGOT: Two of the most influential men in the Bush Administration -- the president's senior adviser, Karl Rove, and vice-president Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby -- waited for word this week on whether they would be indicted in connection with leaking the name of a CIA agent. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has to make a decision within a week and it has enormous implications for the Bush presidency. Dan, how did this investigation over what was after all a routine kind of Washington leak come to this point?

HENNINGER: Well, it came to this point because the original story, the alleged leaking of this covert CIA agent's name, was a mole hill that was generated into a mountain of controversy. The mistake was that the administration decided that the only way to resolve it was to appoint a special prosecutor. Special prosecutors are very unusual institutions. They are not like a normal prosecutor who looks for a crime and then decides whether you have an individual attached to it. They are appointed to investigate individuals, in this case Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. Having spent all this time and money on this investigation, he has to have something to show for it. We are faced with the prospect of the president's closest advisor being indicted which will be catastrophic for the presidency.

GIGOT: It would be damaging, wouldn't it John?

FUND: Very much so and of course the White House is already in disarray on all these other issues that we've been talking about. I have to say though, if it happens, I think it will be one of the strangest stories ever in Washington because there is no underlying crime. Almost everyone agrees that the law that was investigated probably should not even have been investigated.

GIGOT: ... If it is such a difficult decision, if it is such a close call, then why would you make such a momentous decision to indict? You are really essentially torpedoing a second administration and you are doing potentially great damage to the ability of the government to function.

These are the same breed of assworms who warmed their pincers in delight as Bill Clinton was “torpedoed” over lying about consensual sex, and now view treason during wartime as something “routine”, and are shocked that anyone would proceed with indictments over what they consider small matters given the “great damage” it may do “to the ability of the government to function.”

See, I do get some things wrong.

Douchebags like these deserve no pity whatsoever.

They deliberately installed a blood-chugging, HellMouth assassin like Rove and a peevish void like Bush in the People’s House for no other reason than brutal partisan gain, and it will be my distinct pleasure to watch them burn, and their pathetic delusion melt into slag and ignite their bones.

As Steve Gilliard likes to remind us from time to time, “When you’re enemies are drowning, throw 'em anvils.”

And when their heads are on fire, hose ‘em down with mercury fulminate.

+ + + + + + 

The price of admission to the Liberal larder of Campbell's instant forgiveness and compassion for people who have spent a lifetime kicking me in the teeth has always remained the same.  From me in 2018:

If the Never Trumpers are offering actual, useful intel -- plans to the GOP Death Star -- then great.  Welcome aboard.  If they are coming to us in the spirit of genuine confession, repentance and atonement, terrific.  We're a forgiving bunch.  But if they cannot form the words "The Left was right about the Right all along" and will not lock their loyalty to our cause down with anything more than nods and winks, then we have no reason in the world to lend them our hard-won credibility or give them our trust or show them an ounce of our mercy. 

Because if they are not with us all the way by now -- if they have not genuinely seen the error of their ways by now -- then all they are doing is biding their time and enjoying the hospitality of our fox hole until the immediate danger has passed.  And the minute there is a break in the storm, they will breeze right out the door and go back to the business of poisoning wells, pimping monsters and slandering those who now give them shelter.

It's simple, really.

Confession.  Repentance.  Atonement.

Or.

Burn.  The.  Lifeboats.

Behold, a Tip Jar!