The Aristocrats

Never Trumper's Charlie Sykes and Bret Stephens in happier times.

Welcome to the new Never Trump party line.

Charlie Sykes: Democrats Must Run a Republican to Win in 2020!

And for anyone who is even the slightest bit surprised by this development, I welcome you to line up double file while I walk past and slap you upside the head with my "I Fucking Told You So" shoes.

Shouldn't sting too much. After all, the soles of my "I Fucking Told You So" shoes been worn thin and soft by the many, many times I have had to wear them after everything I wrote about the Tea Party came to pass.

And everything I wrote about Glenn Greenwald turned out to be on the money.

And everything I wrote about the rise of Donald Trump and the decades-deep rot at the heart of the GOP turned out to be horribly true.  As did everything I wrote about the indestructibility of David Brooks no matter how completely wrong he has been about everything, and all that represents.  And everything I wrote about all the Matthew Dowds and Bill Kristols of the world.

And so forth.

Mind you, I am not sanguine about this "vindication of history" business.  In fact, I hate it.  You probably do too.  Because being vindicated by history usually means the awful thing about which you've been shouting  dire warnings into the abyss for a long time has finally come to pass.  I'd wager you would much rather never shout into the abyss again and never have another depressing predictions come true again.  I know I would.

But we don't live in that world, do we?  We live in this world. And the thing is, for the most part, those of us who live in this world and have been talking about or writing about the steep, down-sloping road to Hell this country has been on for most of our adult lives have no special abilities or deep contacts within the corridors of power.

I know I don't.


I'm just a citizen of Flyover Country, USA, who took up blogging and podcasting because I barely heard a whisper of anyone in the media speaking honestly about the terrifying fascist carcinoma that was eating the Party of Lincoln alive from within.  I'm just some guy who lives in the middle of Middle America and who pays attention to what he sees on the teevee machine, what he reads in the papers, what has come hollering out of AM Hate Radio for the past 30 years, and what one hears in everyday conversation among everyday people everywhere in American except, apparently, inside the Beltway media bubble.

The late Hunter Thompson once said that, "Politics is the art of controlling your environment."  And over the last 30 years, no group has put that theory into practice more publicly and ruthlessly than the lords and ladies of the Beltway media. They manufactured for themselves a political fool's paradise: a wholly false version of reality in which Hate Radio and Fox News barely existed at all.   A wholly false version of reality populated by fake Responsible Conservatives and Sensible Centrists and Noble Republicans in which in Murrica was indisputably a "Center/Right" country and every explicitly Republican atrocity was magically transformed into an act of lunacy by the Extremes on Both Sides.

Because that's what you can do when you run a multi-billion dollar establishmentarian propaganda factory under the banner of the First Amendment.

But while a reckoning with history and causality can be postponed for a long time by the brute-force of controlling where the cameras point and who gets to be in front of them, any wholly false version of reality will inevitably begin to buckle and crack under the mounting pressure from the Real Reality piling up just outside.  And so it was with the lords and ladies of the Beltway media, who confidently predicted that the Responsible Conservatives and Sensible Centrists and Noble Republicans had everything under control and that everything was gonna work out A-OK, right up until this happened...

And that is when everything went sideways.  That is when, for one, brief moment, the lords and ladies of the Beltway media stood well and truly naked before the world.

Because there is no plausible explanation for the rise of Donald Trump -- his nomination, his election, his overwhelming, fanatical support among the GOP base and the immediate capitulation to his whims by virtually every elected Republican in American -- other than Trump is the Party and the Party is Trump.

In other words, the Left has been right about the Right all along.

Ergo, the lords and ladies of the Beltway media have been utterly wrong about everything all along.   There are no Responsible Conservatives or Noble Republicans coming to save the GOP.  And Sensible Centrists are just cowards, so desperate to avoid taking a stand on any issue, ever, they would rather see the country burn than abandon the narcotic comforts of the Both Sides Do It cult.

I used to think there was a chance that the rise of Trump would finally break the Beltway media self-protection racket for good,  Of course, I briefly held out this same hope about the collapse of Bush Administration too -- that it's complete implosion would finally force the Beltway media to stop lying every fucking day about the true nature of the Republican party. And if this were a healthy, functional democracy that's what would have happened.  The Bush regime dead-enders and the GOP apologists and revisionist and their enablers who barnacled the media for years would have been flushed out of the system long ago.  Perhaps forced to seek honest employment in the food service industry.

But as we have already established, we don't live in that world. We live in this world. And in this world, the most sacred bond among the lords and ladies of the Beltway media is to never, ever hold each other accountable.  And, when everything goes tits-up, blame Both Sides.

Do these things and you'll never miss a meal.

In this way the Trump administration and the Beltway media both represent the end-states of the same sort of degenerative disease.  The final verdict on what happens when civic institutions in a democracy -- in this case a political party and the corporate media -- completely jettison the very idea of holding themselves accountable to any standards other than profit and institutional self-protection.

Charlie Chaplin once said, "The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury."  And this is exactly what happened to that subset of  Beltway media parasites who now call themselves Never Trumpers.

By the time Donald Trump came slithering down the escalator to declare himself for office, the lords and ladies of the Beltway media had already become institutionally addicted to the depraved luxury of never being answerable for being horribly wrong all the time.  They came to believe that it was somehow in the natural order of things that they be paid to appear on national teevee or in national news publications to haughtily spout their insipid opinions about imaginary Responsible Conservatives, Noble Republicans, Sensible Centrists and those naughty Extremes on Both Sides who inhabited the fictional "Center/Right" country they had conjured into being.

And once it all blew up in their faces -- once it became obvious (yet again) that they never had the slightest idea what was really going on in their own country and that the Left had been right about the Right all along and -- the Never Trumpers reacted exactly you would expect entitled royalty to react.

Exactly like exiled Russian aristocracy after the revolution.

Aristocrats who had been run out of their out of their country by the serfs they had exploited.

Aristocrats who suddenly found themselves financially dependent on the largess of people they detested.

Aristocrats who, with that special, asshole-arrogance that comes with an inbred sense of entitlement,  become indignant when their hosts don't snap to and do as they're told.

Aristocrats who still believe in their God-given right to command a national spotlight and who go right on airily insisting they know what the serfs really want.

Here is Ross Douthat explaining why Democrats must bend the knee to him and his kind.

It’s a national emergency, join our unity government; also we offer you nothing and we’re moving full speed to the left.https://t.co/WaGj67OrwJ

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) June 28, 2019

And here is Ross Douthat again:

many possible strategic pitfalls for Dems. but this is silly. Democrats won with big margins last year. They need to keep that coalition together and energize it. this is an argument premised on an assertion with no basis. https://t.co/UhTXnKSppQ

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 30, 2019

And here is a collection of some of Bret Stephens greatest "Democrats will dooooom themselves by moving too far left" hits:

Never Trump Republican pundits lament that the Democratic primary is not catering to them

Here is David Brooks:

Dems, Please Don’t Drive Me Away
The dynamic pulling the party leftward.

And David Brooks again:

Hey progressives! Moderates have a story too! (It’s more compelling than yours). https://t.co/07yDynqzmG

— David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) July 2, 2019

Tom Nichols has butt-scooted so many deflections and evasions and so much self-absolving bullshit all over social media...

I just went back through and watched the entire debate again... and I really don't get how someone can conclude that Warren brought any "anger" or "drama" in her answers... https://t.co/6etdMDgB4m

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) June 27, 2019

...it's hard to pick out just one.

Once you’ve excused your conscience and once you stop giving a fck what your politics do to the country, electoral success is a piece of cake.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) June 29, 2019

And of course there's Rick Wilson:

you're right. It's not as if I spent 30 years kicking the living shit out of Democratic candidates all across the country. What do I know? https://t.co/2Dq4EvtzoW

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 28, 2019

By the way. this is true.  Rick Wilson did indeed spent his entire adult life as a GOP mercenary, marshaling the darkest impulses of rage, racism and paranoia on the Right and focusing them to win elections for his scumbag clients.  He helped Republicans corner the market on bigots and imbeciles and thus, over the long run, helped to sow the dragon's teeth that eventually grew into the Beast Trump.

What sort of sick fuck would actually brag about this, or offer it as the top-line of a resume to a party which is diametrically opposed to everything Rick Wilson stands for, remains a mystery to me.

Here is Charlie Sykes:

Charlie Sykes Democrats say they want to beat Trump in 2020. But the debates suggest differently.

There are millions of voters who are horrified by Trump and open to voting for a reasonable Democratic alternative — but not for a party that ignores or scares them.

And Charlie Sykes again:

By all means, Dems, light a candle in the darkness, but don’t pour kerosene over your heads and light yourselves on fire. https://t.co/5gwVWqijXO

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) July 1, 2019

Here is Matt Lewis:

The amazing (and sad) thing is thar there will VERY likely be no decent/acceptable alternative to vote for in 2020. The illiberal Left continues to radicalize—and Trump continues to Trump. Both sides have abandoned the sane center. My current position? Vote for nobody!

— Matt Lewis (@mattklewis) July 1, 2019

And Matt Lewis again, who has made this point a ZILLION times people!

A point I’ve made a ZILLION times: Between the relentless culture war attacks (twitter mobs, attacks on the American flag, etc)—and the 2020 Dem primary (abortion, busing, guns, single payer, socialism!)—it’s almost as if the Left is TRYING to re-elect Donald Trump.

— Matt Lewis (@mattklewis) July 3, 2019

Here is Dowager Countess Peggy Noonan:

Democrats march in lockstep with the left. What are they offering voters who backed Trump in 2016? https://t.co/rH1umcxLxx

— WSJ Editorial Page (@WSJopinion) June 28, 2019

And here is Max Boot:

Elizabeth Warren has lots of ideas. Bad ideas.

And Max Boot again:

It’s the party of no ideas vs. the party of bad ones
...
When Democrats aren’t being fiscally reckless, they are economically irresponsible.

If these Never Trumpers actually believed their own Conservative bunkum -- actually believed that saving their own party was possible and worth doing -- they would shut the fuck up and immediately decamp to wilds of Massachusetts and offer their services to Bill Weld, the only Republican who has the guts to take on Donald Trump here-and-now in the Republican primaries.

But Never Trumpers are too lazy for that kind of heavy lifting against overwhelming odds.  Smacks too much of real work.  And they're smart enough to see Donald Trump for what he is.  As we on the Left have seen him all along.  As the agonal breath of a dead political party.

So instead Never Trumpers will go right on doing what they have been doing since the days when they were just plain, old Republicans -- relaxing in a hammock strung between gigs at MSNBC and The New York Times and lazing the summer away handing out scathing Yelp! reviews to Democrats for not cleaning up yet another Republican catastrophe to their specifications.

Behold, a Tip Jar!