So after five months and +20 unanswered appeals, the Twitter Ministry of Truth has handed down its final ruling on my case. I am, indeed, banned from Twitter completely and forever, and will be permitted no further appeals.
Did I incite a bloody insurrection against the United States government?
Nope.
Did I threaten anyone or wish them physical harm in any way?
Of course not.
I am told by the Twitter Ministry of Truth that I have been evicted from Twitter and told never to return for responding to this, which was directed at me...
It seems painfully obvious that Twitter has seen fit banned me for life for some other reason, which almost certainly involves repeatedly making any number of Blue Check Conservatives look stupid in public. Because while my remarks to "ah_notty" might have been little spicy, they are nothing compared to what you can see flying back and forth on Twitter all day, every day, with no scoldings or groundings or exiles from @Jack. Stuff like this --
Did you work hard to be this much of a moron, or are you the product of a combination of enthusiastic inbreeding and a mother who spent her pregnancy huffing paint thinner while servicing her other clients in a truckstop bathroom? https://t.co/sVUubocn9m
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) January 8, 2020
-- which wasn't even worth a 12-hour-bit-in-Twitter-minimum-security-jail.
And after 11 years on Twitter, accumulating over 10K followers and finding myself being regularly retweeted by some social media powerhouses as well as you wonderful folks, somebody or somebodies clearly got tired of me running my mouth and making them look stupid in public, so they solved the problem by eliminated me from Twitter.
I am cancel culture.
Ah well, too late for regrets now. I'll still be on Blogger, writing every day until they kick me off of here too, and there are several kind souls (and at least one disreputable Twitter outcast now traveling under an assumed name) who regularly posts my writing to Twitter, so many thanks for that and for all the follows and follies over the years.
“The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters.”
-- Lewis Carroll, writer
Members of the New Now Generation are not hard to spot.
They're overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly middle-aged Conservatives who suddenly discovered very late in life that their Republican Party was full of Republicans and were then either thrown out of the party, or left under their own power or still think of themselves as Republicans even though their party has rejected them like a bad kidney transplant.
If you go looking for a member of this New Now Generation , you don't need to look far. They are wildly overrepresented across all major media platforms and, other than their age, their race, their gender and their political history, you can easily identify them by their virtually unanimous insistence that every horrifying aspect of the Republican party's very long and very public descent into madness has only presented itself during a period called "now" which extends from the moment they left the party until, well, "now".
Before "now" the veil of time had not descended on the human species. Nothing was known or knowable and the principle of "cause and effect" had not yet come into existence, so before "now" there is no history of what these people said or did believed.
Sad!
What this mean from a practical point of view is this.
If you were, say, a prominent and respected Liberal writer like Digby and you had written an essay entitled "The GOP Stands for Nothing" at any point before the "now", well, if you were lucky, Kos might repost it and Atrios might clip a sentence or two from it and direct his readers to go read the rest of it, and much of the rest of the Liberal blogosphere might follow suit. But that's it because any suggestion that something was fundamentally broken and diseased about the GOP coming from anyone before the "now" was obviously just crackpot Liberal alarmism.
And if you were a prominent Liberal writer now but had written an essay entitled "The GOP Stands for Nothing" in which you proved beyond any doubt that the fundamental brokenness and derangement of the GOP began long, long before the beginning of the "now", well good luck finding anyone who wants to print your divisive crazy talk. The crisis is nownownow. So who the fuck cares when it started, or why it started or who profited from starting it? All that matters is the now. The right now.
Ah, but if you're a member of the Conservative New Now Generation and your schtick is writing essays entitled something like "The GOP Now Stands for Nothing"...
The Republicans stepped forward in 1980 as optimistic warriors.
All of that is gone. Today’s Republicans exist only to stay in power, not least so that their elected officials can avoid what they dread most: being sent home to live among their constituents.
TOM NICHOLS is a contributing writer at The Atlantic
...is the surrealest David Brooks of all.
As we take off the physical masks, it seems important that we take off the psychological masks as well...
And:
More lives are wrecked by the slow and frigid death of emotional closedness than by the short and hot risks of emotional openness...
And then:
My wife and I are printing out our calendars in three-month chunks, so we can get an accurate overview of how we are committing our time. I’m hoping to spend less time at one-off events and more time...
Please don't say "doing butt stuff" please don't say "doing butt stuff" please don't say "doing butt stuff".
...and more time with recurring commitments — groups that meet weekly, monthly or several times a year.
OhThankGod.
File under, "When your organizational imperatives are in direct conflict with each other, hilarity will inevitably ensue"
Consider the two of the most important objectives of anti-Trump Republican club:
As such, according to the official anti-Trump Republican club calendar, every event of relevance in modern American political history must take place in a cartoonishly compressed time-frame: basically from 2015/16 until today. And because anti-Trump Republican club need to simultaneously obliterate history to hide their complicit and cite history to prove their moral superiority, this leads to some hilarious confusion among the acolytes.
For example, in this corner we have the true, original spirit of the anti-Trump Republican club. No matter how weak or equivocal or tortured or revisionist or sheathed in Both Siderism or too-damn-little-too-damn-late your words of condemnation may be...all is forgiven and welcome to the club! Ouchless absolution with no questions asked!And in this corner we have the new rules of the anti-Trump Republican clubhouse. Your words of condemnation can still be weak or equivocal or tortured or revisionist or sheathed in Both Siderism or too-damn-little-too-damn-late, as long as you said them at just the right time.Look, I share the frustration. I know and like Paul Ryan and wish he said more, said it more forcefully and said it earlier. If you want confrontation, Paul is not your guy. Still, I rather him speak up late rather than never.
— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) May 27, 2021
Welcome to the Club, Paul. https://t.co/YZE1utQHgP
We have been at a “crossroads” about the future of America since 2015, when Trump came on the scene, and you think by now you’d learn what side your are on. Stay in the middle, get run over.
— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) May 27, 2021
Here we find Charlie Sykes being gravely concerned over Republicans who are attempting to obliterate history and destroy those who would remind us of that history:
"The objective of the Trumpians who wish to destroy democracy is exactly that: to obliterate history and, at the same time, destroy those who would remind us of it." Read: @RosenzweigP
— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) May 26, 2021
https://t.co/iCFvjUBSNO
And here we find a sampling of Never Trump Republicans, including Charlie Sykes, reacting to a certain blogger who had the impertinence to remind them of the long, ugly history of their Republican party that led to Donald Trump:
The first five minutes of this podcast, "No One is Coming to Save Us" (which I tried to embed but Stitcher wouldn't cooperate) sounds like a chapter straight out of my mom's life. Moving to a strange town where she knew no one. Having to start her job teaching school almost immediately and having three kids who needed looking after in an America where child care of any kind barely existed and in a suburb expressly built with the idea that all Dads commuted to Chicago every morning and all Moms stayed home.
So she squared her shoulders and started knocking on the doors of strangers.
Here first stop was the next-door-neighbor who had moved in just a week or so after us. One of the only African-American families in town. And my mom's first question to the woman who answered the door -- "Do you work?" -- and our neighbor's quite understandable reaction to this nosy white lady asking about her employment status -- "Excuse me!?" -- might have sent our long and deeply intertwined relationship with that family careening down the wrong path if mom hadn't immediately apologized and cleared up the context of her impertinent question. She was a starting a new job teaching school and needed someone to look after her children a few hours a day, and she didn't know anyone, had no relatives within 400 miles, and asking your neighbors for help was how she was raised.
Our neighbor invited her in for coffee. Turned out, she was a teacher too. And also had children about our age. And that's how a friendship that lasted a half a century, though all kind of tragedies and blessings, started. Eventually both moms found people to look after their children when they were at work, which is how my brother and I ended up having PBJs and milk at the kitchen tables of several different women over the next few years.
Like the narrator of the podcast, this story has passed into family lore: something my sibs and I take out of memory's glass case and pass around with a laugh when we reminisce. But when I think about what my mom actually did -- shepherding our tiny family literally around the globe, through airports and customs and vaccines, getting situated in weird little hotels for a day or a week, navigating us through the streets of Paris and Hong Kong and Beirut, then landing in a suburb full of strangers and having to set up housekeeping, get us enrolled at our schools and start a new job a month or two before our furniture arrived, all without the internet, without email, without reliable phone service -- I am awed.
And appalled that the United States was (and still very much is) content to let people like my mom and our neighbor and who knows how many thousands of other working women fend for themselves in a system that depended on their labor but was (and still very much is) actively hostile to their basic needs.
Important writer's note: Never start a story with "There I was..."
So there I was, having just finished my mammoth deconstruction of David Jolly's 'boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" scam' as it was revealed to me by the Bulwark podcast. A scam that Mr. Jolly launched in a market which was already thoroughly oversaturated with boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" scams, and which Mr. Jolly pitches using every discredited, used-up, burnt-out Beltway media trope from 2015/16.
Anyway, there I was, gone gaunt from the effort. Bleary-eyed. Begrimed with the dirt of a thousand mouse-clicks, sore from a hundred corrected typos and glistening with the honest perspiration of my labors. So off to the shower, where it took ten minutes to get rid of the stains and sweat and another twenty until I had rinsed that unclean feeling I get every time I read or listen to one of our "allies" trying to grift the general public out of their trust and hard-earned cash.
Feeling good. Clean.
Slip on my robe, sink into a comfortable chair and who knows? Maybe watch a documentary on the tortured origins of the Garamond font. Or Bridge on the River Kwai. Or root around the internet for some godawful, no-budget slice of American International Pictures science fiction cheese.
And then, unbidden, the thought came. "I wonder what those scamps at The Lincoln Project are up to?" After all, my labors are done. Podcast recorded. What harm could come from dialing into the antics of those lovable tykes for five minutes. If they're up to no good, I could make a few notes, set them aside, then join William Holden trekking back through the jungle (Jebus, I'd forgotten how big those bats are) to blow up a bridge.
Which is how I learned that The Lincoln Project is now boosting something called The Franklin Project (because everything's a project now and everyone owes Alan Parsons $5 now) except it's not that Franklin Project, or that other Franklin Project, but a completely a different Franklin Project.
So there I was, surrounded by Franklin Projects...
So this Franklin Project is being launched to "...address the increasing imbalance of power between the government and the governed, the creation of 'The Democracy Corps', and the state of civics education in the United States" which sounds innocuous enough. After all, who doesn't love civics education and Democracy!
And it is co-executive directed by Mr. Greg Jenkins and Ms. Erin Dobson.
Both former-Republicans. Both worked in Bush White Houses.
(RedAlert!)
And after about 16 minutes of obligatory happytalk about things which no one could possibly object to -- democracy, accountability, an informed public -- podcast host Reed Galen starts laying down the Both Siderist runway so these crazy kids can slowly bring their scam in for a landing.
It begin with everyone's favorite non-specific villains. "Some people". Some people say everything is rigged. Some people say it's all bullshit. Some people think "the other side" is fundamentally against America.
As opposed to the Good Guys at the Franklin Project who...
Erin: Want to build group of like-minded citizens that are made up of every kind of every political persuasion, race, location, economic background -- something that's a tapestry, of kind of the voices of America...
So you want to build... the Democratic Party?
Cool. But, y'know, we've already got one.
Erin: ...then that's the reflection of our country that is in that Middle.
Erin said "in that Middle". Everybody drink. Because that's the where all of these boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" scams go prospecting. The Mythical Orphaned and Unloved Center. And why has the Mythical Center -- the real America which is home to the very best people -- been abandoned?
Erin: What're we've fallen victim to is listening to the loudest voices in the room.
Nope "We" haven't "fallen victim" to anything. Instead, "you" -- the mainstream media and the leadership the GOP -- have spent 30 years conspicuously ignoring the grave and growing threat coming from your party. And that's not being a "victim", Erin. That's being complicit.
Erin: ...need to re-engage that silent group of people In The Middle
Middle. Drink.
Greg: If you listen to the voices that appear to be controlling the discussion...
Wait for it.
Wait for it.
Greg: ...they're the voices on The Extreme Ends. Ask yourself, why are these extremes -- on the Left and on the Right -- in crazy-land on either side...
Greg said "on the Left and on the Right". Everybody drink. Oh, and fuck you, Greg, and the Fascist Party you helped to build.
Greg: ...why are they successful in driving any kind of a narrative?
Now you might be asking, who exactly is the crazy-town Extreme Left that Greg is talking, and what fucking narrative have they succeeded in "driving"? Don't worry, eventually they'll get there.
Greg: It's the same dynamic that feeds how is it the party's decide who their nominees are.
Hold up a second Greg. You're telling me that your evidence that we on the Extreme Left (from deep within our narrative-driving lair in crazy-land) control the nomination process is that we nominated and elected that notorious radical ... grandpa Joe Biden?
Wow.
Greg: It's the activists that show up during the caucuses and the primaries. The vast majority the people don't bother to get engaged until, well, frankly, until it's too late. It's a binary choice.
Congratulation, Greg. You are describing how elections work.
Greg: If you feel like you're part of a tribe...
Greg said "tribe". Everybody drink.
Greg: ...if you feel like you're party of the MAGA tribe -- if you feel like your part of the ultra-Left Wing or the ultra-Right Wing or whatever -- there's a collective dynamic that you touched on, Reed, that's really important. You feel like you're not alone. So if I feel like I'm not alone and I'm wearing my MAGA hat, whether or not I see another MAGA person for the rest of my days, I know that I'm part of something bigger than me. Therefor can agitate for kind of a collective perspective.
Greg said "ultra-Left Wing or the ultra-Right Wing". Everybody drink.
But hold up another second, Greg, because if this is a Both Sides problem, why won't you tell us which hats we Libtards are sporting to show our "tribal loyalty? What are you hiding Greg? Or , Mother of Blog, could it be that we Lefties are so damn devious that we signify cult membership by not wearing hats at all!
The textual analysists out there will quickly spot that "or whatever" is where Greg disappears entirely up his own ass. Because the MAGA tribe did nominate and elect Donald Trump and then, after four years of corruption, failure, death and madness, they did re-nominate their Dear Leader and they did come out in even greater numbers for him than they did in 2016 And there is simply no equivalent whatsoever to be found on the Left, and Greg damn well knows it. But his Franklin Project scam would be laughed out of town without an equally scary bogeyman on the Left, so Greg does exactly what everyone else working this grift does: he just makes one up and counts on friendly media not to push back too hard.
Greg: So what we want to do is give everybody else in the country...
A hat? Does everybody get a hat? Because in Slapstick (or Lonesome No More!), Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. has President Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain using the power of the federal government to assign everyone a new middle name which was supposed to give everyone a sense of belonging. For example, here is how one might deal with a panhandler in this fictional world:
You ask him his middle name, and when he tells you "Oyster-19" or "Chickadee-1" or "Hollyhock-13" you say to him: Buster - I happen to be a Uranium-3. You have one hundred and ninety thousand cousins and ten thousand brothers and sisters. You're not exactly alone in this world. I have relatives of my own to look after. So why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the moooooooooooon?
So, do we get hats?
Greg: ...give everybody else in the country sort of their own identity -- the Democracy Corps -- which allows them to assert a level of influence that they haven't been asked to exert before.
No hats, then. Damn. Well what about specific policies and issues over which there used to be genuine differences before the GOP gave up on governing entirely?
Greg: We don't advocate for any particular policy or against any particular policy, except to the extent that a policy is inherently anti-democratic or authoritarian in nature.
The Franklin Project: Solving today's most vexing problems by saying that they're someone else's problems.
Cool.
And then comes some talk about "peeling away the onion" on issues and getting to "those things we can agree on". Which describes a process called "governing" which Republicans since Gingrich have been dedicated to sabotaging.
Greg: A great example is voting rights...is obviously all over the news. Texas, Georgia, elsewhere.
You mean voter suppression, right Greg? You mean Republicans ramming through legislation everywhere they have control to make it harder to vote for people likely to vote for Democrats, right Greg?
Greg: Now all people are hearing to make their decisions are the talking points from Both Sides.
Greg said "Both Sides". Everybody drink.
Greg: There are some aspects of talking points on Both Sides that have truth to them.
Greg said "Both Sides" again. Everybody drink.
Greg: But there are also motives underlying those talking points that aren't really discussed.
Don't know where you're getting your "news", Greg, but even out here in the middle of Middle America I can see that the motives behind the GOP trying to suppress voter turnout are discussed a lot.
This is followed by a few minutes of pure, barnyard-grade bullshit about how, sure Democrats and Republicans both say stuff about voting, but maybe their motives are different than what they're saying!! Greg has no actual evidence of anything: he just wants listeners to consider that maybe Both Sides have secret, nefarious reasons for their positions on voting, and that once they join the Franklin Project Democracy Corps, all may be revealed to them.
Erin: The Franklin Project is an idea and a value system. We're not going to tell people what to think or what side of an issue that they should be on.
But you already are, Erin. Because every time you and Greg and every other hack like you opens up your cake-holes to justify your boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" scam by blaming Both Sides, you are very definitely telling them what to think. You're telling them that Both Side are to blame. Which is a god damn lie.
At this point, Mr. Galen wakes up long enough to correctly points out that, in fact, we're stuck with one party who believes in democracy and another party that "seems to be looking to jump overboard as quick as they can". And then asks how these grifters explain that to someone who is upset by that but feels politically homeless.
Greg: Whenever an issue -- topical issue in particular -- comes up what people who are interested in these sorts of discussions immediately do is race to their corner of the boxing ring.
Wrong on two counts.
It's stupidly wrong because boxers don't go to their corners when the bell rings and the fight starts, they come out of their corners. They head back to the corners when the round is over or when told to do so by a referee. And it's cravenly and deliberately wrong to dodge the question by pretending that the actual sacking of the nation's capitol by one party bent on overthrowing an election was just another "topical issue" over which two parties disagree.
Greg: What we want to do is tell people, y'know, before you go racing to your Republican or Democratic talking points.
Greg said "Republican or Democratic talking points". Everybody drink.
Greg: Before you go racing to what you hear on Fox or MSNBC.
Greg said "Fox or MSNBC". Everybody drink.
Greg: Before you say "Rachel Maddow said this" or "Brett Baer said this."...
I'll stop here because by this point you're probably knee-walking drunk.
However, two more things before I sign off.
First, if you've followed any of the many, many boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" scams that I've written about over the years, you will not fail to notice that they're all working from the same, ideologically bankrupt marketing material. All singing slight variations from the same debunked Beltway media hymnal.
And second, to Erin and Greg and all of the other Both Siderist flim-flam men and women working at every level of the American political media, why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the moooooooooooon?
“If you wanna win the hand, you've gotta stay in 'til the end.”
-- George, House of Games
You may know David Jolly as a former one-and-a-half term congressperson from Florida who is now a frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC.
In addition to being a former one-and-a-half term congressperson, you may or may not know that Jolly is also a former Republican (bailed on the party in 2018) a former Independent (bailed on that whatever-it-is in 2020) and is now registered under the Serve America Movement, an organization which he chairs.
And you probably had no idea that (according to Wikipedia) 93% of the Serve America Movement's funded comes from one former Big Tobacco executive, Charles Wall, and that, as of November 2020, the "movement" had a grand total of 649 registered members in New York, which is the only place on Earth where it appears on any ballot at all.
So since his is entire "movement" is being bankrolled by one guy, and since the world is not exactly beating a path to its door, you may be wondering why Mr. Jolly has any platform, anywhere?
Fair question, and one which reveals itself to the careful listener in Mr. Jolly's conversation with Charlie Sykes here.
Broadly speaking, David Jolly is on your teevee far more often than makes any sense because what he lacks in tangible achievements, he more than makes up for in what I think of as political HerbalLife, vertical marketing, time-share doubletalk.
It's Ricky Roma stuff straight out of Glengarry Glenn Ross. First, get the credulous suburban mark loose and lubricated. Get them nodding along to some deep-sounding fortune cookie BS --
-- and then, while you have your mark agreeing with you that "transparency" and "problem solving" are indeed fucking awesome, out comes the solution to all of their problems in a pamphlet and a pitch --
-- all calibrated to get them to sign on the line which is dotted.
When his conversation with Mr. Sykes turns to the unsalvageability of the GOP David Jolly was very proud that he has been "involved in this space for five years now" and handed out plenty of attaboys the tiny handful of:
Jolly: ...other Republicans who started this war five years ago.
Actually, David, this war has been going on for decades. You just never noticed until stepped up and punched you in the face -- a moral and political myopia which, to be clear, has been the rule rather than the exception until, well, five years ago.
And that's the common element here. A deep desire in the media and among former Republicans like David Jolly to pretend that everything wrong with the GOP started spontaneously and with no warning five years ago. It comes in the form of a longing for good old days of 2015/16 when the media and every member of the GOP Brain Caste could openly laugh at the notion that Donald Trump could ever win the Republican nomination. A because of this yearning for the imaginary greener pastures of the Good Old Days, David Jolly has decided that, in a political marketplace already overstuffed with boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" scams, that the perfect foundation on which to build his own, boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" grift would be...the Beltway common wisdom of five years ago!
And you all remember what the Beltway common wisdom was back in 2016, right?
It was rampant, willfully blind Both Siderism. It was the imperative of defeating the K'rupt Duopoly above all else! And how does one overthrow the K'rupt Duopoly? By Disruption!
And now that Donald Trump has been temporarily entombed in Bedlam-by-the-Lake, Jolly figured it's safe to ransack Matthew Dowd's 2016 storage locker and cobble together his very own scam out of whatever he found there.
And kids, it is a treasure trove of golden oldies.
Sure the Republican party "isn't worth saving", but really, are the Democrats that much better?
To begin his pitch, Jolly asks you to place enormous faith in the Greatest Grandfalloon of all! The...
Jolly: 40% who self-identify as Independents.
Now we've had over 16 years of, well, jolly good fun mocking Conservative mopes who, every few months, peer into the impenetrably murk of America's "independents" and somehow, every time, miraculously see exactly what they want to see. In fact, at this point "I'm an in-dee-pen-dant!" is the unofficial punchline of The Professional Left Podcast because, just for starters, most "independents" aren't independent at all. They just like to say they are to impress their dopey friends or to increase the odds of hooking up with an attractive stranger they meet at a bar:
According to the Gallup polling firm, the identity that people choose most often is actually “independent” – not Democratic or Republican. In 2019, 42% of Americans chose this label – up from the low 30s just 15 years earlier, in 2004.
However, three-quarters of these “independents” admit, when asked, that they lean toward favoring the Democratic or Republican Party. Judging by how they vote or what they think of national political leaders, the truth is that these “leaners” really are partisans rather than independents. Apparently, many people who like to think of themselves as independent-minded and free of party influence aren’t.
So, why call themselves independents? Typically, according to one leading study, it is “not because they disagree with the parties ideologically or politically but because being a party member is embarrassing.”
In fact, only about 10% of Americans are what political scientists call “pure independents” – that is, people who identify as independents and claim not to favor either of the two major parties. Nor has that percentage grown in recent years. This means that the vast majority of Americans – consistently around 90% – are partisans, whether they like to admit it or not.
Heedless of this, Mr. Jolly plunges ahead, affecting a unique insight into what "independents" want that would make 2009 David Brooks ("What Independents Want") envious:
Jolly: This 40% is not wandering the political wilderness looking for a Center/Right coalition. That is not what informs their politics.
And what does inform their politics? Beyond, y'know, politics?
Jolly: They're actually rejecting the prescriptive dogma that parties suggest you have to adhere to, whether it's Left, Right, Center/Right, Center/Left, middle.
I don't recall being forced to sign up for any prescriptive dogmas when I registered as a Democrat, but maybe I was drunk. Nor have I ever felt any special need to adhere to any prescriptive dogmas when I vote, but maybe I've been drunk then too.
Jolly: [Independents] don't want to be told that to be part of a political organization -- a "party" -- we all have to coalesce around this shared ideology. What they want, I believe that the numbers prove out...the 40%, y'know, can be all over the map, but it is a rejection of dogmatic party organizations.
Of course nobody wants anyone telling them to do anything, and everyone wants to be a member of the "All Good Stuff/No Bad Stuff" party, but, see what we have here in this country is whatchacall a representative form of government. And since laws are passed by the people who are elected through a series of winnowing "primary" contests, I pick the people who I think broadly reflect my values and have a decent chance of actually winning in the "general" election.
Because (and Jesus, David, I can't believe that I really need to explain this) in our representative form of government we don't decide everything from tax rates to declarations of war by plebiscite. And as is true in examples as disparate as multicellular life forms, multinational corporations and the Catholic church, so it is true in politics: large well-organized groups stand a vastly better chance of winning the Darwinian competition survival sweepstakes than small, scattered groups with very little in common.
Which is why Jolly wants to bypass the idea of a "party" altogether and doesn't want to be pinned down about believing one thing or another. His pitch is for great big empty phrases like "problem solving" and "principles". Which, to the inebriated suburban mark, may sound like, hey, you know what? Maybe this is plot of land in the Glengarry Highlands is exactly what I've been searching for my whole life! Sign me up right now!
But then, inevitably, the cold light of morning comes creeping in.
Beyond "democracy" and "freedom" and "apple pie", what exactly am I signing up for? What specific problems is Mr. Jolly's "movement" going to solve and exactly how do they plan to solve them? Because honestly, right now, there already is a large political organization called the Democratic Party which actually does accommodate a wide spectrum of beliefs.
Foe example, when it comes to trying to, say, solve the problem of gun violence, one party -- the Democrats -- are willing to try anything that will work to even marginally reduce the slaughter, while the other party -- Mr. Jolly's former party -- is firmly locked into a "Bazookas for Everyone Because Liberals Are Commies!" position.
The same is true for fighting to expand the franchise. One party -- the Democrats -- believe in the principle of making easier and safer for every eligible American to vote, but are of many minds about the strategies and tactics that will advance that cause, while the other party is single-mindedly devoted to the proposition that "Elections Don't Count Unless We Win".
In fact, the same is true for long list of critical national issues, because one party already is a Very Big Tent where actual solutions to actual problems are debated among often fractious and constantly shifting coalitions. While the other party is a white nationalist madhouse goose-stepping towards the abyss and dragging the rest of us along with it.
But of course the obvious truth that the two parties are not at all equivalent is where all Third Way shell games that promise to transcend partisanship come a cropper, which is why the Beltway common wisdom of 2016 is so alluring. Because if you can convince people to move past the central political reality of our time -- that the Republican Party is the fucking problem -- you have freed yourself to slip back into he easy, lazy, toxic bromides of the pre-Trump world.
For example, Mr. Jolly makes it explicitly clear that the goal of his 649-member club is to "Disrupt!" our politics (yes, he actually uses that word) which he insists is broken because it's stuck on the "Left/Right" spectrum instead of twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!
What slayed (slew?) me was that Charlie Sykes was trying so hard to be Mr. Helpful that he accidentally undercuts Jolly's whole premise and never noticed:
Sykes: I... I... I... do think that on areas like the Child Credit that it seems like there's a moment when, if people would just take a deep breathe and find out that, y'know, Mitt Romney and Joe Biden are not necessarily that far apart. That we can actually come up with some pro-family, pro-life policies involving child care, involving child credit. But it's hard to break from those... those habits, y'know, that... that... that... habits of, oh, y'know, Us versus Them that have been so ingrained.
Yes, Charlie, Joe Biden, the president of the United States and the leader of the Democratic Party would probably be close enough to Mitt Romney on child care to work out a deal...in an alternate universe where Mitt Romney is not a pariah within his own party with no standing to negotiate anything. But in this universe, Mitt Romney is the leader of nothing and speaks for virtually no one because he has lashed himself to the mast of the American Fascist Party.
See, at this moment in history, we don't actually need our politics to be "Disrupted!" because the problem is not "those habits of....Us versus Them that have been so ingrained." The problem is the Republican Party. And to solve that problem we need for the Republican Party to not be seditious sociopaths anymore. And since that is never going to happen, Plan B needs to be the demolition of the Republican Party, root and branch, and to do that we need to be honest about how the Republican Party came to be a mob of seditious sociopaths in the first place.
And for the foreseeable future this means supporting the Democratic Party. Period.
And that simple, irrefutable fact is Kryptonite to anyone trying to get yet another boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" grift off the ground. And so Mr. Jolly once again rummages through the 2016 Beltway Book of Common Prayer and comes up with...
...the K'rupt Duopoly!
Jolly: So the Duopoly has produced a very effective currency called "negative partisanship". And we all see it. We might not use those terms but every election is about demonizing the other side. Republicans are calling Democrats "socialists". Democrats calling Republicans "authoritarian".
This is one of those places where the sheer, ham-fisted goofiness of Mr. Jolly's pitch cracks me up. Because we're now around 36 minutes into this podcast, with Jolly bitching that our politics is broken because each side unfairly demonizes the other. Except is it demonizing a pony to call it a pony? Or a plague to call it a plague? And is it demonizing the Republican Party to call it authoritarian when it clearly is authoritarian? Because if this is the bedrock on which Mr. Jolly's Both Siderism stands, I'll gladly step aside so Mr. Jolly can take his complaint up with the long list of former Republicans who say so.
Like Jennifer Rubin:
The Republican Party seems to be getting worse. In some cases, it has exceeded the level of dishonesty, bigotry and anti-democratic fervor that it displayed when its MAGA cult leader was in office.
And Max Boot:
The GOP is accelerating its descent into authoritarianism
And David F. Brooks:
Without Trump, the GOP is getting worse
...With their deep pessimism, the hyperpopulist wing of the GOP seems to be crashing through the floor of philosophic liberalism into an abyss of authoritarian impulsiveness. Many of these folks are no longer even operating in the political realm. The Republican response to the Biden agenda has been anemic because the base doesn’t care about mere legislation, just their own cultural standing.
And holy crap, here is Charlie Sykes' own publication demonizing those poor Republicans!
The GOP’s Telltale Signs of Authoritarianism
And double holy crap here are David Jolly and Charlie Sykes on this same podcast just 15 minutes prior writing off Republican Party as irredeemably anti-democratic and fucked-in-the-head
Jolly: This is Donald Trump calling for a cover-up of his instigation of an insurrection that tried to topple our republic, and it's Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson and every other person who worships at the lap of Donald Trump saying "Yes, sir, we'll help you cover this up."
Also here:
Sykes: ...That war is over. It is lost. The Republican Party has been taken over by the conspiracists, the cranks, the bigots, the people who believe the Big Lie. And anyone who thinks the Republican Party can now be reformed I think is incredibly naïve ...
And also here:
Jolly: Let's start with the premise that the Republican Party's not worth saving. Because even if you rid it of Trump and Trumpism, it would still require making common cause with te likes of Josh Hawley and Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and I say you can't find common cause with anti-democratic, illiberal politicians under the same tent.
All of which sure as hell sounds to me like Sykes and Jolly taking turns calling the GOP "authoritarian".
Then Jolly decides to radically rewrite the history of the Affordable Care Act, recasting it as some kind of zero-sum, tribal food-fight between equally intractable partisan warriors: Obama (who was dug in on one side interested only in protecting Democrat's interests) and Republicans (who were dug in on the side interested only in protecting their constituency.) And wasn't it a fucking pity that there wasn't some kind of Third Way Savior Party like David Jolly's merry band to Disrupt The K'rupt Duopoly! because then maybe everybody would've gotten what they wanted!
Jolly: What about the coalition that says that all three constituencies are valid and all their experiences are all equal? So how do we do this? And to your point, is it a Romney/Biden-type coalition? Hopefully we would see that. The problem is, we'll go back to fair elections, we have so rigged our election process towards hyperpartisanship that... that Romney/Biden alliance would never get rewarded and successfully build through a general election that would successfully change our politics. Which leads us to this new party space...
Nope, nope, nope. Everything about this is the ripest kind of bullshit and I just can't let it sit there, stinking up the joint. So once again a lowly Liberal is forced to do what Charlie Sykes never has the balls to do: remember the past accurately. .
First, since it is impossible for me to believe that David Jolly simply doesn't remember how many different kinds of pluperfect Hell president Obama went through to get any Republicans to work with him in any way to create exactly the kind of "everybody wins" compromise that David Jolly is whining about, I'm forced to assume that Jolly is just lying his ass off here to manufacture a demand for his S.A.M. scam.
After all, there were endless of town halls and hearings an hundreds of hours of negotiations. President Obama even went down to Baltimore and crashed the annual Republican retreat to plead with them, in person and without notes, to work with him on behalf of all Americans to make the bill work for everyone.
And they told him to fuck off. Many, many times.
Consider how many Republican amendments were included in the final bill (from The New York Times) --
Obamacare Included Republican Ideas, but the G.O.P. Health Plan Has Left Democrats Out
When Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010 without a single Republican vote, they were criticized for being too partisan. In the end, however, the bill included many Republican ideas.
The keystone principle of the act — a mandate that all Americans buy health insurance — is rooted in conservative thinking. Additionally, the Democrat-controlled House and Senate committees adopted nearly 190 Republican amendments while writing the legislation, according to data compiled by The New York Times...
-- and yet the Affordable Care Act never got a single Republican vote precisely because their goal was to sabotage president Obama at every opportunity, to give him nothing, to deny him any wins at any cost...and then go on the Sunday Shows where they knew the craven Beltway media would let them get away with playing the victim.
Second, where the fuck does David Jolly summon the nerve to weep into his beer over how "rigged our election process [is] towards hyperpartisanship that... that Romney/Biden alliance would never get rewarded" when talking about the Affordable Care Act when Romneycare was president Obama's fucking starting point when he came to the negotiation table?
And finally, of all the people in the known universe he could've dragged into his idiotic game of historical revisionism, how does Jolly pick Romney's name to put in his mouth over this specific issue? When it was Mitt Romney's Republican Party that had so poisoned the political atmosphere in this country over the issue of the ACA that Mitt Romney himself was reduced to lying about his involvement in the creation of his own healthcare bill during a presidential debate? Even though it was prominently mentioned in Romney's own biography? Even though the bill itself was included on his desk as part of his official portrait as Massachusetts governor?
Once again, at this moment our problem is not the K'rupt Duopoly or an election system that is rigged towards hyperpartisanship, or Both Sides Doing It or the Left being so rude as to correctly identify the GOP as an authoritarian dung heap, or any of rest of the pundit flotsam from the good old Beltway media days of 2015/16.
Our problem is the Republican Party. Period.
But of course that clear and present danger to the republic was never not gonna get some former Big Tobacco executive to foot the bill for yet another boutique, former-Republican, Third Way, "problem solving", "beyond partisanship" scheme.
And so, instead, we get cold 2016 leftovers.
To understand the real significance of this above-the-fold headline story in todays State Journal-Register you really have to read it from back-to-front. Because this is not just about why this particular group of Republican mopes and dregs have chosen to pay an unhinged Hitler-sympathizer and batshit conspiracy PEZ-dispenser like Candace Owens to keynote their 117th annual Lincoln Day Dinner.
This is about the fact that the entire Republican party is utterly (to borrow a phrase from the late Hunter Thompson) decadent and depraved all the way down to the local level, and how the cowardice and ruthless opportunism that is hardwired into the party means there is no longer any way out of the doom-loop they have locked themselves into.
First it's important to understand why this annual dinner exists at all. And for that we start near the end of the(pay-walled) article:
[Sangamon County Board chairman Andy] Van Meter said the goal of the Lincoln Day Dinner is to raise money. Owens, he said, “is a personality and her personality helps sell tickets. … I realize that some of her tweets are out there.”
This is about money.
Specifically this is about raising money for local Republican candidates, especially for down-ballot races like state representative, county circuit clerk and so forth where the party builds its bench. And to raise money for local Republican candidates, you have to bring in someone that local Republicans want to cheer for. And right now, local party officials believe that giving an unhinged Hitler-sympathizer and batshit conspiracy PEZ-dispenser like Candace Owens a microphone and putting her in the spotlight for one of their most high-profile annual fundraising events will raise money.
And they're right. There'll be the basic ticket price, which will gross them $150K --
About 1,500 people are expected to attend the $100-a-person, sold-out event at the Bank of Springfield Center.
-- and there are the sponsorships and photo-op fees--
-- and, of course, there is the informal process of putting the additional bite on attendees that always happens off in the corners, and out in the hallways.
I'm assuming that everyone reading this blog knows what an absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel, assembled-from-Ann-Coulter-and-Ben-Shapiro-leftovers hobgoblin Candace Owens is, but for the unlettered, the Journal-Register, to its credit, not only put some of Ms. Owens' more loathsome batshittery right up front in the second and third paragraphs --
Owens, 32, an author, a frequent guest on Fox News and prolific poster on Twitter, has said the 2020 presidential election that former president Donald Trump lost was “rigged,” COVID-19 is a “ridiculous scam,” Black Lives Matter is a “trash organization,” the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a “disgusting group,” and white supremacy and white nationalism are “not a problem that is harming Black America.”
Owens, who is Black, told Fox News that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, was a victim of “mob justice” when he was convicted in the death of George Floyd, a Black man, and Floyd was a “pawn” in a political game.
-- but actually ran a second, parallel article ("What makes her so controversial") right next to this one in which they print a sampling of her Tweets. Such as this:
“Tucker Carlson told the truth about #BLM: it has nothing to do with black lives. When 18 black people were murdered in 24 hours in Chicago #GeorgeFloyd riots, plus 10 people shot in Brooklyn in one hour — the movement is about black anarchy. And I will never bend a knee to that.”
Candace Owens, Twitter, June 9, 2020.
And this:
“Wish I could send @DonaldJTrumpJr a genuine “get well soon” message. but like millions of others Americans — he’s perfectly healthy with absolutely no symptoms, despite a test telling him that he’s sick. Most ridiculous scam in the entire world. Covid-1984.”
Candace Owens, Twitter, Nov. 20, 2020.
Now consider how fucked-in-the-head any organization must be when the headline of the Big Unveiling of the Big Keynote Speaker of their Big Annual Event is not "The Sangamon County GOP is Proud and Excited to Announce..." but is instead, "Sangamon County GOP leaders defend speaker."
And just from reading what the GOP leaders on the record, it's clear that they know perfectly well who Candace Owens is and would very much like it if you didn't ask about whether or not they agree with her:
[Chairwoman of the Sangamon County Republican Central Committee Dianne] Barghouti Hardwick, wouldn’t comment on whether concerns have been raised by any local Republicans about Owens’ upcoming appearance, saying it is an internal matter.
Maybe their squeamishness comes from Owens' overall record of being a irredeemably horrible human being or maybe it is specifically because Owens is an infamous COVID-19 denier, a mask-hole and vaccine panic-peddler who "will not be touching the vaccine", while the Lincoln Dinner honoree this year is...
...the local party’s immediate past chairwoman, Rosemarie Long, who died Feb. 2 at age 78 of complications from COVID-19.
Jesus, read the fucking room.
So how are local Republican party leaders trying to straddle their need to raise money in a party that remains dog-loyal to a deranged racist traitor named Donald Trump...and the unavoidable fact that the Trump myrmidon they hired to bring in the dough and fire up the rubes is a bottomless pit of appalling?
By trying to reframe their cravenness and cynical opportunism as a virtue.
Like this:
GOP leaders say their 'big tent' is large enough to include controversial commentator
And this
"[Owens is] a young, energetic, African-American woman who has a lot of energy and is appealing to young people.”
And this:
When Barghouti Hardwick was asked whether she agrees with Owens’ past statements, she responded: “I don’t agree with everything any speaker would say. My major emphasis is that we have to be a ‘big tent.’”
Barghouti Hardwick said, adding that Republicans, in general, are “independent thinking.”
And this:
A prominent local Republican, Sangamon County Circuit Clerk Paul Palazzolo, said in an email that Owens is a “dynamic, conservative African-American woman which shows our party is reflective of all independent-thinking people regardless of race or religion.”
Sangamon County State’s Attorney Dan Wright, a Republican, does not endorse Owens' obviously deranged opinions, but...
“The Sangamon County Republican Party has always espoused a ‘big tent’ philosophy," Wright said in a statement. "Our country cherishes free speech and diverse perspectives..."
Andy Van Meter agrees with Owens on some stuff, disagrees on others, but hey, who among us agrees with everything someone else says right?
But [Van Meter] added, “I don’t agree with everybody I see on television.”
The article wraps up with this by Van Meter:
Van Meter said the Sangamon County GOP is a “conservative, mainstream” organization.
“We have to act like a big tent and hear all points of view,” he said.
First, like the rest of the Republican party, the Sangamon County GOP is neither a conservative nor a mainstream organization. It is the a backwater regional outlet of a fascist doomsday cult that will finally finish off our democracy it it every claws its way back to power.
And second, I trust you noticed how every party leader has been trained to repeat the Magic Conjure Words "Big Tent" any time anyone asks them any question about the fascist doomsday cult that they serve.
Strange sort of Big Tent though.
Like the opposite of Dr. Who's TARDIS, it's Big Tent which is much smaller on the inside than it appears on the outside.
It's a Big Tent that cast out Liz Cheney of Republican leadership -- the same Liz Cheney these same people were celebrating and literally embracing right here in Sangamon Country less than two years as a shining example of Women in Republican Leadership, who has a nearly-perfect wingnut voting record and who voted for Trump twice -- for the cardinal sin of not being willing to back Donald Trump's Big Lie or pretend that the January 6th insurrection really wasn't much more than a class field trip that got a little bit rowdy.
So Cheney if no longer welcome in the Big Tent, who is? What's the spectrum of "independent thinkers" of "diverse perspectives" who have not only been welcomed into the Big Tent, but have been given the honor of keynoting the Sangamon County Republican party's Big Annual Event?
Well, let's see.
Last year was Jason Chaffetz, one-time congressperson and current Fox News troll who taken up permanent residence in Donald Trump's underwear drawer.
The year before that -- 2019 -- it was noted perjurist, unindicted Iran/Contra traitor, former NRA president and Fox News goon, Oliver North. And here are a few of the diverse and independent-thinking opinions he shared with his audience:
The 75-year-old North, who became president of the NRA last May, also said the “disarm America movement is the best-funded, most sophisticated assault on our American liberties in our history.”
North claimed that an unnamed “unholy troika of tyrannical billionaires” was setting the Democrats’ “far-left socialist agenda.”
“They’re using their vast fortunes to elect enough progressives to turn America into a disarmed socialist dystopia,” North said.
The year before that it was Fox News in-house train-wreck/barfly, Jeanine Pirro.
The year before that wingnut-network-job-hopper and H.R. Haldeman stunt-double, Corey Lewandowski.
Are we noticing a pattern yet?
The year before that, 2016, it was none other than Fox News prime-time Gorgon, Laura "Eva Braun-nose" Ingraham. Chairman of the dinner and said Sangamon County Circuit Clerk Paul Palazzolo explained:
"We wanted somebody who had some recognition. Every time they are on a show or a radio program and we’re promoting her coming, that’s good PR. And she’s a positive speaker."
In 2015 it was Corey Lewandowski again.
In 2014 2014 Ben "Obamacare is Slavery" Carson took the stage. At the time, was camped out at Fox News.
In 2013 they hired Hate Radio Mouth and Ronald Reagan's own Eric Trump, Michael Reagan.
And in 2012 they signed red-meat vendor Ted Nugent who let this old town know what to expect by telling local reporters that Barack Obama was an “America-hating punk.” The Sangamon County Republican party billed Nugent as a "rocker, hunter and gun enthusiast" but somehow neglecting to mention all the crazy, murderous, threatening shit he was always up to,, Because let's facie it, that shit was the only reason local racist meatheads were willing to shell out $100 to see him live. Here's a small taste from Think Progress, April 20, 2017:
And here's a little more of Ted Nugent road show sedition that commended him to the attention of the Sangamon County GOP:Nugent’s 2012 comments about Obama — who he has called a “piece of shit” and a “subhuman mongrel” — are far from the only threat he’s made against prominent Democrats. As the Daily Beast chronicled, Nugent discussed shooting Harry Reid during the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in 2015. In January 2016, he called for both Obama and Clinton to “be tried for treason & hung.” Nugent once called Clinton a “worthless bitch” and called for her to “ride one of these [guns] into the sunset.” He told Obama to “suck on my machine gun.”
