Monday, June 14, 2021

I Wasn't Being Condescending. I Was Being Patronizing.


This week, our award for "Never Trumpers Sternly Lecturing Democrats About How They Are Fucking It All Up" goes once again to crew over at The Bulwark for this little gem.

James Hohmann:  ..and and then I think to your point, [Democrats have] become super condescending toward anyone who doesn't sort of "get it" in quotes and... and that is a huge turn off for so many voters that I've talked to around the country who I think, y'know are ancestral Democrats and just the... the... a lot of the condescension is that Democrats feel like they shouldn't have to explain to you uh why they're doing what they're doing

Charlie Sykes: Yeah the condescension and contempt can be really be deadly in American politics...

First of all, if you mean "Strom Thurmond Democrats" or "Reagan Democrats" just say so and don't conjure up a phrase like "ancestral Democrats" as if these goofs have been passing down locks of Martin Van Buren's hair from father to son for 180 years.  They haven't. They've been stone-cold Republicans for at least a generation largely because they hate and fear people of color and because your party rolled out the red carpet for them as they fled my party because of our slow but steady embrace civil rights as a core value.

So you can stop pretending these goofs have shit all to do with the Democratic Party.

Second, speaking for all Liberals everywhere, we are 100% cool with asshole voters and fascist voters and racist voters knowing we have contempt for them.  In this matter, we stand with the late Steve Gilliard from +16 years ago:

There's a tendency for liberals to try and be fair, to consider other viewpoints, so we get baited by [Conservatives] in debates on terms that they set. I'm going to act on the following: I don't care what conservatives think. The NRO Corner thinks I'm a racist, I don't care, their opinions on race are meaningless.

Instacracker doesn't like what I say?

That's the purpose of the exercise.

I want conservatives to read this site and come away steaming. I don't want them to think they will like a word I will say here. I don't want them to think I will consider their opinions or viewpoints. I want them to think: boy he doesn't like conservatives and really, really doesn't care what we say.

I'm tired of people acting like these people can be reasoned with or talked to. They don't want to talk, they want to drive us away into a corner and ridicule our ideas.

I'm not writing to make conservatives happy. I want them to hate my opinions. I'm not interested in debating them. I want to stop them...

But the meatiest and most hilarious point in all of this is the monumental hypocrisy of these very recently homeless Republicans suddenly deciding that condescension and contempt are so toxic that Democrats dare not brush up against it because it's a "huge turn off for so many voters".

Really?

Because I don't know if Charlie Sykes noticed during his many decades of unstinting service to the Party of Limbaugh and Gingrich, but when the base of Mr. Sykes' party went looking for political stimulation, they weren't pulling "The Wealth of Nations" or "Democracy in America" off the shelf.  Instead, they were taking out their dog-eared copy of "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster" or wanking themselves it a tube sock watching their cassette of The Clinton Chronicles for the umpteenth time.

Granted, most of the GOP base doesn't read much at all, preferring instead to let Limbaugh or Levin or Hannity or Beck or O'Reilly shit their condescension and contempt for people of color, poor people, gays, immigrants, women and people like me directly into into their skulls.  

Week after week.  

Month after month.  

Decade after decade.

But when they do bother to crack a book, or at least buy it and display it as a totem of their tribal loyalty, they invariably choose titles from the vast and hugely profitable genre of Wingnut Grievance Literature which frequently loiters at the corner of mere condescension and contempt only long enough to launch itself into full-on apocalypticism with  such titles as...

"If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It" -- by Hugh Hewitt

"Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism" and "Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism" by Sean Hannity

"Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the Media are Subverting America" and "Won by One: Defeating Obama, Saving America" by Laura Ingraham

"Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation" by Candace Owens

"DARK AGENDA: The War to Destroy Christian America" and "The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement is Destroying America" by David Horowitz

"If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans" and "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America" and "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" and "Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama" -- by Ann Coulter

"American Marxism" by Mark Levin

"The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life" by Ramesh Ponnuru

"Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth" and "The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent" and "The People Vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against the Obama Administration" and "Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans" by Ben Shapiro

"To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine" and "Breakout: Pioneers of the Future, Prison Guards of the Past, and the Epic Battle That Will Decide America's Fate" by Newt Gingrich

"Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First" and "Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help and the Rest of Us" and "Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense" by Mona Charen 

"Conform: Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education" and "Liars: How Progressives Exploit Our Fears for Power and Control" by Glenn Beck 

And Tom Nichols' forthcoming, Everyone But Me Is A Fucking Idiot. (kidding)

A vast genre of pettiness and ridicule into which Charlie Sykes' own book, "Moochers", fits quite comfortable.  

I could go on and on.  

And on.  

And on.  

But you get the idea. 

For these people and thousands of their fellow travelers on the radio, teevee, the internet, in magazines and via their steady output of hippie-punching hate-porn in book-form, hysterical loathing and contempt for people like you and me has been their fucking brand.  They built an entire political movement -- the modern Republican Party -- on that foundation in a decades-long project which also proved to be enormously profitable for the organization and individuals who eagerly participated in making the Left the GOP's all-purpose Emmanuel Goldstein.

And when all of those years of rage and lying and conspiracy-mongering and pandering to bigots had groomed the Republican base into an army of reprogrammable meatbags (which -- surprise! -- fell in love with the guy who spoke to them openly in the rage-drunk, lying, bigot-pandering, conspiracy-mongering vocabulary that had been drilled into their heads) a small number of those who, like Charlie Sykes, had built the modern GOP found themselves, like Lucifer, cast out of their own wingnut paradise.

Tossed out so quickly that they barely had time to grab much more than a toothbrush, The Weekly Standard's mailing list, the contact info of cronies and friendlies in the media who would immediately hire them, and their own, seemingly inexhaustible supply of [checks notes]  condescension and contempt.  

Since the rise of Trump, virtually every Never Trump appearance on cable teevee has positively seethed with condescension and contempt for the voters who had made made them wealthy and for the politicians who they had worked to get elected.

But it's not just Trump and his lackeys and the Republican voting base for which they have contempt.  They also despise Conservatives media.  They collectively loathe pretty much all Republican elected officials at the federal, state and local level with whom they spent so many years making common cause against you and me.  And they have grimly hung onto their vintage condescension and contempt for you and me -- for us reckless, mouthy Lefties who are (according to Charlie Sykes) are directly responsible for the GOP being racist, for blinding men like Charlie Sykes to the danger that was growing inside the GOP by "crying wolf" about the growing inside the GOP and, somehow, for the election of Donald Trump.

So before lecturing us Liberals n the fleck of entirely justified condescension and contempt in our eyes, perhaps Mr. Sykes should start excavating the entire lumberyard of the stuff in his own.


Burn The Lifeboats

13 comments:

Ian said...

Well written and roll on the ground funny. Well done!

Robt said...

Don't get me wrong. I read and enjoy good books . Even some of the driest texts where I painfully read through like parched in the dessert seeing oasis everywhere. but learn more than I dehydrate.

I wouldn't bother reading a Charlie Sykes book or a Jonah Goldberg piece if I was stranded on an island alone.

Reading tea leaves is more acceptable.

Not sure who actually buys these type of hacky sack of shit books. But FreeDumb baby.

Unknown said...

This is a serious issue. The Republican anguish is real. There is genuine butthurt among those who feel that they're considered gob-smackingly stupid for following the mask-shaming, hoax-claiming hydroxychloroquack with his name on 11 digits of bankruptcy and who is unable to get a loan from anyone other than leegeetimate beeznessmen put in charge of former Soviet state enterprises by Comrade Putin. I can relate. Many people treat me like I'm relatively tall because I'm 6'3".

Pluto said...

Here is an exchange with a never trumper that you would appreciate.

https://twitter.com/ReifTerrance/status/1404626238854029315

GrafZeppelin127 said...

This needs to be on a continuous loop somewhere 24/7.

I've often said of conservatives, "They admire themselves too much, and have too much contempt for everyone else." That's why they're not funny, but it's also why they can't fathom or handle the idea that anyone might have contempt for them.

dinthebeast said...

I feel like most of the "conservatives" who condescendingly rail about condescension and contempt never figured out gratitude, and that leaves a gaping hole in their citizenship and humanity.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Ema Nymton said...

*

It is so nice to hear the views from protected media icons ensconced in media-land hideaways. Wouldn't it be oh so genteel to take a moment to learn what the rest of us (who are not in the "club") are thinking?

Right; that's not going to happen from that corner.

The Democratic Party has to ask itself (not Republican'Ts), "Did the Democratic Party win the election?" Then govern like you believe in what you stand for!

Stand tall and do the right thing. Carry out the Democratic agenda 'We The People' voted for. Act now. Your advantage will not last forever.


*

Vasiliy said...

If such a thing as the Communist Party of the United States still exists, it is a far less subversive organization today than is the Republican Party.

pagan in repose said...

I generally don't read they're writing or the so-called subjects they write about. They don't seem to know what they are talking about. Truths turned into half-truths turned into lies turned into propaganda ad infinitum to ad nauseam.

The long way around to say I just don't read the books they write anymore. I did at first many years ago but no longer.

At my heart of hearts, being that there is such a thing as a heart of hearts, I feel sorrow for them. Yes, I know they are dangerous, but gee whiz, to go through life being that deluded and angry all the time without ever questioning themselves. A crapulent lifestyle to be sure, just to make the point you don't like Dems.

Robt said...

One of Trump's first media promotions from the White House was to verbally criminalize a kneeling Football player so badly to get him fired from his career.

The use of the power of the White House presidential podium. Of course it did not stop there and the GOP elected officials stood by him and the GOP voters obliviously wandered into hate and anger at who Trump pointed his finger at.
making America great again was pressuring the NFL to fire a football player.

It didn't stop there. The republican (small) Government under complete majority control of the GOP was in fact bloated, intrusive, and all the trigger issue words they have always made claim of blame at their political opponents.
Excuse me, The GOP does not have political opponents. They have emeries..

Jake formerly of the LP said...

There is no one that thinks people are stupid more than Never Trump grifters, because that's why they put out such absurd BS for all those years when they knew better. And they think we can't use the Internet to remember their greatest hits.

These guys still think supply-side economics and cutting services will lead to prosperity, and their elitist sneer about how "they know how things work in the real world" is so laughable. Talk about not "getting it."

Robt said...


There is something to say about a dogs keen senses.

My dog has not been exposed to FOX or other propaganda much. Hardly at all.

So I cannot explain why when a person comes to my home who is on the Right wing (trump circus) of things is confronted with my dog.

He becomes very aggressive with the person.

He doesn't behave like that with anyone else.

It is like he can smell it on them.

Wesley Sandel said...

I'm supposed to be civil to racists, fascists and misogynists? I'd rather be throwing bricks at them.