These People Are Not Your Friends

"These people are not your friends, you know.  These are people want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of rock stars and they will ruin rock and roll and strangle everything we love about it..."  -- Lester Bangs, Almost Famous

Now that things have gotten real, you may have noticed an awful lot of silence from all the Savvy Liberals who handed the Left's hard-won credibility over to a tiny clique of Never Trumpers and helped them build large media platforms and audiences.

Platforms which they are now using to shit on the Left.

But I wouldn't go so far to say the silence is deafening, because it's not.  

Instead that silence is filled with the sound of clowns like Charlie Sykes and Republican Ringwraiths like Bret "Bug" Stephens getting back to doing that which they love to do above all other things: chortling over how stupid and awful Democrats are for daring to fight for Democratic values, when our proper place should be on bended knee thanking Joe Manchin for saving us from ourselves.

Here are a few, select cuts from this particular Bulwark podcast, but take it from your very uncool Unca Driftglass who monitors to all of this swill, all of your favorite Never Trump BFFs are talking this way, right down the line.

Right out of the box, after Charlie Sykes describes in great detail some nefarious goings on in Wisconsin Republican politics, Stephens skips the flowers and foreplay and jumps right into the hippie punching. 

Stephens: ...but it's such a reminder that the Trump, uh, the... the... the Trump true believers are the mirror image of the Woke Left.

This is the "But the Democrats..." reflex that instructors begin drilling into the skulls of freshman on their first day at Pundit University so that by the time they graduate and go on to lucrative careers of journalistic malpractice at The New York Times or Meet the Press it is completely automatic.   In fact, it's such an automatic and ubiquitous dodge among the worse hacks in the media that I was writing jokes about it 15 years ago.

Now let us return to Sykes and Stephens in the here-and-now.

Sykes: You know Bret, I, uh, do regard you as something of a kindred spirit because, uh, I think you're probably disliked as intensely as I am on a bipartisan basis.

Stephens:  So that's... that's... what... that's what I'm aiming for. If you have all the right enemies you've done something right.

Sykes: It looks like [Progressives are] going to kill, uh, Joe Biden's infrastructure bill in order to save something or other...

Sykes:  As the Republican party becomes more nihilistic and anti-democratic at that exact moment the... the Democrats appear completely committed to blowing themselves up...

Sykes: ...this is how bad things are that when I saw, um, your that comment about the... the Biden Get Your Groove Back campaign it did not mean, y'know, no solutions immediately leapt to mind for me.

Stephens: So one solution comes to mind for me and the template is the first two years of the Clinton Administration.

Sykes: Which was a clusterfuck!

Stephens goes on to radically re-imagine the Clinton years, choosing to erase the inconvenient presence of Newt Gingrich, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, Hate Radio, the NRA and all the rest of the scumbags who had taken over the GOP and instead insisting that the reason Democrats took a pasting in 1994 was that Clinton had the temerity to try and pass health care reform, which, according to Stephens, is what "moving very far to the Left" looks like, God help us all.

 According to Stephens, that loss was so traumatic that Clinton never again tried to do anything remotely Democrat-ish, and this is what Stephens hopes happens to Biden.  That he gets his ass kicked so badly that he will forever give up on the idea of trying to pass anything that remotely smacks of the Democrats' agenda, and instead "swing very hard to the Center" and focus on what Bret Stephens wants. 

Stephens:  So I'm hoping that a political shellacking now might sort of shake the... sufficiently shake the administration to remember they're supposed to be governing from the Center.  That's what America wants.

For the record, Bret Stephens never has and never will have the first fucking clue what America wants.  

Sykes:  So you have an open letter, uh, to, uh Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin saying that, y'know, they can actually -- this seems a little bit counterintuitive for a lot of our folks -- I think that they should just say "No".  And that they are the ones who might actually be able to save the, uh, Biden presidency... so make your case about why you think that Manchin and Sinema saying "No" might actually help Biden and the Democrats.

And here it comes.

Stephens:  Well what it will do is it'll be a tremendous defeat for the Left-wing Progressives that are currently holding a highly popular bipartisan infrastructure bill, as uh, as... as a hostage.  So it does a couple of things. First of all, um, it reminds the Biden presidency that its mandate is to... is to govern from the Center.  To be a... a moderate blue-collar presidency not a...not a Park Slope... uh... Berkeley, uh... uh... uh... y'know White Lib White wealthy liberal, uh, presidency.

Because in Bret Stephens' pinched, miserly imagination only Park Slope, Berkeley, wealthy White liberals care about clean water.  And clean air.  And community college.  And child care.  And child tax credits.  And dignified elder care.  

Instead Stephens believes Democrats should pass the infrastructure and debt ceiling bills as-is, and then "disaggregate" the Park Slope, Berkeley, wealth White liberal stuff and vote on each dirty hippie aspect of it one at a time, which he knows perfectly well McConnell will kill piecemeal.  

Stephens floats some claptrap about how forcing Republicans to justify voting against widows and orphans will "put Republicans on the back foot" as if Republicans possess a conscience.  As if "shaming" works on sociopaths.  And forgetting that ten minutes earlier Sykes and Stephens were both shaking their heads ruefully over what a nihilistic shithole the GOP had become.  

And now, even more Both Siderism!

Stephens:  The Biden administration faces, obviously, one adversary in the Republican party but it faces an equal adversary in its Left-wing Progressive Corbinista side.

Sykes:  You write, "The likeliest way for President Biden to fail and for democrats to lose their congressional majorities next year and for Donald Trump to return to the white house next term is for the spending bills to pass mostly as they are -- a Democratic party that abandoned its center..."

Then comes the smarmiest, most privileged, Conservative elitist bilge I've heard probably since the last time Bret Stephens opened his hole in public.

Stephens: You know their argument-- and I hear this all the time -- is, hey you know it's really popular when you poll this stuff.  People love the idea of, y'know whatever it is Green New Deal um... uh... the... the... the early childhood education. And then you have to say, yeah that's like saying, um, "Hey we can give you a free TV and by the way we're going to get you your own Tesla!"

At last the spiteful darkness that lurks in the heart of every Conservative pokes it mingy little head out.  Sure feeding hungry kids, helping single moms and making college more affordable sounds nice, but the next thing you know the Libtards will be nationalizing the banks, promising every welfare queen a spaceship and forcing poor Bret Stephens to subsist on rotten potatoes while cranking out Pro-Bernie propaganda on some collective pundit farm in North Dakota. 

Stephens: It's only when you present the bill that people think twice about the real value of some of these some of these programs.

To clarify, by "people" Bret Stephens means "Bret Stephens" as by "some of these programs" Bret Stephens means "any program that does not directly benefit Bret Stephens".

Stephens:  I mean I can't believe that you need to... they need to be reminded of what happened in in 2010 with the 63 uh seat loss in in the house.  Historic.

And here we go again.  Stephens insistence that Democrats doom themselves whenever they try to govern as Democrats, when, in fact, the opposite is the case.  

Democrats lose when they demoralize their supporters by refusing to fight hard for the priorities of the men and women who elected them.  They lose when they treat their supporters as idiots by continuing to go along with the fairy tale that Republicans are decent men and women, instead of taking every opportunity to curb-stop Republicans as the dangerous, fascist shitpile of bigots and imbeciles that clearly they are.

And then Sykes and Stephens are off to "But inflation..." land, and I'll spare you most of that because it comes down to Stephens warning that if some unforeseen and unforeseeable Bad Things were to happen in, say, China, well then, boy howdy, won't Liberals looks stupid!

Stephens: If that happens we're going to have a problem potentially every bit as serious as 2008, while we're busy spending like drunken sailors on a kind of a progressive Utopia that suddenly we're going to discover we can't possibly afford!

And regarding the border, well once again, those fucking Liberals!

Stephens:  I mean these... these are problems that have pretty clear solutions and so, again, it's just a matter of just pure political malpractice of kind of foolishly caving into an extreme Left-wing base that represents nobody except the angriest voices on Twitter.

In the spirit of constructive criticism, 'm not sure bringing up "angriest voices on Twitter" is a big winner for ol' Bret Bug since he very famously stormed off of Twitter and vowed Never To Return after he was thoroughly and righteously dragged for being a petty, vindictive asshole who was using his New York Times column to punch way down at a Associate GWU professor Dave Karpf who said something mildly critical of him.  

Professor Karpf then schooled the shit out of Stephens on Twitter causing Stephens to flee the scene of his crime like the poltroon that he is.

And then were on to the subject of race and, you guessed it, even more Both Siderism!

Sure Tucker Carlson is bad.  I mean, we call all agree to that, right?

Sykes: So what we're seeing is people like Tucker Carlson embracing the Great Replacement Theory, which is raw racism. You can disagree -- I don't think you'll disagree with me.

Stephens: No, I... I think Tucker Carlson is a malignant force in American life.

driftglass:  Great.  How about we just all agree and on this one REALLY obvious thing and move on?

Sykes: ...bringing the the Great Replacement Theory into the mainstream of American politics, or at least right-wing politics.  And of course using the border as an excuse to take this white nationalist meme uh you know prime time.

driftglass:  Excellent point, Charlie.  So maybe you just take the win and...

Sykes:  At the same time though...

driftglass:  Ah fuck.  I knew it.  You fuckers just cannot help yourselves can you?  

Sykes:  At the same time though...we have this increased shrill illiberalism and, I hate to use the word "woke" again.

driftglass:  Bullshit.  Nothing makes you happier than using a word that connotes consciousness and awareness as a pejorative.  

Sykes:  At the same time though we have this increased shrill illiberalism and, I hate to use the word "woke" again, extreme, y'know illiberalism of the anti-racist folks.

driftglass:  Go ahead.  Everyone can already see where you're going. Push all your chips in.

Sykes:  ...so as the Right becomes more hardcore and... and closed off to a discussion about race, the Left seems to be also escalating it's, uh, y'know upping its ante.

Stephens:  I mean because we have algorithms and systems in media that privilege,  if I can use that word, the loudest and angriest and most extreme voices.

So who exactly does Stephens classify as "the loudest and angriest and most extreme voices."

Stephens:  You know that that MSNBC caters exclusively to angry Progressives and Fox to angry Conservatives.

The Alert Reader will notice that Stephens is saying this to paid MSNBC contributor Charlie Sykes  But instead of wasting a lot of valuable adjectives explaining why this is hogwash, let's all enjoy this fun headline from the Daily Beast in 2017:

MSNBC Hires Conservative Columnist Bret Stephens

And this subsequent paragraph:

The former Wall Street Journal columnist recently switched over to the Gray Lady and generated controversy for his skeptical views of climate change. In recent months, MSNBC has hired several right-leaning figures: conservative radio talker Hugh Hewitt, former Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, famed columnist George Will, and former George W. Bush spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace.

Sorry, Bret, I think I interrupted you in the middle of saying something remarkably stupid.  Please, do go on.

Stephens: There... there's a kind of a model there that is constantly giving voice to, really, some of the most obnoxious people.

And who specifically are these "most obnoxious people", Bret?

Stephens: ...Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity...

Anyone else?

Stephens: ...uh uh Rachel Maddow.

Really?  Your Desert Island, Top Four most destructive, obnoxious people on cable teevee are Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity...and Rachel Maddow?

Stephens:  They're... they're all perfect encapsulations of, uh, or embodiments of... of that... of that phenomenon.

I think we'll leave it there because I don't have the patience to take this any further, and if I haven't made my point by now I never will.

And what is my point?

Well, to repeat what I said 1000 words ago, my point is that for several weeks now this has been the party line which all of your Never Trump BFFs have been taking:

1. Manchin and Sinema are the real heroes. 
2. Liberals are the real threat.   
3. The Biden presidency is doomed -- and will take democracy down with it when it falls -- unless they muzzle the Left and start taking direction from people like Charlie Sykes and Bret Stephens.  

In other words, these people never were your friends.

And they never will be.

Burn The Lifeboats