From This Day to the Ending of the World...

...But we in it shall be rememberèd methodically edited out of history.  

But that's the gig, right?   Labor in obscurity.  Watch as the mainstream media washes the past we fight to hang onto down the spout of history like the itsy bitsy spider.  And hope, in the end, that all we have have done has done some good.

Because the cavalry is not coming kids.  There is no secret wealthy Liberals plan to build a Mighty Liberal Media with enough firepower to shove the Fox News/Hate Radio propaganda machine back into the Bircher sewers and slap the mainstream press hard enough that it sobers up and starts doing journalism.  You and me?  We're it.  Us and a few others are the Liberal media.  

And as The Liberal Media, it's my job to tell you exactly what we're up against and why it is that way.  

So today, let's talk about our "allies".

Across all time, space and dimensions there are a few, powerful denialist tenets which are shared by virtually all former- or future-former-Republicans.

First, until they personally were either tossed out of or fell out of the GOP Racist Shitwagon, everything was fine.  Just fine.  And then, suddenly, it wasn't fine.  There is strong, "Archie Bunker Swears He Never Realized He’d Joined the Klan Until They Threatened to Burn a Cross on His Daughter’s Lawn" energy here, and with one or two exceptions, this has been the overwhelming consensus view of all Never Trump Republicans.  

Second, despite being the once-proud bearers of the Party of Personal Responsibility banner, they believe that they personally bear little or no responsibility for the Trump Big Bang -- that moment when, in a trillionth of a second and for reasons that political physics has been unable to unlock, their righteous and good and above reproach GOP was spontaneously transformed into a shitpile of bigots and imbeciles.  

You will get no such contrition, because I think your party had plenty of matches and lighter fluid and is not free of responsibility here.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 14, 2019

Once again, with a few rare exceptions, this has been the consensus view of all Never Trump Republicans.  

Third, Republican policies are still basically awesome.  Might need some wordsmithing, but nothing fundamental about Republicanism needs to change at all and the ship could be righted and the GOP would go back its righteous and good and above reproach default setting if only they could get back to where they were in 2014/15.  For example, this is the thesis of a book -- GOP 2.0 -- by the Lt. Governor of the State of Georgia, Geoff Duncan who got caught crosswise when he announced that the 2020 election was free and fair.  And the reason I am aware that Mr. Duncan and his stupid book exists is that he was a guest on The Bulwark podcast.   

Also, as far as I can tell, it is the only episode that the Bulwark has not uploaded to their YouTube page because I'm guessing that its existence is an embarrassment.  

I listened to the whole enchilada (why are you being unfair to enchiladas driftglass?) and it's clear that  Mr. Duncan's version of denialism finds him stuck in 2015.  He is grateful for four years of Conservatives policies under Trump, but find the "tone" from that wing of the party too salty.  He believes that the problematic part of the GOP is no more than "five-percent" on the fringe, and that Democrats are just as bad.  He is sure that there are ten of millions of Republicans -- the "silenced majority" -- who are just chomping at the bit for his GOP 2.0, and he is apparently swamped daily by unnamed GOP elected officials who tell him, tearfully and secretly, that he's their hero.  

And fourth, for all the luggage they were forced to leave behind when they fled (or were cast out) of the GOP, they were able to take their seething contempt for the Left with them.  Or, rather, their seething contempt for the caricature of the Left which they invented and which they spent their entire adult lives pummeling.  Tom Nichols from his Farewell to All That article in The Atlantic is as good an example as any:

As an aside, let me say that I have no love for the Democratic Party, which is torn between totalitarian instincts on one side and complete political malpractice on the other.

And because their seething contempt for the Left (to borrow the words Barbara Jordan once used to describe her faith in the Constitution) remains whole,  complete and total, it is psychologically and professionally impossible for any Never Trumper to admit the simple truth that the Left has been right about the Right all along because it would mean being forced to eat the seething contempt for all things Liberal that has been wired so deeply into their identities for so long.  

The result of this crippling and impenetrable psychological block is that is remains imperative to the Never Trumper's sense of self that the Left (that'd be you and me) continue to be caricatured as fucking awful.    Very nearly as bad as Trump and his zombie army.  We are foolish.  Incompetent.   Spendthrift.  We suck at politics.  Our policies are still monstrous.  Everything, as my grandma used to say, but a child of god.  In fact, not only are we probably responsible for the Rise of Trump, but if we don't curb our salty tongues we may also be responsible for destroying American democracy and plunging us into 1,000 years of fascist darkness!

This is the point at which each Never Trumper detaches themselves from the main narrative and customizes an origin myth to suit their particular circumstances.  

For example, some will insist that of course everybody knew that the GOP has been a shitpile of bigots and imbeciles for decades but during their brief, two-year interregnum as party chair they personally drove all the racists out of the party, but after they were cruelly deposed, all the bigots came back.  

Others will contend that because they live in a distant and backwards land the natives call "Mass-a-chu-setts" that despite their self--proclaimed superior political expertise, until Trump showed up there was no way they could have known that their Republican party was a shitpile of bigots and imbeciles.  

But however they tweak the narrative to make it their own, personal hero's journey, if you add up the four Very Big Lies they all tell themselves and the world -- everything was more or less fine until they left, none of this is their fault, what the country needs is to get back to GOP 2014, and the Left are destructive, clueless mopes whose fecklessness may yet topple the republic -- you get a very accurate recipe for virtually every Never Trump op-ed, teevee appearance and podcast.

And because their fairy tales of a fictional Center-Right Murrica tired of the Extremes on Both Sides and crying out of a Sensible Centrist Third Party comports perfectly with the farrago of Both Siderist claptrap the mainstream press tell it's mainstream readers and listeners and watchers every day, it should come as no surprise that the mainstream media has found a comfy chair for every Never Trumper with a book to sell or a boutique Third Party grift to flog.  

Conversely, it should come as no surprise that, precisely because the Left has been right about the Right all along, the mainstream press would rather air reruns of Al Gore's 2000 concession speech from now until doomsday than let actual Liberals with actual receipts anywhere near a microphone.  

Besides you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

Those Lifeboats Aren't Going To Burn Themselves