When The Zone is Already Flooded: Part II

Yesterday we talked about how defunding the police and Hillary Clinton eating babies and Barack Obama being a covert Kenyan Communist and the Affordable Care Act's secret provisions for murdering our sainted grannies and COVID being a hoax and Bill Clinton being a drug dealer who had Vince Foster assassinated and Fred Hampton shooting first and the wrong side winning The War of Northern Aggression are not actual problems for Democrats.

They are symptoms of the problem.

The actual problem is that the Fox News/ Rush Limbaugh Conservative media has spent decades building a pipeline into the homes of +70 million Americans through which they have been pumping their poison 24/7. 

The actual problem is that the racist meatheads on the receiving end of this pipeline are so addicted to that poison that they will actively fight against anyone trying to tell them anything different, even at the cost of their own lives and the lives of their families.   Because that's how junkies do.

The actual problem is that the mainstream press is equally committed to peddling its own lies about the polity.  Lies to comfort the cosseted cowards and smug elites who are just as addicted to their Both Siderist mythology as the wingnuts are to their Vince Foster/Baby Eating/Secret Kenyan crack.  

And so every time the  Right lurches another hundred yards into outright fascism, the mainstream press feels compelled to dredge up another reliable Beltway hack to tell the cosseted cowards and smug elites not to worry because it's really Both Sides!  Which brings us to Matt Bai in The Washington Post:

 I reject both parties’ ideas of Americanism. And I’m not the only one.

There follows a few obligatory paragraphs about the complete collapse of the GOP into deranged, fascist culthood, and then...

For all of his successes, though, there’s a fire raging in his party that Biden hasn’t even tried to control — and probably couldn’t extinguish if he did. For me (and probably a lot of suburbanites voting this fall), this is more than a backdrop to his presidency. It’s a dealbreaker.

In their zeal to beat back Trumpism, the loudest Democratic groups have transformed into its Bizarro World imitators.

And just like *that*  Matt Bai enters the race to become 2016 Matthew Dowd.

And what exactly is this mighty, Trump-imitating party-bestriding colossus?  

Well, in point of fact, all Matt Bai can manage to conjure up as evidence of such a thing is one book, by one author.  “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi.  But to hear Matt Bai tell it, it's like the movie The Ring: if you read it – even a summary of it – one week later you’ll be leading an armed uprising against Matt Bai’s condo association. 

Or something.

Now Mr. Bai is smart enough to know that he’s peddling David Brooks’ used toilet paper here, so he has to reach deep into the Glenn Greenwald bag in an attempt to disarm the reader with..  

This is about the point where some (most likely some in my own business) will scream: “Both sidesism!” That’s the now-cliche argument that any criticism of Democrats whatsoever must be some kind of journalistic reflex to equate the parties, when clearly one is worse than the other.

And so, having disarmed the credulous reader, Matt goes on to say that, while Democrats aren’t yet quite as bad as Republicans, the situation overall is so fucking bad that…

For years, I’ve predicted the eventual triumph of an independent president, outside the two-party system. That candidate hasn’t emerged, but the lane for a credible independent has never been wider.

Leaving me to wonder which Both Siderist slop-house will be offering Mr. Bai a slot in the near future.  

Maybe Axios can let him bunk out in their "OMG The Squad is Ruining Everything" guest room?

From Axios:

The push to defund the police, rename schools and tear down statues has created a significant obstacle to Democrats keeping control of the House, the Senate and the party’s overall image.

And this is pretty much everyone else who isn't Frank Luntz and/or an Axios dupe:

The ideas being talked about didn’t come from the squad. Axios cites “transgender rights” as a problem for Dems in Virginia. That’s a mainstream Dem cause that predates the squad; and its advocate in Virginia last year was Maoist revolutionary Terry McAuliffe. pic.twitter.com/rJ1JG5aLIV

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) February 18, 2022

MANCHIN: I will not support Build Back Better under any circumstances

SINEMA: I will never oppose the filibuster, thereby condeming the Democrats to permanent stalemate

CNN: Democrats’ approval is cratering

AXIOS: Clearly this is the Squad’s fault for their divisive rhetoric

— Dreamweasel (@Dreamweasel) February 18, 2022

And I threw in this one because I like the phrase "Schrodinger’s left":

Schrodinger’s left: not powerful enough to control of the presidency, legislative strategy, or party institutions, yet somehow powerful enough to cause all Democratic party failures

— Leah Greenberg (@Leahgreenb) February 18, 2022

Because while Republican lunatics, traitors and wannabe tyrants may come and go,  Both Sides Do will always be the Mother Sauce the Beltway media uses to make its lazy, hackneyed, toxic glop go down smooth and easy

No Half Measures