Friday, March 18, 2022

This Is Never Going To Stop

 How business gets done in corrupt institutions.  

As predicted on this blog back when all the savvy Liberals were flinging themselves drunk-prom-date fashion at the handful of snarling, Liberal-hating Republican hacks who were being driven out of the Republican Party, among those Never Trumper "allies" all stories are now one story and all issues are now one issue.

And can you guess what that one issue is?

Using your own amateur detective skills and this a little snip from The Bulwark's Mona Charen podcast today talking about Ukraine, see if you can suss out what that One Issue might be.

From the podcast blurb:

Ukraine’s brave stand against Russia has united Americans behind them. Will this new found bipartisanship mute extremists on the right and left?

Have you guessed it?  

It's preeeetty subtle,  so here's a second clue, from Mona Charen herself on her own podcast

CHAREN:  ...So the question then becomes, "What does this mean for us in terms of our domestic politics?"  There's now a debate going on as to whether this will disempower the Extremists both on the Far Left and on the Far Right.  What do you make of that argument and for context let me read you something from, uh, the Democratic Socialists of America...

Charen then name-checks Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman as members of the DSA (which they are) and ascribed to them a DSA press release that bagging on the United States, NATO and all the usual global imperialist suspects.

For the record, this is representative Tlaib's actual position.

The invasion of Ukraine is an unjustifiable violation of international law, and we need an immediate diplomatic solution that ends hostilities and protects innocent lives. We must be laser focused on protecting the millions of innocent lives in Ukraine that are now under unconscionable threat from Putin’s violent aggression. Sanctions should target Russian leaders and oligarchs, not civilians, as we seek to end this horrible war without further bloodshed, and the US should also be prepared to assist with protecting and sheltering refugees. 

And this is AOC's actual position.

Podcast regular Damon Linker then wandered chin-deep into the mighty Word Salad Swamp to explain  that while Trump (who is the former president of the United States and leader of the Republican Party) and Tucker Carlson (who is the Minister of Propaganda for the Republican Party) believe some deeply weird and flatly unAmerican things, so does Cory Bush (who is a 1/2 term Democratic representative from Missouri)!   Because the Trump era something something expanded the bounds of what is "normal" to the point where yadda yadda fringe positions that previously would've ended the careers of journalists, politicians, etc. on The Left And The Right yadda yadda yadda Both Sides!

Then jumping way ahead, we find Mona Charin speaking glowingly of Ezra Klein's article entitled

Government Is Flailing, in Part Because Liberals Hobbled It

It's about NIMBY laws in various places, with a special emphasis on the People's Republican of Berkley California.   And when you pair it with Tim Miller raging on Charlie Sykes's podcast last week about the excesses of the People's Republican of Berkley California school board (or somesuch -- I didn't take detailed notes) what's very clear is that Bulwark editorial policy will continue to deal with the absolute, unalloyed racist shitpile their recently-former party has become by continuing to find some Liberal sin -- either trivial or wholly imaginary -- to flog the shit out of it as if it were somehow equivalent the quotidian fascism and derangement on display across the entire GOP every fucking hour of fucking day.

Both Siderism has now fully disrobed and shown itself to be the dominant Never Trump political trope, with the Extremes on the Left and the Right cast as the villains, and Never Trumpers -- cloaked in the mantle of the 2014 Republican party -- as avatars of the Sensible Center.     

And brothers and sisters, the prevailing Both Siderist winds from the Lords and Ladies of the Beltway is at their back stronger than ever.  


Burn The Lifeboats


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As Lee Atwater said in at 40 seconds here, "In 1964 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8E3ENrKrQ&ab_channel=TheNation

So then by 1968 you can't say nigger anymore. That's it right there. There's the problem right there and they are going to fix it.

Anonymous said...

Please try to parse the following according to your logic of the sides...

Putin ‘channeling his inner Trump’ at Moscow rally, says Sean Hannity
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/mar/19/vladimir-putin-donald-trump-rally-sean-hannity

...I say the pitfall is the attempt at projection of any logic whatsoever.

Neo Tuxedo said...

In today's Herald-Mail, columnist Tim Rowland, who's like Dave Barry except that he moved from West Virginia to New York to write for a Maryland paper rather than from New York to Florida to write for a Florida paper, suggests the one thing that might stem the tide of lies and bullshit: make it unprofitable. He admits that his proposed solution has the potential to eviscerate the Times v. Sullivan precedent, but he's willing to take that chance, and getting more willing the worse this shit gets.