Today in Magic Ruralism (TM): An Open Letter on Behalf Those of Us Who Were Actually in the Blue Bottle Saloon in Wichita the Night English Bob Killed Corky Corcoran

Show us on the doll where Modernity hurt you.

Well it turns out, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the "Fuck Your Feelings" brigade are actually extremely delicate creatures whose own fee-fees can be deeply bruised by the slightest change in the cultural barometric pressure.  

So of course The New York Times reacted to this non-news by dispatching its Zeitgeist Action News Team to sit with these Eight Angry Men and record their pain and suffering so that future generation who are fighting megastorms,  water rationing and (possibly) mutant scorpions and swarms of Fire Roaches the size of your foot -- 

-- can look back at this generation of Conservative He-Men and laugh their ragged, battle-hardened asses off because, really?  This was the shit that haunted your days and nights?

I've read the whole thing and it is what my former grandmother-in-law might have referred to as a real "Joe Daisy".   

You are, of course, free to read the whole thing for yourself -- 

These 8 Conservative Men Are Making No Apologies

-- or the many miles of cacti and corduroy road over which intelligent commenters have dragged the article since the NYT editors were damnfool enough to let the writers hit "Publish".  

Or both.  

After all, to appreciate the giddy awfulness of Troll 2 fully, the true aficionado will also have watched Best Worst Movie:

OK, here's one lil' taste from  Mr. "I never got over that one time I was cut off in traffic by a Nissan Leaf":

Danny: Nobody follows rules or laws. Stop signs are voluntary. Red lights are voluntary. Nobody gets punished for doing the wrong thing anymore. We reward mediocrity.

And, OK fine, here's another tiny sip from widom cup of Mr. "These modern broads don't want to fuck.  Betcha they're all lesbians.  Thanks a lot Brandon!": 

Christopher: I support feminism, but I don’t support modern feminism. I think that modern feminism is focused on so-called toxic masculinity, and they are actually purveyors of men-bashing. And so I support femininity and feminism but not to the point where they’re looking to hoist themselves above men to try to make up for so-called patriarchy.

But that's all you're gettin'.

You see, some years ago, when it became clear that the flood of nearly identical stories in Major National Newspapers about Trump voters in diners was not going to end anytime soon, I -- an innovative Midwestern lad curious about the world -- began writing about this phenomenon as the rise of a new genre of fiction called Magic Ruralism (tm):

Noun: a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of political fantasy.

And as a working writer, this new form of fiction -- which suddenly seemed to be everywhere -- interested me for the most mundane of reasons  Who's footing the bill for this tripe?  And why?

From me in 2018:

...[L. Ron] Hubbard didn't write Man-Killers of the Air ("A daredevil pilot wins an international air race, foiling a scheme to sabotage his plane") to raise the level of national discourse or for the betterment of mankind. He wrote it because Five Novels Monthly would pay him for it.

The point being this: just as Thrilling Detective and Detective Fiction Weekly were in the business of cranking out hard-boiled crime genre fiction for the titillation of their readers, so have The New York Times and the Washington Post gone into the business of cranking out True Tales Of Rust-Belt Trump Murricans! for the titillation of their readers.

Of course, this condescending Duck of Death  claptrap plays very differently for those of us who actually live in Middle America and who have actively been yelling about the GOP monster factory for decades  -- those of us who were actually in the Blue Bottle Saloon in Wichita the night English Bob killed Corky Corcoran --

-- but as long as the Times' and Post core readership can enjoy hair-raising tales of Middle America pity and terror from a safe distance,  there is no reason in the world for America's mighty East Coast media factories to stop paying people to write "Rubes along the Monongahela" or "The Economically Distressed Madmen of Mercer County".

It's four years later and, looking back, I can safely say that I got a one thing wrong and one thing right.

What I got wrong was the Beltway media's insatiable appetite for this dreck.  I really thought that once they could feel the mob's jaws snapping at their heels (or see the mob storming the nation's capitol live and in color on teevee) they would dial back on this shit.  

...I suspect that as the very real horrors which the election of Donald Trump have unleashed on the world continue to crawl right up the pants-legs of our coastal elites and bite them in very personal and intimate places, the market for these hair-raising tales of Middle America pity and terror will gradually expire.

I was wrong.   I blame that last tiny shred of Capraesque idealism in me that keeps hoping the press will rise to the occasion in the eleventh hour, suddenly remember why it exists, and save itself.  

What I got (mostly) right was the triumphant return of Both Siderism under the guise of...

...a new genre of fiction which I predict will breathlessly cover the rise of "The Radical Civility Movement" (tm) -- a brand-new, Middle American, grass-roots, sensible Centrist Party-over-Country thingie which will be massively well-finance and composed entirely of Always-Wrong Beltway Conservatives like Bill Kristol, Joe Scarborough, David Brooks, Matthew Dowd and millions of "Independents" who will swear to God they have never even heard of Donald Trump no matter what their lawn signs and Facebook pages say.

This is underway right now.  Everywhere you look, virtually every Beltway Solon and all of your favorite Never Trump "allies" are pumping the rotting corpse of Both Siderism full of as much Re-Animator goo as they can lay their hands on.  

And quite selfishly, for all of that, at this moment all I can think of is what a perfectly awful time it is for us to lose one of the strongest, clearest voices we had with up here with us on these increasingly lonely, rickety ramparts:

Eric Boehlert’s tragic death came as U.S. desperately needs to hear his message 

Burn The Lifeboats