Monday, September 19, 2022

Snarkeology 101: An Introduction

Recently our public discourse has been graced with a number of books that claim to show conclusive evidence that history began prior to 2016.  

Shocking, I know. 

For decades, any Liberal showing up in the public square warning about the alarming trajectory the GOP was on was treated by America's recently-former-Republican (before they were former Republicans) as Dr. Zaius treated Taylor in Planet of the Apes.  

Angrily indignant.  Arrogantly dismissive.  

To borrow a little prose from Rod Serling's Planet scripts, we terrified them from the first, and we still do.  They're afraid of us and they hate us. 

Why?

Because they were the Defenders of the Faith and Guardians of the Terrible Secret.  Because they have always known the truth -- the terrible and dangerous truth -- about their own party.  And so all their lives they have dreaded the moment that terrible truth might break out into the open.  Dreaded it, like death itself.

And then one bright summer day, down the escalator came Donald John Trump, who was everything they feared.  And off he went, shambling from rally to rally, speaking out loud the Terrible Secret beneath the prissy, bow-tied, Burke-quoting veneer of the GOP.  

Of course they hated him.  Of course they feared him.  But for reasons that were diametrically opposed to the reasons Liberal hated and feared the rise of Trump.  

All the GOP Defenders of the Faith had ever needed to do to make the grotesque truth about their party vanish was to use their various media platforms to pretend that whatever happened...never happened.  Or, hey, look over there!  Some crazy Liberal about to do some crazy thing I'll betcha!   To bulldoze it down the memory hole.  To burn their Bush/Cheney bumper stickers, put on stupid hats, swear they'd never heard of George W. Bush, and start calling themselves Tea Partiers or Constitutional Conservatives or Independents or whatever.  

And then rely on a meek and compliant media to roll right over.  

Like Dr. Zaius, to save the Big Lie on which their faith was founded, all they ever had to to was plant some Both Sides Do It charges, dynamite the cave with the evidence in it, cast out the heretics, and order would be restored.  

But Trump could not be muzzled or bulldozed because he spoke, loudly and without shame, to the racist, delusional base of the GOP in the language that they knew.  The language of Limbaugh.  The language of Gingrich.  The language of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly.  The language of George Wallace and Lee Atwater.  

Trump called to them in their Mother Tongue, and they flocked to him and suddenly no amount of finger-pointing and Both Sidesing and whatabouting was making the problem disappear.  Trump was their very own Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouching to Cleveland to be born.  

And that's why the soon-to-be-recently-former-Republicans hated him and feared him.  Not because he was a liar and a degenerate and a racist with a very visible fascist bent, but because he was giving the game away.  And once it had all gone too far and there was no way left for them to pretend that the GOP was just going through a phase or running an unusual fever that would surely break once Trump went too far,  the soon-to-be-recently-former-Republicans were forced to take last tool available to them out of the denialist trick bag.

An embargo.  

Specifically a temporal embargo in which the time-honored, all-purpose alibi magic words "Both Sides Do It" were replaced with a new alibi phrase: "These last five or six years." or some variation thereof.

Suddenly, "these last five or six years" was everywhere.  On the lips of every recently-former-Republican in every venue.  On their podcasts.  On cable news.  In the op-ed pages of America's premier newspapers and magazines ("The Five or Six Year Wager").  It was aa invocation  every bit as magical as Both Sides Do It.  

For recently-former-Republicans it meant that, however awful things got with the GOP, none of it had been their fault.   In fact, they should be honored as sages and prophets for seeing what was becoming of the GOP before anyone else!

For a meek and compliant media it meant that they weren't utter failures at the most basic job of journalism, because no one could have known or predicted that the GOP would suddenly and inexplicably lose its mind.   In fact, they should be honored as heroes for bravely reporting ... on things that were happening ... in plain sight.

And for Liberals, well they could just shut the fuck up.  Since everything wrong with the GOP had happened suddenly and without warning over these last five or six years, all that crazy alarmist talk they had been engaged in for decades was just...crazy alarmism.  In fact, all of their decades of crazy talk about the GOP becoming a deranged racist shithole might have actually caused the the GOP to spontaneously become a deranged racist shithole in 2016!  Yes, that theory has been floated multiple times by several recently-former-Republicans including  Bulwark founder and MSNBC contributor Charlie Sykes.

But now there is a new development in the tale of these last five or six years.  Through some weird planetary alignment, there is suddenly a spate of proper, respectable books by proper, respectable authors that break the temporal embargo and dare to excavate artifacts from the pre-2016 Forbidden Zone. 

And, no, I don't mean The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement is Destroying America by insane garbage person David Horowitz.

I'm referring to books like American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy by David Corn and The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party by Dana Milbank and Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s by Vanderbilt University historian Nicole Hemmer.

And more shocking than the existence of such heretofore heretical texts appearing in the mainstream of American political discourse is the fact that, at least a few of these authors have managed to wrangle invitations to talk about their remarkable discoveries on podcasts run by recently-former-Republicans.  

And the results might most charitably be described as ... detached.  As if these authors are describing some historic battle that took place long ago the far edge of these recently-former-Republicans' property, beyond a stand of trees and over the rise of a line of hills.  

Sure, they were peripherally aware that a battle was taking place, and occasionally one of the field commanders would wander over to their house for a drink or a meal.  But the details of who was fighting, on behalf of what,  and what weapons they were using were all far away abstractions that didn't really involve them or affect them in any significant way.  And of course, no one could have imagined that the battle would have world-changing consequences that would lead to anything so bad that it couldn't be memory-holed with a sufficient tonnage of Both Siderism.

So now that the temporal embargo has been temporarily lifted, I'm thinking that, just maybe, revisiting some specific episodes from the Forbidden Past might not by the exercise in absolutely futility that they were back when I wrote 'em.

And so today I'm starting an occasional and soon-to-be award winning feature called Snarkeology 101, which will reach back into the past bring forward once again some home truths about the GOP that were in evidence long before these last five or six years.

Maybe we'll start with Mittens Romney and the Public (but now forgotten) History of the Campaign that Failed.



I Am The Liberal Media.

7 comments:

dinthebeast said...

I miss Dr. Zaius. I don't know what happened to him, but he hasn't posted since December of 2012, right after Mittens lost the election.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Robt said...

GOP has had many ridiculous things they have come up with and embraced. For GOP marketing and such.

Fiscal Conservatism that allows for bailing out Big banks that irresponsibly bankrupt themselves with other people's money but cannot afford to make health care affordable for Americans.

TEA Party, Taxed enough already,. Raising taxes to build our military even larger. Tax dollars for tax credits for rich people using working class dollars to fund it.

Now there is this Constitutional conservative.

I have yet to get my copy of this constitution and I suspect the Federalist Society is contracting out with China to have it printed on Bamboo paper.

ToddBC said...

Straight up side their heads, Driftglass, send it straight up side their heads.

Robt said...

There is way to much time in the news media being given to Trump and QANON.

They are showing old recording where Trump is asked about QANON. They give Q ANON a definition and ask Trump to denounce.
Not once in all this time has any news media sleuth booked the :A: on their show for an interview.

They just aren't concerned to put a face on it. Like the TEA Party. Every republican got to speak for the TEA party and the GOP gets to speak for Q. But no one gets to talk with Q.

I notice reporters aren't asking Romney about Q or the latest Q prediction that did not come true and why?

Like is there a difference between MAGA and QANON, republicans, conservatives, fascists or the TEA party patriot himself, (who has never ben identified).

Like the SCOTUS 6 GOPers ruling that a baker can refuse a gay couple the sale of a cake. he can demand they tell him if they are gay or not (I guess).

But the recent Fed Judge that says social media cannot tell people what they cannot do on their media platform.

So when people get on that platform and begging plotting the murder of the 6 SCOTUS justices. The social media platform cannot do anything about it.

The Zombie Apocalypse has begun.....................

Grung_e_Gene said...

It's fascinating the 7 faces Horror-witz places on the book cover. Let's see: Woman / Woman / Woman of Color / Jewish Man / Woman of Color / Jewish Man / Muslim Woman - I might play a detective in real life so I will hazard a guess that's a purposeful signal!

Daniel Becker said...

Gee, all they had to do was look up Walter Brennan on Wikipedia. Its been in plain site right along.

According to his biographer Carl Rollyson, Brennan was fiercely opposed to Communism and reportedly branded people as Communists if they supported John Fitzgerald Kennedy. "He thought that the Watts riots could have been stopped 'with a machine gun.'" and expressed satisfaction at the murder of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Rollyson also reported that Brennan's home "included a bunker stocked with weapons and food in anticipation of a Soviet invasion." It's been said that when he heard of the news that King was assassinated, Brennan danced a jig, much to the shock of the cast and crew of The Guns of Will Sonnett, and did the same for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. [38]

...later endorsed George Wallace in 1968 believing Richard Nixon was too liberal for a Republican. In 1972, he endorsed right-wing extremist candidate John Schmitz, who much like Brennan, was a member of the John Birch Society.

Daniel Becker said...

Gee, all they had to do was look up Walter Brennan on Wikipedia. Its been in plain sight all along.

...later endorsed George Wallace in 1968 believing Richard Nixon was too liberal for a Republican. In 1972, he endorsed right-wing extremist candidate John Schmitz, who much like Brennan, was a member of the John Birch Society.