A "Guess The Author" Pop Quiz

 Is this me, writing two decades ago?

I hear you. I know. I agree.  That's how these people feel.  But it's just... it's wrong. And we have to... can we...  continue to like... like what? I... I have to kind of indulge their fantasies?  Like, why do we have to continue indulging their fantasies? ... Everyone knows that. [names of leading Republicans]  These people are not fucking idiots.  Like, it's not, like, they just fell off the turnip truck and they're confused [about some completely imaginary Democratic scheme cooked up by Conservative media like, say, Death Panels or Birth Certificates or the murder of Vince Foster or Her Emails] 

Like,  that's not what is happening.  All these guys know it's not what's happening.  They're lying.  I know you know all that.  I don't know what we're supposed to do about that.  How are we supposed to be more generous to them?  And... and more thoughtful about, like, the perspective that they're coming from when everyone that speaks to them is is bald-faced lying about what's happening?

Or is this Never Trumper Tim Miller yesterday?

Because +30 years of elite political journalism make it almost impossible to know, doesn't it?  

Because according to those elite opinion-havers -- up to and including David Brooks' column yesterday -- the rank-and-file of the Party of Personal Responsibility are never personally responsible for anything they believe or say or do, are they?  Not even responsible for something as small as changing the fucking channel.  The have no autonomy.  No agency.  They are, to coin a phrase which Brooks will never used but repeatedly, accidentally, implies, simply reprogrammable meatbags.  

And if the meatbags an be swayed by a barrage of increasingly ludicrous lies by increasingly ridiculous clowns...well at some level isn't that the fault of Democrats for not something something "messaging" better?   Damn it, why won't Obama lead?!?

Here's one example among thousands of that pundit brain-rot that has all but killing off the last remnants of honest political journalism.

Immediately after the murder of 17 Americans at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February of 2018, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times went to work telling his cloistered plutocrat audience the lies they want to hear. Lies about squabbling Tribes of Red and Blue peasants who are Both Equally Wrong About Everything All The Time:

We have one big tribal conflict, and policy fights are just proxy battles as each side tries to establish moral superiority. But just as the tribal mentality has been turned on, it can be turned off. Then and only then can we go back to normal politics and take reasonable measures to keep our children safe.

Yes, Mr. David Brooks, who has never in his entire professional life had the first fucking clue about what goes on out here in the Real World, nonetheless had some very definite ideas about how we who do live in the Real World should be conducting our gun control debate.  Specifically, that we as a nation cannot lift one fucking finger to stop mass shootings until the paranoid madness of America's NRA thugs and ammosexual ghouls is heeded -- humbly and respectfully -- by everyone else.

I'm not kidding:

If you want to stop school shootings, it’s not enough just to vent and march. It’s necessary to let people from Red America lead the way, and to show respect to gun owners at all points https://t.co/BBrlNIlzY3

— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) February 20, 2018

If you're interested, I wrote a whole thing about it back then entitled "David Brooks: Moral Idiocy Incarnate".  

And anyway, returning to my main point, if for whatever reason (Pro tip: always remember to studiously avoid talking about the reason) these increasingly ludicrous lies continue to work, then isn't it just "good politics" for those increasingly ridiculous clowns to use them?  Embellish them?  Water them and cultivate them and  harvest them at the polls?  

It will be a horrifying fascination to see how much further one of America's political parties has to advance into fascist territory before agenda-setting elite political journalists start to report that one of America's political parties is advancing into fascist territory.

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) August 3, 2023

Over/under? Maybe when they start getting shot. Staggering how corrupted American journalism has become from own reason for existing. Facilitating citizenship is literally why they came up with the "free press" part of the First Amendment in the first place.

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) August 3, 2023

Well, I'm sure you guessed it.  The transcript above is from Never Trumper Tim Miller who can currently be seen on MSNBC more frequently than the network's peacock logo.  

Miller:  I hear you. I know. I agree.  That's how these people feel.  But it's just... it's wrong. And we have to... can we...  continue to like... like what?  I... I have to kind of indulge their fantasies?  Like, why do we have to continue indulging their fantasies?  The grand juries have regular people on there that decide whether or not these things can go forward.  Everyone knows that.  Kevin McCarthy knows that.  All... all Tim Scott  knows that.  Ron DeSantis knows it.  Vivek knows it.  These people are not fucking idiots.  Like, it's not, like, they just fell off the turnip truck and they're confused -- they've been watching Steve Bannon's podcast and now they're running for president and they think that...that Joe Biden is doing something is... or is orchestrating this attack on his political opponent like we're ... like we're a third world country.  Like,  that's not what is happening.  All these guys know it's not what's happening.  They're lying.  I know you know all that.  I don't know what we're supposed to do about that.  How are we supposed to be more generous to them?  And... and more thoughtful about, like, the perspective that they're coming from when everyone that speaks to them is is bald-faced lying about what's happening?

Tim, I hear you.  

I know.  

I agree.  

That is how these people feel.

But it's just wrong.

And sometime during the 1990s -- probably while you were in 8th or 9th grade -- I stopped indulging their fantasies.  Republicans were lying.  Gingrich knew it.  Limbaugh knew it.  DeLay knew it.  Bill Frist knew it when he remotely diagnosed Terri Schiavo.  (Most of) these people weren't idiots.  Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and all the rest knew it when they lied us into the wrong war and then fucked that war up.  They knew "Brownie" wasn't doing a heckuva job.  They knew they were torturing people and lying about it.  Illegally surveilling Americans and lying about it.  

And the lies -- the brazen, roaring, racist lies -- that they told from the first day of the Obama administration to the last?  Where does one even begin?

So why, then, did it come as such a shock when the meatheads who have been wallowing in -- luxuriating in -- increasingly dangerous lies troweled out by increasingly cynical, authoritarian liars went ahead and nominated and elected the Prince of Liars?

To them, Trump is the Prince who was Promised.  The wingnut Lisan al-Gaib. And since before you could shave, your party has been energetically laying the groundwork and preparing the way for him.  

I suppose the only real surprise is, once he began slouching towards the White House, his hour come 'round at last, and all you Never Trumpers began to aping the Liberal mother-tongue of  " But it's just... it's wrong.  All these guys know it's not what's happening.  They're lying.", the real, disappointing surprise (which wasn't really a surprise) is how fast all of you newly-minted Never Trump MSNBC employees began blocking those of us who had been sounding this very same alarm in these very same words since before Growing Pains was cancelled.   

 

I Am The Liberal Media