My Bad Manners

Over the past eight years I have been told by my Liberal supervisors many, many times that it shows incredibly bad table manners to go 'round reminding the recently-former Republicans (who have almost completely colonized the mainstream media with their message of "This madness all started in 2016") that we on the Left had been outspokenly warning them for decades before 2016 that they were creating the very monster that has now run out of their control.  

The whole "We told you so" thing was, I was told, cheap and off-putting.  And using my two-bit blog located in the middle of flyover country to grouse about Liberals not being give proper honor and credit for being right about the Right all along was not only bad manners, it was also...dangerous. The sheer power of my words and minor influence they have on the literally dozens of people who read this blog might startle and offend enough fence-straddlers back into voting for Republican sadists and ghouls to tip the balance, and didn't I realize that Democracy Was at Stake!?!?

Well, no.  The actual danger comes from the fact that Never Trump, Inc. depends entirely on everyone pretending to that Liberals do not exist.  That we never said what we said, in public and on the record, back when saying such things made us all pariahs.  Long before Donald Trump was a even a twinkle ins Vladimir Putin's eye.  

Because, since form follows function, inevitably every Never Trumper ends up just recapitulating -- almost word for word -- 50 years' worth of Liberal critiques of the trajectory of the GOP.  Then they file off the serial numbers and resell our original insights to The New York Times and The Atlantic and MSNBC it as edgy epiphanies.  But this is an illusion which would become impossible to maintain if they were ever forced to explain how it is that all those dirty hippies got is so right all along back when they were busy paving the way for a monster like Trump to take over their Republican party.

Anyway, back to my bad manners and the cavil that running around yapping righteously about how We Told You So is just the worst kind of political faux pax in these parlous political times.  Which is probably why we dirty hippies will never be found in the Times or at  The Atlantic or on MSNBC.  Sure, we might 'technically" be right and might "technically" have been right all along, but our sharp elbows and sharp tongues have no place in the serene, cerebral conversations at the Adult Table.

So instead let's all of us dirty hippies sit quietly and take a lesson in good manners from two of the Never Trump men to whom the Times and The Atlantic and MSNBC have opened their doors and pulled out the chairs.

Ruh roh. 

Tim Miller:  Their agony takes us back to my very first answer in this question which is, just, our slow rolling "I told you so." It's like they hate us so much.  And for people who don't know, sometimes we just throw out the "anti-antis" [and] people don't know what we're talking about. But, um, y'know, these are the people that that really dislike Trump privately.  Politicians...the the right-wing commentators, that dislike Trump privately.  But... but have just continued to stick with them because the Democrats are bad and the Democrats are scarier and Ilhan Omar and, uh, y'know, transgender youth or whatever the... the excuse of the day is.  

And they're going to find themselves now for like the 9th... 10th straight year having to suck it up and, y'know,  just be Donald Trump's you-know-what again. Apologist.  The thing is, like, they hate us because... because, like, we are a mirror up to their choices and they... they would you know say, "They have TDS!" and "They're.. they're Democrats now!" and whatever.  But it's, like, had they listened to us in 2015.  Had they listened to us in 2016.  2017. Impeachment one.  The 2020 election.  The after the stop the steal impeachment two.  They had so many fucking off-ramps!  They had so many off-ramps and it was so obvious it wasn't hard to figure out that they were gonna end up here it was so obvious that they're gonna end up here.  And they refused to take every single off-ramp.  And now they are stuck on this hell-ship with the Flaming monkeys and Donald Trump's uh mug shot.  And I just I don't feel bad for them.  I'm kind of enjoying their pain I have to admit.

God damn, Tim.  Don't you know that kinda talk can get you cancelled?  That it might scare off the stragglers and fence sitters who maybe, maybe, maybe if you just ask 'em real, real nice and offer 'em a cookie and handjob and don't make any sudden movements or speak too loudly they just maybe, maybe, maybe might not vote for Trump?

For god's sake, man, don't you realize that Democracy is at stake!?!?

I know.  I'm disappointed too. Sorry, fellow dirty hippies.  Tim did not deliver the lesson in good manners I thought he would.  Perhaps it is an artifact of being young and hot-headed.  So let's turn to an older and wiser MSNBC Employee of the Month for some more seasoned and level-headed wisdom.

Charlie Sykes:  Are we gonna do the T-shirt?  Come on.  We're gonna do the T-shirt, right?

Ruh roh.  Again.  

Miller: Yeah!  I wish we were [laughter] "Never Trumpers Were Right!" t-shirt.  Please!  Yeah!

Sykes:  This is Tim's brilliant idea. That do you have the mug-shot and... and what... what does it say? 

Miller: "Never Trumpers Were Right!" The Bulwark dot Com.

Sykes:  There's a slightly more obnoxious... which we could say "We Told You So!" 

Miller: Oh "We Told You So!" Sure. "We Told You So!" The Bulwark dot Com.  Either of those are acceptable to me.

Sykes: We are going to have that t-shirt because I want that t-shirt.   

Miller: Okay great let's do it!  

Sykes: I want to walk down Main Street in Cedarburg with a big mug-shot "We Told You So!" or y'know "Never Trump From The Jump!" Just some version of that.  I really want that!

Once again, I must apologize.  Deeply.  This is not the master class in political courtesy I was expecting, especially considering how hard I was scolded for doing the very thing that these fuckers now want to put on tee-shirts, sell at their website and preen down the main street of Charlie Sykes' home town.  

You can also see why it is so very important to Never Trump, Inc. that we Liberals and our long history of being right about the Right be made to disappear.  

Except over at Never Trump, Inc. we Liberals have not disappeared entirely.  We still exist as straw-men, to be unboxed and punched whenever a Never Trumper needs to prove their True Conservatives bona fides and their moral superiority.

Take for example this same podcast just two days earlier, when the guest was Tom Nichols. frequent cable teevee talking head and senior writer at The Atlantic.  

In the middle of gasbagging about the Evil of the Republican party, it took 'ol Tom less than six minutes veer completely out of that lane --

Nichols:  I worked on the hill 30 years ago and you've started in politics when y'know men wouldn't leave the house without wearing a jacket.  Until, y'know those days. I was thinking of this watching Kat Cammack, y'know, jumping around barefoot on stage at, uh, some young Republican thing.  My wife was looking at this and she said, "Who's that?"  And I said, "That is a member of Congress of the United States."  

- and into this lane:  

Nichols:  And by the way Cammack was just the most recent version.  There are plenty of Democrats who do things where I just kind of put my hand to my temple and say, "You understand that you're, like, a senator, right?   That you're a member of Congress. That you're an adult.  That you are a handful of the most important leaders in this country?"  And they're all, y'know like teenagers.  And I think that reflects this juvenile culture we live in. 

 

Because sour pecksniffs like Nichols, whose whole thing is their supposed unparalleled expertise. cannot stand the fact that they have been wrong, wrong, wrong about their party all along, and are doubly infuriated that mouthy Liberal assholes, who they cannot fucking stand, were right all along.  So, like all the rest of them he finds a home in a mainstream-media-funded Never Trump ecosystem where he is all cozy and safe from anyone challenging his pathological Both Siderism.

And then, just eight minutes later:

Sykes: I think now we're seeing the growth of the Trump Generation.  Now there may be some positive developments, y'know.  Young people may be permanently turned off to conservatism and the Republican party for decades. But there's also going to be a class of people who have been formed in narrow [?] where insanity is the norm.  Where shamelessness is the norm.

Nichols:  Well I think shamelessness -- and here I'm going to throw some shade at our friends on the Left, because I think the emergence of shamelessness actually begins in kind of the moral relativism, y'know of the Left... um... y'know, 20... 30 years ago.

Now bear with me a moment because I'm trying to remember what was so depraved about our Liberal politics "20... 30 years ago" that it left such a bitter taste taste in Tom Nichols' mouth that he's still not fucking over it.  

And remembering stuff is sorta what we do here.

Well 20 years ago -- in 2003 -- George W. Bush had just lied this country into the wrong war which I will wager gave Nichols four-year-long boner that he remembers fondly to this day.  By this time Bush had also pissed away the entire Clinton surplus and was working up to loading the country up with more debt than even St. Reagan had ever dreamed of.  Bush was also gearing up for what would arguably be the filthiest, most despicable campaign in modern American presidential history. 

And 30 years ago?  Well 30 years ago, in early 1990s, these were the enlightened thinkers and moral compasses guiding Tom Nichols' Republican party.

This was their Bible.

From The New York Times, September 20, 1990

The Politics of Slash and Burn

'Sick.'' ''Traitors.'' ''Bizarre.'' ''Self-serving.'' ''Shallow.'' ''Corrupt.'' ''Pathetic.'' ''Shame.'' The group that urged political candidates to use these epithets has since regretted suggesting the word ''traitors,'' in response to inquiries from the press. But the others were allowed to stand; they appear in a glossary that a conservative Republican group recently mailed to Republican state legislative candidates.

The group is Gopac, the G.O.P. Political Action Committee. Its general chairman is Representative Newt Gingrich. With the pamphlet, ''Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,'' comes a letter from Mr. Gingrich himself. Its message to candidates: Step up invective. Use words like these to describe opponents. These words work.

Mr. Gingrich's injunction represents the worst of American political discourse...

The Gopac glossary may herald a descent into even lower levels of discourse. It comes blessed by a politician of some influence - the Republican whip in the House - and it is intended for candidates on the state level, many of them presumably running for the first time. Even though Mr. Gingrich himself may not have seen the list before it was mailed, this is a disturbing document.

And these were their holy commandments delivered straight from the Boss himself:

From The New York Times, December 1994:

Republicans Get a Pep Talk From Rush Limbaugh

BALTIMORE, Dec. 10— To all the advice for the new Republicans coming to Congress, add this from Rush Limbaugh: A hostile press corps lurks inside the Beltway.

"You will never ever be their friends," the talk-show host warned most of the 73 Republican freshmen at a dinner here tonight. "They don't want to be your friends. Some female reporter will come up to one of you and start batting her eyes and ask you to go to lunch. And you'll think, 'Wow! I'm only a freshman. Cokie Roberts wants to take me to lunch. I've really made it!' " The audience laughed.

"Seriously," he added. "Don't fall for this. This is not the time to get moderate. This is not the time to start trying to be liked."

The freshman class, which included not a single "femi-Nazi," one of Mr. Limbaugh's favorite epithets for supporters of women's rights, whooped and applauded, proving itself one big fan club of the man it believes was primarily responsible for the Republican avalanche in November.

Mr. Limbaugh was made an honorary member of the class as its members tonight finished a three-day orientation here sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and Empower America, two conservative Washington research organizations.

Barbara Cubin, an incoming freshman from Wyoming, told Mr. Limbaugh that because 74 percent of the nation's newspapers had endorsed Democrats, "talk radio, with you in the lead, is what turned the tide." On behalf of the women in the class, she gave him a plaque that said, "Rush Was Right." He also received a pin like the ones the freshmen wore, saying, "Majority Maker."

"Rush is as responsible for what happened here as much as anyone," said Vin Weber, a former Representative from Minnesota, now of Empower America. Citing a poll taken after the election by Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, Mr. Weber said that people who listened to 10 hours or more a week of talk radio voted Republican by a 3-to-1 margin. "Those are the people who elected the new Congress," he said...

In fact I wrote a whole long thing about it here ("In The Beginning...") which I suspect (despite the mighty, opinion-bending power of my words) neither Nichols nor Sykes have ever read, because they really don't like it when mouthy Liberal assholes bring these things up.  

Mind you, it's not because these things are irrelevant or untrue, but because these things make them look like either doddering fools or complicit frauds, neither of which is good for business over at Never Trump, Inc.

Which is why, over at Never Trumper, Inc. Liberal straw-men are always kept on-tap to "prove" the moral and analytic superiority of the Never Trumpers over the Extremes on Both Sides...

...while actual Liberal with our receipts, long memories and bad manners are:

Burn The Lifeboats.