I had written the opening paragraphs of this post three different times, and last night all I wanted to do was button the damn thing up and move on. But sometimes, Kalliope, the Greek muse of epic poetry and eloquence, drops something in your lap that demands that you set aside what you had planned to do and instead take what the goddess offers.
Today, I was offered this. From Carlos Lozada at The New York Times, from which I will cite only the first paragraph (plus a sentence) and last paragraph.
Liz Cheney Is Very Worried
Deep in her new book, “Oath and Honor,” Liz Cheney points out that the likeness of Clio, the Greek muse of history, is found in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. “Clio is depicted riding in the chariot of time, making notes in the book in her hand,” Cheney writes, “as a reminder that what we do in the Capitol Building is written in the pages of history.”
Cheney’s book is likewise an attempt to write the history of our time, a history in which Cheney has become a protagonist...
Like every other Never Trumper, Liz Cheney is now exploiting the credulity of the "liberal" media to get on with her real, long-term project: writing the "history of our time". Except...
Yet, for all the insider detail Cheney offers, her memoir is truncated, treating the period between the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack as the beginning of history, or the only history that matters, as though no prior warnings about Trump had been warranted or even audible. Cheney once believed in the staying power of the country’s constitutional principles, she writes, “but all that had changed on January 6 of 2021.”
Surprise, surprise, surprise. Yet another Never Trumper writing yet another book absolving themselves of any responsibility for or knowledge of any of the events that led us the rise of Donald Trump.
All the way back during the 2016 GOP primaries, I defined this emergent characteristic of the Never Trumpers as "Republican Detachment Disorder". Which is, simply stated...
It's a huge shit sandwich and everybody but me is gonna have to take a bite.
Which brings us to another writer of "OMG! Trump!" books who has also been making the rounds. Tim Alberta has been been vigorously promoting his book, "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism" at many of the same venues where Liz Cheney can be found flogging her book-shaped product.
One stop on Mr. Alberta's book tour was a certain, prominent Never Trump podcast, where he recounted a story from his book about his father's wake and funeral. His father had the Conservative evangelical pastor of a megachurch. Tim had been on the air discussing his previous book which was critical of Donald Trump. And after his father died, Tim was attacked by some of the parishioners and family friends who had known him since childhood. They accused him of being an agent of the Deep State who had betrayed his faith, but he could still get back in good with God if he turned his mighty powers of journalisming to investigating and exposing Deep State conspiracies.
Upon reading one particularly hateful, deranged letter, Tim's wife yelled, "What the hell is wrong with these people?"
All of which tracks.
From the podcast.
Alberta: Because, Charlie [Sykes], here's the thing, right? If... if... if they're willing to treat me that way? I'm the son of their pastor. They've known me since I was. like, four. I've... I've been there my whole life. They know who I am. They don't know Trump. They don't know Rush [Limbaugh]. They don't any of these people, [but] they know me, and they know what I believe, right? If they're willing to treat me that way on the occasion of my dad's funeral, then how are they treating the rest of the world. How are they treating, y'k now, the... the... the... their neighbor, right? Like, can you love your neighbor if you're treating your pastor's like that? When he's grieving his father's death? I... y'know, my hunch is probably not. And so, yeah, "What the hell is wrong with these people?" was sort of a call to action for me, even though I didn't realize it.
Then came Charlie Sykes, who one must always remember, has two jobs on his podcast: to give his almost exclusively current- and former-Republican guests a platform to tell their stories, and reinforce basic Never Trump orthodoxy.
The orthodoxy bit has been highlighted for your edification.
Sykes: Have you figured it out? Because I... I... feel that we've been wrestling with for seven and eight years. I have had many podcast discussions with you, with David French, with Peter Wehner, with Russell Moore. And it comes back to, like, what had happened? How did you go from being a committed Christian and reading the gospel, to what this cult has become?
At this point I have listened to hundreds of hours of Never Trump podcasts and seen them guesting on cable teevee who-knows-how-many times and I guarantee you that, if you were to make a word cloud of their most commonly repeated phrases, you would immediately notice that "seven or eight years ago" or "five or six years ago" or "in the last few years" or "since Trump" is by far their most common ritual incantation.
Like a brick wall, sentence-by-sentence in every venue where they speak, they have erected a barrier between the nomination and election of Donald Trump (or, in Cheney's case, January 6tm 2021) and everything else that has ever happened in the history of mankind.
But the picture at the top of this post is not from seven or eight years ago but from from nearly half a century ago.
And by 1981, not seven or eight years ago, the language of violence, apocalypse and the election of a Republican president as a leader in a holy war against us villains of the secular Left was already part of lexicon of the white Conservative evangelical Christianity (from "Reagan's Christian revolt: How conservatives hijacked American religion"):
[Francis] Schaeffer himself developed the theme in his most influential call to action, "A Christian Manifesto," a 1981 book that Falwell described as “probably the most important piece of literature in America today.” As in his other recent works, Schaeffer stressed the inevitability of an authoritarian takeover if Bible-believing Christians remained indifferent to politics and failed to take a stand. He believed that the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 might represent a window of opportunity to reassert Christian values. But he also warned that the power of relativistic secular humanism was so strong in the government, in the courts, and in the schools that it soon might be necessary for Christians to resist through civil disobedience—and even with violence—much as the United States had resisted British tyranny at the time of the American Revolution. Christianity and secular humanism, he emphasized, were opposites. “These two world views stand as totals in complete antithesis to each other,” he declared. “It is not too strong to say that we are at war, and there are no neutral parties in the struggle.”
And this video is not from seven or eight years ago but from 22 years ago:
I don't doubt that prominent and influential Never Trumpers like Charlie Sykes have personally been wrestling with this for only seven or eight years, because with the rare exception of people like Stuart Stevens, Never Trumpers all have an entire suite of excuses for why they personally never saw any of this coming.
Excuses which all amount to elaborate, psychological detachment disorders.
Never Trumpers who want to maintain their cozy sinecures inside the mainstream media need to constantly maintain two, diametrically opposed propositions. That yeah, sure, waaaaay out there on the fringe on the Right there was some unsavory weirdness going on, but, (they will rush to add with nary a comma or pause for breath) that group was almost entirely irrelevant to the larger Republican project and was considered such a joke that no one coulda possibly predicted what was to come:
Sykes again: As you pointed out, I mean, there’s this the low simmering schism in the church that’s been there for a very, very long time between the Christians who want this transcendent experience and who don’t want the church fighting the culture war versus the more, you know, militant approach. And again, I wanna talk about this transition. So you write. In the last five or years though...
This is where it helps enormously if you're a writer or a shrink and can understand the interior topography of people who can ping-pong back and forth between multiple and mutually exclusive beliefs without their heads exploding.
In one moment they can accept that, for half a century, every Republican victory has been dependent on Rush Limbaugh's Hate Radio dittoheads and the evangelical Right...while at the same time dismissing both groups as irrelevant fringies.
In one moment they can shrug and claim that the activities of these groups were somehow so opaque and happening so far away from the centers Republican political power that no one coulda seen their takeover of the party coming, despite the fact that everything the Fundies and the Hate Radio thugs were up to was very open, very public and was often happening with the overt blessings of the leaders of the Republican party.
From The Washington Post, June 9, 1992:
Limbaugh, Bush's house guest
President Bush last week sought the views and carried the bags of Rush Limbaugh during an overnight stay at the White House, but neither the conservative talk show host nor a Bush spokesman would discuss specifics of the evening's conversation.
"The president never once asked me about the views of my listeners {or callers}. ... He did, however, ask me for my views on a few things," Limbaugh said in a written statement to The Post on Sunday. Bush "did not ask me to discuss anything at all on my radio program. He inquired very little about the program, other than how I got started. I discussed my program only when answering his questions about its history. I did not ask him to guest on my program," he added.
Limbaugh, heard by almost 12 million listeners a week on nearly 500 stations -- including WMAL-AM (630) here and on WCBM-AM (680) in Baltimore -- said it would be "inappropriate to discuss specifics, but our conversations ran the gamut from baseball (I used to be with the {Kansas City} Royals), to politics, to the campaign, to his press conference the next evening, to my life history."...
From The New York Times, Dec. 12, 1994
Republicans Get a Pep Talk From Rush Limbaugh
...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 other words...
And yet, as I mentioned, all the way back during the 2016 Republican primaries, when it was becoming clear that not only was Trump was going to be the party's nominee, but that he was going to easily sweep the field...
...back when frantic, backpedaling excuses were pouring like a mighty river from the keyboards of the Very Savvy Pundits who had all sworn mighty oaths that none of this was possible...
...that was when I defined the emerging Republican Detachment Disorder simply and clearly as:
It's a huge shit sandwich and everybody but me is gonna have to take a bite.
Suddenly, RDD was the new hotness and it was everywhere, and as we proceed and I want to stress three things.
First, the links below do not remotely represent a complete list of offenders.
Second this is nowhere near everything I wrote on the topic: this is a sampler, and everyone I wrote about has been a serial offender.
And third, pretty much everyone who has steadfastly stuck to the RDD alibi has profited thereby: some by simply maintaining their privileged positions within the pundit ecosystem when they should have been sacked, some got promotions and books deals, many got contributor contracts on cable teevee, and some built entirely new media corporations based on the RDD bullshit.
As I wrote in June of 2016, suddenly there Was No "I" In "Republican".
January 27, 2016 -- Today In Republican Detachment Disorder News: David Frum.
January 29, 2016 -- Today In Republican Detachment Disorder News: Tucker Carlson, Super Class. Warrior Hero Guy.
January 30, 2016 -- Today In Republican Detachment Disorder News: Boss Limbaugh.
February 13, 2016 -- Today In Republican Detachment Disorder News: Frank Luntz.
February 26, 2016 -- David Brooks' Life When It Is Written Will Read Better Than It Lived.
February 29, 2016 -- Today In Republican Detachment Disorder: Ron Fournier, The Sad Clown of Centrism.
March 08, 2016 -- Today In Republican Detachment Disorder News: Kathleen Parker.
April 27, 2016 -- Today in Republican Detachment Disorder: Wouldworking Class [Michael Gerson]. --
May 14, 2016 -- Today In Republican Detachment Disorder: Peggy Noonan Finds Her Magic Cab Driver.
June 3, 2016 - Today In Republican Detachment Disorder: Ramesh Ponnuru.
June 15, 2016 -- Today In Republican Detachment Disorder: Joe Scarborough.
July 20, 2016 -- Republican Detachment Disorder: Michael Steele, Patient Zero
October 20, 2016 -- Joe Scarborough and Bill Kristol -- Cannibals Fighting Over The Place Settings.
September 30, 2016 -- Today In Republican Detachment Disorder: George Will.
December 14, 2017 -- Today In Republican Detachment Disorder: Charlie Sykes UPDATE.
Understanding how (almost) all of these mopes have prospered even though they were prominent leaders of the army of Respectable Media Validators who created the conditions which made Trump possible is easier if you think of the mainstream political media as a loosely confederated hydraulic empire with a great deal power and wealth at its disposal, but no moral compass, only a corporate imperative to remain profitable
A hydraulic empire (also known as hydraulic despotism, or water monopoly empire) is a social or governmental structure which maintains power through exclusive control over water access.
The mainstream political media doesn't have a monopoly on water, but for a significant percentage of the population, it exercises enormous influence over the political lens through which its readers and viewers see the world. And that influence depends entirely on their audiences continuing to believe in the deep knowledge and expertise of the mainstream political media, which can be an extremely volatile currency.
But can also be a very potent currency.
After all, during times of drought, a water monopoly can't just pretend it isn't happening. Instead, water is allocated to only the most obedient provinces. Loyalty to the empire is thus reinforced, troublesome provinces die off, problem solved! But an industry with even a limited media narrative monopoly can do what a water monopoly cannot: it can bend perceived reality around any inconvenient obstacles.
Which we have talked about on this here blog for nearly 20 years now.
From obligingly cheering on the Republican slander, bomb throwing and
obstruction campaign against Bill Clinton...to obligingly shoveling the
Republican slander, bomb throwing and obstruction campaign against Bill
Clinton down the memory hole so they could cheerlead Dubya's Great Patriotic
Christian War against the wrong country....to obligingly shoveling the
corruption and catastrophe of Dubya administration down the memory hole so
they could obsess over the Fake Tea Party and cheer on the Republican slander,
bomb throwing and obstruction campaign against Barack Obama...to their
relentless "But Her Emails" attacks on Hillary Clinton...and on and on and
on...the mainstream media has used its power to erase its own complicit role
in every step along the way to Donald Trump.
NBC, ABC and CBS can no more afford the relitigate the past +40 years of Republican perfidy and disaster than The Bulwark, The Lincoln Project or Liz Cheney can. And so the mainstream media has made itself willing accomplice to the larger Republican project of eradicating their mutually inconvenient pasts.
As one crackpot alarmist Liberal blogger wrote more than a decade ago about one of the most flagrant and successful of the mainstream media's professional Conservative Molesters of History:
...it is now painfully clear that Mr. Brooks is engaged in a long-term project to completely rewrite the history of American Conservatism: to flense it of all of the Conservative social, political economic and foreign policy debacles that make Mr. Brooks wince and repackage the whole era as a fairy tale of noble Whigs being led through treacherous hippie country by the humble David Brooks.
And every day, right before our eyes, they're getting away with it.
9 comments:
Thank you for that.
I was listening to an audiobook by Barbara Kingsolver called "The Lacuna" in which they quote Trotsky when he was in Mexico before Stalin killed him.
Trotsky is describing the media. He said there are two types of media, one is called Yellow Journalism and they just lie all the time about everything (FoxNews) so you don't have to wonder with them, if they write it then it's a lie.
The other type like the New York Times tell the truth about mundane things that occur around us regularly so it lulls you into believing they are trying to report things fairly. But on things that REALLY matter they lie and people don't catch it because they have come to expect the truth. But these are big business entities and they are only ruled by profit.
Anyhow, when I heard that I thought of your statements on it in this blog.
From the linked NYT article:
"I did not expect “Oath and Honor” to double as a mea culpa; in any case, Cheney does not seem the type to dabble much in remorse. Her courage in challenging her party over Trump’s election fantasies is hardly rendered meaningless by her prior support for Trump(1), and her leadership of the House Jan. 6 committee elevated patriotism over partisanship(2)."
(1) Wrong. Rep. Cheney's "courage" is rendered completely meaningless by her prior support of Trump, because her own unwillingness to address the reasons for that support (hers and others) shows that both support for Trump and condemnation of Trump are only faces that an endlessly cynical Republican wears for her own gain. Her words hold only two values: the indisputable illustration of her own hypocrisy, and the further exposure of how astonishingly vile and corrupt the Trump Presidency was.
(2) Also wrong. Rep. Cheney may be conscienceless and selfish to her last atom, but she's also a skilled bureaucrat and talented speaker (a power she has most notably and frequently used to tell lies with a straight face). She can navigate the waters of political chambers and media cameras with equal deftness. She knew exactly the right words to say and the right tone of voice to use. Her criticisms of Trump and his enablers often sought to excuse the Capitol attackers of Jan 6 2021 as "misled patriots" and "good people." They are neither, and she knows that too. Her words to the committee held far less patriotism than self-interest. She's positioning herself for a POTUS (or whatever we're calling the leader of the Executive Branch by then, Trump will probably rename it if he wins) run, probably sometime around 2028 or 2032.
Is the above virulent criticism meant to say Rep. Cheney's words are meaningless and should be completely ignored? Absolutely not. In my own poor way, I'm echoing and furthering the message of this site's proprietors: Elizabeth Cheney has no one's interests at heart but, peripherally, her political tribe's - and more centrally, her own. The enemy of our enemy is not our friend here - never has been and never will be. Putting the fate of the US in her hands would quite conceivably be more awful even than Trump's - because Trump is foolish and headstrong and however much damage he did, he'd also likely fail in much he tried. Cheney's smart enough, experienced enough, connected enough, and has enough baked-in media backing to make a far more hellish new USA than Trump could even envision. And she'd have a far better chance of actually getting away with it.
Thanks DG and BG for all you do.
"This is where it helps enormously if you're a writer or a shrink and can understand the interior topography of people who can ping-pong back and forth between multiple and mutually exclusive beliefs without their heads exploding."
Sometimes they can explode anyway if you help them a little.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
It is bad enough republicans use any Congressional majority power in congress (when they have it).
To use tax dollars to operate republican smearing campaigns during working hours and on the tax payer dime even while complaining about democratic big spending.
Cases in point, Ken Starr appointed to find criminal activity on Clinton. When he is coming up empty, the GOP drops a Blue dress on his lap to bark a big criminal consensual affair over.
Obama's girth certificate and all his Kenyan usurping.
Hillary's ultra strong desire to make sure 4 people died in Benghazi.
Son of Joe Biden's trial and trivialities' with drugs and missed paying taxes. Worst most of all, when Hunter is down on his luck and needs money to pay his vehicle payment. His dad loans him the money and damn if that evil criminal Hunter pays his father back that loan.
It is not enough to use tax dollars and congresses paid working time to run smear campaigns.
Every time they get a chance, they pass tax cuts for their billionaire donors so they can use that money to purchase our Supreme Court, donate to GOP and fund GOP candidate to funding lawsuits to the high court they own to rule as they say. Court can unroot Roe and the Congressional GOP pretends they had nothing to do with it. No, they could never legislate Roe out. Like the ACA, they need and want the court to overturn it. They will find a way eventually to rule on overturning Social Security and Medicare because the GOP cannot survive or pass repealing these themselves.
So they use tax dollars from Tax cuts, use tax dollars and official congressional paid time, and their tax exempt organizations like the Federalist Society (which I have never known one person in my lifetime that was a member) to use that Federalist organization with its tax exemption to donate to GOP to confirm their people o wear black robes and pretend they are judges just calling balls and strikes.
Quick nitpick: Frances s/b Francis.
the point that needs continual reminders of is that the gop is built on only one precept...lower taxes, no lower, lower yet ending with giving money freely to the gop with no expectation of reciprocity.
trump tax cuts were the reason for trump. a military, a free society, opportunity for economic advancement for FREE!! that is what the gop wants..
trump, guns, god, gays and all the rest are incidental to the goal. pay nothing and get everything. an example is the military...they love our military, pay no taxes, children have bone spurs and have hoople-headed shrinking middle class to do all the chores.
thank you for your service we might say, trump might thanks chumps...
"And so, yeah, "What the hell is wrong with these people?" was sort of a call to action for me, even though I didn't realize it ..."
You might even say they were being deplorable.
Just from the list of David From to Kathleen Parker to Tucker Carlson.
Would di be too forward of me, too naive of me to ask.
How did they get that way? They grew up in wealth on the plantation? Went to private brainwashing schools?
How did they make it through college without getting their asses kick royalty and their heads bashed in? At the least ridiculed into normalcy.
As some have repeated on the TV. That Lying Ted was one of the great debaters on the college debate campus.
For real? It must have been an exclusive Yong college republicans debate circuit.
Now if they meant Lying Ted was the best liar of the young college republicans debate against other republicans. I am sure he is a good enough liars to over talk his fellow republicans .
After watching a CSPAN House oversight committee hearing where comer's top whistleblowing witness tells Comer he never seen or heard of Hoe Bidden in Ukraine when dealing with Hunter Biden. Then you see Comer on BitchMax. Needing help from the host hack who doesn't understand how house procedure's work at all. Fumbling through words as Comer is now dueling while in full mumble.
But hey, maybe I am being too critical. Too harsh and extremes. Too partisan? Which in their GOP language would call me Woke?
Which I respond, their brain is in deep sleep as they are sleepwalkers. and sleep talkers.
So called conservatives and conservatism have never been what they pretend to be. Or what they portend will happen if they aren't in charge. And never, ever accept responsibility for the many disasters, miseries and destruction's when they are in charge. George the Lessor, as I like to refer to him, or the Cheney administration as he is better known as, is a fine example in this century of conservatives and conservatism in its true form. Of course Trump is the new variant of it now. As Driftglass and Blue Gal have been documenting and writing about the web of complicity, enablers and their ilk for the past decades with a determination and dedication that would have broken many a man or woman's back and spirit by now. And as Driftglass writes in this piece about what could be described as the "I'm shocked, shocked to find out that gambling has been going on here." version of the enabler's club explaining how it is no big thing and only just happened and really it was someone else's fault. And it never happened before. And we're the true conservatives...With it all wrapped up by the daughter of the Cheney administration...under the heading "Liz Cheney Is Very Worried" is as funny as it gets. A variant of the horror movie I saw in my childhood called "Mr. Sardonicus" updated to today's conservatives.
My whole life I've been watching and smelling this shit-show. It sure is tiring some days.
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