Thousands and Thousands and Thousands

Here's a exciting gladiatorial contest that the whole family would enjoy, except that it'll never happen.

The graphic above represents the spectrum of Republican party/Conservative movement as it existed around 2016.

On the left is Joe "Joey Muskets" Walsh.  Failed, one-term congressman from Illinois and blustering, shoutycracker MAGA Trump guy until late 2017/early 2018 who we call "Joey Muskets" because he was forever grabbin' his musket and rushing off to fight on the barricades of whatever wingnut idiocy was hot shit that week. 

Grab your musket.
Sign the pledge.
Join the revolution.href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MAGA?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MAGAhttps://t.co/cYLt7Vn0Ah

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) December 6, 2017

On the right is Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times about whom I have written on this blog once or twice :-)

If there exists a noumenal ideal of the smug, clueless, Beltway fraud, it's Mr. David Brooks. who despite being profoundly wrong about everything all the time has nonetheless built himself a very lucrative and influential cottage industry feeding Both Siderist bullshit to wealthy, cosseted ideological shut-ins.

For his entire career, David Brooks has maintained that bellicose goofs like Joey Muskets either did not exist at all, or were nothing but an admittedly loud but teeny tiny irrelevant fringe of his Republican party.

For Joey Muskets, Brooks was just the sort of RINO squish Beltway quisling who was always collaborating with the Libtards to deny real Murrican patriots their FREEDUMB!!

Both are men.  Both are white.  Both are on their second marriages.  Both are 62 years old as of this writing.  Both claim to be "Conservative" whatever the hell that means anymore.  Both make some or all of their living as professional opinion-havers on various media platforms.  And, of interest to us today, both of them base their claim to a place in the media spotlight on their own, special signature insight into the hearts and minds and souls of "the people".  

Especially "voter" people.  

Very especially Republican voter people.   Thousand and thousands of Republican voter people.  

Here's just a couple of such claims made by Joey Muskets:

I hear from thousands of GOP base voters every day. Here’s the thing:

Tucker Carlson spent this past week making the case for autocracy over democracy. And while you & I are rightly disgusted by this, the GOP base isn’t. Because Tucker Carlson speaks for the GOP base.

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) August 7, 2021

Unlike most of you on this website, I engage with thousands of GOP base voters every day. So maybe my vantage point is really skewed. But I’m telling you, these voters live in a COMPLETELY different reality. I don’t think most CNN/MSNBC types sufficiently get this. It’s real bad. https://t.co/iP9YT4DMBP

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) July 29, 2021

And, in diametric opposition, here is David Brooks last night on the PBS News Hour responding to Jack Posobiec at CPAC saying "We're here to overthrow [democracy] completely. We didn't get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here." then holding up a cross and saying "Replace it with this."

Brooks:  Yes, it's meant to be — I mean, there's a game right-wing commentators of that sort play.  They get — they say something that offends the left, and then they could say, oh, the left hates me. And then they get popular in their own crowd, and so it's a form of performance art to shock the bourgeoisie.

And I take it with utmost cynicism, that they are just trying to get attention, and this kind of humor is, shock the left. And then I have owned the libs. So I think it's like, crass, stupid. 

Do I think it represents the thousands of Trump voters I have interviewed? 

No, none of them would talk like that.  They're all serious people who have serious views that I happen to disagree with, but they're not like that kind of guy at CPAC.

With Brooks, it's the Tea Party all over again.  Brooks' career is defined by a truly superhuman refusal to see his Republican party and his Conservative movement as they truly are.  Which is why, back in 2010, he turned the act of jogging past one group of protesters into a deep, sociological proof that the Tea Baggers were all the salt of the Earth and not even a little bit racist.  

Even when the turn of events became so tectonic that they brought all of his bullshit crashing down,  briefly prying his eyes open and moving him to swear to his employers that he would do better and get out of his bubble and touch indians and see the mountains and the valleys and the whole rest of that song -- 

-- at his earliest opportunity he snapped right back to being "Both Sides Do It" David because he is psychologically and professionally incapable of being anything else.

So, I propose that PBS or NPR or the WWE bring these two mopes together in a televised, sanctioned Thunderdome of disputation to determine which of them has actually talked to thousands and thousands of Trump supporters, on what day and at which Ohio diner. 

The winner will be awarded the "True Conservative" belt, even though I have a very strong feeling the answers to those three questions are going to be "neither", "never" and "none".  

And you know what?  I won't even insist that, because it's my idea, I get to officiate.

Instead I will content myself with sitting up in the cheap seats.

Eating popcorn.

And rooting for injuries.  

I Am The Liberal Media