With a sloooow trickle of mainstream media critters like Susan Glasser beginning to notice with alarm that, holy shit!, the Republican party is full of Republicans --
Crucial point here: Watch Trump rallies in full and you will learn *new* things. As Susan Glasser says, you gain a deeper grasp of his authoritarian appeals by letting his "hate speech flow over you" and by watching him "explicitly running against the rule of law."
— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) March 18, 2024
Our exchange: pic.twitter.com/1OLc2DEPl5
-- I thought I might take a quick look into my archives to locate the first time I ever posted the Special Glasses.
You know about the special glassed, right? The lenses (see above) through which one must look to make sense of the otherwise inexplicable gibberish pouring forth from Crazy Uncle Liberty every day of the week.
Putting on the special glasses is not particularly difficult -- doesn't cost anything and requires no special training, but boy howdy has our mainstream media ever fought for decades like Keith David in They Live --
-- against getting anywhere near the special glasses.
So, being curious, I got to wondering about the very first time I knocked together this graphic and added that metaphor to my lexicon.
It was 2010. August. Y'know, during the Before Time which, for the sake of all our new, recently-former Republican "allies", we are now apparently obligated to pretend was a golden age of politeness, civility and bipartisanship.
Until, of course, you take the trouble to remember what that time was actually like. Remember the graphics and the posters.
The revolting comments. The emails. The jokes. The T-shirts. The ghostwriters. The whole fucking Fake Tea Party. The Freedumb caucus.
If you are inclined to revisit those days, there's plenty of literature out there mouldering on the digital back shelves of the internet. I borrowed some of the list above from this article in The Daily Beast from April 25, 2014, but there are hundreds -- thousands -- of others. It takes a lot of money and enormous, conscious effort to pretend, day after day, that the Before Times were what that manifestly were no.
Republicans Are Racists? No, It’s Just All a Big Coincidence
[BECAUSE ROBERT BYRD]
The revolting comments. The emails. The jokes. The posters. The T-shirts. The ghostwriters. It’s not like it’s a pattern or something.
So there I was, in the late summer of 2010, doing my self-appointed duty of watching the usual parade of horribles on the usual channels at the usual time and documenting what I saw for posterity. Well, here we are, 14 years later, and I guess you and I are the posterity on whose behalf I was madly typing away.
So, 14 years ago, what was the pre-Trump Republican party obsessed with?
Immigrants.Muslims.Ho-mo-sexuals.Terrorists.
Sound familiar?
And how were they approaching these subjects, as filtered through my own, subjective perspective?
“Fox News Sunday” shows all the wanner, wannabe networks the way, as it always does, with Chris Wallace’s understudy -- Bret…Fartscalder? …Trollspankington? ...Hairthimble? -- boldly leading off with the story ofa New York mosque that some people plan to build on the site of a Burlington Coat Factory a mile from the Ground Zero site
!!Dr. Phibes 3D Mosque of Terror Babies!!
Yeah, it was bad. It was all bad. Including inviting on nominal Democrats to give aid and comfort to the Bad Guys by shivving their own party.
Bret Poospray: How big a pussy is the President for “clarifying” his position and don’t you agree that so-called tolerance and religious freedom should be set-aside whenever wingnuts feel bad? The latest polls say most people don’t like terrorists, so isn’t this a great issue to run on?
Republican John Cornyn: Yes. People who live in trailers and have never left Sisterfuck, Arkansas have very strong feeling about New York whenever Rupert Murdoch reminds them that it exists.
Bret Folliclebasket: Lastly, are you worried that this is sucking up a lot of oxygen?
Driftglass: You mean like you are doing right now? Spending the first 1/3 of your show talking about it?
Bret Bluntpie: Now let’s talk about illegal immigrants.
Yay!
Cornyn: There are not nearly enough boots on the ground. We need 40 million troops all linking arms standing on the border. Preferably shirtless. And oiled up. Full body shave. All staring smolderingly into the setting sun. Also we need a smaller gummint. That being said, I’m glad Obama has finally stopped hating America long enough to do what Republicans tell him to do.
Bret Scow-coifed: How will Obama’s contempt for America work against Democrats in the Fall? Also, in Afghanistan, how about something something David Petraus and something something what Joe Biden said once, in a book, in a paragraph which, if you read what he said next, doesn't sound at all like the scary shit I just implied he meant? Are Democrats running away like babies?
Bret Puddingchisel: Doesn’t the fact that the wacko teabaggers are losing in the primaries means that they’re a little too patriotic for the bland old GOP?
Cornyn: Ah…but the Democrats!
Democrat Jack Reed: Yes. Our candidates suck a lot sometimes.
I then gamboled over to This Week... to find out how the Non-Fox universe was screwing us. That particular week This Week... was hosted by...
George StephanopoulosTerry MoranJake Tapper
Christiane Amanpour run[ning] the place like she’s accidentally scheduled a biker convention and WindyCon into the same venue on the same weekend.
Get the first mob in.
Get ‘em out.
Get the sheets changed and the furniture hosed off
Get the next mob in.
We learn that Republicans Banking Committee Sen. Bob Corker and Martin Regalia of the ultraconservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce agree on almost everything.And hey, lookit that! It's then-Republican political strategist Matthew Dowd auditioning for a permanent gig at ABC by ladling out warmed-over Beltway Both Siderist drivel by the bucketful.
Yay!
They agree that the very best thing we can do for the financial health of the county – and, for some reason, poor, rural folks -- is to stop making changes to stuff.
That ObamaCare scared some fictional companies away from hiring people.
That maybe we all just need to suck Wall Street’s dick a little harder.
Also we need to decide exactly how much money the fed gummint should have, then appropriate backwards to that number.
Also rich people desperately need more tax cuts.
Also “people” can decide how to spend their money better than 535 people in Washington! Hey kids, we’ve got some costumes and a barn, so lets put on a show and buy a new 21st century transit system!
Did I mention the need for more tax cuts?
Later on, Republican political strategist Matthew Dowd humiliated himself over and over again.So, that was me during the Before Time. Pretty clear understanding of how bad things had gotten, the terrible direction events were taking us, and that the mainstream, "respectable" media was failing us when we needed them most.
Dowd: Obama’s point of view on the NY mosque reminds me of Bush. “My way or the highway”. This is a big problem for Obama.
Dowd: Oh, sure, technically we do have things like a “constitution” and “property rights”, but that shit is all beside the point when it comes to dealing with Scary Brown People. Tolerance goes two ways!
Dowd: Obama looks weak…so he needs to cave on this issue ASAP.
Amanpour: But the people who are building this mosque have been to the White House, have condemned 9/11 and intolerance.
Dowd: Yawn. Yawn. And double fucking yawn.
Amandpour: But the people who are building this mosque have been to the White House, have condemned 9/11 and intolerance?
Chrystia Freeland (Reuters): Yeah, Dowd.
David Ignatius: You’re full of shit, Dowd.
Amanpour: What about the oddball freak teabagger types who are cluttering up the political Universe?
Dowd: It is perilous…to both sides.
Cokie Roberts: Yeah. That’s right. Democrats think they can go back to the old playbook, and use facts and stuff.
Ignatius: Robert Gibbs and his “Professional Left” talk demonstrate how people are really pissed by the Centrist, establishment stuff that Obama is pitching,
Cokie: On the other hand, voters are schizophrenic idiots.
Dowd: I will now underscore how much my dick is still in Sarah Palin’s pocket by trotting out some complicated, incoherent “sea wall” metaphor. Involving bricks. And bridges.
Next week...Will rumors about Obama's plans to appoint a gun-grabbing Muslim Chupacabra to the Supreme Court force Robert Gibbs to shoot a hippie in Reno just so Mitch McConnell can watch him die?
I will tell you that, with the exception of Paul Ryan, I don't recall hearing that kind of rhetoric -- that kind of principal defense of the free market from a Wisconsin politician -- in many many years.
2 comments:
>>>Not much to add except, you can see why media creatures still fight like mad dogs to avoid looking through the Special Glasses.
Some do, sometimes. Too rarely.
And here it is.
Other readers who see this: please, read that article. Every word. (I promise you, by the time I posted this, BG and DG already had.)
From the article:
>>>Their empathy is an eighth of an inch deep and last only as long as it takes their minds to come up with a rationale to excuse this disgusting behavior. They’re not good people.
Let me add my own perspective. I've lived in a radioactive-red state for more than 5 decades now. I can promise you that most (not all) of these people are usually very pleasant to talk to. They're courteous. They're hospitable if you're visiting their home. They can usually tell stories, almost always true, about how they gave up possessions or paychecks to help someone needy. (That someone is almost always white and in their direct circle, like an employee or personal friend, but they did these things.)
There are times they let the mask slip, but mostly they look like "normal" (if there is such thing) southern-fried country folks. They don't go around dropping the n-word in casual conversation or openly belittling LGBTQIA+ folks, Muslims etc.
But sometimes you have a disagreement where they get angry, or sometimes you see them with their guard down. Then that mask really slips.
It's brutally hard to say this, because you want there to be a better way, for this not to be true. But - and DG may not let this comment post because of this - no small number of those folks would happily put bullets into my body if they thought there'd be no consequences. I don't let my politics walk into a room ahead of me, but people do know I'm a liberal.
Even the ones who are genuinely nice to me always have some personal stake in it - I've done something for them or have a business relationship with them, etc. And even in those cases I'm not sure.
Out on a drive through more rural areas a couple of days ago, we saw a hand-painted sign in someone's yard. I'm not going to quote the things I saw written on it - they are vile - but I will say my above words about happily shooting liberals if there would be no consequences are not hyperbole.
Sometimes you can just ask them. Sometimes they'll openly tell you.
I'm sorry. This isn't pleasant reading.
Many J6 violent insurrectionist rioters were arrested and had to sit in jail until their trial.
Question: Pick one or all of the Trump criminal trials and explain why Trump is not in jail awaiting trial?
What I am coming to admit, I am seeing the courts, the Justice system in all still allowing Trump to believe nothing else but his bad behavior and accountability is not going to happen . And, This enables Trump to continue to indulge in his bad behavior and take it to another level.
This treatment is what Trump explained himself, that he is smart and gets away with it. Like when he bragged about not paying his owed taxes and getting away with it. He boasted on stage with Hillary in debate, "That makes me smart"
This is how other things swirl around the toilet bowl in his skull. Like the Suckers and Losers of our military for serving and sacrifices. That he could enjoy the freedoms they preserved. Which he only cares about for himself.
Post a Comment