Tyranny, Like Hell, Is Not Easily Conquered...*

Honestly, these days nothing makes me laugh harder than shit like this.  From The Bulwark, with emphasis added to spice things up:

Tom Nichols:  But the problem is that... that there is always something -- y'know you and I went through this.  And you and I and other Never Trumpers went through this in 2016 when we were trying to make the big tent argument to our friends in the Democratic party. To say, y'know you're just gonna have to.  This is the nature of coalitions.  I mean, uh, y'know Roosevelt didn't like Stalin but they they managed to work together. And, uh, I think that there is just this kind of purity testing among Democrats that makes that really difficult. And it's not... it's not about, um, Gaza or tras or anything else.  It's about -- all of it -- it's about a very segmented coalition that is like a parliamentary party where every small party says I must have my issue satisfied or I will withdraw during the vote of no confidence.

 

Sure, my laugh these days is a rising, scary laugh bordering on madness -- 

-- but tis laughter nonetheless and I'll take that wherever I can find it.  

Purity test?  

What fucking purity test?  

Practically the day the #NeverTrump hashtag went up, every one of these feeps was waved right on past the bouncers and the velvet ropes, straight to the head of the line by whatever the hell was left of the "Liberal" media.  Ushered right on past all the dirty hippy hoi polloi who, having been right about the Right all along, were a grave threat and embarrassment to whatever the hell was left of the "Liberal" media.   

So I ask, what fucking purity test?  

And waiting at the head of the line for these Gingrich acolytes, Fox News regulars and Bush regime arrivistes were gift baskets containing lucrative deals to write books that were basically aping what we Murrica-hating commies were saying 20 years ago. And also literally hundreds of millions of dollars in in-kind coverage and promotions for their various media projects and causes.  And also tens of millions of dollars to produce ads to flatter the vanity of credulous Liberals but which did absolutely nothing to actually change the trajectory of the fascist party that they had spent their entire adult lives building.

So once again, what fucking purity test?  

Virtually every open seat on every panel discussion of the state of our politics was handed over to these recently-former Republicans.  And where no open seat was available, cable networks carved one out.  Never Trumpers have completely colonized MSNBC, which, in turn, has become a Reputation Rehab Laundromat for still more recently-former Republicans. All while the Never Trumpers two, main media corporations -- The Bulwark and The Lincoln Project -- have become virtual subsidiaries of MSNBC.

Just imagine if any of your favorite Liberal bloggers or podcasters had, instead of being canceled by the legacy media and sent into Coventry for the high crime of being right about the Right all along...imagine if any of them had gotten just a fraction of the bottomless largess and promotion that they have showered on the Never Trumpers since day one.

One more time, what fucking purity test?  

Remember, despite their pomps and airs, these people are actually just a bunch of overpaid clueless fuck ups.  Goobers who were the architects of their own destruction.  Who, despite clear and ample warnings to the contrary, went right on building the Republican Doomsday Machine until it eventually drove them out of the party.  

So, having spent a professional lifetime shitting on Democrats as Murrica-hatin', terrorist-lovin' idiots, as whose door did these goofs show up once they had burned their own party down?

At our door.  

And having had their faces rubbed in the fact that they had been fucking wrong about everything all along, and we had been  right about everything all along, did they approach us with even a whiff of humility?  A hint of apology?  A smidge of contrition?

Oh hell no.

You will get no such contrition, because I think your party had plenty of matches and lighter fluid and is not free of responsibility here.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 14, 2019

Instead they marched right on in and immediately began treating us like the help in our own house.  As if we were their incompetent valets and handmaidens who didn't realize how fucking lucky we were that they were allowing us the opportunity to serve their every whim.

Wrote a whole thing about it back in 2019 -- "The Aristocrats" -- every word of which I stand by today.   But every time one of us minor, Liberal nobodies kicked up a fuss about the insanity of letting the people who destroyed their own party become the official Voice of the Resistance, we were shouted down because, somehow, despite having no real power whatsoever, we might secretly be mighty ruin everything.  Otr something.  

Y'know, Stalin and Roosevelt and all that jazz!

I tried to reassure these Nervous Nellies that they had nothing to fear from me.  That in all the (at that point) 15 years I had been blogging and 10 years I had been podcasting, I had an unbroken record of no one who had any influence over anything ever listening to anything I had to say, much less heeding my advice.  But they were still terribly anxious that some stray, badthinkfulness from some 8th tier blogger from flyover country might upend everything (Good God, didn't I realize that the Future of Democracy was on the line!!!) , so they interspersed their insistence that I shut the hell up with reassurances that, once this was all over and Trump was gone, "we" would take back all the power "we" were handing over to Rick Wilson, Tom Nichols and company and be done with them.

Because, yeah, that is exactly how power works.  Like a lawnmower you loan your neighbor, but it has your name stenciled on it, so they'll definitely give it right back once they're done with it.  

Except...wait a tick!  That's not how power works at all!

From The Washington Post, April 28, 1987:

FALWELL TAKES CONTROL, BARS BAKKER FROM PTL

BOARD CUTS OFF ALL PAYMENTS TO EVANGELIST

The Rev. Jerry Falwell today placed himself firmly in control of the PTL empire and barred its founder, Jim Bakker, from retaking the pulpit.

Beneath crystal chandeliers in the ballroom of the grand hotel built by Jim and Tammy Bakker with money from their flock, Falwell announced that the board had cut all payments to the Bakkers, who have received $4.8 million since January 1984 in salaries and bonuses.

...

Falwell, asked by Bakker to take over PTL last March when Bakker resigned, said, "We intend to stay and will not step aside . . . His ministry here has ceased." And Falwell added: "If God Almighty had let me quit, I would have told you that today. I am going to lovingly and scripturally lead on until God says, 'Get out of there.' "

Well, now we've tried it their way.  

We tried the "Less Lizz Winstead: Moar Liz Cheney" way.  

And the results are in!

And how are our "allies" in the "Liberal" media reacting?

Well this morning, a whole nest of them spent an hour on "Liberal" teevee fawning over Maureen Dowd's sickening, Liberal-slagging drivel in The New York Times:

Yeah I think I’m done with Morning Joe. I was angry on Wed (day after election) when they started dumping on Harris and claiming the Dems are too woke. Just the day before they were giddy and saying how flawless Harris’s campaign was..because they thought she was going to win.

— Dan Stone (@DanMStone) November 11, 2024

So now I'm just counting the seconds until Liz Cheney also publicly reverts to her factory default settings.  

In the coming weeks and months try not to be staggered by the sheer tonnage of recent history which our fair-weather "allies" will be memory holing, and the armada of lifeboats which will be hitting the water.

Remember...

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”  -- Thomas Paine, late November, 1776

Update:

Thanks to Zero Sum Game [‪@classicvibe.bsky.social] for this excellent subtitle for this post:

‬

"Everything Rick Wilson Touches Dies" 

Burn The Lifeboats