This week, we take you back to the "Before Time" - specifically 2011 - to trace the toxic road that led us to where we are today. We revisit the birther movement, explore how "Conservatism cannot fail; conservatism can only be failed" evolved into "Trump cannot fail; Trump can only be failed," and examine what happens when an entire political movement becomes nothing more than loyalty to one man.
We discuss the courts blocking Trump's tariffs (and then unblocking them), judges using 26 exclamation points to strike down executive orders, Harvard losing a quarter of its student body overnight, and the president's ongoing extortion and bribery schemes - from CBS settlements to Mar-a-Lago pardon purchases.
Plus, we cover Chris Cillizza's traumatic encounter with a mean note on his Tesla, Trump's potential pardons for would-be kidnappers, and why the meatheads will always find someone else to blame when their dear leader inevitably fails them.
It's another episode in which we boldly venture into a place where others fear to tread—recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance.
"Chicago, you will be mine, like my dog, or my horse, or my falcon, or my favorite neck-stabbin' pencil except that I shall love you more - and trust you less." -- The Ten Lessons of Rahmses -- Lesson Three
The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal
This week, we’re diagnosing a political condition we’re all feeling — what we’re calling Political Cabin Fever. It’s not hopelessness, it’s exhaustion, and if you're part of the Democratic Base, we bet you know exactly what we mean. We remember before-time examples of MAGA from Archie Bunker to Bill Hicks to RoboCop, and we talk about how liberals like us have been sounding the alarm for decades while elite opinion-havers closed their eyes. Plus, we take a look at the Rahmbo revival tour (Why are you doing this, Rahm? We think we know.), corporate media’s dangerous dance with Trump, and why the Democratic Party keeps punching hippies when it should be listening to the very people who saw this coming. Buckle up — it’s Episode 903 of The Professional Left Podcast.
In defense of American democracy, if a lie, or 100 lies, or 1,000, would knock
the Undecided and the Independents off the fences they're eternally straddling or smoke
them out of their smug, hermetically sealed "Both Siderist" panic rooms,
you're damn right I would.
Without hesitation, I would lie my ass off all week and twice on
Sundays.
If you have a minute, let me explain why this is something Democrats need to
start seriously considering. And just to make the point that, if called upon,
some of us can hang with the Joe Rogan and the Barstool Sports crowd I'll do
it in language they would understand.
This is about winning, and in the here and now, winning is ugly, because in
the here and now, politics is not lofty or idealistic. We have our base
of people who, broadly, care about the same things, and they have their base
of reprogrammable meatbags who want to burn our democracy down and dance on
its grave. And so "winning" is about getting the laziest, stupidest
people in America to take your side, stop thinking of politics as a philosophy
class or an ethics panel or a TED talk.
It's not. It's a bar. Specifically, a dive bar. And it’s
getting near closing time and your goal is to get laid. Period.
There are belligerent assholes at the end of the bar shouting nonsense that
you find really offensive. Do you engage? You do not. Why? Because
your goal is to get laid. Period.
There’s a bored bartender, who is starting to wipe down the bar and close out
tabs. Can he be of any help? No he cannot. He is the letter
of the law. He is your ticking clock. When the clock strikes 2:00
AM, the lights go on and the patrons will be shown the door whether you’ve
hooked up or not.
There are a few other patrons nursing their drinks, and one of them is an
unaccompanied woman. She is the undecided or Centrist or independent
voter. And at this moment, your goal is to get her to go home with
you. To get electorally laid.
Not to get married. Not to start a family. Not to pick out
adjoining plots in the cemetery. Just laid.
So how can this be accomplished?
Well, let's make a quick list of the advice that highly paid consultants and
pundits are currently screaming at Democratic politicians.
Don’t talk about policy. Voters hate policy!
Don’t talk about facts. Facts confuse voters.
Be authentic, but not too authentic.
Be a fighter, but don’t be confrontational.
Never challenge anyone’s stupid, bigoted opinion. It doesn't matter if
the economy is improving. If they, personally, are not feeling better
then all of your charts and graphs won't mean shit.
Use plain, clear language, but don’t offend anyone. Conversely, you must never
take offense at being called a corrupt, baby-killing commie.
And above all, remember that no matter how wrong they are, voters are never
wrong because they have the final say. So you must respect the
voters, no matter how stupid or bigoted they are, and how very clear they make
it that they will never vote for you. Which is why you should be
authentic, but also stick to vibes.
Vibes and sports and farts and tit jokes.
That’s what the consultants and pundits say.
I favor a different strategy. A bolder strategy. And to explain
that strategy, let us turn now to “Better Call Saul”.
In the politics of here and now, be Kevin Costner.
Tell them what they want to hear.
Lie your ass off.
And before you start to feel bad about it, ask yourself this. Whatever
beef you have with Democrats, is it true or not true that, on his worst day,
Joe Biden is 100 times better, more decent and more focused on the problems of
real Americans than Donald Trump? Is it true or not true that, on her
worst day, Kamala Harris would have been 100 times better, more decent and
more focused on the problems of real Americans than Donald Trump?
To any sane person, this is obvious, right? Blindingly
obvious.
And yet…
And then we had that debate where Kamala Harris blew Trump out of the
water. And what difference did that make?
Kamala Harris was widely seen as dominating Tuesday's presidential debate
against Republican former president Donald Trump, but a group of undecided
voters remained unconvinced that the Democratic vice president was the
better candidate.
Reuters interviewed 10 people who were still unsure how they were going to
vote in the Nov. 5 election before they watched the debate. Six said
afterward they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward
backing him. Three said they would now back Harris and one was still
unsure how he would vote.
Felicity voted for Trump in 2020 but has yet to decide if
she'll back the former president a second time.
I have no freaking clue man. It's so hard. When I voted for Trump, it came
down to who would I trust with my kid alone and it wasn't [President Joe]
Biden.
I'm still undecided.
All of my family is voting for Kamala and my friends are voting for
Trump.
I'm going to vote for one of them. I've got no idea which one.
I'm still super-duper undecided. I think I'm leaning toward Kamala over
Trump, if I think about who I would trust alone in a room with my
daughter.
I'm going to make up my mind when I go into the ballot booth...
Jessi voted for Biden in 2020 but this year, she was leaning toward a
third party candidate. She's now also going to vote for Jill Stein.
My mind would have been changed to maybe vote for Harris if I had heard
more from her that was substantial.
Nothing she said, I felt, throughout the campaign really sounded like it
had any substance, and there were some key issues I don't support her
position on.
I would say the same for Trump, so I'm
going to stick with third party.
If enough voters in swing states decided to go third party, Democrats and
Republicans would have to realise they have to choose candidates who we
can support....
In September, Mat told the BBC that Harris "very likely" had his
vote. He's since left his ballot for president blank.
I ended up casting an empty ballot for president. It was tough but I felt
like no candidate really offered any policy that resonated with me.
It didn't feel like any candidate offered anything that was very
substantial. ...
Tracy was impressed with Harris after her TV debate with Trump,
but remained undecided. Now, she's still not sure - so she's not voting
for either Harris or Trump.
I have definite plans of who I'm going to vote for, but I can't tell you
the candidate's name because I don't know the candidate's name. I'm voting
for a third party.
Hopefully that [candidate] is an adult. I'm not happy with either of our
[major] presidential candidates.
I know the third-party candidate doesn't stand a chance to get in. It's
just to send a signal to Washington that I'm not playing their game and if
they want me to vote Democratic or Republican, they better put somebody in
there with brains.
One of them is a bully who wants to own the country and the other one
wants to give the whole thing away...
Vanessa was impressed with Harris earlier in the campaign but is
throwing her support behind Trump.
I believe Trump has surrounded himself with competent leaders such as
Tulsi [Gabbard], RFK, and [JD] Vance...
Now, taking all of that into consideration – the overwhelming evidence that
Trump was and is completely unfit to hold any political office anywhere,
versus the basic decency and competence of both Biden and Harris – what is it
that undecided and independent voters really want? (And remember,
pundits and consultants are adamant that, however crazy or stupid the voter’s
issues and priorities may be, you as a candidate are bound to respect them.)
What do undecided and independent voters really want?
They want to be lied to. It's no more complicated than that.
By now, the undecideds who voted 3rd party or voted for Jill Stein
or stayed home or filled out "None of the above" for president must have figured out that this kind of performative “sending a message” voting is
ridiculous and never works, because the only message it sends is “I
am ridiculous”. And it sends a message to all the third-party/Third Way/Forward Party/No Labels grifters out there that
maybe they can hit you up for a donation. But they want to believe a
lie, and Jill Stein gives them what they ask for.
At some level, the woman Jimmy McGill hooked up with for the night back in
Chicago knew he wasn’t Kevin Costner, but she wanted him to be.
She was willing to be lied to, and he was willing to provide.
As painful as it is, think about the two presidential campaigns in 2024. One was
more than substantive and detailed enough for anyone who bothered to
look. But undecideds are lazy. They’re always on the verge of
“doing their own research” when the truth is, they don’t wanna do even the
minimal amount of homework necessary to make an informed decision.
Instead many of them soak up what little they think they know about politics
from hanging around gamer sites and Joe Rogan and Barstool Sports.
Y’know, for the vibes and the farts and the tit jokes.
So, if the Democrats were offering boring substance and detail, what was Trump
offering?
They are begging to be lied to. Demanding it.
Don’t insult them by refusing.
So, until the rest of the country sobers up and starts acting like adults, be Kevin Costner.
White House purges transcripts of Trump's remarks from its
website
The White House told NBC News it has decided to post only videos. There
still is one transcript remaining online, however: Trump's inaugural
address.
The White House has removed official transcripts of President
Donald Trump’s public remarks from its government website, replacing
them with selected videos of his public appearances.
As recently as Sunday, transcripts of Trump’s speeches and comments
were still showing up in the “Remarks” section of WhiteHouse.gov. The
next day, they were gone, snapshots of the site from an internet archive
show. The only transcript appearing now is of Trump’s inaugural address
on Jan. 20...
Hundreds Join Trump at ‘Exclusive’ Dinner, With Dreams of Crypto Fortunes
in Mind
The guests were the biggest investors in President Trump’s memecoin, and
they were greeted with chants of “shame” as they arrived at Trump National
Golf Course.
President Trump gathered Thursday evening at his Virginia golf club with
the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, promising
that he would promote the crypto industry from the White House as
protesters outside condemned the event as a historic corruption of the
presidency.
The gala dinner held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban
Washington, where Mr. Trump flew from the White House on a military
helicopter, turned into an extraordinary spectacle as hundreds of guests
arrived, many having flown to the United States from overseas.
At the club’s entrance, the guests were greeted by dozens of protesters
chanting “shame, shame, shame.”...
Chant all you want, but remember, sociopaths don't feel shame.
The House and Senate both voted to loosen regulations on air pollutants
like dioxin and mercury, which are associated with higher cancer ...
And here's the headline:
Congress moves to loosen toxic air pollution rules
And yet, to borrow a few words from the immortal Buckaroo Banzai, you could
take that article, and pulverize it, and sift through it like breadcrumbs
for the rest of your natural life ...
Congress has voted to undo a Clean Air Act regulation that
strictly controls the amount of toxic air pollutants emitted by many
industrial facilities like oil refineries, chemical plants, and steel
mills...
The House approved the resolution early Thursday morning,
following a Senate vote in favor of changing the rule earlier
this month...
The move is part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to
roll back environmental and public health regulations. EPA
Administrator Lee Zeldin announced in March that he intends to
re-evaluate other regulations like the one Congress just voted
to change, which is related to a section of the Clean Air Act that
deals with Hazardous Air Pollutants...
Rules regulating those seven air toxic pollutants, along with more
than 180 others, have been in place since 1990 when
Congress passed a major amendment to the Clean Air Act that
greatly increased its specific regulatory powers...
The regulation Congress targeted concerns which facilities
count as "major sources."...
... and you would never, ever, find any mention of the fact that this was a
party line vote.
All but one House Republican voted for it.
All Democrats voted against it.
Which should come as no surprise.
For as long as I can remember, NPR (Nice, Polite Republicans) has bent
itself into all kinds of unnatural shapes to avoid holding Republicans
responsible for Republican atrocities. To avoid pointing a finger and
calling out Republicans for what they very clearly are.
Fat lotta good it's done them.
From The White House:
Presidential Actions
ENDING TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZATION OF BIASED MEDIA
Executive Orders
May 1, 2025
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and
the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. National Public Radio (NPR) and the
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) receive taxpayer funds through the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Unlike in 1967, when
the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with
abundant, diverse, and innovative news options. Government
funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and
unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic
independence.
At the very least, Americans have the right to expect that if their
tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair,
accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage. No media
outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the
Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to
subsidize. The CPB’s governing statute reflects principles of
impartiality: the CPB may not “contribute to or otherwise
support any political party.” 47 U.S.C. 396(f)(3); see also id.
396(e)(2).
The CPB fails to abide by these principles to the extent it
subsidizes NPR and PBS. Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote
does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity
presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to
taxpaying citizens...
Because NPR failed to learn the first and most important lesson about
dealing with fascists: Appeasement never works.
We're serving up some hard-won advice about winning elections - and it's not pretty. While our Never Trump allies and high-paid consultants keep screaming the same tired strategies at Democratic politicians, we're here with a bolder approach inspired by David Bowie's wisdom about language and a certain scene from "Better Call Saul."
We dive deep into what undecided and independent voters actually want (spoiler: it's not what you think), examine the post-election interviews that reveal the uncomfortable truth about swing voters, and explore why policy substance keeps losing to vibes, farts, and other distractions.
In local news, we have some upsetting tornado recovery updates from St. Louis, where FEMA showed up five days after the storm, and it was not to provide immediate help.
By now you will have noticed that our Never Trump "allies" are incapable of
expressing their indignation with their former party using objective terms and
a stand-alone vocabulary.
Instead, like the Tamarians in the ST:TNG, Season 5, Episode 2 "Darmok", their critiques are expressed almost entirely in metaphors and
allegories. Metaphors and allegories which are meaningful only to
themselves. Specifically, they are hardwired to criticize their former
party in ways that almost always involve comparisons to us villains here on the
Left.
This was especially striking during this Bulwark interview "Little Marco Goes
FULL MAGA! (w/ David French)". When describing Donald
Trump's policies, David French cannot simply point out that they are
catastrophically awful.
Instead you get:
...at an event at the White House so you know we'll get to that in a second
yeah it's like Bernie's economics and Code Pink's foreign policy...
And:
Marco sounded like Cindy Sheehan.
And:
Cancel Culture from the far left, bad! Cancel Culture [from the
Right] hold my beer.
And:
...you take almost any malady of the far left and then you take it over to
the to the Trump right and they make it worse...
And:
...far-left condescension smug y'know, if you're disagreeing with me you're
a bad problematic person. That's bad! Trump turns it into, if you
disagree with me, I'm so obviously right that you're not just an idiot if
you disagree that you're also a coward.
And, to repeat in case you missed it:
...every malady you saw on the far left in the sort of woke world the
anti-woke MAGA world has replicated and amplified.
For goofs like French, it is imperative to continually remind anyone who will listen (which is a lot of people now that The New York Times has given him a job) that we on the Left were the OG villains, and that we still are just fucking awful.
In other words, "Bork, his face black, his eyes red."
If you want to get instantly blocked by all your Never Trump allies who have
now elevated the late Michael Gerson to sainthood, my advice to you is to
remind them of Gerson's actual record.
His actual writing.
Not the way Peter Wehner' remembers it:
A beautiful writer with an even more beautiful soul
Not the way Christianity Today summarized it:
Gerson crafted the language of faith-inspired politics for president
George W. Bush from 1999 to 2006. He fused a theological vision of moral
purpose with a practical policy agenda—and in the process produced some of
the era’s most memorable phrases, including “armies of compassion” and
“axis of evil.”
Not the way The Wheaton Center for Faith, Politics & Economics
memorialized it:
God’s Wordsmith: Michael Gerson Remembered by Peter Wehner, David Brooks,
and Scott Baker
Because of course his Conservative friends and fellow travelers remember him as
angelically humble and high-minded ... because the bile that poured out of his
keyboard every week and into pages of the Washington Post wasn't aimed
at them.
It was aimed at us.
More specifically, it was aimed at President Barack Obama, and it was
fucking relentless. If you are
interested in the details, back in 2019 I wrote a little over
16,000 words about it here, breaking down year after year of Gerson's baseless, scurrilous, often
borderline-racist attacks on President Obama, and his slanderous attacks on
you and me for voting for Obama. You see, according to Mr. Gerson, many of us were either idiots or idolaters or
both for supporting him.
Two Faces of Obamamania
Some Obama supporters aren't the brightest of bulbs.
However, this is not a column about the late Michael Gerson, per se. His story just gets us where we are going, which is 20 years
ago. May of 2005. This is about all those good, God-fearin',
morally superior Christian Conservative men who held enormous sway within the
Republican party while holding themselves willfully and disastrously blind for
decades as to what was really going on with their Conservative evangelical
cult and their despicable political regime.
It's about how so many of these God-fearin', morally superior Christian
Conservative men had their Road to Damascus moment 30 years too late.
How their recognition of the size and shape of the monster they had created
only arrived, grudgingly, once that monster had grown large enough to cast its
terrifying shadow on them personally.
It's about what savvy Conservative Evangelicals like Gerson, and Peter Wehner,
and David French should have seen coming long before a Midwest
bumpkin like me did. And despite the fact that these men of faith
were so consistently and catastrophically wrong about the one thing
they were being paid to opine about -- the one thing they had their
noses pressed right up against for their entire adult lives -- they either retained their positions of influence and authority in the media, or,
in the case of David French, actually gotten promoted all the way up to
The New York Times.
All while those who had been sounding the alarm all along are still treated
like crackpots and pests.
So let's take a little walk into the Forbidden Zone of the Before Time to see
a world that some of us dirty fucking hippies had seen all along, and a whole
lot of revered and highly-paid Conservative pundits and thought leaders held
themselves heroically ignorant of until it was far, far too late.
Chick Tract “Christians” and why Nick Kristof is an idiot.
Let me tell you a couple of mostly-true stories, and then explain why Nick
Kristof is an idiot.
First: My Mom had spent a week at an ashram in
Pennsylvania and was positively bubbling over with joy. It was a traveling
summer, so after her face-time with Buddah, her sojourn took her west to visit
family we have out there. This particular evening she was visiting with my
cousin and his family who are deeply Fundmentalist. Every other phrase out of
his mouth on any topic is “Well Praise the Lord!” or “God is good.” They’re in
church every few days. Bookshelves are stocked with “Left Behind” fiction. The
whole deal.
In other words, Right Wing Evangelicals who spend a
good part of their waking hours relentless pushing their particular, ossified
version of Christianity to anyone who comes within earshot.
So my
Mom is over having dinner, and Cousin Fucktard and his family are practically
stuffing Chick Tracts into her pockets…and she’s listening politely to their
idiotic hard-sell drivel, because that’s what nice people do. Then came a lull
in the conversation, and since the topic was God, she stared to share with
them her deeply moving and ecstatic experiences at the ashram, and Cousin
Fucktard immediately cut her off.
“Excuse me, Aunt Driftglass,” he
asked, “but do these people believe that Christianity is the only True Faith,
and have they accepted Jesus Christ is their personal Lord and Savior?”
“Weeell,”
she began diplomatically, “they believe Jesus was a great spiritual leader. As
an incarnation of the Divine. You see, they believe…”
And that’s
when Cousin Fucktard cut her off again.
“That’s what I thought,”
he said. “Sorry, Aunt Driftglass, but I’ll have to ask you not to talk about
that in my house. We don’t approve of
blasphemy here.”
And that was that.
Second:
My brother and I were at our family reunion last summer down in the wilds of
Missouri. It was Red State Central, and the 2004 election was heating up, and
as it happened, Bill Clinton’s autobiography had just come out. My uncle – the
patriarch of the tribe – held forth these opinions, and spoke for most of the
family when he said:
There was no need to read anything from Bill
Clinton’s autobio, “’cause Clinton’s just a liar. Lied about ever’thang.”
The
reason every right-thinkin’, God-fearin’ person must re-elect George Bush was
equally simple. Bush was “a plain-spoken man, and a per’fessed Christian.”
Period.
No
engagement with factual reality of any kind. No discussion of policy or
nuance, or comprehension that there even are such things. A level of cultural,
political, historical, global and just-plan-factual illiteracy and detachment
– and a smug self-satisfaction with being this pig-ignorant -- that was
absolutely Medieval.
This was when I figured that Bush would
probably win. Because these members of my family – and millions of other
Conservative Evangelical Fundamentalists – have no higher reasoning functions
with which you can engage. They don’t believe facts. They are cultists who
have been relentlessly programmed to believe “Liberal = Satan” and “Republican
= Christian”. Period.
Now on to this slice of simpleton cheese
from Nick Kristof:
Liberal Bible-Thumping
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published:
May 15, 2005 Even aside from his arguments that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married
and that St. Paul was a self-hating gay, the new book by a former
Episcopal bishop of Newark is explosive. John Shelby Spong, the
former bishop, tosses a hand grenade into the cultural wars with "The Sins
of Scripture," which examines why the Bible - for all its message of love
and charity - has often been used through history to oppose democracy and
women's rights, to justify slavery and even mass murder. … This
book is long overdue, because one of the biggest mistakes liberals have
made has been to forfeit battles in which faith plays a crucial role.
Religion has always been a central current of American life, and it is
becoming more important in politics because of the new Great Awakening
unfolding across the United States. Yet liberals have tended to stay
apart from the fray rather than engaging in it. In fact, when
conservatives quote from the Bible to make moral points, they tend to
quote very selectively. … "Can we really worship the God found
in the Bible who sent the angel of death across the land of Egypt to
murder the firstborn males in every Egyptian household?" Bishop Spong
asks. Or what about 1 Samuel 15, in which God is quoted as issuing orders
to wipe out all the Amalekites: "Kill both man and woman, child and
infant." Hmmm. Tough love, or war crimes? As for the New Testament,
Revelation 19:17 has an angel handing out invitations to a divine dinner
of "the flesh of all people." … Bishop Spong particularly
denounces preachers who selectively quote Scripture against homosexuality.
He also cites various textual reasons for concluding (not very
persuasively) that St. Paul was "a frightened gay man condemning other gay
people so that he can keep his own homosexuality inside the rigid
discipline of his faith." … Liberals can and should confront
Bible-thumping preachers on their own terms, for the scriptural emphasis
on justice and compassion gives the left plenty of ammunition. After all,
the Bible depicts Jesus as healing lepers, not slashing Medicaid.
Apparently Mr. Kristof has never heard of the Presbyterians. Or the
Unitarians. Or any of a dozen flavors of Protestantism that aren’t run by
completely deranged big-haired Mussolinae (isn’t that the plural of Il Duce).
Or the Liberal and/or Liberation Theologians of the Catholic Church. Or the
fucking Jesuits. And he has never read any of the rich body
of literature that has taken on the Christian Right over just these issues,
over and over again, for at least the last twenty-years.
So since
he has decided to plop himself down in the middle of this busy intersection as
innocent of any knowledge of his own culture as a dung beetle is of
ballistics, let me help the poor man out by hipping him to a few facts, the
central two being these:
1. We are not talking about “Christians”
generally, but that fiercely and proudly ignorant cult called Conservative
Evangelical Fundamentalists.
2. Being “biblical literalists” –
believing that the Bible is the “literal and inerrant Word of God” – means
that Conservative Evangelical Fundamentalists are
by definition unable to admit doctrinal or dogmatic
error in the slightest degree. On a practically molecular-level they are
incapable of allowing themselves to think even for a
second that there are parts of the Bible that are historically absurd or
physically impossible…or just poorly translated or misunderstood.
On no issue of any kind, to any degree large or small, are
Conservative Evangelicals capable of or willing to engage at all. All
discussion begins with the predicate that their beliefs are 100% correct in
every detail, and that anyone who disagrees with them is either misguided and
in need of conversion, or a minion of Satan in need of Armageddon.
Or
to put it a little less abstractly, Jerry Falwell was a lying,
hater-mongering, heap of wormy shit twenty years ago and
no amount of engagement by anyone on any issue in any venue on any topic
has succeeded in budging his fat ass one micron.
Ditto the rest of the Heroes of Evangelical Ignorance: Pat
Roberston. James Dobson, Don Wildmon., Paul Wyrick, Randall Terry, Phyllis
Schlafly…and so on with a list that extends well out past the vanishing
point.
And for the record, Nick, we had a Democratic President who
was as steeped in scripture as any one of these thugs; could out-cite them all
and did engage them on the spiritual as well as the policy level. And do you
remember how they reacted?
The howled for his blood.
The Masters of the Antebellum South looked to the Bible to
justify their fascist Plantation States and generations of the faithful fought
them from the pulpit. And failed.
Further generations confronted
Southern Segregationists and lynchers in the same pulpits and with the same
Good Book. And failed.
Another generation fought them over
interracial marriage and property rights and voting rights and civil rights.
And failed
We engage them now over a woman’s right to her own body.
Over stem cell research. Over fucking Evolution. And we
fail.
No amount of moral suasion has ever softened the hearts or
opened the minds of these motherfuckers one iota; over and over again history
has shown that it is only the naked power of a religiously neutral Federal
Government coming down on their necks that ever forces them to quit abusing
and murdering people their perverse faith has taught them to hate in the name
of White Male Privilege and actually behave like Good Christians.
Which
is not really surprising; Christians of all species have been talking right
past each other for, well, around 2000 years. Same book, same language, same
Savior...and you still get the Reformation, the Counter Reformation, Greek
Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Anglicanism, Evangelicalism. You get schismatic
warfare. You get internecine murder on a massive scale. You get the
Inquisition, Salem, the Crusades and the likes of the Albigensian heresy
(“Kill all. God will know his own.”)
So no thank you, Nick. I’ll go
right along reading my Bible for a variety of reasons, but trying to engage a
Fundy in a serious discussion about faith as opposed to simply enduring a
set-piece, memorized-by-rote monologue
is a fool’s errand. For your own edification, I urge you to sit down one evening over a beer
with a couple of Jesuits and let them tell you about Evangelicals and how
thoroughly reviled and discredited their inbred-idiot-cousin version of the
Gospels is among serious theologians. How their Pop-Up Hate Book version of
the Bible is laughed at by anyone not in their hillbilly cult.
Finally
remember that the Bible is a Big Book. A whopping great, intimidating Moby
Dick of a book that scares the crap out of most people who either don’t read
at all to begin with, or read only monosyllabic Twinkie news with brides
running away to Neverland to fondle young boys (I’m probably getting the
details wrong. Following the Twinkie news is hard work.)
And like
pre-IraqWar intel, it is cherry-picked by the Falwells and the Robersons of
the world to fit their pre-existing bigotries…and always will be. They only
see what they want to see so Nick, to save you a little time, let me summarize
what the Fundies actually look at when they read the Good Book.
The
Fucktard Bible
Old Tes’mint: Gen’sis. God
make everything on October 9th, 4004 B.C. ‘Round 9-ish. Ex’dis. Chuck
Heston saves some good Christians, some animals and his guns. Buncha
stuff God killin’ people what don’t look like me, which is always
cool. God hates fags. Bunch faggity poems or somethin’ God
wastes Lot’s whole family, ‘cause he’s a fag or a libril or somethin’. Sooo
cool. Buncha other stuff.
New Tes’mint. Jebus Kick’s Ass! Stinkin’ Jews kill Jebus. Buncha stuff Buncha
faggity stuff about “forgivin’ and camels and ‘the least of these.’” Jebus
Keeps Kicking Ass! Buncha Letters. Letter about God Hatin’ Fags,
which is Excellent. Buncha other stuff Jebus Comes Back and Blows
Shit Up and Kills alla them Librils and Queers and ay-rabs and Jews.
Weather woes! Driftglass and Blue Gal welcome some special guests - tornado refugees (the two younger kids!) - as severe weather interrupts podcast preparations.
A "No Fair Remembering Stuff" segment takes us back to 2008's bizarre tire pressure inflation controversy - and why it matters as a "telling detail" in the trajectory of Republican politics.
Science Fiction University returns with a look at a particular time travel novel and its eerie parallels to current events involving South African connections to the Trump administration.
How has the GOP's disinformation playbook evolved but remains unchanged, and what is its real purpose?
Former President Biden's health news and the media's selective memory.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts or at proleftpod.com
Support the show through PayPal at our website or mail contributions to:
The Professional Left Podcast PO Box 9133 Springfield, IL 62791
Not safe for work. Recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance.
Harry Turtledove's excellent, award-winning alternate history science fiction novel, "The
Guns of the South", is set during the American Civil War.
The story deals with a group of time traveling members of the Afrikaner AWB --
a South African nationalist, white supremacist, and neo-Nazi political party
-- from 21st-century (Hey, that's us!) In their timeline, the South
African system of apartheid has been overthrown, but these fuckers have access
to a time machine. So, in the hopes of saving and spreading their
depraved ideology, they travel back in time to the American Civil War and
supply Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia with AK-47s and other
advanced technology, medicine and intelligence.
Their intervention results in a Confederate victory in the war.
33 years ago, in 1992 when the novel was published, who could have guessed
that time travel shenanigans wouldn't be necessary for Afrikaner AWB scum to
find safe harbor and political power in the United States? All it
took was 40 years of relentless propagandizing from Hate Radio and 30 years of relentless propagandizing from Fox News, and the relentless propagandizing from the rest of Conservative media to sculpt the
Republican base into reprogrammable meatbags who adored the idea of a white
Christian nationalist authoritarianism, and a few South African billionaires
willing to put up millions of dollars to buy the White House for a corrupt
degenerate felon who is 100% on-board with the white supremacist agenda.
The Road to Trump’s Embrace of White South Africans
The Trump administration’s hostile approach to South Africa was shaped by a convergence of factors.
It was May 2019 and national security officials were in the Situation Room discussing Iran when President Trump abruptly changed the subject. He wanted to talk about granting asylum and citizenship to white South African farmers.
Mr. Trump had floated the idea before, claiming that the farmers were a persecuted minority group being displaced from their land, according to John R. Bolton, his national security adviser at the time, who was at the meeting.
Mr. Bolton said he thought little of Mr. Trump’s wish. The president had embraced fringe ideas and false narratives pushed by white Afrikaner activists, Mr. Bolton said.
“It never amounted to anything, so I just put it as typical Trump,” Mr. Bolton recalled in a recent interview. “Some random person tells him something and he’s obsessed with it.”
Years later, Mr. Trump’s views on white farmers in South Africa are shaping U.S. foreign policy in his second term. On Monday, the first group of Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that ruled during apartheid in South Africa, landed in Washington, as the Trump administration upended a refugee system that had provided sanctuary for those fleeing war, famine and natural disasters.
The administration is welcoming white South Africans after suspending the program for everyone else, including other Africans who have waited in refugee camps for years and were vetted and cleared, and Afghans who supported the U.S. war in their country...
The deep South African ties in the Trump administration
Apart from Elon Musk it’s clear the US president has the ear of South Africans, or those who have lived here.
Everyone by now is aware that Elon Musk has the ear of US President Donald Trump, and is to a large extent shaping US attitudes to SA.
Apart from Musk, there are several others with strong South African ties in Trump’s inner circle, including David Sacks, the US’s new AI and crypto czar; billionaire investor Peter Thiel, a key backer of Trump for many years; and Joel Pollak, who has been tipped as the next US ambassador to SA...
Head of CBS News to Depart Amid Tensions With Trump
Wendy McMahon, the president of CBS News and Stations, had allied herself
with Bill Owens, the “60 Minutes” executive producer who recently resigned.
CBS News faced another shock wave on Monday after its president, Wendy
McMahon, abruptly said that she would exit her post, the latest
development in an ongoing showdown between the news division and President
Trump.
Ms. McMahon, whose full title was president of CBS News and Stations,
said in a memo that “it’s become clear the company and I do not agree on
the path forward.”
Tensions between Ms. McMahon and CBS’s parent company, Paramount, have
simmered for months, a period that Ms. McMahon described in her memo as
“challenging.”
Paramount is in talks to settle a $20 billion lawsuit brought by Mr.
Trump that accused “60 Minutes” of deceptively editing an interview last
year with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Many legal experts have
called the suit baseless, but Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari
Redstone, has said she favors settling the case. She is seeking the Trump
administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to
a Hollywood studio, Skydance...
You might think a post that includes this sort of thing --
There is nothing in modern history short of the collapse of the Soviet
Union with which I can compare it for the scope and speed at which the
implosion came, and in the great halls and palaces of Big Media we are left
only with trivia and circuses. They have fallen, and they are never coming
back.
Viewed within its own context, this self-inflicted crime
against democracy is more insidious and more poisonous than any frontal
assault any terrorist group could possibly mount.
But viewed
against the scrim of the all-out press gangbang that ran 24/7/365...
-- is from the Age of Trump.
Nope.
From this blog,
May 15, 2005
(original links to The News Blog and The Nation have been removed because the
original content disappeared a long time ago.)
The Black Hole Where the Press Used to Be
This via Steve Gilliard got me to thinking...
Dr. Hager's
Family Values by AYELISH MCGARVEY
When Hager's nomination to the FDA was announced in the fall of 2002, his
conservative Christian beliefs drew sharp criticism from Democrats and
prochoice groups. David Limbaugh, the lesser light in the Limbaugh family
and author of Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging Political War Against
Christianity, said the left had subjected Hager to an "anti-Christian litmus
test." Hager's valor in the face of this "religious profiling" earned him
the praise and lasting support of evangelical Christians, including such
luminaries as Charles Colson, Dr. James Dobson and Franklin Graham, son of
the Rev. Billy Graham.
Back at Asbury, Hager cast himself as a
victim of religious persecution in his sermon. "You see...there is a war
going on in this country," he said gravely. "And I'm not speaking about the
war in Iraq. It's a war being waged against Christians, particularly
evangelical Christians. It wasn't my scientific record that came under
scrutiny [at the FDA]. It was my faith.... By making myself available, God
has used me to stand in the breach.... Just as he has used me, he can use
you."
Up on the dais, several men seated behind Hager nodded
solemnly in agreement. But out in the audience, Linda Carruth
Davis--co-author with Hager of Stress and the Woman's Body, and, more
saliently, his former wife of thirty-two years--was enraged. "It was the
most disgusting thing I've ever heard," she recalled months later, through
clenched teeth.
According to Davis, Hager's public moralizing on
sexual matters clashed with his deplorable treatment of her during their
marriage. Davis alleges that between 1995 and their divorce in 2002, Hager
repeatedly sodomized her without her consent. Several sources on and off the
record confirmed that she had told them it was the sexual and emotional
abuse within their marriage that eventually forced her out. "I probably
wouldn't have objected so much, or felt it was so abusive if he had just
wanted normal [vaginal] sex all the time," she explained to me. "But it was
the painful, invasive, totally nonconsensual nature of the [anal] sex that
was so horrible."
............................
Sex was
always a source of conflict in the marriage. Though it wasn't emotionally
satisfying for her, Davis says she soon learned that sex could "buy" peace
with Hager after a long day of arguing, or insure his forgiveness after she
spent too much money. "Sex was coinage; it was a commodity," she said.
Sometimes Hager would blithely shift from vaginal to anal sex. Davis
protested. "He would say, 'Oh, I didn't mean to have anal sex with you; I
can't feel the difference,'" Davis recalls incredulously. "And I would say,
'Well then, you're in the wrong business.'"
By the 1980s,
according to Davis, Hager was pressuring her to let him videotape and
photograph them having sex. She consented, and eventually she even let Hager
pay her for sex that she wouldn't have otherwise engaged in--for example,
$2,000 for oral sex, "though that didn't happen very often because I hated
doing it so much. So though it was more painful, I would let him sodomize
me, and he would leave a check on the dresser," Davis admitted to me with
some embarrassment. This exchange took place almost weekly for several
years. ..........................
As Hager began fielding
calls from the White House personnel office in 2001, the stress in the
household--and, with it, the abuse--hit an all-time high, according to
Davis. She says she confronted her husband on numerous occasions: "[I said
to him,] 'Every time you do this, I hate your guts. And it blows a bridge
out between us that takes weeks, if not months, to heal.'" She says that
Hager would, in rare instances, admit what he had done and apologize, but
typically would deny it altogether.
....................
Linda
Davis chose not to bring allegations of marital rape into her divorce
proceedings; her foremost desires at the time were a fair settlement and
minimal disruption for her sons. Nonetheless, she informed her lawyer of the
abuse. Natalie Wilson, a divorce attorney in Lexington, asked Linda to draw
up a working chronology of her marriage to Hager. "[It] included references
to what I would call the sexual abuse," Wilson explained. "I had no reason
not to believe her.... It was an explanation for some of the things that
went on in the marriage, and it explained her reluctance to share that
information with her sons--which had resulted in her sons' being very angry
about the fact that she was insisting on the divorce." ...
As
for David Hager, after repeated attempts to interview him for this story, we
finally spoke for nearly half an hour in early April. That conversation was
off the record. "My official comment is that I decline to comment," he
said.
Mr Gilliard concludes:
****
"So let me get this: he would fuck his wife up the ass, call it a mistake,
then pay her? Because he got confused?
And this is who Bush wants
to have the government advise it on women's health.
I mean, didn't
it matter his wife didn't like anal sex? Especially when he raped her like a
child molester in prison?
My basic question is what the fuck is
wrong with this guy? I mean, he could have found a mistress who liked oral and
anal sex and his wife would have gone along. What is all this shit with the
anal rape and the money?
Also, does the Bush administration vet
anyone? Ever?"
-- End of Mr. Gilliard's comments. --
* *
* *
OK, so let’s stipulate that David Hager has the all the
hallmarks of a typical high profile Bush Nominee: to wit, he was 170 lbs. of
ambulatory offal. A morally and/or sexually warped slab of rotten meat not
just unqualified, but
uniquely unqualifiedfor the post to which he has been
nominated.
And page-by-page it followed the same tired
You-Must-Be-Shitting-Me Bush nomination playbook. Specifically, a lavish and
mindless defense mounted by the infinitely reprogrammable Golem of the
Religious Right: that Reliable Fucktard Militia, trained to hold themselves
ferociously blind to facts of any kind – no matter how staggering -- that
might conflict with the pronouncements of Dear Leader. Always painting anyone
standing in their Shining Path as Christ-hating traitors at 100,000
decibels.
In other words, another one. Another scandal. Another
mortifying embarrassment. Another one. Yet another one. Yet
another fucking one.
Let’s
make a little list, shall we?
Not exhaustive – not even really
extensive – but just a little, off-the-top-of-my-head list (And FYI, there
must be something abroad in the land. I was over at
Atrios
and found this link to another list of Crimes Against The Truth and Sins
Against Journalism thing. How cool! Who knows? Maybe we’ve at long last
collectively crossed one a’ them tipping point/critical mass thingies.)
Dick
Cheney and a cabal of oil lobbyists rewrites US Energy Policy behind closed
doors. When asked, declares the whole this Top Secret.
Bush
ignoring warning of an imminent terrorist attack.
Bush lying about
the predicate for taking the nation to war.
Bush lying in the State
of the Union Address about Niger, Uranium and Iraq.
Bush sacking
the one man who told him the truth about the real costs and risks of Iraq.
The
Downing Street memo: a smoking gun showing the Bush plan to invade Iraq was a
“go” in 2002, and intelligence was being cherry-picked, massaged and
deliberately misread to justify a war Bush had already decided to wage. A war
that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.
Tom Ridge’s
astonishing admissions that mysterious “others” had basically coerced him into
jacking up the Terror Alerts during the run-up to the 2004 election. During
which time he publicly swore that no political influence
Voter
suppression. Not Diebold stuff, just bread-and-butter corruption.
Swift
Boat Liars.
Jeff Gannon – criminal manwhore – loose in the press
room as a Bush Administration shill for two years. Regurgitating GOP talking
points and calling it “reporting” under his nom de whore. Being leaked
classified intel regarding active CIA agents and the timing of the invasion of
Iraq.
Tom DeLay and his 1,001 grotesque sins and crimes, from
defrauding Native Americans to being in the pay of foreign governments, to
criminally redrawing the Texas Electoral map, to extorting the House to
rewrite the rules just for him.
Torture as Policy. Secret trials.
“Extraordinary Rendition.”
Promoting the author of our new Torture
policy to Attorney General.
Presidential Medals of Freedom for
Everyone.
Bernie Kerik.
John Bolton.
Dick
Cheney’s Halliburton – Known War Profiteers who just scored a sweet $72
million bonus.
Social Security lies, lies and more lies.
We
will be greeted as Liberators.
Cake walk.
Slam dunk.
A
few regime dead-enders.
And now, David Hager.
You
probably have your own list that you can bullet-point at parties, and there’s
certainly some overlap, but let’s take a breath and look at the overall
picture these individual crimes pointillistically create.
What do
they have in common?
A fuck-you contempt for democracy that is
truly breathtaking, but that’s no surprise.
A tantrum-throwing
derision for fact and causality rarely found outside of DT sufferers,
sociopaths and four-year-olds, but that’s no surprise.
An unbroken
string of scandals breaking now almost daily over life-and-death issues, any
one of which would have resulted in a knee-jerk reflex launching of yet
another Special Prosecutor investigation had it involved anyone named
“Clinton”, but Republicans of the modern age are either Elmer Gantry or whore
and hypocrites of the First Water, so that’s no surprise.
No, the
biggest surprise –
the wheelman for this vast, criminal enterprise – the one that they’ll be
studying in the history books a century from now is the complete and utter
failure of the American Press at virtually every level. That’s the one for
which I must admit I was unprepared.
In my own Capra-colored way, I
always assumed that buried deep in the machinery of our Fourth Estate was a
rectifier that would kick in when we found ourselves up against it. Something
in the DNA that would let at least a few of them rise up and take on the Enemy
especially when that Enemy took up residence in the White House.
But
they didn't. The went down quietly, easily. With no struggle at all they laid
down their arms and became capitulators, these spineless Sunshine Journalists
who were so slavering seven short years ago.
Remember? Such a
ravening wolfpack they were before Rove learned how deeply cowardly and easily
cowed they are. Back when they were pounding the shit out of the Clinton
Administration so unremittingly. Fairly sometimes, unfairly much more often,
but relentlessly. Daily. Sometimes hourly.
And for the last five
years...nothing. An article here, an editorial there but in the
end...nothing.
A few toadies I could understand, and you can't
really count the Limbaughs and Foxes and CNNs of the world who are, of course,
simply propagandists not really media in any sense of the word. But whatever
happened to all the rest?
Saying that they are gutless for a whole
cornucopia of reasons is correct
but insufficient.
That doesn’t get at the details.
Why? Why,
specifically, is
this happening? This passes mere incompetence and laziness by light years. Has
every single reporter on the national stage been topped on film by Jeffy
Gannon? Have they all been caught on video making the beast with two backs
with goats and children?
Does anyone out there have any contact
with the working press who could perhaps shed some clear light on why
Journalism is so abruptly and thoroughly dead?
This is a Total News
Embargo on anything negative having anything to do with the Administration
taken to such an absurdly lap-doggish extreme that the gargantuan abyss where
the Press used to be is practically screaming.
How bad is it? Well,
what do you think future generations will make of the fact that with little
more than
publicly available video clips and clever writing, John Stewart makes better ratings and tell more pure truth in any given
four minutes of what is clearly labeled "Fake News" than the Empires of
Mainstream Media can manage with a multi-billion dollar budget, a global
infrastructure, and a 100,000 Klieg lights, satellites and pairs of hands?
There
is nothing in modern history short of the collapse of the Soviet Union with
which I can compare it for the scope and speed at which the implosion came,
and in the great halls and palaces of Big Media we are left only with trivia
and circuses. They have fallen, and they are never coming back.
Viewed
within its own context, this self-inflicted crime against democracy is more
insidious and more poisonous than any frontal assault any terrorist group
could possibly mount.
But viewed against the scrim of the all-out
press gangbang that ran 24/7/365 during the Clinton Presidency this lethal,
deliberate and consipicuous conspiracy of silence is without a doubt the
Story of the Decade.
Maybe of Story of the Century.
Would that there was a
Free Press who would report it.
End of May 15, 2005 post.
And truly it can be said that, in every way, the Bush/Cheney regime walked so the Trump regime could run.
Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea! Flash! Those audio chatterboxes they call "The Professional Left Podcast" are taking to the airwaves tonight with a retrospective that'll curl your permanent wave!
From the swanky studios of downtown Springfield, Illinois, to your very own listening device comes "Nine Hundred Episodes in Sixty Minutes" — a piping hot sample platter of American political whoop-de-do spanning fifteen years of ballot box bedlam and legacy media failures that put the most corrupt man in American history in the White House! Twice!
To mark this 900th episode of their award-ready podcast, today, the Professional Left kids will be sampling every episode from the past 15 years that ends in a double-zero. A little something from 100th, 200th, 300th et cetera
Flashback to 2010! When the Fake Tea Party stormed Capitol Hill while President Obama's healthcare hullabaloo had Republicans reaching for the smelling salts! The midterms dealt the Democrats a shellacking that made the '29 crash look like a slight dip!
Also, 2011 saw wedding bells for our intrepid podcasters. But did they let their nuptials interrupt their podcasting? No, they did not!
The audio oracles take you through Mitt Romney taking a beating worse than Joe Lewis' punching bag! Obama's second inauguration had champagne corks popping in blue states while red states nursed their bourbons neat!
But – hold the presses! A corrupt, racist New York real estate crook with a coiffure that defied gravity and a former First Lady squared off in a campaign brawl that would make the Thrilla in Manila look like a Sunday school picnic! Donald Trump's November surprise left the pollsters with egg on their faces and their crystal balls in the repair shop!
Join them as the Blue Wave of 2018 washed over the House of Representatives like high tide at Coney Island! 2020 impeachment dramas hotter than a Broadway opening night, followed by an election showdown during a pandemic panic! Biden and Trump traded verbal haymakers while mail-in ballots flew faster than V-mail to the troops overseas!
Flash! January 6th, 2021 – the Capitol steps saw more action than the Normandy beaches with protesters storming the rotunda! The podcasters recall congressional hearings that made the Kefauver crime committee look like a bridge party!
The audio oracles highlight Supreme Court confirmations with more drama than a soap opera, and a 2024 campaign rematch that had Trump returning to Pennsylvania Avenue after Biden stepped aside and Harris stepped up!
That's a 15-year political roundup, as jam-packed with excitement as a three-ring circus. 900 episodes in the books, 900 more to go!
While this is not exactly a dip in ancient waters, now that legacy media
and Conservative media and Never Trump media have
collectively declared the Before Times to be strictly off limits to any
recollections that don't involve weeping over how shabbily Robert Bork was
treated or elevating Ronald Reagan to sainthood or carping about Abbie
Hoffman, there is no act of
You’ll-Never-Get-a-Gig-at-The-Atlantic-With-That-Attitude more transgressive
that profligately remembering stuff from back in the day.
So, since after 20 years at this coal face, there isn't a hope in Hell of me
ever, ever, ever being offered a writing gig at brick-and-mortar publication,
even if no one listens now just as no one listened then, that is exactly what
I plan to go right on doing.
So today, a snip from May 30, 2005. An open-letter of sorts (those were
big back in the olden times) to those chimeral Moderate Republicans who were
only ever visible out of the corner of your eye. Try to look straight
and they vanish like a fart in a firestorm.
Anyway, give it a read if that is your pleasure and then reflect on why it is
that, once Republicans acclaimed Donald Trump as their lord and savior, the
Liberals who have been sounding the alarm for decades that the Republican
party was on a trajectory towards something like this are still treated as
kooks and pariahs, while the Conservatives who were caught completely
flat-footed by the rise of Trump and who first swore that such a thing was
impossible, then swore that the rise of Trump was a fluke, then swore that is
was merely a fever which would pass once people realized yadda yadda, then
swore that Liberal were probably to blame .. how is it those people who
have such a long history of being so wildly wrong are now the once you see
larding the op-ed pages, the cable teevee panels and aver other mainstream
media platform?
And, not to get too meta on you, but if you are so inclined, reflect further
on the fact that, as the media was being colonized by recently-former
Republicans and us very inconvenient Liberals with our very inconvenient receipts being shoved into the corner, there
were a few of us who warned that, if the Left did not
loudly refuse to cede one inch of the moral high ground to the
Never Trumpers (who had spent the last 30 years making a living and getting monsters elected by calling us
dirty, commie baby-killers) -- that they could be welcomed as subordinate
allies but only after they conceded the obvious fact that Left had been right about the
Right all along -- that before you know it, any mention of the Before Time
would become taboo (No Fair Remembering Stuff), and voices on the Left would be shoved even deeper in the
corner while the legacy media would elevate or amplify people like David
French, Matthew Dowd, Rick Wilson, Michael Steele, Steve Schmidt, Charlie
Sykes, Tom Nichols, David Frum and David Brooks.
And as I recall, even as this was all happening right before our eyes -- even
as MSNBC was giving tens of millions of dollars worth of free promotion to
websites hurriedly cobbled together by recently-former Republican while
Liberal sites starved, even as credulous Liberals poured tens of millions of
actual dollars into the coffers of the Lincoln Project for ads that
accomplished nothing while Liberal sites went begging -- credulous Liberal
were scolding people like me for making a big deal out of it. After all,
I was told a 1,000 times back in 2017, 2017 and 2018, this was just a
temporary arrangement. It was just until Trump was gone. Then,
instead of using their newly-dominant positions in the media to scold
Democrats for not being Republican-lite, they would be told to go back to
their own party and clean up the awful mess that they had made.
...So to the many Moderate Republicans who are angling for their tiny
places in history – for the elementary school cafeterias and highway
on-ramps that they hope will one day be named for them – I would ask in
all seriousness just how in the Hell do you think history will judge
you?
At this point, you know the Administration was and is lying to you. You know that our children are dying for those lies and the treasure-house of
respect and honor that two centuries of successive Administration have
carefully stored up is now being pissed away into the sands of Iraq. You know that liars and thugs are being appointed to vital, high-profile
jobs. You know the courts are being packed with ultra right wing lunatics.
You are the same people and belong to the same Party that was more than happy to spend tens of millions of dollars going after Clinton on the whiff of
a hint of a suggestion of something untoward, and you were quite willing
to sit at that fishing hole and lob dynamite into it for seven long years
until you knocked something loose.
In light of that, what I don’t quite understand is how you’re going to
explain to posterity how you refused to bother to even investigate any of
this. How you’re going to sell “I never knew” and “I never bothered to
find out” to the history books as anything other that rank cowardice and
towering hypocrisy once the multiple, interlocking Bush Ponzi Schemes fall
apart, given how much evidence of wrongdoing is right there in front of you.
Well we all know how that turned out , don't we?
And now, just for kicks, here is the first two of the 76 comments on
that post (most of which were spam ads for auto loans and real estate -- it
was a different time). A reader wrote and I responded, as the pedant
that I am:
Anonymous said:
For history to judge a man harshly those writing it must render such a
verdict. The writers of history often reflect the thinking of a nation's
populace, prodded into a rumination heavily influenced by the sentiments of
the many. I don't see Bush suffering too badly under the microscope of
future historians. We are a nation of xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic,
militaristic half-wits. The citizenry mostly agrees with the psychopaths in
the White House. Our schools churn out millions unable or unwilling to read
or write. Most of the population is content to swill beer, ogle porn and
worship NASCAR drivers. These are the people historians will appeal to in
their tomes, exposing Bush as a murdering, criminal vulgarian? Please, it's
not going to happen. Think of the query "If a tree falls in the forest and
no one is around, does it make a crashing sound?". If historians judge Bush
badly but no one pays attention to their verdict have they made a sound?
driftglass said...
"The citizenry mostly agrees with the psychopaths in the White House."
You're wrong on three counts.
First, have a care slinging "most" around too easily. Around 49% of the
citizenry very definitely does not agree with the psychopaths in the WH, and
the margin of victory was around 100,000 votes in one state and not
millions. Furthermore, every measure of Administration popularity has been
dropping steadily since Christmas. Reality is slowly overtaking propaganda,
as it always does. Yes, a high percentage of the populace are superstitious
and bigoted and generally a waste of perfectly good carbon, but when wasn't
this the case, so...
Second, you misread history if you think that there were ever some bygone,
halcyon days when the average American whiled away his leisure time by
wading though Tacitus and debating Clausewitz with his friends over a beer
(swilled or otherwise.) Never happened. However, popularized histories have
always made it into the mass markets, from Shakespeare to Spielberg.
Third, I for one have nothing but nice things to say about the ogling of
porn, but as to NASCAR, I must admit, how anyone can pay rapt attention to
hour after hour of left turns stumps me.
