The George Will Homunculi That Lives in Their Heads

I was not going to write about old friend Tom Nicols today.  This was not the plan.

After all, these last few days have been so overstuffed with serious breaking news -- one story piling atop another, each trying to elbow the others aside -- why bother with some cranky old fart that our Never Trump friends crank out whenever us naughtybad Liberals need to be reminded that they're running the show now and we need to sit down, shut up and mind our manners.

I was going about my chores and errands business, listening to a selection of podcasts in the background much as  local reporter (back when we had such things) might listen to a police scanner, when suddenly I heard ol' Tom say this to Mr. Tim Miller on a recent podcast.

...but it does it really shows you the that this is... that the modern Republican party, whatever it's become now, not the thing that you [Tim Miller] and I knew 20 years ago...but it's become about power.  Just the raw exercise of power not about principle not about ideology not about conservatism...

Oh great.  Now I am contractually obliged to spend a few words on ol' Tom and the Misremembrance of Things Past forcefield that Never Trumpers have erected to keep themselves safe from the past, because, as it happens, I began this little blog of mine 20 years ago.

Wheeee!  

What's more, I've spent most of the past 20 years remembering and writing about all those terribly inconvenient things that Never Trumpers are so desperate to keep safely buried deep inside the memory hole.  

This Misremembering forcefield is not a physical thing.  It's more like a George Will homunculi that lives in their heads.  A homunculi conjured at the intersection of the past tense and a past perfect infinitive.  To wit:  Never Trumpers need the past to have been very different than it was.

It is no exaggeration to say that everything depends on this.  

They need their former party to have been a Disneyland of morally superior, Burke-quoting Conservatives.  

They need themselves to have been the only people wise enough and brave enough to sound the alarm about what was going on with the GOP... in 2016 or 2017 or as late as 2018. 

They need the rise of Trump to have been a Black Swan event which no one could have predicted and for which none of them are to blame.  

They need Liberals to have always been clueless idiots and political naïfs who are always wrong about everything.

And they need Democrats to have been so darn far to the Left and so besotted with snooty big words that, mayhap, they were actually responsible for the rise of Trump.    

Because if this pack of lies is not, once and for all, adopted as --

-- the whole thing risks falling apart.

Because if even a hint that the Left was right about the Right all along breaches the force field, the implications are catastrophic.  

It means that all of your favorite Never Trump celebrities were actually wrong all along.  

Wrong about the one subject about which they were being paid a whole lotta money for their supposed expertise.

So if it is true that they were not only wrong all along,  but that they mocked and ignored the people who were right all along...?  Well, you can see where this is going. 

If they truly failed to see what we Liberals clearly saw (and wrote about every fucking day) unfolding in plain sight, they why in the name of Jesus, Mary and Joe Scarborough are they still being paid a whole lotta money for their opinion?  Why are these people, whose resume top line reads "Never Saw Any Of This Coming",  being paid to consult on how the Democratic party -- my party -- should conduct its politics?

And that is the most charitable explanation.  The alternative is that they knew damn well what was going on inside their own party but were willing to ignore it and lie about it, because they also knew that pandering to their increasingly deranged base was their only hope of winning elections.  Which mean feeding them more and crazier lies to keep them spun up and watching Fox and voting the right way.  

And putting all of that in a box and sealing it behind a forcefield is what keeps the Never Trump movement propped up and us mouthy Liberals shut out.

So. allow me to interpret the Never Trumper's internal lament, with the help of The Shangri-Las from 1964, Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand):

Whatever happened to the boy that I once knew?
The boy who said he'd be true?
Oh, what will happen to the life I gave to you?
What will I do with it now?

What they are doing with it now is... pretty much the same shit they were up to before the monster they made drove them out into the cold, cruel world:  pretending to knowledge they do not have, shitting on Liberals, and dropping in a "Both Sides Do It" wherever they can.

TOM NICHOLS:  I suppose this is why I still bristle every time people say "Well they're conservatives and you're conservative." There is nothing conservative about this situation.  This right-wing... far right-wing radicalism is indistinguishable from... from the kind of left-wing radicalism that if, y'know, a bunch of y'know... like the president of my old school used to call them,  y'know a bunch of short pants communists, took over the government, they'd be doing the same thing. 

Except this "far right-wing radicalism" is something your party welcomed and pandered to and cultivated for fucking decades you colossal ass.  All right under your fucking nose.  There is absolutely no equivalent whatsoever in the Democratic party for any of this.  

Hell, it was so obvious that even Aaron Sorkin -- the guy who conjured imaginary "reasonable Republicans" out of thin are because The West Wing plot required them -- could see it coming back in 2012.

But Tom didn't see any of this coming, so why is he running his mouth now?  Because Never Trumpers are incapable of talking for more than eleven minutes without swearing that the Republican party somehow isn't the Republican party, that their Republicans party was so awesome that words fail.  Then they lob in a "But just look at those crazy Lefties!" because they have no other frame of reference, and obviously cannot admit that they were just loudly and wildly wrong for their entire adult lives.  

Ever the genial host, Tim Miller flails around looking for some scenario that would make Nichols' ludicrously false sound less stupid...but eventually trails off and changes the subject because it's all ridiculous.

TIM MILLER: Like, there's no apt comparison but just, like, just... just work with me here.  Let's say there's a red state somewhere that was you know uh discriminating against trans folks in a way where trans folks felt like they were, um, unsafe and President Kamala Harris had decided "I'm going to actually I'm going to actually nationalize the Arkansas National Guard and we're going to put troops on the streets of Little Rock to protect the trans kids at the high school ... at the local high school.  I mean it's a kind of a silly metaphor because it doesn't quite work in the reverse but...

But the heart of the matter is Nichols' deep worry about "the split screen".  You see, since we Liberals are such hapless idiots...

TOM NICHOLS:  When I when I used to teach strategy to military guys we had an expression that we used, um, for lucking out and getting a kind of a dumb enemy... um which is that he he chose LA because it also has a cooperative adversary in it. He has an adversary that that doesn't just take his bait but rushes into the traps that he sets um you know with open arms.

.... our "ally" Tom Nichols, was deeply concerned about how "Americans" would react to the No Kings protest.  

Except he couldn't quite quite explain who these "Americans" are.  Where they live.  What their mores and folkways are, or what influence they have over anything.

But even though Tom couldn't pinpoint exactly who these "Americans" are, he is apparently an expert in who these "Americans" are not, and what moves them to action.  And his most dire directive is that you and I need to sit down, shut our mouths and mind our manners lest these "Americans" will turn on us.  And yet, strangely, these same "Americans" never seem to give the tiniest shit about what the MAGA filth are up to.  From the White House to the trailer park, MAGA filth are free spew any insane, racist thing they please, and wipe their collective asses with the constitution, and the "Americans" simply do not notice or care.

But let a couple of anarchists throw some rocks or wave the wrong flag, and, according to Tom, these same Americans will do ... something?  He can never quite explain what it is these "Americans" will do or why we should give a shit, but by his scolding tone, it's clear that it would be bad!  So bad!

TOM NICHOLS:  His opponents have to take him seriously about this.  He does it because it works with a certain number of people and not just the MAGA base this is a war for public opinion it's a war of images.  You were a political consultant you know this better than anybody that that people don't parse words and spend you know read 1500  words to get through this.  They see those images and for most Americans the ... the image, y'know Marshall McLuhan was right the medium is the message...

Just look at all the filters that thought had to pass through to arrive in spoken form.

Nichols is not worried about the effect of the "split screen" on the MAGA base because they're already lost.  And he's obviously not worried about any such effect on us, because we're the sorts of snobs who "read 1500  words to get through this".

So having eliminated most of the active voting public from the picture, I am moved to ask who the fuck are these "most Americans" that all of us are supposed to be so terrified of that we all need to walk on eggshells at all times?

The exchange is littered with this stuff.  How Liberals will see events one way, but "America" will see them very differently, because, it doesn't occur to Nichols that Liberals are part of America.  

Also doesn't it seem kinda strange these "Americans" only seem to watch split screens where a few anarchists look bad, and not when, say, Republicans are storming the capitol and threating to hang Mike Pence.  By process of elimination, Nichols must be talking about the mopes who pay no attention whatsoever to anything.  Who'd resent having "Below Decks" interrupted by a special announcement that World War Three had begun, and who get their "news" by glancing away from "Love Island" once a week to catch whatever is flying by on the teevee between dick pill commercials.

Hey, it just now this minute occurs to me that, golly, this might not be a "Liberal" problem at all!

Maybe the problem with some assholes throwing bottles at cops running on an endless loop while millions of peaceful protestors go unacknowledged...isn't the handful of assholes or the millions of peaceful protestors.  Maybe the fucking problem is a media that will run endless loops of trivial side issues.  Tom is very big on telling his audience how foolish Liberals are for thinking thus and so and what Liberals will probably say... when, in fact, Tom knows fuck all about what Liberals are thinking, or what Liberals will say.  Wouldn't it be delightful if he could direct a fraction of his bile at the media that invents these bullshit juxtapositions instead of constantly berating imaginary Liberals on the basis of what they might say or do.

But of course he can't.  Because like most Never Trumpers, Nichols has that George Will homunculus that lives in his head, reminding him over and over again that the forcefield that keeps the inconvenient past at bay cannot be allowed to fail even a little. 

On a lighter note, these days every time Tom opens his mouth to lecture Liberals on our bad manners, this is what I hear.  And it cracks me right up.

Finally, Pro Tip for Tim Miller:  If you want to know what Liberals think or say about stuff, put an actual Liberal behind a microphone and ask them.

I Am The Liberal Media.