Bret Bug Is Afraid.

The title of Bret "Bug" Stephens New York Times garbage yesterday was a question.

Do Dumb Ideas Ever Die?

A question we will defintely answer by the end of this post.

But to begin with, you need to understand that for the average Both Siderist hack, sometimes it can be a real grind trying to scare up something on deadline vaguely lefty to wave around to prove that Both Sides yadda yadda.  

Usually it involves waterboarding statistics until they scream and pass out and give the average Both Siderist hack something to fill up the empty page.  

Or, lacking any handy torturable bar-charts. the average Both Siderist hack will just make some shit up.  For example, Tom Friedman's fleet of magic cab drivers who always have just the right words in just the right order to pad out his drivel.  Or David Brooks' legendary [I kid you not] "Joey Tabula Rasa]" -- a patriotic Murrican teenage golem that Brooks brought to life by stuffing his own opinions in its mouth.  

Then there's Bret "Bug" Stephens, who doesn't even bother.  And really, why should he?  After all, the House of Sulzberger has given him a job for life and obviously doesn't give a shit what he writes as long as it fills up a column once a week.

So to the table today Stephens hauls the 800 pound gorilla of ruinously bad ideas, Donald J. Trump.  And from Trump's Conservative Cornucopia of Catastrophe, Stephens pulls out these two solid bricks of unalloyed stupid.

Trade protectionism? The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and beggar-thy-neighbor policies of the 1930s showed us the worldwide economic ruin to which that could lead. Government stakes in private enterprise, like the Trump administration’s recent equity stake in Intel?...

America First? The slogan of Charles Lindbergh and other pre-World War II isolationists should have been buried forever on Dec. 7, 1941. Instead, it emerged from its grave some 75 years later. 

Although there are several dozen (hundred?  thousand?) more ruinously bad ideas I would have used to begin to build my case that Trump is the worst president in American history by several orders of magnitude, Ok, fine.  It's Stephens' column.  Let him pick.

Ah, but remember,  Stephens is, above all things, a very lazy Both Siderist hack and a piss-poor writer, and so, in the very next paragraph, comes the inevitable...

But it isn’t just the Trump administration that is reawakening the moral and intellectual zombies of the past. Everywhere one looks there are policy necromancers.

Really?  Everywhere?  Like...where, for example.  What political organization could possible manifest as much ruthless abuse of political power,  open corruption, and sneering contempt for democracy as would be required to balance out a "Both Sides" formula with Trump on the other side?

You'll never guess.  

Not in a million years.

Ready?

The platform of the national Democratic Socialists of America calls for a...

Yep.  The DSA, which experienced "significant growth" over the past few years and now has nearly 80,000 members.

By way of comparison Donald Trump got...

...62,985,106 votes in 2016.

...74,223,975 votes in 2020.

...77,302,580 votes in 2024.

Ok, fine, but even with a number that tiny, maybe the DSA fielded a flashy newcomer in 2024.  Someone who was still an outsider, but showed themselves to be enough of a third-party threat to the Established Order sufficient for Stephens to make this otherwise ridiculous comparison.  Y'know, like Wallace in '68.  A spoiler and damn-near king-maker.  The unreconstructed racist who inspired Nixon and his henchmen to cook up their infamous Southern Strategy.

Except Wallace fielded nearly 10 million votes in 1968 and at it's peak, with every member accounted for, the DSA could only field 0.81% of what Wallace got more than half a century ago.

Yikes!

Still, just for kicks, guess who the DSA did run for president in 2024?

No one.  

Because the DSA is not a political party.  From Wikipedia:

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a political nonprofit organization, not a political party with a ballot line. DSA members and endorsees usually run as members of the Democratic Party, and occasionally with the Green Party, Working Families Party, or as independents

Looking worse and worse for Bret Bug, but since we've come all this way, Ok, who did the DSA endorse for president in 2024?  Did they get enough icky socialism on Kamala Harris to cost her the election?  Is that the threat, Bret?!?

From the DSA Statement on the Presidential Race,  November 4, 2024:

Workers deserve more than Trump vs. Harris. 

Every four years, working people are faced with the same “choices” for president: a conservative Democrat, a deranged Republican, and a gallery of self-promotional minor party candidates. For many people, voting doesn’t seem worth the effort.

If re-elected, Donald Trump would be a terror on the working class. As described in “Project 2025,” the extreme right wants to consolidate power under a Trump presidency through the expansion of authoritarian executive action. He would aim to repress fundamental democratic rights, stoke violence and discrimination against immigrants and trans people, and throw into chaos essential federal regulations on labor, corporate profit, and the environment. His administration would also want to target organizations like DSA for repression.

Harris is not the alternative we deserve...

This choice is why so many people are rejecting the two major parties and are hungry for a political alternative.

Many of our members are committed to defeating Trump and will vote tactically to that end. Others are committed to rejecting the human horrors and hollow principles Harris represents, so they will vote for a third-party candidate or leave their ballot blank...

Well that worked out just great for everyone didn't it!  

But maybe the DSA has become some kind of super-secret threat to the Established Order by sneaking in though the side door of politics.  

Like, say, as the mouthpieces of a young, charismatic Democrat on the rise?

Like, say, AOC?!?!

From City & State New York, July 12, 2024

The real story behind DSA’s decision to unendorse AOC

Well fuck me.  A pipsqueak political organization with some fine ideas and some bad ideas, and no appreciable political clout, no presence in the presidential cosmos, and it isn't even a political party.  So, at this point you may be asking yourself, why oh why did Stephens bring this weak-as-Methodist-coffee nonsense to a Both Sides Do It shot contest?

Because, dear reader, on an election night when all of Stephens' Republican ponies were not just losing, but were being Godfathered and glue factoried, for a bitter, talentless hack like Stephens and the ten or eleven bitter Conservative losers who still read him, "Socialist" is still a word to conjure with, especially when it's helpfully paired with "Democratic".  

It gives Stephens license to pad out the rest of his column with all the bogeymen of the Conservative-in-exile's nightmares.  “Bolivarian socialism", Jeremy Corbyn, Venezuela, French socialism, "Britain’s National Health" and a quote about “The trouble with socialism" from Margaret Thatcher.  

Are ya scared yet!  Huh!  Are ya!  Are ya!

Then back to other side of this absurd false equivalence to thump on the antisemitism of Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, and the collapse of the Heritage Foundation...and we're done.  

So, let us return to the the title of Stephens' New York Times garbage yesterday.  The question:

Do Dumb Ideas Ever Die?

Well, since the House of Sulzberger is still paying him real American money to take these big, stanky dumps on their op-ed page, the answer is obviously a resounding:

 Not yet.

 

I Am The Liberal Media