And Then One Day You Find, Ten Years Have Got Behind You.

No one told you when to run. 

You missed the starting gun.

Burn The Lifeboats

I Used to Be Your Favorite Drunk

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Good for one more laugh

Then we both ran out of luck

Luck was all we ever had...

Burn The Lifeboats

The Atlantic Lied To You

The 7,000 words of meandering TL;DR Both Siderism that The Atlantic paid David Brooks to write is actually just three David Brooks New York Times, "The Extremes on Both Sides" columns in a trench coat.

Once again Brooks has divided the human universe into "traditionalists" and "progressives", who are both a little bit right and both equally wrong.  Example:

...to contend successfully with the traditionalists’ effects on our politics and culture, we also need to recognize that elements of their worldview are correct. But which parts are correct, and which are completely off the rails?

And, as always, Brooks offers up a Third Way out of the artificial and reductive binary human universe he has invented: a sorta forward-leaning revival of tradition within modernity.

It's really nothing more than that, bloated up to 7,000 words.

Some scientists have theorized that the reason David Brooks has been unwilling to write anything other than variations on "Both Sides Do It" for the last quarter of a century is that he was traumatized by this terrible season three episode of Star Trek TOS at a tender age -- 

-- and that, in order to temporarily exorcise that trauma, he enacts and externalizes it every time he sits down to write.  

Others, who are less charitable, think that Mr. Brooks figured out early on that the American political, academic and corporate elite will never tire of having their favorite cliche Beltway fairy tale endlessly repackaged and repeated back to them.  And that dedicating his professional life to doing that one thing was the key to winning the devotion of those elites, and a a license to print money.

 

Burn The Lifeboats

Professional Left Podcast Episode 986: AmeriKKKan Gothic

"Like they should have stopped Hitler at Munich, they should never let him get away with that, they was just asking for trouble."  --  Peter Clemenza, The Godfather

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Trump The Uniter

I Am The Liberal Media

And on His Headstone Shall Read These, His Final Words: “...But the Democrats”

Whenever you hear Never Trumpers musing about the good old days of the Before Time, it sounds like something between Greek myth and a road company production of Camelot.   Heroes and giants walking the Earth.  Mighty deeds being done by mighty men.  The snow never slushed upon the hillside, and by 9 p.m. the moonlight was required to appear.

And so forth.

And I'm sure that many of them do remember it that way, seeing as they weren't the ones being slandered and demonized every day by the Conservative Media Hate Machine.   They were, in fact, the ones who were profiting handsomely from the Hate Machine.  But as I warned 20 fucking years ago... 

And yet to build this electoral dynamo the Republican Party has had to completely sell out any vestige of principles or soul it once had for dominion over the divided and bitter land it has created. And because of that, there is no “Plan B” if you are a GOP candidate for national office.

Your Party Masters have burned your bridges and salted the Earth behind you, and now there is nothing left for you to do but desperately tunnel deeper into the Hell you have built for yourself.

Which is why John McCain now publicly grovels and kisses the poxy asses of the men who service and steer the Pretty Hate Machine indifferently past the bodies of the dead and dying of NOLA, and gleefully down the blood-tarred, bone-macadamed streets of Iraq. Men who went right after his family -- his wife and children -- and his honorable national service without a second thought when it suited their despicable purposes.

Because the Pretty Hate Machine does not come with a conscience, and it now casts its depraved shadow over their entire Party.

And over the entire nation that Party has seized.

And over the entire world that Party has polluted.

It has become all Means and no Ends but More Power, and as with all power, it comes with a steep price...

Well, the GOP's 2008 candidate for president, John McCain, is gone now.  His daughter married one of the Hate Machine's operating engineers and has disappeared down the MAGA rat hole.  And his 2008 running mate -- Sarah Palin, the Scintilla from Wasilla, MAGA 1.0 -- had her bullshit libel suit thrown out and was a big, big Trump supporter until he went all AI Jebus and now appears to have joined the crowded field of third tier wingnut influencers slow-fast walking to the pier to look for a lifeboat.  

Safe to say, John McCain's political legacy in is ashes.  

But what of the next sterling man of character that was offered up to the general public as a candidate for president?  Their 2012 candidate, Willard "Mittens" Romney?  

You remember him, right?   

He's the guy who was gonna herd the MAGA mob safely back into the corporate/neocon pen.  I wrote a whole thing about it back when it was a thing ("Hokum's Heroes") whence I salvaged these rare curios from that now nearly-forgotten past.

For now at least Mitt Romney has become the leader of the Republican Resistance to Trump.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 2, 2019

Watching David Frum explain how Mitt “is setting up rendezvous with destiny” by being the poltroon he’s always been is peak punditry.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) January 3, 2019

"What Mitt Romney said" was "so profoundly important"

It created "a breaking point from this mind-trap that a lot of Republicans" are in - fmr. RNC Chair @MichaelSteele pic.twitter.com/HM4CmIRFUo

— TheBeat w/Ari Melber (@TheBeatWithAri) January 2, 2019

Yeah, it turned out they were just as wrong about Mittens as they were about everything else, which is why after that last, humiliating display of hilarious political naivete, no one ever heard from David Frum, or Bill Kristol, or Michael Steele ever again :-)

"So why bring him up now?" you ask.

Fair question. 

It's because, speaking of things said and done 20 years ago, this week is the 20th anniversary of then-governor Mitt Romney signing Romneycare into law in Massachusetts, and The Bulwark sent Jonathan Cohn to, well, not "interview" him really.  To just nod and transcribe whatever the Great Man said.

And oh my goodness, does Mittens show himself to be every bit the clueless, obsolete, Republican cipher we lefties knew him to be back when all your favorite Never Trumpers were, well, trumpeting his praises and hailing him as the savior of the Republican party.  

A "savior" who has been assembled out of spare parts salvaged from all their previous failures.  Because in the interview, Romney happily parrots just about every MAGA culture war lie on the checklist --

Romney:  I think today it's the culture stupid. I think, my own view is Democrats have staked out some positions -- or a number of Democrats have -- that don't make a lot of sense to everyday Americans. Defund the police.  It's like are you kidding? You think that's going to sell in cities? Defund the police. Uh biological males competing in girl sports. Like that doesn't make any sense at all. uh open borders, people flooding into the country, people saying, "What in the world are you doing?" Democrats were doing some absolutely, in my opinion, just crazy stuff, right?  And that caused a lot of everyday Americans to say, you know, I used to be a Democrat, but I can't put up with that stuff. And they became they became Republicans. And uh and I mean, I think the Democratic Party is in a world of hurt uh in part because of their posture on so many of these social issues.

-- slathered with a big ol' helping "Both Sides Do It".

Romney:  I think both parties have uh have sown the seeds of defeat uh in part by taking some positions which I think are out of the mainstream.

And: 

Romney:  I think at politics maybe more today even than them which is if it's an idea raised by a Republican Republicans like it. If it's idea raised by a Democrat um Republicans hate it and vice you know vice versa. 

And:

Cohn:  And what about the Republican party? Do you feel like that where they are?

Romney:  I mean do you feel like on immigration on there's a lot of policies where people would say, you know, they are extreme in their own way and does that well we're both parties are creating their own problems. 

Romney:  I think what the president did to secure our border is wisely uh done and very popular. I think some of the ICE uh actions throughout Minnesota and other places is seen by people as being unnecessarily brutal um and is and has hurt the president's popularity. Um, so some things I think the president has done that make a lot of sense that are politically attractive. Other things I think are more harmful. I look, I have a list of things where I agree with President Trump and it's a good long list. Then I have a list of things where I disagree with him, but I understand his logic and  say, you know, he may be right, I may be wrong. I'm not right on everything. 

Scary trans males in women's sports?  Check!  "Open borders"?  Check!  "Defund the police"?  Check.

If you want virtually any shitty MAGA talking point repeated by a bland technocrat loser, Romney's your man.  

Because Romney was never the cure for what ails the Trump Republican Party.  

Instead, Romney was just another respectable, Beltway-approved carrier of the disease that made the rise of Trump possible.   

And he still is. 

I Am The Liberal Media

The Art of the Deal With Sam Spade

For the purposes of this scene, Iran is Spade.

Trump is a much stupider, narcissistic version of Gutman.

The gunsel could be a much more favorable deal for Iran than they ever got from the Obama administration.  

And the Strait of Hormuz is the stuff dreams are made on.  

Yes, the are no characters here proxying for Israel, Russia, China or the Gulf states.  So sue me.  It's a 1941 film noir so the analogy will be imperfect, but simplified it works pretty well.  Trump has the guns, but Iran has the item he wants and they will not give it up without Trump meeting their terms. And, practically speaking, there is no way for Trump to force Iran to give up without making the whole situation catastrophically worse.  

Tell me why I'm wrong in the comments.  

I Am The Liberal Media

Professional Left Podcast Episode 985: 'The Cheaper The Crook...'

"I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble." -- Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon

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