Never Trumpers Are Being Tormented By Their Younger, Crueler Selves

In aid of helping readers make sense of our mad and seemingly-incomprehensible world of mindless, smirking Conservative goons, sniveling Republican cowards and feckless Never Trumpers, I have turned to Ray Bradbury before, and I probably will again.  For example, to explain why Conservatives and Both Siderists both loathe us lefties with such intensity (and why we are all but banned from the mainstream media) you don't need to have mastered public policy because their contempt of us has nothing to do with public policy.  What you need to understand is that they dread us because we are the stewards of the past.  Because we are the ones who insist on remembering all manner of terrible things that their ideologies absolutely demand to be forgotten.

That is what makes us a genuinely existential threat to them.  And no one was ever better at explaining the kind of visceral hatred by the Many Who Want To Forget for the Few Who Dare To Remember than Bradbury:

Ray Bradbury's "The Chicago Abyss" is a tale of an old man who remembers too much. In the rubble of some bombed out urban center, the people physically abuse the old man when he shares his memories of such things as Baby Ruth candy bars, music, restaurants, and television. A small group protects and cares for the old guy, hiding him from the ever-searching police.

Of course, the reason for the loathing and fear of this gentleman was that he held a frame of reference that degraded the present...

And so today or tomorrow your assignment is to find 30 spare minutes to sit and enjoy "Night Call, Collect" while keeping the following in mind.  Like the old man in the story -- stranded alone on a desolate, abandoned Mars -- Never Trumpers are not at war with some external force, but instead are being tortured by an ideological engine which their younger, crueler selves gleefully set in motion decades ago. 

David A. Walsh at Washington Monthly puts this phenomenon into it a larger historical perspective here:

Conservative pundits repackaged Cold War–era attacks equating liberals with communists during the Bush years. In 2003, Ann Coulter, a frequent Fox News talking head, published Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, which was a full-throated defense of Joseph McCarthy that accused liberals of being, well, traitors who hated America. The book sold 500,000 copies in its first three weeks. Even the racially charged birther myth—that Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen, and was a covert Muslim, to boot—was a riff on the old John Birch Society charge that liberals, including moderate Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower, were secret members of the international communist conspiracy. The cry that Obama was a Marxist, Maoist, Muslim Kenyan socialist was almost interchangeable with right-wing attacks directed against the civil rights movement in the 1960s. And the idea that a vast left-liberal conspiracy was both undermining the country and using dirty, underhanded tactics to do so rhetorically justified an anything-goes strategy on the part of the right. Shutting down government. Refusing confirmation votes. Supporting Donald Trump for president.

So-called Never Trump conservatives lament that the Republican Party and, indeed, the conservative movement have ceased to be about ideas beyond slavish devotion to Trump’s cult of personality. But this critique ignores the centrality of the idea of liberal nefariousness even in the self-consciously intellectual corners of the conservative movement. Jonah Goldberg, who has been affiliated with National Review for twenty years, has called for a revived conservative intellectual vigor to tackle the policy challenges of the twenty-first century. He was also the author, in 2008, of the book Liberal Fascism, which—until a last-minute change by Goldberg—bore the subtitle The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton...

And therein lies the real reason why both Conservatives and Both Siderists hate us so hard.

Because Never Trumpers would rather be staked to an anthill -- nekkid and covered in high fructose corn syrup -- than be forced to admit that the Left was right about them all along.  That the rough orange beast which is wrecking the country is nothing more than the toxic legacy of their own cruel and callow ideology -- a monster which they turned loose upon the world and for which they never in a million years thought they would have to foot the bill. 

And Both Siderists would rather be staked to the adjoining anthill rather than be forced to admit that they consciously ignored 30 years of Liberal warnings that this day was coming and enabled the rise of this run-amok Republican beast every step of the way. 

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Return of The Illustrated Manafort

Given the shambolic nonsense that fell out of Sean Spicer's bottomless lie-hole today in response to a very simple question (from CNN) --  

Sean Spicer says Trump campaign chairman actually played 'limited role' in campaign

-- it seemed appropriate to repost this from August of 2016:

The Illustrated Manafort

With great respect for the life and work of Ray Bradbury.

Prologue:

It was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Illustrated Manafort.

Walking along an asphalt road, I was on the final long of a two weeks' walking tour of Wisconsin. Late in the afternoon I stopped, ate some pork, beans, and a doughnut, and was preparing to stretch out and read when the Illustrated Manafort walked over the hill and stood for a moment against the sky.

I didn't know he was Illustrated then. I only know that he was tall, once well muscled, but now, for some reason, going to fat. I recall that his arms were long, and the hands thick, but that his face was like a child's, set upon a massive body.

He seemed only to sense my presence, for he didn't look directly at me when he spoke his first words.

"Do you know where I can find a job?"

"I'm afraid not," I said.

"I hadn't had a job that's lasted in forty years," he said.

Though it was a hot late afternoon, he wore his wool shirt buttoned tight about his neck. His sleeves were rolled and buttoned down over his thick wrists. Perspiration was streaming from his face, yet he made no move to open his shirt.

"Well," he said at last, "this is as good a place as any to spend the night. Do you mind

company?"

"I have some extra food you'd be welcome to," I said.

He sat down heavily, grunting. 'You'll be sorry you asked me to stay," he said. "Everyone always is. That's why I'm walking. Here it is, early. September, the cream of the Labor Day carnival season. I should be making money hand over fist at any small town side show celebration, but here I am with no prospects."

He took off an immense shoe and peered at it closely. "I usually keep a job about ten days. Then something happens and they fire me. By now every carnival in America won't touch me with a ten-foot pole."

"What seems to be the trouble?" I asked...

Chapter One:  The Other Foot  (from The New York Times, March 28, 2016)

Donald Trump Hires Paul Manafort to Lead Delegate Effort 

Donald J. Trump, girding for a long battle over presidential delegates and a potential floor fight at the Cleveland convention, has enlisted the veteran Republican strategist Paul J. Manafort to lead his delegate-corralling efforts, according to people briefed on Mr. Trump’s plans. 

Mr. Trump confirmed the hire in a brief telephone interview. “Yes,” he said, “it is true.”

Mr. Manafort, 66, is among the few political hands in either party with direct experience managing nomination fights: As a young Republican operative, he helped manage the 1976 convention floor for Gerald Ford in his showdown with Ronald Reagan, the last time Republicans entered a convention with no candidate having clinched the nomination.

He performed a similar function for Mr. Reagan in 1980, and played leading roles in the 1988 and 1996 conventions, for George Bush and Bob Dole.

Mr. Manafort has drawn attention in recent years chiefly for his work as an international political consultant, most notably as a senior adviser to former President Viktor F. Yanukovych of Ukraine, who was driven from power in 2014...

Chapter Two:  The Exiles (from Bloomberg Politics, May 19, 2016)

Trump Promotes Manafort to Campaign Chairman

The veteran campaign strategist will now be in charge of nearly every facet of the campaign.

Power over the management of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is shifting to Paul Manafort.

Manafort was hired for his experience with contested Republican conventions, but now that that threat has passed, Trump is naming the 67-year-old strategist as the campaign chairman, aides told Bloomberg Politics.

Corey Lewandowski, 42, will continue to be campaign manager, Hope Hicks, the campaign's spokesperson, said. But Manafort, whose title also currently includes chief strategist, is now in charge of every facet of the campaign...

Chapter Three:  The Long Rain  (from USA Today, June 20, 2016)

Trump fires Corey Lewandowski as campaign manager

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump fired Corey Lewandowski as campaign manager on Monday, seeking to re-calibrate his organization after a stream of criticism about the divisive political operative who directed his presidential bid since its launch a year ago.

After a number of advisers — including his children — had raised questions with Trump about Lewandowski's aggressive style, the campaign issued a short statement early Monday saying only that he "will no longer be working with the campaign."

...

"Firing your campaign manager in June is never a good sign," said Republican political consultant Kevin Madden after the announcement.

The former campaign manager clashed with many colleagues, according to two people briefed on the dismissal who were not authorized to speak publicly, including senior adviser Paul Manafort and the candidate's children, who supported the leadership change...

Chapter Four:  Marionettes, Inc.  (from the Washington Post, August 18, 2016)

These Trump surrogates are working as hard as they can to deny a campaign shake-up 

...

Trump's decline in polls in the wake of the two political conventions held last month began to cause panic among Republicans, and Trump himself reportedly began to tell friends privately that he blamed micromanagement by advisers and a change in strategy away from his shoot-from-the-hip style toward scripted, "teleprompter Trump" for his recent numbers.

It's not a huge stretch, then, to say that this week's shake-up of top Trump advisers was an attempt at a reset, at a minimum. But the campaign tried its hardest to smother that narrative, sending its small army of television surrogates to attempt to change the narrative. In the video above, several of Trump's top surrogates can be seen trying to deflect the argument that the campaign shake-up wasn't a … campaign shake-up.

Chapter Five: The Illustrated Manafort (from The New York Times, August 19, 2016):

Paul Manafort Quits Donald Trump’s Campaign After Tumultuous Run

Paul Manafort, installed to run Donald J. Trump’s campaign after the firing of his original campaign manager, handed in his resignation on Friday morning.

Mr. Manafort left nearly a week after a New York Times report about tumult within the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign helped precipitate a leadership shake-up. His departure reflects repeated efforts to steady a campaign that has been frequently roiled by the behavior of its tempestuous first-time candidate.

Mr. Manafort was also dogged by reports about secretive efforts he made to help the former pro-Russian government in Ukraine, where he has worked on and off over several years. He had also become viewed with trepidation by Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and a major force within the campaign, amid a number of false starts since the Republican National Convention, according to three people briefed on the matter...

Epilogue:

It was  almost midnight. The moon was high in the sky now. The Illustrated Manafort lay motionless. I had seen what there was to see. The stories were told; they were over and done.

There remained only that empty space upon the Illustrated Manafort’s back, that area of jumbled colors and shapes.

Now, as I watched, the vague patch began to assemble itself, in slow dissolvings from one shape to another and still another. And at last a face formed itself there, a face that gazed out at me from the colored flesh, a face with a familiar nose and mouth, familiar eyes.

It was very hazy. I saw only enough of the Illustration to make me leap up. I stood therein the moonlight, afraid that the wind or the stars might move and wake the monstrous gallery at my feet. But he slept on, quietly.

The picture on his back showed the Illustrated Manafort himself, with his fingers about my neck, choking me to death. I didn’t wait for it to become clear and sharp and a definite picture.

I ran down the road in the moonlight. I didn’t look back. A small town lay ahead, dark and asleep. I knew that, long before morning, I would reach the town...

Run all you want, Donald.

Run all day and all night.

You'll never make it.

There is nothing waiting for you at the end of the line but the brutal judgement of history which will mark you down forever in as the biggest liar, fraud, buffoon and loser ever nominated for President by a major American political party.

Walking While Bradbury

In Los Angeles, in 1949, Ray Bradbury and a friend were hassled by the police for walking down Wilshire Boulevard.

Hassled, as Ray put it, for "...putting one foot in front of the other."

Being Ray Bradbury he later transmuted that experience into this story, which seems especially appropriate tonight.

The Pedestrian

To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o'clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do. He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down long moonlit avenues of sidewalk in four directions, deciding which way to go, but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of A.D. 2053, or as good as alone, and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.

Sometimes he would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house. And on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind

the windows. Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomblike building was still open.

Mr. Leonard Mead would pause, cock his head, listen, look, and march on, his feet making no noise on the lumpy walk. For long ago he had wisely changed to sneakers when strolling at night, because the dogs in intermittent squads would parallel his journey with barkings if he wore hard heels, and lights might click on and faces appear and an entire street be startled by the passing of a lone figure, himself, in the early November evening.

On this particular evening he began his journey in a westerly direction, toward the hidden sea. There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow. He listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction, and whistled a cold quiet whistle between his teeth, occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.

"Hello, in there," he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. "What's up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?"

The street was silent and long and empty, with only his shadow moving like the shadow of a hawk in midcountry. If he closed his eyes and stood very still, frozen, he could imagine himself upon the center of a plain, a wintry, windless Arizona desert with no house in a thousand miles, and only dry river beds, the streets, for company.

"What is it now?" he asked the houses,noticing his wrist watch. "Eight-thirty P.M.? Time for a dozen assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?"

Was that a murmur of laughter from within a moon-white house? He hesitated, but went on when

nothing more happened. He stumbled over a particularly uneven section of sidewalk. The cement

was vanishing under flowers and grass. In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time.

He came to a cloverleaf intersection which stood silent where two main highways crossed the town. During the day it was a thunderous surge of cars, the gas stations open, a great insect rustling and a ceaseless jockeying for position as the scarab beetles, a faint incense puttering from their exhausts, skimmed homeward to the far directions. But now these highways, too, were like streams in a dry

season, all stone and bed and moon radiance.

He turned back on a side street, circling around toward his home. He was within a block of his destination when the lone car turned a corner quite suddenly and flashed a fierce white cone of light upon him. He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn toward it.

A metallic voice called to him: "Stand still. Stay where you are! Don't

move!"

He halted.

"Put up your hands!"

"But-" he said.

"Your hands up! Or we'll Shoot!"

The police, of course, but what a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car left, wasn't that correct? Ever since a year ago, 2052, the election year, the force had been cut down from three cars to one. Crime was ebbing; there was no need now for the police, save for

this one lone car wandering and wandering the empty

streets.

"Your name?" said the police car in a metallic whisper. He couldn't see the men in it for the

bright light in his eyes.

"Leonard Mead," he said.

"Speak up!"

"Leonard Mead!"

"Business or profession?"

"I guess you'd call me a writer."

"No profession," said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a

museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.

"You might say that, " said Mr. Mead. He hadn't written in years. Magazines and books didn't sell any more. Everything went on in the tomblike houses at night now, he thought, continuing his fancy. The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them.

"No profession," said the phonograph voice,hissing. "What are you doing out?"

"Walking," said Leonard Mead.

"Walking!"

"Just walking," he said simply, but his face felt cold.

"Walking, just walking, walking?"

"Yes, sir."

"Walking where? For what?"

"Walking for air. Walking to see."

"Your address!"

"Eleven South Saint James Street."

"And there is air in your house, you have an air conditioner, Mr. Mead?"

"Yes."

"And you have a viewing screen in your house to see with?"

"No."

"No?" There was a crackling quiet that in itself was an accusation.

"Are you married, Mr. Mead?"

"No."

"Not married," said the police voice behind the fiery beam, The moon was high and clear among

the stars and the houses were gray and silent.

"Nobody wanted me," said Leonard Mead with a smile.

"Don't speak unless you're spoken to!"

Leonard Mead waited in the cold night.

"Just walking, Mr. Mead?"

"Yes."

"But you haven't explained for what purpose."

"I explained; for air, and to see, and just to walk."

"Have you done this often?"

"Every night for years."

The police car sat in the center of the street with its radio throat faintly humming.

"Well, Mr. Mead," it said.

"Is that all?" he asked politely.

"Yes," said the voice. "Here." There was a sigh, a pop. The back door of the police car sprang

wide. "Get in."

"Wait a minute, I haven't done anything!"

"Get in."

"I protest!"

"Mr. Mead."

He walked like a man suddenly drunk. As he passed the front window of the car he looked in. As

he had expected, there was no one in the front seat, no one in the car at all.

"Get in."

He put his hand to the door and peered into the back seat, which was a little cell, a little black jail with bars. It smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft there.

"Now if you had a wife to give you an alibi," said the iron voice. "But-"

"Where are you taking me?"

The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was dropping card by punch-slotted card under electric eyes. 

"To the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies."

He got in. The door shut with a soft thud.

The police car rolled through the night avenues, flashing its dim lights ahead.

They passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all of its electric lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness.

"That's my house," said Leonard Mead.

No one answered him.

The car moved down the empty river-bed streets and off away, leaving the empty streets with the empty side-walks, and no sound and no motion all the rest of the chill November night.

In 2014 America, there is no more dangerously Regressive Tendency than being black and male around some punk asshole with a gun and an out-sized sense of gladiatorial entitlement.

A Sound of Blunder

It seems someone told Senator Penny-Ante McCarthy that there was once an author named Ray Bradbury.

After which hilarity ensued.

...

Even Tuesday, Reid continued to his campaign against the Kochs. "They have all these phantom organizations," Reid said. "They must have 15 different phony organizations that they use to pump money into the system."

McConnell said he had little patience for the political stagecraft taking place.

"Everyone on this panel knows this proposal will never pass Congress," McConnell said. "This is a political exercise to stir up one party's political base so they'll show up in November by complaining loudly about certain Americans exercising their free speech and associational rights."

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, predicted the Democrats' amendment would allow critics to use the Constitution to ban books and films, and likened the move to repealing the First Amendment, which guarantees free speech.

"Ray Bradbury would be astonished because we are seeing 'Fahrenheit 451' Democrats today," Cruz said, invoking the novel about book burning.

...

Actually, Cruz is invoking the right author, but the wrong story.

See, over in An Adjacent Universe -- where they have created a commercially viable form of time travel -- for the right price, Time Safari, Inc. makes money taking rich, bloodthirsty assholes on a shooting parties to previous eras where they can kill a variety of apex predators to which modern humans no longer have access.

TIME SAFARI, INC.

SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST.

YOU NAME THE ANIMAL.

WE TAKE YOU THERE.

YOU SHOOT IT.

Beyond proper identification and payment in advance, Time Safari, Inc. has one immutable rule: Once you arrive at your destination, stay on the path they've laid out for you. You walk along a slip of anti-gravity metal, touching nothing, and only killing the animal they have selected for you -- an animal which they know in advance was destined to die anyway, minutes later.

Sadly one day, one rich, bloodthirsty asshole freaks out, steps off the path and accidentally crushes a butterfly. 

And when the hunting party returns, they find a new reality where things are so fucked up that a buffoon like Ted Cruz is an actual Senator elected from an actual American state.

On Time, On Budget

Operating 3,000% beyond design specification.

And run by the Evil Gummint.

From "Universe Today":

NASA Robot arrives at ‘New’ Landing Site holding Clues to Ancient Water Flow on Mars

by Ken Kremer on September 3, 2011


Opportunity has begun a whole new mission at Endeavour Crater promising a boatload of new science discoveries.

Scientists directing NASA’s Mars Opportunity rover gushed with excitement as they announced that the aging robot has discovered a rock with a composition unlike anything previously explored on the Red Planet’s surface – since she landed on the exotic Martian plains 7.5 years ago – and which offers indications that liquid water might have percolated or flowed at this spot billions of years ago.

Barely three weeks ago Opportunity arrived at the rim of the gigantic 14 mile ( 22 km) wide crater named Endeavour after an epic multi-year trek, and for the team its literally been like a 2nd landing on Mars – and the equivalent of the birth of a whole new mission of exploration at an entirely ‘new’ landing site.

“This is like having a brand new landing site for our veteran rover,” said Dave Lavery, program executive for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It is a remarkable bonus that comes from being able to rove on Mars with well-built hardware that lasts.”
...

This is what Hope actually looks like: a small helpmate to mankind made by our species with love and exquisite precision, slowing ambling across the surface of an ancient world, enduring so far beyond anyone's wildest dreams as to border on miraculous, and sending back dispatches from the Final Frontier in silent streams of 1s and 0s.

Remind me again how tax cuts and Creationism were responsible for landing this tireless emissary of the human race on Mars?

The Case for Digital Cremation

At least the comment sections.

Consider the case of legendary blogger Jon Swift (Al Weisel) who passed away in March of last year.

His lacerating, Badlands-dry wit is sorely missed by the entire Left blogosphere. What salts that wound unnecessarily is the fact that he died digitally intestate (so to speak) with his comment section open, and as time has passed and the "we'll miss you" comments tapered off, the place began filling up with this...

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And buried in the middle of it, this:

12/10/2010 12:58 AM

tigtog said...
I absolutely HATE seeing all these spam comments left as updates here on this post. Isn't there any way for somebody to look through his computer and find out his login details? Or any way for the family to contact Google and have the blog assigned to one of them so that they can enable moderation and delete all the spam?

It's heartbreaking to see Jon's legacy come to this.

This slow, silent accretion of small desecrations by mindless, life-mimicking devices is a genuinely new and sad thing: an army of automatons quietly overrunning some of the sites of our departed like something out of a Ray Bradbury short story.

I wrote about it here in 2005 --

The side-effects of a digital world

...
And I would drop by once in a great while and read the new posts. The sexual particulars were very much not my cuppa joe, but the writing was always good…until it veered sharply into despair. And then writing about life being painful and not worth the trouble appeared.

Then a rally.

And then the site “went dark”, and there have been no new posts since.

Ok, perhaps they just got bored or busy. Perhaps they changed their lives. Perhaps to move on they had to shed old haunts and habits like a skin. But I really don’t think so.

Now I wouldn’t have known this person had we passed on the street, and it’s highly unlikely we ever would have crossed paths in the analog world, but I came to admire their voice and while I have no way of knowing what actually happened (no email option on the site) my imagination can’t help but run out ahead of the facts and what I think probably happened saddened me.

However what makes it more than just another poignant story to me is the last time I checked, this dead site was not completely inert.

Spambots in their mindless, relentlessly insectile way were slowly filling it up with fake-cheerful salutations. Mechanically excreting ads and a sliver of text about “Really liking your blog” and then scuttling on.

For reasons I can’t quite explain I find that particular image thoroughly unnerving, and I am quite aware that the very same technology that's been a boon to my family made this scenario possible and delivered it into my head.

What a strange world it has become.

-- and it still unnerves me.

Of Robert E. Lee, Stephen Vincent Benét once wrote that "The heart, he kept locked away/ from all the picklocks of biographers.”

Now, in the age of Facebook, "the heart" is so routinely served up to biographers, celebrity teevee, tabloid rags and the wide, indifferent world on a bed of rice with a complimentary bottle of Dom that the very idea of privacy is starting to be treated as a mild perversion.

Now it appears that, down here in the grubby, transient, below-decks of the blogosphere, whatever legacy we may leave behind is much more in danger from the silverfish of spam.

Professional Left Podcast #65

"Don't cry," said the old man. "We won't be hungry forever. We'll rebuild the cities. Listen, I didn't mean for you to cry, only to think."

— Ray Bradbury, "To The Chicago Abyss"

Related Links:

1. "To The Chicago Abyss" by Ray Bradbury.

2. My eulogy of David Broder.

3. Rare, recently-discovered color photographs of the great San Francisco earthquake.

4. The Moral Underground: How Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy.

Outside of a dog, a Professional Left button is man's best friend.


Inside of a dog it's too dark to read (sorry, Groucho .)

You know you want it, so why not toddle on down to Blue Gal's Cafepress Store (and keep listening later in the year for an opportunity to win one). Also too, the Podcast Donate Button Button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast. Thanks for your listenership and support!

Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic at the ProLeft website and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget, our archives are available for free with no downloads at Professional Left.

Call and Response

at the Church of the Robot Pimps* ** -- UPDATED 8/20 ***

So, one of Andrew Breitbart's local hatchlings wrote about Ray Bradbury.

Oh boy!

It was a small thing, really. Internet ephemera that will come and go. But it caught my attention because it was such a tiny, mingy gem of professional wingnut Goebbelspeak -- such a nearly-flawless example of the absolutely mechanical compulsion that drives Conservatives to pluck literally any issue out of thin air and then mangle it beyond recognition it in order to bash Liberals -- that I thought it would be worth taking apart to show how all the scummy little moving part work.

Were you to simply read Warner Todd Huston's article in any of the dozens and dozens of Conservative disease vector media outlets which happily pick up and pass along such poison, here is what you would find.

Let's start with the headline:

"Sci Fi Giant Ray Bradbury Slams Obama’s Era of Big Government"

And what does the author impute his headline to mean?

"You see, Bradbury did not say he’s against “government.” ... It is possible to be against welfare spending, the so-called stimulus, and Obama’s ever growing tendrils of Big Brotherism without thinking that government shouldn’t help fund a space program. Further, Bradbury did not state that only government can get us back to the moon, either."

So, according to our local Breitbart-knockoff, Obama is the sinister author of a Big Brother Government, and it is against Obama's Insidious Liberal Triumvirate of "welfare spending, the so-called stimulus" and "Big Brotherism" which the nearly-90-year-old science fiction Grand Master was inveighing.

So, is any of that actually true?

Nah.

How do I know?

Because it says so in the very first sentence of the LA Times blog/article to which our local Breitbartlette was referring:

"Ray Bradbury is mad at President Obama, but it's not about the economy, the war or the plan to a construct a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City."

So what specifically is it that Ray Bradbury is pissed at the President about?

Conveniently, the article makes that clear in the second paragraph:

“He should be announcing that we should go back to the moon,” says the iconic author, whose 90th birthday on Aug. 22 will be marked in Los Angeles with more than week's worth of Bradbury film and TV screenings, tributes and other events. “We should never have left there. We should go to the moon and prepare a base to fire a rocket off to Mars and then go to Mars and colonize Mars. Then when we do that, we will live forever."

Well, shit, I'm pissed about it too. Yes, this filthy, America-hating Liberal of the First Water could (and has) done thousands of word on both the pragmatic, dollar-and-cent value of sending human beings to space, as well as how vital it is to the human soul to have crazy, awe-inspiring, long-term goals to shoot for.

Hell, the space program's educational and technological spin-offs alone are enough to justify tripling our investment.

So what does any of that have to do with ""welfare spending" or "the so-called stimulus" or "Big Brotherism"?

Nothing, of course. Nothing whatsoever. Just another steaming bit of offal dropping off the assembly line at the Breitbart Conservative Lie Factory:



Now as to Mr. Bradbury's general complaint that "There is too much government today" based on what he actually said, there is no real way to suss out exactly what he might have been referring to.

Bimetalism?

Rural mosquito abatement?

Cops, such as the one who busted him for daring to go pedestrian in LA in 1951?

In an interview, Bradbury revealed that the inspiration for this novel came when he was walking down Wilshire Blvd. with a friend and a police cruiser pulled up asked what they were doing. Bradbury answered "Well, we're putting one foot in front of the other." The policeman didn't appreciate Ray's humor and he became suspicious of Bradbury and his friend for walking in an area where there were no pedestrians. After some arguing the policeman told them to go home and to not walk any more. Bradbury said "Yes, sir, I'll never walk again."

The subtle Masonic villainy of "The Food Pyramid"?

Fuck if I know, but I don't believe it would be a huge stretch to imagine that the author of the intermittently-banned "Fahrenheit 451" and drum major for public libraries would be extremely concerned about things like the USA Patriot Act, secret prisons, rendition, torture, illegal wiretapping and the jackboot of the federal gummint on the throat of American librarians.

In other words, all of those grotesquely totalitarian legacies of the Cheney Administration towards which the Right was so giddily, volubly and unforgivably hospitable...and against which the Dirty Fucking Hippies raged virtually alone and in vain. (Hey, Tea Baggers: Where were your fucking rallies then?)

And against which we still rage, still virtually alone.

Ah but we must remind ourselves that we are no longer in the Real World, but deep inside the fetid bell jar of the Breitbart Universe, where every stale, 30-year-old Bircher beer fart has already been lustily re-breathed and re-farted a million times, and inconvenient facts and history that completely invert your bullshit theses can all be just...wished... wished... wished... awaaaaay.

And because we are spelunking through Breitbartian dreck, we must also remember that the attack is only half over.

That having invented an imaginary Conservative superstructure beneath a few passing remarks by Ray Bradbury, to go the "Full Breitbart" Mr. Huston must now proceed to invent an equally imaginary Crazy Left horde who apparently militate tirelessly against poor ol' Ray and against which Mr. Huston can then vent his bottomless spleen.

Here are Mr. Huston's own words, with emphasis added here and there as the mood suited me:

"Naturally the misinformed, and those unable to think clearly—by that I mean liberals—think that Bradbury is an old coot that is off his rocker."

What Liberals, Mr. Huston? Where?

"How can he say we should be going back to the moon but still be against “big government,“ they fume. "

"They"? Again, who the fuck are "they" and from which corner of your cardboard box basement anti-Liberal fort Panic Room are "they" whispering all of this to you?

Oh Jesus. Tell me you didn't assemble your entire Big Liberal Broadside Hissy Fit out a few, unattributed, anonymous sentences from the comment section of some random fucking blog post.

"This is a simpleton’s point, the sort of idiotic, childish taking point that one would expect from halfwits like Keith Olbermann or Media Matters."

I did a complete search of Media Matters.

Ray Bradbury's name has never been mentioned.


Then I did a Google Search of "Keith Olbermann" and "Ray Bradbury" and outside of Mr. Huston's own feculent bit of fake journalism ricocheting through the delicate digital minarets and wide, stony canals of Teh Internets

there is no indication whatsoever that Keith Olbermann has ever mentioned Mr. Bradbury.

Which is a shame as more people should read him.

Then again, in the Age of Limbaugh it has become almost a matter of Pig People etiquette to gratuitously slam an Olbermann or a Media Matters every time they take a dump. Exactly like, say, a "good German" in the 1930s reflexively cursing Jews for his every ache and sniffle.

Haters...Signify!

Mr. Huston continues:

"I am sorry for all those simpleminded lefties out there upset at Bradbury..."

OK, at this point there ceases to be any psychological distance between what Mr. Huston is saying in his article and the rantings of some withdrawal-stricken junkie thrashing around the floor of a CTA bus and raving about the imaginary devil-rats in his pants that are biting his naughty bits and screaming terrible things in his ears.

Except, of course, that the paranoid keening of random junkies is not useful grist for a well-funded Right Wing Hate Machine which must be fed 24/7/365.

"I am sorry that they are not sophisticated enough to understand that the warnings of this aged elder statesman of the literary world are worth considering."

What do you mean you can't hear the devil-rats!?

They're all around us!

And they fucking hate Ray Bradbury!

"The unthinking lefties chastising Bradbury also focused on the seeming incongruity of a celebrated science fiction author being against the permeation of machines in our lives. How could he be against fantastic machines and be a sci fi writer they burble.

"Clearly these people have never once read a Bradbury book."

First, this here Liberal got his first Bradbury book pressed into his hands by a kindly 5th grade teacher 1,000 years ago and never stopping reading and loving the man's work.

Second, there is a big, tasty helping of konservative kultural kizmet coming up, so hang in there.

"And I leave you unthinking lefties with Bradbury’s line above..."

Yeah, pal, we get it. You really, really, really don't like those dirty kikes Liberals and their international Jewish conspiracy Commie President who are secretly behind every bad thing that happens.

Message received.

So I looked across Teh Internets for these awful Liberals.

High and low I looked.

Left and right I looked.

Through Wordpress and Blogger and Drupal I looked.

And you know what?

Outside of a few, unattributed, anonymous sentences in a comment section, the only actual post or article I could locate anywhere implying in any way that Uncle Ray had perhaps gone irretrievably Koo-Foo-for-Cocoa-Puffs did not come from some frothing, nonexistent anti-Bradbury Liberal vanguard...

...but was instead to be found nesting quite comfortably smack in the anthracite heart of the Randite Right.

From Nick Gillespie at "Reason" magazine:

Ray Bradbury Hysterical Theater: We Got Too Much Gummint, Too Many Internets, But Not Enough Moon Colonies! UPDATED AUGUST 17!

Nick Gillespie | August 16, 2010

The inspiration for one of the worst movies of all time (Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451) and a pretty good one (Disney's Something Wicked This Way Comes), and a bunch of better and worse books, has gotten into the Grandpa Simpson zone of Larry King-esque observational complaints. Here's author Ray Bradbury in hypoglycemic overload:

...

Thanks, Ray, for making your work more difficult to access, you Luddite old fart.
...

Nick Gillespie, whose publication describes hims as "...[a] libertarian and doctor of literature, who...is injecting [Reason magazine] with a pop-culture sensibility."


Nick Gillespie, who, as it turns out, also happens to be one of Mr. Huston's fellow contributors to Andrew Breitbart's Big Government Miscreant site.

Which -- according the Commutative Law of Wingnut Guilt-by-Tangential-Association -- means that, in addition to being an elite member of the hardcore Randite Right...

...Nick Gillespie is also somehow a Dirty little Muslim Commie.

There will now be a short pause while the entire Universe laughs at Mr. Huston behind his back.


Seriously, outside of Mr. Gillespie's stiff-arm, I can find no record of any liberals out there anywhere who are upset by something that one of the last Grand Masters of science fiction (or speculative fiction, or magical realism, or whatever you want to call what Uncle Ray does) had to say in some LA Times article. Truth is, almost nobody noticed -- or really cared -- what Ray had to say about "too much government" until one of Brietbart's ideological rentboys decided to use the old gentleman's shouty opinions to mule in another assload of the Right's depraved ideological cancer.

And as much as reading this tripe ticked me momentarily off, I could not help but also be deeply amused by the irony of the words of Ray Bradbury being hijacked by a typist who (like virtually everyone still hunkered down inside the Conservative nattering classes) has devolved into some kind of mindless automaton.

A device which -- regardless of circumstances in the Real World -- endlessly, iteratively regurgitates its pre-programmed talking points...

...in a synthesized human voice...

...to a dark, crumbling auditorium devoid of anything but other mindless automata...

...who, in turn, rotely regurgitate back their squeaking, chittering approval.

Frozen inside an endless, fog-bound midnight, it is forever Call and Response time at the Church of the Robot Pimps.**

A dismal, nightmarish and ultimately terribly sad existence.

Almost like something out of a Bradbury story.

* Original Photo from here.

** (h/t "The Paper Chase")


*** Commenter Twinky P* correctly points out that Rumproast and Whiskey Fire each did posts taking exception to Uncle Ray's comments. They did "spank his butt" a bit -- mostly focused on Bradbury's apparently cranky tone -- but strangely no one rose to defend (or even mention) the Kenyan Usurper's Insidious Liberal Triumvirate of "welfare spending, the so-called stimulus" and "Big Brotherism". Also no fatwahs were declared.