Hot Lesbian Never Trumper Action Here!

File under: "History is Not Your Mommy".

A few days ago I noticed that all three of these Clinton-era three hobgoblins were top trending on Twitter and I had to double-check to make sure it wasn't 1995.

Nope. Still 2020.  Damn.

So put a pin in that and lets jump back in time a little more than 26 centuries to talk for a minute about history's most famous lesbian -- Sappho of Lesbos -- who was, during her time, one of the most popular and prolific lyric poets in ancient Greece.  Statues were erected in her honor.  Solon and Plato gave stirring speeches to her genius. She was considered Homer's equal, and frequently referred to simply as "The Poetess", just as Homer was "The Poet".

And yet today almost nothing is known of her life and of the 10,000 lines of her poetry -- which was widely read in antiquity -- only a few fragments survive.

Today, with a few clicks of the mouse from anywhere on the planet I could have a dozen different translations of Homer's  Iliad and Odyssey shipped to my home, so how exactly did Sappho's work suddenly all but vanish from history during 9th century?

One story holds that her collected works were put to the torch by leaders of the Catholic Church because they disapproved of her morals.  A more likely and less dramatic (but no less devastating) explanation is that copying manuscripts was hard work that used up a lot of papyrus, and the celibate, male, Catholic monks who were charged with preserving the written works on antiquity decided that the brilliant work of a long-dead lesbian poetess was not worth recording and passing along to future generations.

Because history is not a law of nature.

History is not physics. History is not plumbing.

And history is definitely not your Mommy.

History is not here to break up your stupid fights or clean up your messes.  It's not history's job to comfort you with promises of retroactively balancing the scales of justice decades from now.  History is not here to tell you that you're wonderful when the world knows you're not.  History is not here to comfort you with fairy tales about how, in the larger scheme of things, all the shit you did really wasn't so bad when the world knows it was.

Pick whichever quote you like --

"History is a set of lies agreed upon." -- Napoleon Bonaparte.

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." -- Winston Churchill.

"They got a name for the winners in the world.  I want a name when I lose." -- Steely Dan.

-- but it all comes down to the same thing.  "History" is what gets passed along.  "History" is whatever those with the power to interpret events and stamp their interpretation as "Official" chose it to be.  "History" is a brutal, never-ending barroom brawl over who gets to decide what really happened and why it really happened.

And right now the American political media is doing what they have always done in the face of existential threats to our democracy which they helped to create: expending enormous institutional energies to make sure that history lets them and their friends and fellow travelers off the hook.

Consider this chummy tribunal of well-paid, media insiders warning that naughty people may be laughing now, but the Righteous Judgement of History will definitely come for them and boy howdy are they gonna be sorry!

Rush transcript, with emphasis added:

MIKE BARNACLE:  Everything we're talking about, Parnas, Pompeo, Pence, Trump, all of this is being recorded by an element among us called history. In terms of history, the snap of a finger. The behavior of the Republicans in the united states senator in 1974, it's literally a first.

So my question to you, and to you, too, Rick, is what has happened to the institution, not just the Republicans, but specifically now in the Senate Republicans, what has happened to our institutions is Trump slowly altering things, maybe forever in this country?

RICK WILSON:  I wouldn't say slowly.

[OFF CAMERA] Hope not.

RICK WILSON:  Barnacle, I would say he's altered them profoundly and swiftly. The idea of standing up for your state or your district for a Republican particularly is gone. You're judged only if you're loyal to Trump or not. That's the only scoring system in the Republican party. And he has reduced Washington to this corrupt and sort of corrupted environment. Sort of corrupted environment.

KURT BARDELLA:  I think about being not just history like 1974, but their own history. I remember when he was investigating Benghazi. He put out a report saying security is a priority and the administration failed, that's why we're doing the investigation, that's why we are investigating Hillary Clinton. Where is that Mike Pompeo now when someone's security, an ambassador's, has been compromised? Where is Jim Jordan who was on that committee? All these Republicans turned away from their own history, it wasn't that long ago. It was six years ago they were doing this.

SCARBOROUGH:  As a "Morning Joe" contributor, give our viewers a firsthand look back to what it was like when it was Republicans that were investigating Barack Obama. The hypocrisy is staggering.

BARDELLA:  It is so different. I was thinking about the interview last night with Parnas. If something like that was going on when we were in charge of Congress, we would have had a subpoena out that night, wouldn't have waited until the next day. During that interview you would have breaking news, House Republican Darrell Issa subpoenas for testimony. When anything happened that hinted of potential scandal or impropriety with Obama, Republicans were the first to issue subpoenas, have hearings, do closed-door depositions, things they rail about now, they were a big fan of closed-door depositions when they were the majority, it is complete hypocrisy, seeing a different standard. Frankly, we never had close to the volume of evidence that we have now when we were going after them.

When I look at this clutch of media insiders, I spy with my little eye ... one longtime aide to Darrel Issa and former member of the Breitbart goon squad ... one human husk and plagiarist who is now in charge of refilling the Morning Joe Both Sides Do It water cooler every day (or, it is rumored, he is whipped through the streets by Mika Brzezinski) ... one straight-up, life-long Republican ratfucker who found that credulous Liberals would give him more wealth and fame and influence than he ever dreamed possible if he called Donald Trump a shithead ... and two hosts who boost Donald Trump's campaign ointo orbit by giving him million of dollars in free publicity and soft-soap "interviews" on their teevee show.

And all of them have clearly escaped the the Righteous Judgement of History by a very wide margin.

Or consider the case of George Conway, who made his bones as a pro-cancer lawyer working for Big Tobacco and as one of the Republican goons who tried to blow up the Clinton presidency by any means necessary.  Husband to Kellyanne Conway.  Running buddies with Anne Coulter.  And here he is now, cozy in his media sinecure, issuing dire warnings about how Righteous Judgement of History will surely come for naughty people in, oh, five or ten years...

"Republican senators need to look themselves in the mirror," @gtconway3d says, "and think of what it's going to be like 5 years from now, 10 years, what their legacies are going to be. This evidence is going to keep coming out. Truth has a way of coming out..." pic.twitter.com/V5yiPZWNLb

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 22, 2020

Or consider the case of a sweaty, bipedal  rodent named Reince Priebus who, if the Righteous Judgement of History were actually a thing, would be spending the rest of his miserable life going door-to-door begging the forgiveness of the American people.  But instead:

CBS hires Reince Priebus, whose firms work for the GOP, the Trump Organization, and lobbying clients

Reince Priebus is a Republican operative who is best-known for his humiliating tenure as President Donald Trump’s first White House chief of staff. Priebus now holds senior roles at affiliated lobbying and legal firms; his law firm is connected to the Trump Organization and has collected over $280,000 in fees from GOP campaign groups such as the Republican National Committee.

Despite all that, CBS News announced on January 22 that the network has hired Priebus as a political analyst. He appeared on its coverage of the Senate impeachment trial, where he was the only political operative guest and his conflicts of interest went undisclosed...

Or consider that Ken Starr still walks the Earth and is solicited for his opinions.

Or consider all the time and money David Gregory and NBC spent making sure that Newt Gingrich's career was completely fenced off from the Righteous Judgement of History and his reputation was immediately rehabilitated every time he said or did something which should have gotten him run out of civilized society on a rail.

Or hell, just consider all the Bush Regime scutwork myrmidons -- creatures like David Frum, David Brooks, Michael Gerson, Bill Fucking Kristol, Peggy Noonan, Joe Scarborough, Marc Thiessen, Bretbug Stephens and Hugh Hewitt  (and yes, I know the complete list is much longer) -- who walked away from the bloody and monstrous catastrophes they helped to author with nary a paper cut from the Righteous Judgement of History.  Who, in fact, walked straight into promotions and tenured positions in the Beltway media where no one would dare to be rude enough to bring up their horrifically inconvenient past.

Appeals to the Judgement of History to balance the scales of justice at some point in the future are like appeals to an Almighty God to send bad people to hell.  At best, they provide comfort to the powerless and oppressed.  But at worst, they are the alibis of cowards who want to outsource the hard work of fixing shit here-and-now -- of holding monsters accountable here-and-now -- to imaginary people far in the future (who will apparently be very much better and wiser than we are), or to an all-powerful deity in the hereafter.

As for me, whenever I catch the antics of Bush Regime dead-enders yucking it up on cable teevee, or being paid to pass off their shopworn drivel as profundity in America's major newspapers, I wonder how anyone can continue to believe that eventually the Righteous Judgement of History will catch up with Conservative assholes.

Because as long as the Beltway media puts the full might of its "Strategic Forgettery" machinery behind helping these ghouls and grifters walk away from their crimes against journalism and democracy unscathed over and over again, the  Righteous Judgement of History might as well give up and go pick blueberries for a living.

History Is Bunk!

Great Moments in Magic Ruralism

Magic Ruralism (™) noun: a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of political fantasy.

As I have mentioned before, the Beltway media's hot new genre is something I call Magic Ruralism.

...just as Thrilling Detective and Detective Fiction Weekly were in the business of cranking out hard-boiled crime genre fiction for the titillation of their readers, so have The New York Times and the Washington Post gone into the business of cranking out True Tales Of Rust-Belt Trump Murricans! for the titillation of their readers.

And I wasn't kidding.  As someone who could once tell you what the submission policies and pay scale were for every science fiction market from Playboy and Omni (serious money) to the Windycon writer's contest (a gold coin and approbation) I can tell you that in all the animal kingdom there is no species that seeks out sustenance and communicates its location back to the hive more efficiently than hungry writers hustling after a buck.

And ever since the rise of Trump, no genre of Beltway media fiction has paid better or more reliably than Magic Ruralism.  Which, I predict. will go right on paying well as long as what passes for our national political conversation is dominated by coastal media corporations who:

1. Have apparently never met an actual Republican in the wild, and
2. Have no intention of giving up their twin myths of the Imaginary Reasonable Republican Party and the Imaginary Feisty Independent Voter which are as one with tall tales of John Henry the Steel Drivin' Man, Pecos Bill who roped and rode tornadoes, and Joe the Plumber who wasn't named Joe and wasn't a Plumber.  

But because they're not Homer and because they purport to be the "news", they can't get by reenacting the same fables year after year around the national camp-fire.  Instead, they have to hunt up new actors to populate their tired, old puppet show.

Enter Doug Ogden.

And I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, "Doug Ogden?  Holy shit!  You mean the Doug Ogden?"

Yes, the Doug Ogden.  Now calm down and let the Associated Press tell you why you you are aupposed to care:

Democrats face identity crisis in next phase of 2020 race

"Golly,"  you're probably thinking.  "That does sound important.  Tell me more, Associated Press!"

Doug Ogden doesn’t know what to do.

So now you're thinking, "OK, that might trouble me if I knew who the fuck Doug Ogden was, but I don't, so..."

Patience.  All will be revealed.

The 75-year-old retired law enforcement officer is disgusted by President Donald Trump. But he can’t imagine voting for a Democrat in 2020, either. A self-described independent in South Carolina, Ogden doesn’t recognize the modern-day Democratic Party.

“The state of the Democratic Party is wild against wilder,” says Ogden, standing with his arms crossed at a recent town hall meeting for Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg. “It scares me.”

Oh I get it now?  Doug Ogden is a moron.  He's just another random Republican meathead who now calls himself an "independent" because what-the-hell, it worked last time!  And because the Associated Press stuck a microphone in front him and had him recite the sacred "Both Sides Are Bad" talking points now, for no explicable reason, this is a national story about "Democrats face identity crisis in next phase of 2020 race".

Sure there follows a lot of meaningless yadda yadda about The Larger Picture which is larded onto the Amazing Tale of Doug "I'm An Independent!" Ogden --

At the core of Ogden’s concern is a broader question about the direction of the Democratic Party and its values in the age of Trump...

-- because the Associated Press is lazy that way.

But the core of this old meathead's concerns have nothing to do with the direction and values of the Democratic Party in the age of Trump.

Instead they have everything to do with yet another iteration of the same "Get Out Of Accountability Free" escape plan Republicans have been running for the last 40 years.

This is why it was so imperative that the media memory-hole the entire George W. Bush administration.  Because Republican shitheads like good ol' Doug Ogden now find themselves in exactly the same position they were in back when the Dubya Administration began to fall apart:  desperate to scuttle away from taking responsibility for electing the Worst President In History while at the same time not willing to give up their arrogant ignorance and their seething contempt for my Party of Scary Negroes, Mouthy Women, Gays and Commie Libtards:

Back in South Carolina, Ogden isn’t interested in hearing about multiracial coalitions.

The Democratic Party, he said, has become “the welfare party” by offering too many free benefits to people not willing to work for them.

“The Republicans aren’t any better,” Ogden said. “Republicans don’t seem to want to change, and Democrats want to change everything.”

He added: “I’ll have to see if I can stomach either one of them.”

Once again, the Republicans and their enablers who got us into our latest national disaster are scrambling to find  some way to escape the righteous judgement of history.

And if you listen carefully, somewhere just over the horizon you can hear the thrum of the instrument of their liberation -- a newly repainted and detailed Bush-Off Machine -- roaring to life.

My plan?
Hang Trump and everything that led to Trump around the necks of every Republic and Republican-enabler forever.

The Most Dangerous People In America

One of the leitmotifs of my little blog at the edge of respectability is the subject of memory. Specifically, how the modern Republican Party would simply cease to exist without a massive, ongoing and lavishly well-funded campaign of warping and mutilating the memories of the Pig People.

As every professional sporting lady has known since the beginning of time, success in that oldest of professions depends on figuring out what your client wants to hear and then pouring it on.  The weakling wants to hear what a stud he is and the dolt wants to believe he's brilliant.

And Trumpkins, being a horde of cowards, imbeciles and bigots, are willing to pay any price to hear someone pretty or smart-looking say that they are brave, brilliant patriots.  In fact, they'll hand the country over to monsters over and over again as long as those monsters promise to keep their heroic delusions comfortably upholstered.

But there's a catch: when you make prattling delusion your master, you make memory your the enemy.  And whether it's David Brooks selling smooth, top-shelf Both Siderism to Upper East Side plutocrat shut-ins, or Hate Radio schlock merchants slinging Birtherism and Benghaaazi alley juice to the meatheads of Sisterfuck, Arkansas, the game remains the same:  keep up the fantasy at all costs and make unremitting war on anyone or anything that threatens to monkey-wrench the scam.

Which is why, for the whole wingnut syndicate, the past itself has become the boogie-man; the terrible beast that lives under their bed.  It's why there is a Beltway Iron Rule of David Brooks in the first place, and why all of them -- from Brooks and Limbaugh to Jeff Zucker and Roger Ailes -- really hate Liberals.

Because we go around all day remembering shit!  And saying it out loud!  Willfully and with premeditation!

Almost ten years years ago when I wrote of the Right's mental affliction as the "...inability to form any new political memories after 1997" I wasn't kidding.

And seven years ago when I borrowed from 2 Maccabees to explain that the Right had become a lunatic machine designed to blot out it's own past by sheer force of rage and decibels, I wasn't kidding, nor was I kidding when I said that "where yesterday has been exiled, memory is rebellion". Because by my back-of-the-envelope estimation, the process of Conservative self-delusion had become self-sustaining right around 2005.  Back when the wheels really started to come off the Bush Administration and both the lapdog Beltway Media and the base of the Republican party were so desperate to duck out on righteous judgement of history that they would seize on any fairy tale no matter how patently ludicrous if it could be used to cast blame away from themselves.

The Beltway media hurriedly erected the High and Holy Church of Both Siderism -- a Safe Space in which everyone agrees that everyone is always equally to blame for everything, and so no one (and certainly not them) is ever specifically to blame for anything.

The Right flung itself into the arms of Freedom Works, Dick Armey and their Fabulous, Tea-Baggulous Bush-Off Machine which magically zapped their entire inconvenient Bush Administration record out of existence leaving them free and unencumbered to get on with the important business of hating Barack Obama for shit they were making up out of whole cloth every day.

And once you take that Faustian bargain, it doesn’t matter how fine your suit is or how surgically superior your tits may be; you’re just another grifter, straining a different grade of ethical sludge for krill and helping to drown your own country in a vast conspiracy of forgetting.  And that road only leads down and down and down...

...which brings us to Fox News lunatic Judge Jeanine Pirro and the Blue Gal challenge (h/t Crooks & Liars.)

You see, in order to sell the legitimacy of Il Douche and his entourage of madmen, Russian dupes and plutocrats, it has now become necessary for the American Fascist Party to pivot 180 degrees, completely unremember the last eight years, and roll out a new and wholly false narrative about the Obama Administration.  And that project begins with Fox News meatbags like Pirro announcing to the Pig People what the New Party Line is damn well gonna be.

And Blue Gal double double dog dares you to make it past the first minute of this video without shutting it off in disgust.

Here is a bit of the transcript:

We have a new president elect…. His name is Donald J Trump. So move over Barack. Move over Hillary, Harry, Jill and all you namby-pamby pathetic losers still crying in your grande double shot skinny lattes...

There was a time in this country when we united behind the flag in celebration of America's new president, our new leader. We all did so in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected.

We had high hopes for a united country, irrespective of our politics.

And it’s time for the left, assuming they are capable, to show the same dignity and class to the 45th president-elect.

Operation Memory Hole is indeed now in full effect as Fox News once again finds itself at war with Eastasia because Fox News has always been at war with Eastasia.

That whole Caucus Room Conspiracy thing?  It never happened.

Neither did Potato Day...or any of the other unhinged wingnut freakouts captured in this vintage Daily Show montage from the first 10 week of the Obama Administration.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Baracknophobia - Obey
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Nothing is a more terrifying threat to a political and media regime built on the shifting sands of ever-more-ridiculous lies than the simple act of remembering the past as it really happened and speaking that truth out loud.  

Which at the moment makes freaks like you and me the most dangerous people in America.

The Media Will Little Note, Nor Long Remember What He Tweets Here...

Turns out, Il Douche doesn't much like it when We The People back sass his minions in public:

Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016

The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016

What better way to honor the 153rd anniversary of the Gettysburg Address than with a couple of early morning tweets seething with contempt for free speech from the thin-skinned fascist idiot who will soon sit where Lincoln sat?

By the way, speaking of the media little noting, nor long remembering stuff, Operation Memory Hole is now in full effect: