Professional Left Podcast Episode 898: Why Today's Politics Is A Holy War

"One man's cult is another man's religion." -- Annie Parisse

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A Modest Proposal: Abolish Gay Marriage Immediately. *

* [Prologue:  If you have never read Jonathan Swift's excellent 1729 satire "A Modest Proposal" please understand that this missive of mine is delivered in that spirit. Onward.]

Sure, abolishing gay marriage may sound "controversial:, but hear me out.

The one thing the Centrist Big Brains and Never Trumpers with media platforms all seem to agree on is that Democrats lost because something something "culture".  They're all very careful never to explain  exactly what "culture" means, but they are all very clear that Democrats must dump the words and the people and who make "Americans" feel icky.

Example.

This is Bill Galston, nearly 80, completely out of touch reality and very hard to listen to since literally every third word out of his mouth is "y'know" on the Never Trump Beg to Differ podcast:

...the [Democratic] party is going to have to go through a hard process of dumping overboard the ballast that threatened to sink the ship.

This is Sam Harris, smug contrarian asshole who has been driven right 'round the bend by trans stuff, on the Never Trump Bulwark podcast.

The Democratic party is a... is a this very rigged, uh, Rube Goldberg device of death.  Which is just, y'know, rigged to destroy, to... to cancel the reputation of anyone who touches the wrong gear or lever.  And, uh, we have to... we have to tear it down to the studs. I mean it's just like this... is there... Actually has to be a purge of the activist class in Democratic politics. Otherwise, y'know, this... no one we put forward will be electable.

All lines on the pundit electoral map converge here:  Democrats have to go all-in on peeling off some of the cow-dumb mouthbreathers who make up the margins in these very close elections. The goofs who have no idea how anything works, what anyone stands for, who pay zero attention to the news and who broke late for Trump this year by a wide margin.  

You know, the clueless mopes Jay Leno used to interview during his "Jaywalking" bit. 

The cast of Idiocracy.   

The Kallikaks.  

America's ambulatory, unprocessed Soylent Green.

We who remember All in The Family need to stop mentally shaking our heads ruefully at the millions of Archie Bunkers who now control this country, and instead bend every oar in the service of convincing at least some of those racist dum-dums to vote Democratic.  

Because, for you Robocop fans out there, the Great Wad (as my friend, the late Harlan Ellison used to call them) does not admire the bespectacled kid working a night shift at a filling station while studying plane geometry:     

They Great Wad hates that guy.  Instead, they admire the asshole on the motorcycle who mocks the idea of being a "college boy" and takes what he wants by force.  

Those are the ones we need to somehow bamboozle into the Big Tent.  And believe me, I understand how uncomfortable this might make some of you. In fact, way back five minutes ago I wrote a lot about madness of credulous Liberals, who had been right all along, to allow themselves to be shoved into a corner (again) and control over the public conversation about what the hell had happened to the GOP ceded to the likes of recently-former Republicans like Rick Wilson and Charlie Sykes and Matthew Dowd and Joe Scarborough.  

Ceded without the slightest hint of genuine confession or repentance or atonement.  Ceded without any acknowledgment that we Liberals even existed, except as wild-eyed straw men impeding the fortunes of this new "Pro-Democracy Alliance" the Never Trumpers were somehow now in charge of.  As this tiny handful of recently-former Republicans began to completely colonize the print and teevee media, I was told, repeatedly and in no uncertain terms, to sit down and shut up.

For God's Sake, driftglass, don't you realize that the Fate of American Democracy was at stake! 

[Fun Fact: Turns out that handing whatever was left of the "Liberal" media over to a bunch of recently-former Republicans accomplished nothing.  And yet there they still are.  Still useless, still wrong, and still telling us what to do.] 

So believe me when I tell you that I well understand your revulsion at the idea of pandering to meatheads for votes, but for God's Sake, don't you realize that the Fate of American Democracy is at stake! 

And keep in mind that the attitudes of the bigots and imbeciles are set in concrete, so you can forget about changing them or persuading them with "facts".  They're completely immune to that.  Instead, just like Republicans, we need to focus on a few their odious prejudices and deranged conspiracy theories and pretend like hell that, A) we agree with them, B) they are very smart for believing what they believe, and C) we promise to make whatever they're mad at go away.

Also keep in mind, they have the memory of a mayfly, so it doesn't matter if we actually deliver on those promises.  This is a great big hammer that foolish Democrats keep leaving in the tool box.  In the New Politics, it only matters that the meatbags think you delivered on your promises.  Donald Trump built a couple of shitty miles of his stupid wall, Mexico laughed at the thought that they were going to pay for any of it, and yet the meatbags think it was a huge success.

After all, if God hadn't wanted them to be greased, fleeced and decreased, She would not have made them chumps.  Seen that way, not scamming them may even be sacrilegious.  

We'd be doing it to Save American Democracy.  And is there a nobler cause to be found in this broken old world?

But we have a lot of catching up to do, since Republicans have already picked the Hate shelves nearly clean, which is no surprise since they've been at it for so long that Hate has become the sole binding force that keeps their volatile coalition of bigots, imbeciles, gun nuts, xenophobes, homophobes, misogynists, christopaths and grifters together.  

Consider that, with Barack Obama, Democrats offered the Right a compassionate, polymath, scandal-free constitutional law professor.  A family man with family values.  With a strong, beautiful wife and amazing kids.  A man who wanted to roll up his sleeves and help America get back on it's feet.  And who obsessively tacked to the ever-shifting Fake Center in hopes of finding partners in fixing America's real problems on the other side.

What the hell were we thinking!?  And a woman of color?  That's twice as bad!

This is not what Republicans want in a black person.  They do not want someone they have to look up to.  Who is in charge of things.  Or funny.  Or smart.  Or competent.  Or articulate.  No, no, no.  Republican want a black man who knows his fucking place.  Republicans don't want black folks gone; they want them servile and deferential.  Bowing low to white power like they did back in the good old days.  

And that's what they got in men like Michael Steele who happily groveled for Rush Limbaugh's approval because Mikey Mike knew his fucking place.  Like grinnin', clappin' Tim Scott who went so far as to marry his "Canadian girlfriend" for a shot at the highest office in the land, running in a party that never had any intention of giving it to him. And now they have Byron Donalds right out front, smiling and lying and happily eating all of Donald Trump's shit and asking for seconds, and  getting absolutely nothing in return.

No way we can match that.  

Republicans have also already stripped women of their basic civil rights, and most of the white ladies didn't care.  Didn't care that Trump was a rapist.  Didn't care that he was besties with Jeffrey Epstein.  Instead, what they know for damn sure and certain is that Obummer was a Kenyan mooslim, Hillary drinks baby's blood and had Vince Foster murdered, and Kalama Harris is tranny loving commie furriner just like her father!

So we can't compete with them for the incels, the bro-vote, or the self-loathing women.  And unless we run Tony Montana next time --

-- the male Latino voters who bailed this time -- because a woman's place is either decorative arm-candy or in the kitchen making dinner and in the bedroom making babies -- are unlikely to return. 

This election proved we can't compete with Republicans in demonizing Haitians or Puerto Ricans either.  

Republicans in Michigan and Pennsylvania showed they could run anti-semitic ads in one state, and anti-Muslim ads in another, and cash in on both, so they pretty much own hating both of those groups.

And no matter how frantically our Never Trumper and Centrist "allies" insist that it's not too late to get in on that slagging transexuals action, Republicans -- led by Failed Botox-and-taxidermy experiment, Nancy Mace -- own that now too.  

So who is left out there in the land of the free for us to target?  Some group that the bigots and imbeciles already hate enough for at least some of them to consider hooking up with the Dems next time?  The Irish?  Italians?  Canadians? 

Nope.  Sorry, but none of those get the blood boiling enough or fire enough berserk lightening into the amygdala to get the meatheads off their asses and to the polls for Democrats.

C'mon people, the answer is right there in front of us.  Who do the meatheads both hate and about whom (and this is the important part) do they feel they're being cruelly oppressed by the Woke Mob and prevented from blabbing their hatred in public?

It's the Gays, stupid.  

You think these assholes have evolved on that subject in the 20 years since Matthew Dowd and Karl Rove used it to help get Dubya re-elected in 2004?  Are you high?  Once again, wake the fuck up: these mopes still haven't gotten over Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865.

The New York Times, February 24, 2004

Bush Backs Ban in Constitution on Gay Marriage

 President Bush said today he supported a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, declaring that such a measure was the only way to protect the status of marriage between man and woman, which he called "the most fundamental institution of civilization."

In an announcement fraught with social, legal and political implications, Mr. Bush urged Congress to act on the amendment quickly and send it on to the state legislatures. Quick action is essential, he said, to bring clarity to the law and protect husband-and-wife marriages from a few "activist judges."

"The voice of the people must be heard," Mr. Bush said in a brief White House speech that Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, called an attempt to find "a wedge issue to divide the American people."...

Of course it was "a wedge issue to divide the American people."  In the New Politics, there are nothing but wedge issues, because the meatheads we need to win elections do not give one tiny shit about anything else.  

I tell you, out here in the Real World where I live, the meatheads are dying to go back being able to openly mock the "queers" and "fairies" and the "dykes".  Go back to telling "fag" jokes in  public without fear o censure or side-eyes from their fellow church goers, which is why Democrats must go after the Sodomites with as much zeal as we speak about climate change.  

And it'll be so easy.  Targeting gay school teachers.  Railing against Hollywood's Gay Agenda  ruining America.  And you know it's The Gays who are driving housing prices out of reach of real Americans.  And for gosh sakes, my kids can even enjoy watching Saw III without seeing commercials for gay couples doing laundry and pickout out furniture!  What about a spirited campaign to have Anita Bryant, Robert Mugabe and Phyllis Schlafly put on American postage stamps?  All the old triggers and stereotypes are still there, lurking just below the surface of oppressive Woke-enforced civility, and for once maybe we can beat the GOP at their own game.

And the first step is the abolition of gay marriage.  And we need to go all-in on this.  Some of us can get away with merely writing pseudo-scholarly contrarian articles in respected journals ala degenerate gambler Bill Bennett and high-class bigot William Buckley explaining how The Gays sap the moral strength of the nation.  This will not be a problem:  if the Times will publish Tom Cotton, they'll publish any filth as long as it draws flies.

Others will need to take a lower road: maybe going full Westboro Baptist Church -- waving the Bible and screaming about Leviticus -- if that's what it takes.  But we all need to get behind this thing and push.  

Or don't you care about Saving American Democracy?

Maybe we can even lure some of the  Log Cabin Republicans into our Big Tent -- they certainly seem self-loathing enough to go for it.

Now I am not blind to the hardship this will impose on The Gays (Note to self I: commission a focus group the find out if beating up on blind people would win us any votes in Pennsylvania.  Or hating handicapped people generally.  Note to self II: Especially people with mental disabilities -- the meatheads are nearly as thirsty to reintroduce "retard" into the MAGA out-'n-proud lexicon as they are "fag".) nor am I unsympathetic, but sacrifices must be made.  Remember, people, to impress the meatheads and get enough of 'em on our side to swing elections, purges must be done.  Ballast must be jettisoned.  

I understand that coming out loudly against gay marriage may disorient some people.  I, for one, will be saddened to see the marriages of prominent gays and lesbians like Pete Buttigieg, Tim Miller and Sara Longwell legally annulled and their children taken away, but what choice do we have?  

Personally, I enjoyed seeing Mayor Pete on Fox running rings around the hosts, and I'm sure that Miller and Longwell meant well when they insisted that the path to victory was for Dems to climb into bed with Liz Cheney, but let's look at the cold, hard facts.

Sending Mayor Pete to Fox News accomplished exactly nothing except impressing some liberals who were going to vote Democratic anyway.  And let's face it, the Never Trump "movement" has also accomplished exactly nothing except salvaging the careers and bank accounts of a handful of elite misfits who were run out of their own party gby the monster they created.

It's all very sad, but sacrifices to the bigotry of the meatheads must be made.  Tribute to the paranoia of the meatheads must be paid.  After all, in this Kobayashi Maru moment, the Salvation of American Democracy hangs in the balance.  And how selfish and self-destructive it would be to value the civil rights of the few over the Salvation of American Democracy for the many.

Look, we probably won't actually have to do most of this.  Remember the thing about the MAGA memory being Etch-a-Sketch sketchy.  We'll just need to promise to do it, then publicly emmiserate the families of a few prominent gays, then declare victory over the Gay Agenda.  Republican voter are  morons.  They'll forget.

And if it should come to pass, after years of winning elections and successfully fundraising off of this stuff, that we must actually deliver on it, well, this Supreme Court is clearly ready and willing to ignore stare decisis, eradicate decades of precedent and strip away the civil rights of certain groups of American citizens.  And if that's not enough. that same Supreme Court has granted the office of the president godlike powers and immunity from everything, so we'd have that in our back pocket too.

As I said, this would all be very sad, but surely a small price to pay to Save American Democracy.

Update:  For the record, the graphic at the top of this post is not a parody.  It's an actual relic from a Conservative ad from 2005.

The ad was produced by USA Next, a conservative group that supports creating personal accounts within Social Security and has aggressively criticized the AARP, which disagrees about the Social Security reform.

More here:

In February 2005, USA Next hired the advertising agency behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign that attacked 2004 presidential candidate John F. Kerry. The group gained instant notoriety late in that month when they placed an advertisement on several conservative web sites and blogs. This advertisement depicted a large red 'x' over a picture of a soldier and a large green check mark over a picture of a just-married homosexual couple.

 

No Half Measures

Jerry's Kids (Test)

I just did a post about Jerry Falwell which you can reach here if you make it past the Scary Content Warning that Google slapped on it the minute it went up, and which was replicated on two of the 8000 social media sites on which we lil' folk must hawk our wares if we want to see any traffic at all.

As an experiment, I'm making the title of this post -- "Jerry Skids" -- a slight variation of the title of the flagged post to see it that's what triggered the warning from the Google Decepticons.

I also tagged the previous post with a lot of naughty labels, so I'll test that next. 

Anyhoo, here's the note Google sent me:

     Hello,

     As you may know, our Community Guidelines 
(https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy) describe the boundaries for what we 
allow-- and don't allow-- on Blogger. Your post titled "Jerry's Kids" was 
flagged to us for review. This post was put behind a warning for readers 
because it contains sensitive content; the post is visible at 
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2023/07/jerrys-kids.html. Your blog readers 
must acknowledge the warning before being able to read the post/blog.

     We apply warning messages to posts that contain sensitive content. If 
you are interested in having the status reviewed, please update the content 
to adhere to Blogger's Community Guidelines. Once the content is updated, 
you may republish it at 
https://www.blogger.com/go/appeal-post?blogId=11363027&postId=6958696997669486806. 
This will trigger a review of the post.

     For more information, please review the following resources:

     Terms of Service: https://www.blogger.com/go/terms
     Blogger Community Guidelines: https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy

     Sincerely,

     The Blogger Team

Or maybe they objected to my call to...

Burn The Lifeboats

Phase One complete:  No flag is I change the title.

Phase Two begins:  What happens when I add bawdy labels to this post like "Christian Sex Toys,Patriotic Christians for Against Socialism,Sex Dolls for Christ,The 10 Hour Orgasm Diet,Get your handjob certificate in under 16 weeks"?  Let's find out!

Phase Two complete:  Labels added.  Still not flagged.  Hmm.  Alright, I'm going to let it cook for a bit, then remove the bawdy labels and change the title to the same title as the flagged post.  Scientific method people!  Happening right here!

Phase Three begins: Removed bawdy labels, and changed name to match original, flagged post.  I'm  going to let this simmer and see what happens.  If nothing happens...

Phase Three complete: No change.  So...

Phase  Four begins:  Add the bawdy labels back in to see if those + the original title is sufficient to get this post flagged.  If nothing happens, add the Falwell video to the top of this post to see if that plus everything else triggers a flagging.

Phase Four complete: No change.  So, adding the Falwell video to the top of this post.  and then, once again, the waiting game begins!

Phase Five begins:  Falwell video added back.  Other than a few pics and word, this now replicates the conditions of the original post that was flagged.  

Plan Nine from Outer Space:  Create an entirely new post, also with the same name as the original and with, I dunno, pictures of puppies or something.  This is currently underway.

Plan Nine results:  I have, step-by-step, altered a cat pic post to be an exact replica (except for this sentence) of the original post that Google flagged as violating community standards.  

So lets find out what this does in 3...2...1...

Well, nothing happened.  So, as the old programmer that I am, there remains one more test to conduct.  Rather than starting with an innocuous post with a cat pic and gradually building it into a replica of the original, flagged post one "Update" at a time, what happens if I do it all in one shot, as I did with the original?

Well, we're about to find out.  

Final results:  Again, nothing happened.  Theory #1 was that, starting with an innocuous post and building it up to community-standards-violating post was a way to beat the Google flagging system.  Great theory, until I created an exact copy of the original post in one shot and nothing happened.  So my guess is that either some troll told Google that I was up to naughtiness and, out of an abundance of legal department generated caution, they flagged it, or there is a glitch in the A.I. which causes it to be over-cautious so that *anything* with "Kids" in the header gets flagged.  And maybe that has since been tweaked, but the flagging can't be undone except by a Google flunky who has better things to do.

Anyway, it's been a journey!   I'm deleting all the test posts but this one so as not to confuse my future self as to what the hell I was doing back in summer of of 2023.  Also, as fate would have it, my next post will riff on the original, flagged post for entirely different reasons that this now-completed experiment.  

Jerry's Kids

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Fuck-Saw Junior

The Future Official Sexual Condiment of the Best Fucking Political Team on TeeVee!

From Politico:

RedState sells 'endorsement' [UPDATED]

The endorsement of Erick Erickson, the founder of the conservative blog RedState and a CNN contributor is for sale as part of an advertising package, according to an email circulated by an account executive for The Human Events Group -Eagle Publishing, which recently purchased the site.

"Erick Erickson's reputation along with his rising profile, combine to make RedState the most influential conservative blog on Capitol Hill and across America," writes the account executive, Chris McIntyre, in a form email forwarded to POLITICO by two surprised conservatives. "Why not put Erick's influence to work for your organization?"
...

Why not indeed?

The Fuck-Saw Junior -- Asshole tested...

...Asshole approved!

Order now!

Looks Like It Was Humiliated Former GOP Overlord Night

at the Well-Fed White People's Wingnut Cotillion "America At Risk" Premier.

In case you don't recognize him (and it genuinely horrifies me that I do), that appears to be former Republican Representative Bob Livingston on the right.

Once one of the Party of God's League of Extraordinarily Moral Gentlemen (and shrill defender of the blowjob-powered impeachment of Bill Clinton), Representative Livingston became the de facto Speaker-elect after Newt Gingrich's humiliating resignation.

That lasted all of about 11 seconds (in those days, GOP leadership positions were shuffled through more dubious hands more quickly than the office of Soviet Premier after Brezhnev departed for that Big Collective Farm in the Sky) after which came Livingston's own humiliating resignation due his own extra-martial affair.

Representative Livingston was succeeded by David Vitter, who is rabidly pro-gun, pro-abstinence-only sex education, anti-children's health insurance, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, pro-school prayer and generally votes the straight-Party-of-God-line-on every other social issue you can think of.

Vitter also likes to wear diapers while he fucks hookers -- a scandal which once might have forced him to resign in disgrace as well, but which apparently stopped mattering a few years ago once GOP leadership figured out that their base no longer had even the minimum, functional level of intelligence necessary to perceive that their scripture-shrieking, Yahweh-invoking Party of God was a nothing but hollow fraud full of raving, criminally-incompetent, lobbyist-owned hypocrites and perverts.

(And not to worry, differently-hued persons! Despite a powerful, restricted-club vibe coming off this event, should you have been in attendance at the Well-Fed White People's Wingnut Cotillion "America At Risk" Premier, you would have found that the Gingriches had thoughtfully set aside a little area

just for you!)

The Great Preacharound

Now that "Come from behind but only after you're married" Teabagger Loony Christine O'Donnell has actually-really-truly won the Republican Senate primary in Delaware -- there is, at last, officially No Sex in the Campaign Room.

None.

It's a bold strategy.

President's Speech on Iraq

Sure to reassure some; disappoint others.