Professional Left Podcast Episode 921: What Ever Happened to QAnon?

"If the headline is big enough, it makes the news big enough." -- Citizen Kane.

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Elon Musk 2025 is...

...Andrew Yang 2020...

...No Labels 2010 ("Dead Center") ...

...Matthew Dowd 2016 ("So, Four Years Later, How's That Whole "Disrupt The K'rupt Duopoly!" Thing Working Out?") ...

...Ralph Nader 2000...

...George Wallace, 1968...

..Jill Stein, every fucking time:

All of these the spawn of the biggest lie in American politics.  The lie whose ubiquity has done more to warp American politics than any other.  The Big Lies that makes all the smaller lies possible.  And because I'm rather tired today, in lieu of brand new words the explain that Big Lie, I'm gonna drop in excerpt from eight years ago and take my wife out to lunch at a local diner.  

From "The Great White Party".

...

Because even as they they stood in the ruins of the Republican Bush Administration -- even as they watched the Republican Congress labor single-mindedly to lie, slander and sabotage the Obama Administration's Herculean efforts to clean up the ruins of the Republican Bush Administration and get us back on our feet -- nothing could override the frantic-junkie desperation of the Beltway brain caste to go right on pretending that Both Sides Do It.

And they're rich. 

And influential. 

And their bosses are rich and influential.  And the lobbyists with whom they crossbreed are rich and influential.  And the teevee networks that deliver their lies to millions and who depend on never offending anyone are crazy rich and influential.  And the Republican moles posing as "Independents" who knew god damn well that "Both Siderism" is the Big Lie that keeps the Right propped up are rich and influential.  

Which is why there has always been a shit-ton of money and job security available to any unprincipled hack willing to help the Beltway prop up it's foundational Big Lie of Both Sides Do It.

On the other hand, there is no profit or prestige to be found in telling the truth about the Big Lie of Both Sides Do It, for the same reason there is no profit or prestige in telling the Mayor of the "a coastal town in southern Norway" and Chairman of the Baths' Committee that the town's very lucrative spa is making people sick.

...

Peter Stockmann. —for his own family, as I was saying, as well as for the town he lives in.

Dr. Stockmann. It is I who have the real good of the town at heart! I want to lay bare the defects that sooner or later must come to the light of day. I will show whether I love my native town.

Peter Stockmann. You, who in your blind obstinacy want to cut off the most important source of the town's welfare?

Dr. Stockmann. The source is poisoned, man! Are you mad? We are making our living by retailing filth and corruption! The whole of our flourishing municipal life derives its sustenance from a lie!

Peter Stockmann. All imagination—or something even worse. The man who can throw out such offensive insinuations about his native town must be an enemy to our community.

... 

In Elon's case, he has hit Stage Five of the Seven Stages of Wingnut Grift.

Stage 1:  Completely clueless.

Stage 2: Buying into ludicrous MAGA/QAnon conspiracy theories about why things are fucked.

Stage 3:  Finding out the Right played you for a chump.

Stage 4:  Blame Both Sides.

Stage 5:  Third Party!!!

No Half Measures

Elon Musk Just Rang The Dinner Bell...

... for every cheapjack, hustlebuck Third Party grifter.  

So I am moved to wonder if he would be open to throwing a few million in my direction for my very own Third Party effort.  Because I have all the buzzwords!  I promise all the things!  All I lack is a few million in seed money.

It's all here in my 2022 prospectus.

Today We Launch The Tesseract Party! 

Don't fall for the Forward hype!

Our Tesseract party rejects the false divisions of all states of matter, energy and politics!

We're not Left.

And we're not Right.

But we're also not Forward.

And not Behind.

Instead, our Tesseract party is fully present in all four dimensions and at all quantum states.

Our party avoids the partisanship of the Left, Right and Forward parties by recognizing that, at the subatomic level, all of us are equal.

And that's where true reform must begin: at the quantum level.  

And what quantum level policies and reforms are we proposing to bring Real Change to our broken politics?  

This is where we at the Tesseract party are truly revolutionary, because we dare to take a superpositioning  approach to all policy and reform development. (h/t Andy Birss@1957AJB)

Our proprietary Tesseractarian development methodology begins by recognizing that all policies and all reforms exist in all possible quantum states simultaneously, and are therefore unknowable and unobservable.  And they will remain there, as a cloud of probabilities, until a team of  Tesseractarian quantum political experts have poll-tested all of them at at the same time, at which point we anticipate that actual policies and reforms may or may not precipitate out of this cloud of infinite possible outcomes.  

Then we send in a second team of  Tesseractarian quantum political experts who will test each policy and reform to determine whether or not it can be safely observed by the public!

But our revolutionary Tesseractarian development methodology can't work without you!  We need your passion!  Your energy!  Your unwavering commitment to never taking any position on anything!  And most importantly, your money!  

We have a variety of sponsorship levels available, from Photon and Gluon to Boson and Higgs-Boson, but all contributions at any level are welcome.   

The Tesseract Party: Literally, a new dimension in politics!  (h/t Charles Evans @cme7677)

The Tesseract Party:  Solving Tomorrow's Problems Yesterday!

Plus: The Tesseract Party has teamed up with the Moebius Party!!

Ain't no party like a Tesseract party

'Cause a Tesseract party don't stop 

at three dimensions!

The Will of Yangdru

Kit Parsons is a lad with a dream.

Kit Parsons is a lad and on a mission.   

And having a mission can be a good thing.  

Just as having a dream can be a good thing.

Kit's dream was to interview his hero, Andrew Yang.  And his dream -- 

Thanks for believing in our ability to accomplish something positive Kit!! 🙏🚀 https://t.co/qLV01lm0vt

— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) August 20, 2022

-- came true:

Life is complete https://t.co/NzvjJQ1AwF

— Kit Parsons 🧢⬆️ (@KitParsons3) August 20, 2022

Turn off your snark detectors, because I am 100% sincere when I say that I am delighted when I see a young writer who is passionate about his subject matter receiving encouragement from someone they idolize.  

And now Kit Parsons' has been elevated to the rank of Forward Party spokesperson by Andrew Yang.  But now that he has written two articles preaching the non-gospel gospel of the Forward Party, he's finding the reaction, well...

The amount of hate I've gotten the last two times I've written articles supporting @Fwd_Party is making it very difficult to keep doing so. I'm trying my best to support the party but it's getting difficult in all honesty. Mentally draining.

— Kit Parsons 🧢⬆️ (@KitParsons3) August 19, 2022

Did I ever tell you that I've also worked from time to time as an editor and a mentor and facilitator to  young writers?  

I know that I drop the occasional typo (ha!) here and there because my writer brain and my editor brain have about a four day lag time when talking to each other.  Meaning I can almost never spot errors in my own work until the piece has "cooled" sufficiently for me to view it with a critical eye.  And that lag is a luxury which the hurry-up-and-publish-it-and-move-on ethos of blogging usually does not usually allow.

But when it comes to other people's work, I've got skills.  I've edited speeches, presentations, tech manuals, you name it.  Book-sized magazines of previously unpublished works by science fiction writers.  I've also led writing groups and taught seminars in content and intent:  what are you trying to say, and to whom are you trying to say it.  

So take this advice as it's intended.  Or not.  

First, if some blowback after two articles is this painful, to quote president Art Hockstader in The Best Man,  it may be that "the job is not for you. And it never will be."  I say this as a +17 year, +11,000 post blogging veteran who has seen my fellow liberal bloggers slog through one venomous shitstorm after another, decade after decade, because they believed that what they had to say was true and important.  All while facing the fact that our setbacks would be enormous and heartbreaking and our victories would be incremental at best.

I say this as a blogger who was abandoned by many of my "allies", pounded by the Greenwald Horde Purity and lost 1/3 of my meager income from this little weblog of mine for daring to point out that Glenn Greenwald was lied a lot about stuff that was terribly important, then lied about lying, and used his newly acquired world-wide media presence to routinely savage anyone who disagreed with him to any degree.

History has proven me right, but the damage had already been done.  

Second, the axel on which your Forward Party turns is the same Big Lie that has powered every third party grift to come down the pike for the last +30 years.  The same Big Lie that has saved the fascist Republican party from being consigned to the ash heap of history over and over again.   The same Big Lie that helped put Donald Trump in the White House.   

The Big Lie of Both Sides Do It.  

Since I've already pretty much exhausted my store of adjectives on the literally thousands of posts I have written and hundreds of podcasts I have done over the years carefully deconstructing the Both Siderist Big Lie and the motives and means of those who propagate it, so pardon me if I take a pass from doing it one more time.

And it's not just me or Liberal bloggers like me.  After years of hewing to the Beltway Both Sides ethos, some of the most caution, circumspect Beltway-friendly political analysts finally threw up their hands and said, "You know what?  We give up.  The Republicans are the problem.  Period.  Full stop."  From Ornstein and Mann in the Washington Post, in 2012.  Right about the time Mr. Kit Parsons was probably entering sixth or seventh grade:

Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

This is also the judgement of a number of battle-hardened Republican campaign veterans who were, at long last, run out of their own party by the monster they had made.

So, using your writerly imagination, just try and imagine how simultaneously laughably gullible and cringingly privileged it sounds when, right out of the fucking gate, your party launches itself using exactly the same Both Siderist Lie and exactly the same empty, 1990s-process-reengineering-consultant-buzzword rhetoric that every Republican party apologist, every craven Beltway hack and every other Third Party grift has used for the past +30 years.

Imagine how automatically it sets the teeth on edge of anyone who has actually been paying attention to politics decades when this --

It's hard having hate tossed at you all day especially when you are empathetic and have a heart like our group does. Just do not take it personally as hard as that is to do. Remember it is hard to chill chimps out once they are in a frenzy. ✌️❤️🤗 pic.twitter.com/ceLfK6qvsF

— Will ⬆️✌️❤️😃 (@WJADragon) August 19, 2022

-- is a proud example of your party's fan art.

And finally, just for fun, let's turn an editorial eye to one of those two articles that got you so much negative feedback.  Let's see if we can pinpoint exactly what might have triggered it.  

Let's start with Mr. Parsons' headline:

Against the Forward Party? You’re probably Pro-Trump

Why being against the Forward Party’s democratic reforms means you are indirectly (unconsciously) supporting extremist candidates like Trump.

Cool.  So right of the bat you have decided that anyone who might disagree with your party or critique your party must be arguing in bad faith.  Must either be Pro-Trump or a hypnotized zombie who indirectly supports "extremist candidates like Trump."  

This is cult-talk.  It abides by the first rule of cults and makes the same claim that every cult, from the Manson Family the Scientologists to Heaven's Gate, has made: 

That you're not in a cult, but somehow everyone else is.  And only your Dear Leader and his worshipful followers can see the Real Truth.

That you and only you hold clear title to the Real Truth and anyone who doesn't agree with you and join your cult is either damaged or brainwashed or motivated by sinister hidden agendas.  

And this Manichean mentality allows for no half-measures: the only cure for us poor, brainwashed dupes who cannot to see your Real Truth...is imbibing of your Real Truth.

We must join The Body.

If this were the 1960s, the pitch would be about joining a commune, or selling flowers at the airport and trying to sell people on Krishna Consciousness.  

If this were the 1970s, maybe you'd be fresh from an EST retreat, where you spent two days trying to hold your piss in until the group leader granted you permission to use the head.

The 1980s might have found you clad in orange and following Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the guru who loved his limousines.  Or having your engrams scrutinized by ElRonners.

I've known people who were acolytes or adherents to all of these -ologies and more.  Some of them were family members.  All of them were serious and sincere seekers looking for answers in a fucked up world.  And they were also incredibly susceptible to every snake oil salesman out there peddling enlightenment and access to the inner secrets and a stepladder to the True and Only Heaven.

Let's look at a few more of Mr. Parsons' contribution to the discourse (emphasis mine.)

The establishment media, and those unconsciously frozen in a state of partisan paralysis by this deeply dysfunctional duopoly are doing all they can to discredit the Forward Party and its efforts to reform US democracy and give the American people more choices, which would also begin to suffocate extremism and authoritarianism.

See everything I have already said.

If these petty partisans who vociferously claim to be defenders and fearless warriors for democracy actually cared about it, they wouldn’t be opposing the Forward Party with quite so much falsely targeted outrage.

Sigh.  See everything I have already said.

If you oppose these changes the Forward Party are fighting for, you are very likely to be unconsciously, or consciously supporting Trump, Trumpism, and other types of extremism that the dysfunctional duopoly provides a platform for. If the system that led to Trump doesn’t change, what is to stop an even more dangerous candidate finding electoral success?

File under: "Women Who Won't Date Me Must Be Lesbians". 

The "system" didn't lead to Trump.  The trajectory the entire Republican Party has been on for decades led to Trump.  So, using your writerly imagination once again, just try to imagine how offensive it must be to people who have been fighting the rise of the fascism in the Republican Party since before you were born, to be lectured by you that we don't really care about democracy because we don't want to join your fucking cult and we think your Dear Leader is a huckster.  

Until the partisan hacks propping up the Democratic and Republican establishments wake up and start giving the Forward Party an honest and fair chance, I fear that the extremism that the nation is already facing will only get worse.

So, more insults.

And more parroting the Both Siderist lie.

After which you whine on social media that some of us partisan hacks think you're a child being used by a political Fagin.

I get it that you passionately believe in this Forward Party nonsense, and are ferociously opposed  to us petty, partisan hacks who believe otherwise.  And there is a word for this: a word you Forward Party goofs throw around all the time.

That word is "partisan", which simply means "a strong supporter of a party, cause, or person."  Which, as a writer, you should damn well know.

You are a Forward Party partisan.  

And if partisans are the problem then,  golly, doesn't that mean that you are part of the problem!

And if you really can't see how monumentally arrogant, alienating and insulting your very partisan writing comes across to the very people you are presumably trying to persuade, then I can't help you. 

Selah.

Me?  I'm Partisan A F

Here Comes Your 19th 3rd Way Shakedown

As longtime, or even mediumtime, readers of this disreputable little blog know, there are three businesses which have (to tweak a phrase from Tony Soprano) traditionally been recession proof since time immemorial.

Certain aspects of show business, the mob and Centrist/Country First/No Labels third-party grifts.  

And since the heady days of David Brooks coming down with a severe case of squealing fantods over Democrats primarying his pal Holy Joe Lieberman and insisting that what Murrica really needed now to fight the vile Republican Tom DeLay and the equally menacing --

...net-root DeLays in the Democratic Party...

-- was the creation of a McCain-Lieberman Party (which just so happened to line up exactly with where David Brooks stood on every issue)...

....this disreputable little blog has been on the job, tracking most of the flashier Third Party flimflams.

This little blog was there days after the No Labels grifters began raking in dough from credulous dopes with far more money than sense (Dead Center -- Political Cowardice Now Has Its Own "Movement"!)

This little blog was there when Howard Schultz waved enough cash under Steve Schmidt's nose to convince him that the answer to the threat from Donald Trump was a third party run by a coffee magnate.  And we were there when the checks stopped clearing.

This little blog was there before Matthew Dowd was candidate Matthew Dowd, running as a Democrat in the Texas Democratic primary.. Back when he was ABC News' chief political analyst Matthew Dowd -- a man who would lecture anyone, anywhere, any time that the Democratic and Republican Party were equally malevolent and beyond repair and that the only solution to overthrowing that K'rupt Duopoly was to vote third party.

And over the decades spent tracking these hustles and fan dances I've learned a few things.  Things like "Muh! Muh! Third Party!" will eventually become the Resting Grift Face of almost anyone who built a career out of being a professional Both Siderist, and of a small clutch of enterprising Republicans who swear they woke up one day to discover to their utter shock that their Republican Party was...full of Republicans! 

This is why so many disgruntled current and former Republican office holders have popped out of obscurity in the past four years to announce with great solemnity that they are forming their very own, boutique McCain-Lieberman Party.

Or "movement".  

Or "cause". 

All claiming the same two things.

That they are beset daily by a veritable army of Republicans (anonymous because they dare not speak out) and Democrats (who are entirely imaginary) and Independents (who are actually Republicans) all begging them to create a Center Right/Center Left coalition to save Murrica from...

...The Extremes on Both Sides yadda yadda.

Which is why no one has any reason to be surprised that Christine Todd Whitman and her youthful ward Fallout Boy were on Morning Joe (where else) to announce that because Murrica is So Very Hangry For a Centrist Third Party...

And then came Yang...

Seriously, do you realize how stupid this is? Any vehicle has to turn left or right, zig or zag. Even MATH would probably tell you that.

— Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh) October 14, 2021

Burn The Lifeboats

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