Orly Taitz Died For Your Sins: Part Two -- Locking Shields

In Part One of this TL;DR we took a little trip down Memory Lane to remind ourselves who Orly Taitz was and what happened to her.  In this second part we try to answer the question, "Why the hell is driftglass writing about Orly Taitz in the first place?"

Also, a reminder: Orly Taitz is not dead.  The title of these posts are poetic license.  If that bothers you, take it up with the poetic licensing bureau.   

So why am I writing about Orly Taitz and not something important like the Gulf of Murrica, or all the transients Don Jr. hired to make it look like he had a supportive crowd in Greenland?  From Politico:

Donald Trump Jr.’s visit was ‘staged,’ says Greenland lawmaker

“We know how they treat the Inuit in Alaska. Make that great before trying to invade us,” Pipaluk Lynge tells Politico.

The subject is Orly Taitz ... and Laura Loomer ... and Mike Lindell ... and the entire Conservative media infrastructure because of what they represent, what they have done to this country, and why it is no longer possible for us to communicate meaningfully with Republicans.  And by “communicate” I don’t mean anything as lofty as “debate” or “persuade”.  We’re way beyond that now.  We now speak two entirely different languages with two entirely different contexts.

For you Star Trek nerds, think of it as the “Darmok” episode, except in that episode the Tamarians -- who spoke only in metaphors -- wanted to make a peaceful first contact with humans.  Their captain was willing to risk his life to try to make himself understood.

Our situation is very different.  Republicans are threatened the very language and context we use to communicate.  They take it as an assault on their values, so the more we try to find common ground with them, the more threatened they feel and the harder they lash out. 

This is so completely alien to the way we think that we just keep trying it and we just keep failing.  So today we’re going to discuss why this approach not only fails, but just keeps making things worse.

And to do that, I'm going to need to talk for a minute about an ancient battle tactic, so bear with me.

If you don’t know what a kite-shield is, you may have seen one in a sword-and-sandal epic, and I’m not an ancient weapons expert so please forgive me if I get some of this wrong.  

A kite-shield was a long shield, sometimes shaped like a tear-drop.  And the front lines of the Byzantine infantry were required to have such shields that were smaller than 6 spans high.  A span is the width of your spread hand, so a pretty substantial shield.

These shields, when used side-by-side, could protect the formation from hails of arrows while they advanced or retreated. 

During a battle, their job was to stay at the front lines of the battle as they attacked with a long lance and maybe a crossbow and protect the rest of the infantry.   Or, if they were retreating, to man the outer perimeter of the army.  If you've seen the movie Gladiator, you'll remember a similar tactic which the gladiators used in the Colosseum when they were being attacked by chariot and arrow fire.  By locking their shield together, the gladiators could keep themselves safe from crossbow fire and by pivoting at a strategic moment, cause an attacking chariot to crash and flip over.

Not sure shields were ever used to flip chariots in real life, but you get the idea.

Next, we need to understand how emotional investment work and how information works.  Not factual information or false information.  Not truth and lies.  Just...information.  

Let's say you're a good-hearted Liberal and you’re motivated by a desire to feed the hungry or heal the sick or welcome the stranger.  You know, all that good Jesus stuff.  Well, by and large you will accept information that helps you achieve that goal and you will lock-your-shields against information that attacks your goal to feed the hungry.  

You will accept information about school lunch programs, healthy eating initiatives, food deserts, and very detailed policy proposals to help you achieve your goal.  On the other hand, you will lock your shields against Libertarian Darwinism that says, let 'em starve.  Or gimmicks that let the government off the hook by redefining "condiments" or "napkins" as food.  Or assholes who just don't give a shit about hungry kids.

From Wikipedia about the "ketchup as a vegetable" thing:

The ketchup as a vegetable controversy stemmed from proposed regulations of school lunches by the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) in 1981, early in the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The regulations were intended to provide meal planning flexibility to local school lunch administrators coping with cuts to the National School Lunch Program enacted by the Omnibus Reconciliation Acts of 1980 and 1981. The proposed changes allowed administrators to meet nutritional requirements by crediting food items not explicitly listed. While ketchup was not mentioned in the original regulations, pickle relish was used as an example of an item that could count as a vegetable.

In the Reagan administration’s attempt to slash $1.5 billion from children’s nutrition funding, school lunch program requirements were worded (whether deliberately or not) so as to conceivably allow for designating ketchup as a vegetable, allowing the USDA to eliminate one of the two vegetables required to meet minimum food and nutrition standards, and thus shrink costs.

This from Stateline talks about the consequences of red states refusing to expand Medicaid:

In the 10 states that didn’t expand Medicaid, 1.6M can’t afford health insurance

The majority of residents in this coverage gap are people of color, an analysis found.

Nearly 1 of every 5 uninsured working-age adults across the 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act are, according to a new analysis, stuck in a health care limbo known as a “coverage gap.” That means they earn too much money to receive Medicaid but not enough to qualify for financial help to purchase their own plan on the marketplace.

In Alabama and Mississippi, more than a quarter of uninsured working-age adults are left with no affordable pathways to health coverage, according to the analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank that researches federal and state budget policies. Overall, 1.6 million adults between the ages of 19 and 64 face the situation in the non-expansion states.

Mississippi state Rep. Robert Johnson, a Democrat, said the lack of insurance coverage contributes to other problems — such as the closures of hospitals that have to cover the cost of treating uninsured patients — in all types of communities.

“This is not a conservative or liberal issue. This is about the people that we represent in the state of Mississippi, whether they be Black or white,” Johnson said in an interview. “This is a life-or-death issue for not just individuals, but the whole communities.”...

So, how can these people -- these Republicans -- turn their backs on hungry kids or sick Americans?  How the hell can they sleep at night?  And the bigger question:  How can the meatheads who keep voting these scumbags into office be so fucking smug about it?  

Well, as a good-hearted Liberal you are emotionally invested in feeding the hungry or caring for the infirm or protecting the Earth or whatever, right?  Probably all of the above and more.  These are what you will lock your shields to protect from racism, ignorance and greed.  You'll keep raising money and raising awareness and protesting and calling your representatives and speaking up at community meetings to try to advance your cause, because this is your emotional investment, and you are dumbfounded that anyone could possibly be against feeding hungry children or replacing lead pipes or, y'know, holding insurrectionists accountable, or electing a competent, capable, honorable public servant instead of a corrupt, racist, serial liar and convicted felon?

Maybe if these mopes just had more information?  After all, you have so much data to back up what you believe – a mountain of studies and white papers -- if they would just fucking listen for one minute to the facts.  

But they don't, do they?  No matter what you do.  They never do.  And they don't just ignore you.  They mock your earnestness.  They are happiest when they are metaphorically capering around burning bonfires of your fancy studies and white papers, or cheering on some has-been garbage person shooting up a case of Bud Light because you care about the fate of trans people. 

From Rolling Stone:

Conservatives Heartbroken That Kid Rock Gave Up Bud Light Boycott

Months after an outrage over the beer brand, one of the ringleaders says it's time to forgive and forget — and some are calling him a sellout

It seems like only yesterday that Kid Rock was firing an assault rifle at cases of Bud Light in protest of their brand partnership with trans entertainer Dylan Mulvaney. But time flies, and it’s already been eight months since that week in April when Rock helped kick off a right-wing boycott of the beverage — one that caused a drop in brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev’s stock price and enshrined the culture war slogan “get woke, go broke.”

A lot has happened since then. In October, AB InBev struck a deal worth more than $100 million to make Bud Light the exclusive beer sponsor of Ultimate Fighting Championship, a mixed martial arts franchise that counts Kid Rock as one of its celebrity fans. Weeks later, Rock gave an interview to Sean Hannity of Fox News, claiming he had never called for a boycott of the beer (indeed, he continued to drink it in public and serve it at his Nashville bar) and that he and Donald Trump had enjoyed a “great conversation” with Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth at a UFC event about why the Mulvaney promotion had set them off. 

So why don't appeals to reason work?  Why do they believe such ridiculous lies? And why are they so happy being this pig-ignorant?  Delighted when they stun you with their cruelty?  Why do they brag about drinking your Liberal tears?

Because they have shields too.  Shields they use to protect what they value most highly.  And what do they value most highly?  The belief that they are always right about everything and are smarter than everyone.  That you and I are monsters and/or Deep State dupes.  And that if it ever turns out that they were actually wrong about something...it was never their fault: it was all part of some vast, evil Liberal Deep State conspiracy that you and I are part of.  This unshakable belief is the core of who they are and what they are emotionally invested in.  

And all of your mountains of facts -- including the things that these mopes themselves said just days or weeks ago which contradict what they are saying today?  All of those are just ... a hail of potentially fatal crossbow bolts against which their shields need to be locked together tighter and tighter.  

And what are their interlocking shields?  Those are the lies they "believe".  Those endless, endless lies.  Decades upon decades of lies.  Lies about Bill Clinton.  About Vince Foster.  About the Mena airport. About Iraq.  About deficits.   About "soul cooking".  About tan suits and Death Panels and birth certificates.  About immigrants eating pets and hurricanes being faked and the "Biden crime family".  Lies about the 2020 election and January 6th.  

OK, (you ask as a good-hearted Liberal) but what about when a big lie just falls apart?  To extend the analogy, why can't the truth get through and help them see reason when a shield collapses?  

Well (my imaginary good-hearted Liberal) I have to ask you right back, haven't you been listening?  To you, things like whether or not Barack Obama was born in the United States are a matter of truth or falsity.  Fact or fiction.  And when we get something wrong, generally we say "oops!" and we correct ourselves (sometimes painfully) and then we get back to pursuing our good-hearted Liberal goals.  

But to MAGA mopes, the endless lies they tell are not about truth or falsehood at all.  Those lies are just bits of kit designed to protect what these mopes are most deeply emotionally invested in.  That they are never wrong, that they're smarter than everyone else, and anything bad that happens is the fault of us Liberal devils

From the Rolling Stone just yesterday:

Right-Wingers Are Blaming the L.A. Fires on Diversity

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and commentators across conservative media are blaming the blazes on everything but the climate crisis 

From Le Monde, just yesterday:

Trump slams Democrats, blames Governor 'Newscum,' for deadly fires in Los Angeles 

From Vanity Fair just yesterday:

Right-Wing Pundits Blame DEI and Democrats in Predictable Deluge of Wildfire Misinformation

“They prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes,” Elon Musk claimed, falsely, in one indicative post. 

You think they're grateful for all that truth that slips in when one of their shields breaks?  That they'll respect you for it?  

Are you nuts?  They'll hate you even more for it.  

All of your facts are nothing but volleys of painfully stabby arrows that need to be blocked  immediately.  And in that moment they'll settle for any lie, no matter how ridiculous, to shut you up.

Do you remember the series of rapid-fire lies Republicans ran through after January 6th?  

At first, most elected Republicans were outraged, or at least pretended they were.  

Because the case was open and shut.  It was obvious what had happened and who was to blame and they were in a hurry to get on what they assumed would be the right side of history.  

But even after four years of Trump and 40 years of escalating Conservative dumbing-down and riling-up propaganda, they fundamentally never understood the base of their party.  Because to the base, the failure of the J6 coup was not a cause for sober reflection -- it was a massive failure of their shield system.  They were in imminent danger of being exposed to a fatal dose of reality!  Something had to be done!

So, suddenly ... maybe it wasn't Trump supporters who did this terrible thing at all.  

In rapid fire succession, a variety of different and contradictory lies were cobbled together. 

It was ... Antifa.  While at the same time it was somehow also all the fault of Sekrit Deep State FBI infiltrators who tricked those poor, patriotic Republicans into doing the deed.

From The Independent, January 6, 2024:

Trump falsely claims FBI and Antifa were ‘leading the charge’ in Capitol attack

Mr. Trump maintained that January 6 rioters ‘went there to protest a rigged election’

Ahead of the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot, former president Donald Trump baselessly cast blame on Antifa and the FBI as the main proponents of the attack.

“By the way, there was Antifa, there was FBI, there were a lot of other people there too leading the charge,” Mr Trump said at a rally in Sioux, Center Iowa on Friday, 5 January. “You saw the same people that I did.”...

He then turned to “the hostages,” seemingly referring to those arrested and charged for their actions on January 6. “The J6 hostages, I call them. Nobody’s been treated ever in history so badly as those people,” he said.

Then it was Nancy Pelosi's fault.  From NBC News, September 10, 2024 

Trump defends Jan. 6 rioters, blames Nancy Pelosi for chaos

Then it was the fault of the capitol police who let those peaceful protesters in the building.  From ABC News, February 19, 2021 :

In new defense, dozens of Capitol rioters say law enforcement 'let us in' to building

At least 29 accused rioters say they thought it was OK to enter the Capitol.

For the record, and any future generations who might wondering, from PolitiFact:

Did Capitol Police let mob of Trump supporters in? 

We didn’t find evidence of that. Instead, we discovered that some online video is getting misinterpreted. Many officers had to abandon their posts and barricades because they were far outnumbered and overwhelmed.

And just this week, the word “Hezbollah” entered the chat.  From MSNBC:

Trump’s rhetoric about Jan. 6 rioters takes a weird and unexpected turn

The president-elect has lied about Jan. 6 before, but his latest comments about the rioters broke new ground — including a bizarre claim about Hezbollah.

What breaks many Liberal's brain is that while fascist scumbags on the right were flinging wild lies about who was to blame for J6 against the wall like ketchup at Mar-a-Lago during an orange toddler temper tantrum...they were also claiming that, hey, maybe J6 was a good thing!

Yeah! A noble undertaking!

Because maybe those rascally Deep State liberals really did steal the 2020 election!  Maybe J6 was justified!

And, suddenly, there was no "maybe" about it any more.  Those cunning Deep State commie liberals definitely stole the 2020 election and the freedom fighters of January 6th were martyrs and political prisoners!

Watching this all from the outside, it felt like watching a moron going insane.  The lies were so stupid and obvious, and they shed them so fast and scampered off to the next lie so awkwardly that, c'mon, this is ridiculous.  This is so dumb.  This isn't fooling anyone.  

Then came the J6 committee, and the dozens and dozens of hours of testimony by eyewitnesses.

Surely this would all make a difference.  Tip the scales.  But, once again, to believe that is to fundamentally misunderstand the Republican brain.  

They do not care about true or false.  They do not care about fact or fiction.  All they care about is protecting the core of their identity: the belief that they are always right about everything and are smarter than everyone.  That you and I are monsters and/or Deep State dupes.  And that if it ever turns out that they were actually wrong about something...it was never their fault: it was all part of some vast, evil Liberal Deep State conspiracy which you and I are part of. 

Just like the lies they told as the Bush administration they had all so passionately supported collapsed,  the early lies the were throwing around about J6 were sloppy and stupid because they were grabbing for any scraps of anything they could throw together to create a temporary defense.  It didn't have to hold long: just until the Republican party and Conservative media came up with more permanent lies behind which their racist grievances and preening self-regard would be safe.    

This is why they love Trump.  He and Fox News and Hate Radio are their Hephaestus.   Their Vulcan.  The tireless manufacturers of an endless supply of shiny new lies --  shiny new shields -- to replace ones that reality shatters and need to be discarded.   

Orly Taitz and her lies were useful until they weren’t.  

Once those lies had outlived their usefulness they were dropped and forgotten and new liars telling new lies took their place.

Because the only imperative is maintaining a steady supply of shielding lies behind which the delusions of Republican bigots and imbeciles can remain unscathed and secure.  

I Am The Liberal Media

Orly Taitz Died For Your Sins: Part One

This is a post in two parts.  Part One is, who was Orly Taitz and whatever happened to her?  And Part Two is, why the hell is driftglass writing about Orly Taitz?

To begin Part One, no, Orly Taitz is not dead.  The title of the post is meant ironically.  Or metaphorically.  Or photosynthetically.  

 One of those writerly things. 

Anyway, no, she's not dead,  just irrelevant and nearly forgotten.   When last the world heard from Orly Taitz she was living in Laguna Niguel, California and owned a dental practice.  But not so long ago, she was the tip of the spear in a massive conspiracy to cripple the presidency of Barack Obama and maybe get him impeached, while at the same time putting Donald Trump in contention for the 2016 Republican nomination. 

From Mother Jones, August 10, 2009:

Meet the Birthers

Who are these people, really?

Born in the former Soviet republic of Moldavia, Orly Taitz is a peroxide-blonde SoCal dentist with a law degree from an online academy and a black belt in Taekwondo. More than anyone else, she has vaulted birthers—their preferred nomenclature is “doubters” or the “eligibility movement”—into the public eye.

In 2008, Taitz helped to bring a lawsuit on behalf of Alan Keyes, disputing the validity of Obama’s birth certificate. This year, she hit the headlines again when she filed another lawsuit from an Army reserve major who charged that “Barry Soetoro” was not his lawful commander in chief. Both suits were rejected, prompting Taitz to accost Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Antonin Scalia at public events to demand an investigation into the matter...

Taitz wasn't alone.  The Mother Jones article has bios on all the leading birthers, including Philip Berg "a 9/11 Truther who hopped the birther train after a brief detour with the PUMA crowd—the small but noisy band of Hillary Clinton supporters who refused to accept that Obama had won the 2008 Democratic primary.", Alan Keyes "The perennial candidate, anti-gay crusader, and anti-abortion activist is nevertheless perhaps the birther movement’s most credible member—which isn’t saying a lot. A party to the Taitz lawsuit challenging Obama’s eligibility to hold the presidency, Keyes, who calls Obama a 'radical communist' and a 'usurper'", Dr. Ron Polarik (not his real name) who claimed to be a “document imaging” expert, Andy Martin (not his real name) who started the rumor that Obama was a secret Muslim.

Swiftboat scumbag Jerome Corsi joined in, as did Fox News' very own Lou Dobbs, and on and on.

And there were even elected Republican federal officeholders who maybe were cautious enough not to  fully and publicly embrace the entire bull goose loony lie, but were more than happy to go on the record as having "questions" about Obama's birthplace.  That list included senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), representative Bill Posey (R-Fla.), representative Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and representative John Sullivan (R-Okla.)

Do you remember that Taitz also sued over Obama's Social Security number?  She did.  

From the Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2011:

Orly Taitz Raises a New Issue: Obama's Social Security Number

In an interview with Washington Wire, she now says that Mr. Obama once used a Social Security number that was not assigned to him. 

She also sued to get him off the ballot in 2012.  

From the Topeka Capital-Journal, September 20, 2012:

Taitz files Kansas suit to block Obama candidacy.

Taitz was the Laura Loomer of her day: the louder and crazier she got, the more media attention she got, and the more Republican "friends" she began to gather on Facebook.  

Because any media oxygen you give to a fanatic only encourages them.  

From Politico, July 27, 2009:  

Birther leader: GOP is with me

Orly Taitz, the California attorney-dentist leading the charge of the so-called birthers movement, is boasting on her blog that she’s made some high-profile “friends” on Facebook: Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor and GOP Reps. Mary Bono Mack and Cynthia Lummis.

“I am in total disbelief and greatly honored,” Taitz wrote on her blog today after Cantor appeared as one of her Facebook “friends.” “To me it means that the leadership of the Republican party understands the importance of the issues and legal cases I brought forward. I hope more congressmen and senators join and either become additional plaintiffs or bring to the House and Senate judicial committee hearings the issues of Obama’s illegitimacy to presidency as well as suspected illegal activities by Obama and his supporters. “

The birthers argue that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and is therefore not eligible to serve as president. Obama’s birth certificate and all credible evidence show that he was, in fact, born in Hawaii.

Republican National Committee press secretary Gail Gitcho said she has been deluged with calls about Steele’s “friend” status with Taitz today — a day when the RNC was trying to roll out its health care counter-agenda...

From Salon, May 17, 2010:

Michele Bachmann pals around with birther queen Orly Taitz

The Minnesota congresswoman was photographed with the one woman in America with crazier ideas about Barack Obama

Wonderful news! Big-haired Minnesota Congressloon Michele Bachmann was finally photographed with crazy attorney/dentist and insatiable lover Orly Taitz, the Queen of the Birthers.

The Tea Party Patriots invited both of them to speak at a lunch in California on Friday. Taitz claims Birtherism didn't come up, but that's literally the only thing she talks about, so I'm not sure if I believe her.

And then, inevitably, the Exploiter Of Broken People took her side.  

And from that moment on, with Hate Radio and Fox News and most of the legacy media happy to go along for the ride, Trump used this ridiculous, racist lie to make himself the center of attention.  From then on, it was Trump versus Obama.  Co-equals.  And when Obama was finally pushed to the point where he thought, fine, I'll disclosed the birth certificate so we can get on with actual, important business, it was Donald Trump that the legacy media rushed to interview.  

And he made a seven-course meal out of it.

>

The CNN headline?

Donald Trump to vet Obama's birth certificate

So that was the end of it, right?  Finally done with this nonsense?

Nope.

From USA Today, December 2013:

Donald Trump and Orly Taitz Reinvigorate 'Birtherism' After Hawaii Plane Crash

And from CNN, four years later, November 29, 2017:

President Donald Trump isn’t convinced Barack Obama was born in the United States after all.

That’s according to a New York Times piece, which contains these two chilling paragraphs:

“In recent months, they say, Mr. Trump has used closed-door conversations to question the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. He has also repeatedly claimed that he lost the popular vote last year because of widespread voter fraud, according to advisers and lawmakers.

“One senator who listened as the president revived his doubts about Mr. Obama’s birth certificate chuckled on Tuesday as recalled the conversation. The president, he said, has had a hard time letting go of his claim that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States. The senator asked not to be named to discuss private conversations.”

So, that's what Birtherism did for Donald Trump.  But what about Orly Taitz?

Well, she's still nuts and still desperately trying to claw her way back into the spotlight, but now she's just a joke.  The last "news" item about her I could find is from January 2021 from an outfit called  Law & Crime.  The headline:

Orly Taitz Accuses VP Harris and Sen. Schumer of Borderline ‘Criminal’ Conduct in Bizarre Attempt to Shut Down Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial

The Wikipedia pages on her are wild.  Just paragraphs and paragraphs of nutso accusations and dozens of transparently ridiculous lawsuits.  Stuff you've heard about and stuff I'll bet you've never heard about like...

• Obama's first act as president was to donate money to Hamas, which she claims will be used to build Qassam rockets.  And, 

• The FEMA camps conspiracy theory: Obama is having the Federal Emergency Management Agency build internment camps for "Anti-Obama dissidents".  And, 

• That Osama bin Laden was killed years before 2011 when he actually died, with his body kept on ice, and the announcement of his death was timed to divert attention from an upcoming court case she was litigating challenging Obama's citizenship.

Back when her madness was useful and exploitable by Republicans, she was everywhere, being interviewed by everyone.  But once she reached her sell-by date and her crazy bitch ravings were no longer useful, she became just another rusted, used-up tool.  Discarded like a used condom in the same ash heap of broken people where momentarily-useful cranks and crackpots like Mike Lindell and Laura Loomer are headed.

End of Part One.

Part Two is here -- Why the hell is driftglass writing about Orly Taitz?

I Am The Liberal Media

Heck of a Week

First, Sam the Sham Alito leads his ragtag band of Federalist Society myrmidons up to the ippy-tippy top of the jurisprudential mountain to announce to the world that, yes! yes! the United States Supreme Court really is the black-robed Conservative abattoir of democracy that those America-hating, terrorist-loving, baby-killing Liberals have been warning us about for decades.

Then Nepo-great-great-grandbaby A.G. Sulzberger rode his high horse all the way to the uppermost  balcony of his New York Times to announce to the world that, yes! yes! America's Newspaper of Record really is the bastion of  petty, vindictive, cosseted monarchists that those dirty hippie ingate Liberals have been warning us about for decades.

Been a heck of a week, vindication-wise.  I'm exhausted.  Think I'll just kick back, open a cold one and wait for the very sincere apologies to come rolling it from all those Very Serious Persons who have been so very righteously wrong all along.  

I Am The Liberal Media

Conservative Headlines Corrected While U Wait

From the article:

CPAC didn’t misrepresent the conservative base because the real Republican voters out there were more normal and serious suit-and-tie types. It misrepresented the Republican voters in the other direction: CPAC attendees were more policy oriented than your median Republican voter. But as a matter of weirdness and tribal antipathy, they were actually a pretty good reflection of the right, broadly speaking. 

The fact that the Republican Party is full of Republicans continues to be treated as a stunning, ongoing revelation to Conservatives who make their living representing themselves as experts in American politics speaks louder than any headline.   

The fact that it would kill them to admit that the Left was right about the Right all along speaks louder than any headline.  

No Half Measures

In Days Of Old, When Knights Were Bold...

We rejoin our story as the slow-motion GOP freakout over the !Sudden!Discovery! that the Republican party is full of -- gasp! -- Republicans ...



... continues to dominate the nation's Grand Guignol comedy circuit (for today's example we turn to the Breitbart Collective Farm):

LIMBAUGH: TRUMP MOVEMENT EXPOSES LOW REGARD CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUALS HAVE FOR ORDINARY AMERICANS

Which is certainly horrifying.  And not funny at all.  And bitterly funny-as-hell.

But let us leave the fog and thunder of America's political media battlefield where everyone is feigning surprise that, under it's tissue-thin veneer of David Brooks respectability, Conservatism is a roiling cesspit of ignorance, racism and crazy...

...and return to a simpler time.  A time before YouTube and Instagram.  Back before your 'umble scrivener was even a blogger -- when I was just a long-winded commenter at the late Steve Gilliard's News Blog.

Steve's comments sections are long-gone now, existing only in the memories of those who found a home there and stomped the jolly fuck out of the trolls that sometimes stumbled through the door (Looking at you, "bloomie".)  But sometimes Steve would haul a comment up from below-decks and turn it into a post, so while all of my comments have turned to digital dust and blown away... thanks to Mr. Gilliard occasionally front-paging my comments, what you see below was saved from the bony fingers of internet entropy.

I am reposting it here because I think from time to time it is vital for us on the Left to to look back and remember just how fucking spot on we have always been about the GOP, and how aggressively we have been slandered and ignored by the Beltway media and by the political elite precisely because we have been right about the Right all along.

From The News Blog in March of 2005:

They are serious

Driftglass posted this in comments and it's too damn funny to stay there.

IMHO it’s as simple as: “Never jump into bed with someone who’s crazier than you are.”

For the Suburban Gated, the non-deranged gunnies and the Tax Cuts Uber Alles Republicans, it’s all jolly good fun having a romp with the Fundies…as long as they keep delivering the 20% margin the GOP must have to win anything and as long as they stay the fuck away from my house and family, its all just good kinky fun…

…until the sun comes up, and you realize that the Electoral Candy you were offered was just bait to get you into the Windowless Fundy Panel Truck. Oops.

And now you’re waaaay out in the country somewhere you don’t recognize without your pants, and you start to figure our that all the Burning Crosses and Swastikas and Apocalyptic Paraphernalia that tricks out the inside of the van isn't tatted-up Goth Chick posturing.

And Randall Terry and Tom DeLay wave to you from the front seat and say, “Mornin’ shug! Get ready; we gonna burn us some ‘a them Chirst Hatin’ Abortionists today.” Or Fags. Or Negros. Or Liberals. Or Ay-rabs. Or Jews. Or, really, Anybody.

And all of the slack-jawed yokels who were so eagerly helpful while you were passing you’re Lovely Tax Cuts are sitting around you giggling…and armed to their snaggled teeth.

And then you hear, “Bring Out The Gimp.” (Which, for my money, should be the Democrats’ Lead Media Message for the next four months.)

Oh. God. You mean these crazy fucks were serious? Like, really, really serious?!

No shit they’re serious, Suburban Weekend Bad-Ass -- and it's not exactly like you weren't given Ample Warning: Now they have your shriveled nuts in a razor-lined C-clamp, they want the very high interest vig on the Electoral Loan they made you to pay for your Optional War and Drunken Safety Net Shredding Good Times.

As I've been saying, the devil wants his due, and he's come to collect.

They thought they could play them forever. I guess forever is today,

 Other than a few of the names, there is absolutely nothing about this post from more than a decade ago from a long-dead blog that needs updating.

Absolutely nothing about the Right which we did not see coming and have been shouting from the rooftops since forever.

And that's a tragedy.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to D'Souza

Recently, Andrew Sullivan was moved to criticize Dinesh D’Souza with language boosted straight outta Liberal Central Command.

D’Souza once believed in making serious arguments for a more conservative view of the world. It’s telling about his own evolution – and the degeneration of public discourse in America – that he has largely given that up in favor of really lucrative propaganda designed to monetize the polarized red state masses. He’s another example of the power of the right-wing media-industrial complex. Its ability to reward its propagandists with fantastic monetary awards without any need to engage critics has transformed conservatism in this country – for the gridlocked, ideological worse.

Sullivan's late-life discovery that Dirty Liberals have been right (over and over and over again) all along about the truly loathsome nature of his beloved Conservatism has had the incredibly amusing side-effect of driving Sully into an ideological St. Vitus' Dance every time he has to gavotte and skitter around that hugely inconvenient fact.

And while he now camps out on his own little ideological Principality of Sealand, smoking weed and extolling the virtues of Imaginary Libertarianism every bit as energetically as he used to preach the gospel of Imaginary Conservatism, like everyone else for whom it is economically and psychologically impossible to admit the scary truth at the heart of our crippling political dysfunction, Mr. Sullivan regularly plays the Both Sides game every bit as hard as David Gregory or Mark Halperin or Harold Ford Junior ever did.

This time around, during his critique of the D'hack D'Souza, Mr. Sullivan felt it was necessary to prop up his Both Siderist cred by pausing every few minutes to gratuitously punch Michael Moore in the face over and over again:

The Michael Moore Of The Right?

In an interview conducted as he awaits sentencing for violating campaign-finance law, Dinesh D’Souza reveals the inspiration behind the “documentaries” he’s produced, such as 2016: Obama’s America (trailer above) and America: Imagine the World Without Her:

I went back and watched Roger and Me, which I think is [Michael Moore's] best film. It’s got an interesting premise: General Motors closes down a big auto plant that his dad happened to work at, and he’s going to go find the CEO of General Motors and demand to know why. Now, it fails intellectually, because there is an obvious reason why General Motors might want to close that plant—i.e., it’s not making money. And one possible reason it’s not making money is General Motors has been paying people like his dad way too much and can make cars much cheaper in North Carolina or other countries. You can’t proceed without confronting that argument. But Michael Moore’s presumption is that the CEO of General Motors, Roger Smith, is just a mean guy who wants to deprive working people of their livelihood. So intellectually, it’s ridiculous.

But visually, cinematically, narratively, it works. This clownish Michael Moore showing up everywhere, the cops in dogged pursuit. All of that works. What Michael Moore understands is that a movie traffics in the language of emotion. The intellect is subordinate to that.

On the Obama question, D’Souza is actually copying Moore’s intellectually ridiculous oeuvre.

He starts, as Moore does, with a crude reductionist idea of a public figure – Obama as seeking revenge on a colonial America – undergirded by nothing but D’Souza’s own pop-psychologizing of Obama’s relationship with his own father. Everything else needed to explain the actions of a center-left president (who has waged more wars in more places than most American presidents) is moot. For D’Souza, a crude narrative of racial revenge is all that’s really necessary to understand the Obama presidency – and he then simply adds layer upon layer to this caricature, which feeds paranoia and conspiracy theories and glib ideology as powerfully as Moore once did...

However repellent to Mr. Sullivan's very, very delicate sensibilities Michael Moore's guerrilla  tactics and directorial style may be, there is absolutely no denying that the range of subjects Mr. Moore has taken on -- the gutting of our manufacturing base and the razing of the American Middle Class for the short-term profit of a few at the top...a scathing indictment of our political system's unhinged overreaction to 9/11 and the Bush Regime's deliberate exploitation of that tragedy for political gain at a time when virtually everyone else with a megaphone including Andrew "Liberal Fifth Columnist" Sullivan was giddily stampeding in the opposite direction...the grotesque and destructive dysfunction of the for-profit boondoggle that we laughingly refer to as a "health care system" ...the fatal madness of our gun culture... Capitalism!...and so forth -- have all proven to be both on the side of the angels and the right side of history.

By way of contrast, Mr. D'Souza's subject matter -- that President Obama is driven by the ghosts of his African ancestors to destroy Murrica -- is the batshit twaddle of a minor demagogue who makes his living fluffing the paranoid conspiracy theories of the shallow end of the American gene pool.

Of course, Mr, Sullivan cannot see this, because Mr, Sullivan is part of the problem.

The Adventures of Baron Grifthausen -- UPDATE

"Lying is the Song of the Streets"

-- Author unknown

Of course Newt-n-Calista-n-Jebus, LLC are "running" for President.

Of course they are.

How could it be otherwise?

Although many on the active, political Right may excel in individual events, there is no one who dominates the Conservative Moral Delinquency Decathlon like the human disaster area that is Newt Gingrich.

No bigger liar than Newt.

No bigger fraud than Newt.

No bigger exemplar and practitioner of the Science of Slaughtering Civilized Discourse for Partisan Gain than Newt.

No bigger hypocrite than Newt.

Also too, Newt has not held elected office since Ally McBeal was on the air.

Now over in the Better Universe, Newt Gingrich would be the national equivalent of a George Ryan or an Ike Carothers -- a half-remembered "Really? I though he was dead"-grade public embarrassment, laughing-stock, and the faint chuckle-inducing punch-line of a handful of mediocre political jokes.


But in this Universe, Newt is the GOP's Total Package, which is why – year after year – the Sock Puppets of Empire like David Gregory keep putting him back in the spotlight.

Because, we are told, Newt is Smart.

Smaaaart.

And within the Beltway Bell Jar (where a room-temperature IQ is clearly no barrier to rapid career advancement) ‘Smaaaart’ is like unto wizardry: a scary, half-understood power which, for Republicans, means that all sins are shriven and all inconvenient questions are pre-censored,

But when our Villager Overlords say "smart", what they really mean is "cunning": a lower, predatory trait which in this context simply means that, unlike a weepy waterhead like John Boehner or an half-bright, openly-scheming flunkey like Eric Cantor, Newt is capable of freestyle-lying in complete sentences without shitting his pants.

In other words, Newt lies effortlessly by reflex.

See, without sturdy verbal guard-rails and training-wheels delivered fresh and hot from the sphincters of Rush Limbaugh or Rupert Murdoch, most Conservative public figures get quickly lost and confused --

("Deer Preznit Kenyun ,
Please make the Dum-o-craps to stop saying how we voted for to gut Medicare!
The past is the past!
Yors in Christ,
the Party of God ")

-- and return to their factory-default settings: little wingbots running in terrified circles, yapping mindlessly about “Freedom” like HAL singing “Daisy” until their new Fox News software upgrades are installed.

Ah, but old-school mendacity innovators like Newt dare to swim out beyond the tightly-scripted, focus-group-tested Frank Luntz talking point tide-pools where most Republican douchebags spend their entire professional career, which both makes for good Imperial teevee, and gets at something important and about how Conservatives lie that we most Liberals have yet to wrap out heads around.

We waste our time waiting for the Right to find or grow or recover some semblance of a conscience.

That is never going to happen.

We keep waiting for some omniscient impartial referee (the Media) or righteous deity (the Masses) to step in and smite these fuckers.

That is never going to happen either.

What too many of us have not yet come to terms with (probably because of its frightening implications) is the tragic reality that, however far down the rabbit hole the Party of Lincoln has fallen, there will always a new low waiting just below it. And below that another. And below that another.

And that while every mile of this steeply sloping trajectory to fascism is paved with a welter of individual, ridiculous lies, the road itself is greased with Biggest Lie of All.

The lie that “Both side do it.”

That “Both side are equally bad, equally wrong, equally to blame.”

That “(But really, Liberals are worse...Liberals are worse...)”

And because this last and biggest lie is the one that makes it possible for both degenerates like Glenn Beck and whores like David Gregory to enjoy almost unimaginably great wealth and status, no one in the Establishment is ever going to allow it to be seriously challenged on teevee.

Never ever.

So, like a junkies turned loose on Free Crank Island, the Right (which has more than earned itself a choice parcel on the ash heap of history many, many times over) has instead found its worst impulses encourages and catered to.

Suddenly -- almost miraculously -- instead of being finally brought to book for the incalculable damage they have wreaked on our poor country, the Party of Lies instead finds that the Mainstream Media has liberated it from any fear of ever being held accountable.

For anything!

Wheee!

Which is why the quality of the lies told by the likes of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin seem so bizarre to outsiders. Over and over again we are just stunned by their infantile construction and naked bullshittery. We are mystified by the obvious fact that the lies they tell are in no way canny or clever, That, in fact, they don’t hang together at all.

Because they don’t need to,

On the street, you'll find people like this –-- People who lie automatically. People who lie by reflex. And as they continually kick up this huge cloud of meaningless, ridiculous verbal chaff, it is important to understand that their expectation is never that any individual lie is going to be 'believed' (although they’re delighted when one is.)

No, compulsive, junkie liars are instead engaged in an ongoing game of Hide and Go Seek with anyone and everyone who would stand between them and their high. So even as they vigorously defend one lie until it falls decisively apart, a junkie’s primary focus is on preparing the next lie.

And the next.

And the next.

And this is terrifying aspect of the Modern Conservative Movement which many of us have yet to really face; the fact that A) they are dedicated to a truly grotesque agenda, and B) they are absolutely devoid of conscience when it comes to the means by which they enact that agenda.

The acid test is, as always, the Right's scuttling deference to hatemongers like Limbaugh, sociopaths like Beck and serial liars like Breitbart: no concertina-wire wall of lies -- no matter how thick or loud -- can obscure the fact that any movement that permits people like these to remain at its core has become something monstrous beyond redemption.

They lie and lie –- even when they don’t have to –- especially when they don’t have to -- because that is what compulsive liars do.

Down on the corner where the men are slinging rock, this behavior is called “the song of the streets.”

In prison, professionals once referred to it as “Ganser Syndrome”, "balderdash syndrome", or the "syndrome of approximate answers".

In politics it is simply known as 'Conservatism'.


UPDATE:

This post was originally published in March, 2011.

The "update" to this post is that, having read it in the shadow of the revelation of Newt Gingrich's latest embarrassing scam, is does not require the slightest modification whatsoever.

The Rise of the Tharks

"But I was to learn that the Martian smile is merely perfunctory, and that the Martian laugh is a thing to cause strong men to blanch in horror."

"The ideas of humor among the green men of Mars are widely at variance with our conceptions of incitants to merriment.

The death agonies of a fellow being are, to these strange creatures provocative of the wildest hilarity, while their chief form of commonest amusement is to inflict death on their prisoners of war in various ingenious and horrible ways."

-- "A Princess of Mars"

(Original artwork from here)

BTW, the Mouse Circus was appalling today.
In all the usual ways.

Republican Peggy Noonan whining that "A leader leads". That it is entirely Barack Obama's fault that he could not make the GOP put country over party. That in 1996 Bill Clinton something something... Omitting, of course, that the good old days she pines for were full of Republicans lying hand-in-glove with Hate Radio, a Republican Congress who used their ascent to power to launch endless, partisan witch hunts culminating in the impeachment of the Democratic President, and that the GOP of 15 years ago look like Communist sleeper cells compared to the case-hardened fascists who run the party today.

Then again, maybe she was just drunk and missed the last 20 years or so.

Republican Mike Murphy whining that Barack Obama ran a brilliant Centrist campaign but has governed as the second coming of Vladimir Lenin ever since.

The billionaire CEO of Starbucks (and Tom Friedman BFF) was on hand to whine that Barack Obama hates rich people and that everyone in Washington was equally to blame for bad stuff happening.

It is not that these lying assbags exist. Of course they exist: Village and Empire pay their soulless mercenaries handsomely.

It is that they are handed the same, million-decibel megaphone to tell the same pack of bald-faced lies every fucking day, and no one who dares to whisper the truth is allowed near their giggly little clubhouse.

Up Next:

Wingnut Fanfic

Please stand by...

Jon Stewart was wrong

The Daily Show
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On the advisability of not pacing your rage.

Before it plunges down the wingnut memory hole forever, let us pause to recall that the absolute batshit berserker rage against the Kenyan Usurper is not something of recent vintage, nor was it something that was "caused" by anything President Obama ever said or did.

As evidenced by this little bit of history from just 10 weeks after President Obama was sworn in, the unhinged hatred on the Right was "caused" by the mere fact that a Black man with a (D) after his name got elected President by a solid majority.

Period.

From the moment his hand touched the Bible (you do remember he took the oath twice, right?) to President Limbaugh ordering his faithful manservant John Boehner to throw an historically unprecedented hissy fit over the scheduling of a joint session of Congress, every Republican tantrum -- Every. Single. One. -- has been nothing more than various means to the end of undoing the results of the 2008 election.

From Birtherism to Death Panels, the Modern Conservative agenda in the Age of Obama has been nothing but reckless swine and calculating traitors grabbing whatever heavy object they could lay their hands on and heaving it into traffic, hoping to cause a wreck.

In other words, a relentless, national program of premeditated sabotage at a time of war and national economic emergency.

And don't even get me started on their fucking governors.

If Bush had actually done his job and killed Osama bin Laden, the Right would have cleared room for him on Mt. Rushmore. If Bush had killed bin Laden and helped take down Gaddahfi? Over a single summer? Fuck, the Right would this minute be carving his face on the Moon.

President Obama -- whatever his flaws -- has done these things -- things that the Right would have found admirable in any other person on any other day -- but since it's Obama, it's...gone. Vanished. Revised, trivialized and miraculous transmogrified into a Christopath coloring book in which Bush actually kills bin Laden.

Instead we have the Right -- lavishly funded by the fascist industrialists and Fox News propagandists who are so close to their dream of pure oligarchy they can taste it -- holding poor people hostage to tax cuts for billionaires, threatening to blow up the world economy unless they get 100% of everything they want, putting holds on everything it couldn't filibuster, swearing public allegiance to lunatics and Dark Ages superstition.

Because you know what? Jon Stewart was wrong. For the Right, going jaw-dropping, over-the-top, foaming apeshit and staying apeshit actually worked just fine. And as long as no Democrat of the First Water is willing to call them out as the depraved thugs that they are (and as long as no major media outlet is willing to tell this story honestly) it will continue to work, because the Right has gone the Brownshirt Dolchstoss myth one better: pre-loading a fully-articulated "We were betrayed by internal enemies!" fantasy into the tiny, mushy brains of their orc army in advance of the global economic Reichstag Fire they themselves are clearly desperate to ignite.

In February, 2009 I wrote this:

After leading us -- limping and wounded -- away from the precipice of economic disaster, over the next eight years President Obama's hardest job is going to be the reclamation and rehabilitating of a gibbering, toxic scrumfuck called the Republican Party.

In this, I was as wrong as Jon Stewart: if the last two years have demonstrated anything beyond any doubt, it is that that the GOP is rotted from the soul on out and beyond redemption.

I am also keenly aware that the last time these people were allowed to get this absolutely dug-in/fuck-you-crazy it took the entire Union Army to stop them from destroying this country.

I wonder what it will take this time?

Monkey Poo Discovered

On Monkey House wall.

Film at 11.

Fresh from the desk of the World's Greatest Blogger:

The Tea Party As A Christianist Force

We've been told again and again that the real motivation of the Tea Party is a multi-partisan movement to bring the debt and government under control. I've never believed this, partly because these people were never to be found under Bush. It was primarily a laundering device to disappear the Bush years, re-brand the GOP as a wholly different entity and thereby avoid the long wilderness that the catastrophes of the first decade of this century might have led them into.

Now we have some large data sets to review the reality. And the reality is that the Tea Party is the Christianist right-wing of the GOP.
...

I agree, although I'd like to know the names of the people Mr. Sullivan believes have been lying to us "again and again" about "the real motivation of the Tea Party".

Names, Mr. Sullivan. Names, and then a sustained call for some substantial consequences to come down on the necks (or at least the wallets) of the people who have been lying to us about such vitally important matters.

Names, Mr. Sullivan, unless of course they are friends of your, in which case we don't name names or call for contrition and atonement do we?

I was also pleased that it came sans Mr. Sullivan's usual, gratuitous shot at the imaginary sins and distant histories of Culture Warrior Liberals, remains the highest form of tribal-identification-invective/Crazy-Lefty-Sauce-lobster-bib among Ivory Tower "Conservatives" who want to make loudly certain that none of their frathouse brethren mistake them for Evil Libruls in the dark as they parrot exactly the same fucking critiques that Liberals have been leveling at the Right (and for which we have been roundly mocked) for decades.



As as I (like many Liberals) wrote many, many times before it was fashionable, the Tea Party -- like German soldiers after the fall of Berlin -- is nothing but the GOP Base who have stopped running away from the catastrophe they created just long enough to burn their uniforms and pretend they were all in Switzerland the whole time.

Nobody knows what “independents” want, because “independent” as a modern political category is a textbook example of what Kurt Vonnegut defined in "Cat's Cradle" as a "granfalloon":

"...a proud and meaningless association of human beings"

Because “independent” can mean any-damn-thing, or nothing at all.

...

Snake-handling queer-hating Leviticans who think the GOP is too gutless because it won’t advocate rounding up Teh Gay and putting them in camps?

Independents.

Bunker-dwelling survivalists?

Independents.

Pimple-faced 30-something John Galt wannabees who masturbate themselves blind to “Atlas Shrugged” because that hot chick in accounting won’t give them a second look, but won’t she be sorry when Objectivists stop the engine of the world and people like her will have to stand in like to offer their vajay-jays to the alpha studs wealth producers!

Independents.

Klansmen who want to smoke a little weed?

Independents.

America's compulsive political middle-children who have been taught so thoroughly to compromise their way out of any conflict that they will travel a 1,000 miles just to find a fence to straddle?

The opinionless little ciphers who just want to make sure they line up with a winner?

The moral cowards wouldn’t pick a side with a gun pressed to their heads, because of the terror of then being committed to actually doing something instead of snarking their way through life declaring "Well, ya know, bote sides are juss a buncha crooks anyway!" about every situation regardless of context and circumstances?

If asked, I guarantee you all virtually of those people would tell you that they think of themselves as “independent”.

And based on simple observation, guess who appears to be the largest group of late-blooming independents?

Those fucknozzles who, after giving Dubya the longest tongue bath in modern political history while calling everyone else a traitor, started gagging on the sheer tonnage of bullshit their creepy idolatry of George W. Bush was requiring them to swallow and obediently regurgitate every fucking day, that's who.

Most newly minted “independents” seem to be little more than Republicans who are fleeing the scene of their crime, but at the same time still desperately want believe in the inerrant wisdom of Rush Limbaugh. They are completely incapable of facing the horrifying reality that that they have gotten every single major political opinion and decision of their adult lives completely wrong, so instead they double-down on their hatred of women and/or gays and/or brown people and/or Liberals, and blame them for the miserable fuckpit their leaders and their policies have made of their live and futures.

Like German soldiers after the fall of Berlin, they have stopped running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms.

But they fool no one.

Except, apparently, David Fucking Brooks.

They have, as always, been aided and abetted in this latest Big Conservative Lie by our idiot media.

the same media that jumped on the Iraq bandwagon. The same media that went right along with the Conservative Lie that Clinton was a depraved monster. The same media that has been on-board with every other Conservative or Fake Centrist Lie before and since.

However, the big, ugly fact that you continue to run away from is that your whole movement has itself been one, long "laundering device". One long exercise in feeding the paranoia and rage of the mad Dog Base with lies and red meat, followed by some horrible failure, followed by pressing the Media Memory Reset Button and pretending it never happened or that Imaginary Libruls were just as bad or worse, followed by rinse-and-repeat-and-up-the-ante.

Like a Virgin.

“...they turned to prayer, beseeching
that the sin which had been committed
might be wholly blotted out.”

-- 2 Maccabees. 12:42

After conspiring to bring about two of the most destructive events in modern American history -- the impeachment of a US President over trivia, and the probable theft of the subsequent Presidential election -- to what God could Republicans possibly pray that their eight years of insanity, venom and violence "might be wholly blotted out?”

On 09/11/01, their dark miracle came winging its way out of a clear, blue sky.

Eight years ago, this is what we all saw.

All of us, all together across all political, cultural and religious spectra watched the worst thing many of us had ever seen.

Together.

But in what now seems like less time than it took to wipe away our tears, the same depraved thugs who sponsored eight years of "Clinton Murdered Vince Foster!" hysteria began hijacking of our pain and patriotism to serve their partisan interests right before our eyes.

The minute the Bush Administration began trying to stretch the war they got into an excuse for the war they wanted, 9/11 stopped being merely a national tragedy and started being the Bush Administration's bottomless political ATM machine.

The minute the Party of Personal Responsibility began using the mantra "9/11 changed everything" as the political equivalent of the Blood of Christ -- as a means to absolve themselves of their personal responsibility for eight years of malice and derangement -- for them September 11, 2001 stopped being a moment of shared, national anguish and started being a suit of cultural body-armor which magically deflected any criticism of their lies and their and hypocrisy.

An impervious sniper's nest from which they could cynically escalate

their war on the Left.


Or don't you remember the day the Right robbed the graves of all those who perished on 9/11 to turn this


into their all-purpose

"Get Out of the 90s Free" card?

And the thing is, it worked.

By selling 9/11 for a mess of wingnut pottage, the Right bought itself an anti-Liberal free-fire zone and two Presidential terms-worth of blank checks. Two terms of an alternately supportive and supine media. Two terms of catastrophe, corruption and treason protected from scrutiny by an ablative shield made out of solid "Why do you hate America?", and a promise that they could go on bareback fucking diseased monsters in the alley all night long, every night, forever and wake up each morning miraculously clean, virginal and still beloved in the eyes of God.
...

There is nothing going on with the Tea Party that was not baked into the Conservative Movement like the bean in a King Cake under Nixon, metastasized under Reagan and predicted by those Damned Dirty Hippies decades ago. And because of that intractable and irrefutable fact, the professional survival of Conservative Public Ineffectuals Intellectuals like Mr. Sullivan depends 100% on "laundering" their own past every bit as much as the Teabaggers "launder" theirs.

And it is perhaps this sheer, ludicrous hypocrisy of the foundation on which they have built their critiques of their former partners in Conservative crimes that is the reason why none of these fearless public intellectuals will publicly debate -- or even acknowledge -- this old and fatal lie at the heart of their brave, new Conservative World.

Only Nixon can go to Nixonland

Conservatives built this monster.

It didn’t just wander out of the woods one day, or land here from another planet. The Wingnut Base -- whatever teabagger, Colonial Williamsburg camouflage they’re sporting this week, and however hard the media tries to pretend they aren't who we know they are -- was manufactured by the Conservative Movement to win elections. Made right here in the U S of A out of spare parts left over from the Segregationist South, Right-wing fundamentalism, Bircher paranoia and general Archie Bunker pig-ignorance.

Conservatives built the unholy thing, programmed it, wounded it up and sent it out to do their bidding.

And everyone knows it. David Brooks knows it. David Gregory. Tom Friedman. David Frum. The goofs at the "No Labels" freakshow. The entire GOP Brain Caste.

Everybody.

This is the same monster that never gave a shit that Reagan/Bush were running up historic deficits, or sold weapons to terrorists to finance illegal wars. The same monster that hunted and impeached Clinton. The same monster that completely looses its shit over "activist judges"...right up until five of the most malignantly activist judges in modern history put their candidate in the White House and gave corporations the right to buy elections.

The same monster that cheered on George W. Bush's serial, catastrophic betrayals and failures while it called Liberals "traitor".

The same monster that dutifully gets its opinions from Rush Limbaugh, its "news" from Sean Hannity and its Jebus from Pat Robertson.

And everyone knows it.

The title of this post is sadly facetious: Nixon would of course be considered a filthy Commie Liberal by the monster his strategies created and would have to carry Pat Buchanan in front of him like the Ark of the Wingnut Covenant if he wanted to get into CPAC.

And everyone knows it.

Everyone also knows that calling your Conservative member of Congress isn't going to budge them, because your Conservative member of Congress owes his or her job to the monster.

Nothing short of an extinction-level event is going to change the monster's course or ferocity: it is quite mad in exactly the way its designers intended. It has no capacity whatsoever to correct or even recognize its own madness, which means it is never going to recover.

So please stop trying to reason with it.

Instead, focus on what can be done, which is this: Nixon didn't go to China for the pandas and the Great Wall; he went to create a split in the alliances that held the Communist world together.

For 30 years, the staunchest ally of the unhinged Right has been the craven Center: that army of Beltway automatons who profit handsomely from propping up the Right’s every act of depravity with one outrageously false equivalence after another. This is the "But the Democrats" brigade, on well-coiffed display every Sunday at what I have been calling "The Mouse Circus" for the past six years.

Unchecked this state of affairs will continue for another 30 years or until we as a nation are finally burned to the ground and sold off for scrap by the Right, right under the noses of the Center who will be busy sternly lecturing Left on the need for more Compromise and greater Reasonableness, and compulsively masturbating into the pages of the New York Times about how an awesome new Third Party full of Radically Reasonable Compromisers

would solve everything:

Can’t We Do This Right?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

...
Personally, I’ll support anyone with a real plan to cut spending, raise revenues and boost investment in the five pillars of our success — be they Democrats or Republicans. But if neither Republicans nor Democrats can see that we need a hybrid politics today — one that requires cutting, taxing and investing as part of a single nation-building strategy (phased in over time) — then I’ll hope for a third party that does get it and can take us where we need to go.

After which they will drive on back to their vast estates inside their gated communities while mobs in festive tri-corner hats driving Medicare-funded scooters start ripping the wiring and copper pipe out of the walls of the Home of the Brave in the name of Freedom.

In other words, it is long past time for that to change, which is why the Center must be destroyed: must be reduce to an economically uninhabitable no-man's land where it is no longer possible for the "Both Sides Do It" liars to ply their lucrative trade.

It is time for a new Pledge; a beneficent mirror-image of Grover Norquist's odious "Americas for Tax Reform" Party of God loyalty oath. A pledge where the signer promises they will not book guests on their radio or teevee show who are liars. Not link to websites that feature liars except to excoriate them. Will not buy from, advertise on or patronize media that hires and promotes liars. That they will not reference lying Centerists at all except to mete out to them the scorn they deserve.

As much as I like Lawrence O'Donnell, a couple of nights ago when he trundled Marcia Blackburn and Joe Walsh and David Frum out in front of the cameras, I turned his program off. I did it because I am not interested in what liars have to say.

I am not interested in watching a "debate" that isn't a debate at all.

Because, as everyone on the Left learned long, long ago, there are no depths to which the Right will not sink in order to hold power and enrich their paymasters. Treason, economic sabotage, scapegoating, direct appeals to racism, stealing elections, voter suppression, you name it.

But most of all, just plain lying. All the time. About everything.

In order to preserve their privileged positions, there are also no depths to which the "Both Sides Do It" Center will not sink to continue pretending none of the above is happening, and/or that the Left is always equally wrong in equal measure in the opposite direction.

Lastly, and most tragically, time and crisis have demonstrated over and over again that there is absolutely no magical combination of facts, logic or goodwill that can dislodge the Center or the Right from their destructive, co-dependent ideological bunkers.

To his credit, Paul Krugman has now gone all the way there:

The Cult That Is Destroying America

...
So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.

The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.

What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on.

You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war. If this won’t do it, nothing will.

And yes, I think this is a moral issue. The “both sides are at fault” people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it’s out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.

It’s a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price.

We did not choose this ridiculous fight with these depraved and reckless imbeciles and their cowardly enablers: our nation has more than enough real, serious problems without having to deal with one more manufactured drama pulled out of thin air by the monster the Conservatives created and set loose to win elections long ago.

But once again the war is thrust upon us.

And this nation can no longer survive half-Fox and half-free.