Professional Left Podcast Episode 1033: Brush Up Your Shakespeare

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"  -- Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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Can't Stop Won't Stop

This was a lead story in The New York Times today.

The short answer, which is actually rather long, is "No".

This is roughly the 12,258th "think piece" on progressive outsiders winning a few Democratic primaries.  It's nearing the "But Her Emails" saturation point. And these articles tend to come either in one of two flavors.  

First, Dire!Warnings! cursing Democrats for risking dooming us all by not becoming GOP Lite in order to chase the votes of disaffected Republicans.  These articles tend to come from (small wonder) recently-former Republicans whose "advice" to Democrats has always been -- rain or shine -- to keep moving rightward, ever-rightward -- in pursuit of an imaginary Center which is always, somehow, slipping over the horizon.  

Second, there are the breathless articles touting how a few members of the Democratic majority (do the math) are fighting back hard against a small number of progressives with whom they have no intention of sharing even a small corner of the Democrat's Big Tent.  Mind you, they had no fucking problem when it came to sharing our Big Tent with ghouls like Liz Cheney who spent their entire career slandering Democrats in the most monstrous language imaginable...but us New Deal Democrats get nothing but the stink-eye and a boot in the ass from the gatekeepers who own the velvet ropes. 

From The New York  Times, August 6, 2026:

Moderate Democrats Prepare for ‘War’ Against an Ascendant Left

One moderate group says the progressive wins are “deeply troubling” and is planning a $15 million effort against democratic socialism.

The embattled establishment of the Democratic Party searched furiously for a political reset after Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s progressive victory in Michigan handed the party’s long-dominant moderate wing its most painful defeat of the year.

Some strategists urgently pressed to adopt a sharper edge to tap into the fury among Democratic voters that was felling its centrist candidates. Others wanted to attack democratic socialism, undercutting a budding movement now set to have far more than a toehold in the next Congress. Yet another young democratic socialist ousted an incumbent congressman in Detroit on Tuesday.

“We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” said Jonathan Cowan, the president of Third Way, a leading centrist Democratic group, revealing to The New York Times a new $15 million effort between now and 2028 to discredit democratic socialism. 

It will not shock you to learn that Third Way gets its money from Big Pharma, Big Banks, Big Tech as well as outfits such as ExxonMobil and various health insurance companies.  All the usual suspects who would rather see a MAGA flag flying over this country forever than share the Democratic Party with actual progressives.

Now, it is rumored that this “Better Dead than Al-Sayed” gang of Regressives is led by a shadowy figure known only as “David Fucking Brooks”.  And two Fridays ago Mr. Brooks left his Bethesda Maryland compound just long enough to appear on the PBS News Hour where, practically in tears, he said this.

Voters in almost every presidential race, I think, in every one of my lifetime, have always said, who's closer to the center? And they vote for that person. Trump seemed closer to the center than Kamala Harris. Biden seemed closer to the center than Donald Trump.

Donald Trump over the last few years has run away from the center. He is handing this election to the Democrats. All they have to do is sit there and be couch potatoes. They do not have to support Medicare for all so that Republicans can go to them and say, you like your private health insurance? Mr. El-Sayed's going to take that away from you.

That is politically bad news, and that's only one of the issues on which the party is moving further and further away from the center, and therefore…

At which point, Brooks co-panelist, Jonathan Capehart, reached his limit of politely tolerating this old fraud's endless bullshit and interrupted him with:

I mean, I disagree that the Democratic Party writ large is moving far away from the center, and that a few races won by Democratic Socialists or people who identify as progressive, like Dr. El-Sayed, that -- to me, I just don't -- I do not see it that you can put this -- make this blanket argument that the Democratic Party is running far left. 

That was the signal for the host – Amna Nawaz – to do the PBS thing of quickly moving on to the next topic at the slightest sign of conflict.

However, since I do not abide by PBS rules, I will just add that it is a matter of public record that David Brooks has never had any workable definition of "the center" beyond: "What I, David Brooks, happen to think at this moment".  

It is also irrefutably true that he has spent the past quarter-century publicly demonstrating that he knows fuck-all about what "voters" think about anything.

And of course Third Way is not a solo act. They have plenty of fellow travelers who are horrified that a few Democratic candidates have won their primaries in ways that Third Way, LLC does not approve of.  

From The Washington Post, June 3rd, 2026:

Centrist Democrats launch new pledge: ‘We are capitalist, not socialist’

Two Democrats in Congress who flipped Republican-held seats in 2024 are launching a pledge for their party’s candidates they hope will act as a rallying cry for centrists, calling for a “politics of persuasion over purity” and declaring that “we are capitalist, not socialist.”

The pledge is a direct rebuke to the party’s leftward tilt as democratic socialists such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) capture the party’s energy and activism.

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-New York) and Rep. Adam Gray (D-California) said they will unveil the pledge Wednesday afternoon at the center-left conference WelcomeFest, and hope to get candidates up and down the ballot to join them in signing it. 

From Common Dreams, February 9th, 2026:

‘One More Billionaire Front Group’: Centrist Dems Mocked Over New Initiative Led by Corporate Lobbyist

In fact, establishment panic over even mildly social-democratic ideas predates the current cycle by years.

From In These Times, seven years ago,  February 7, 2019:

Why Is the Political Establishment So Afraid of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal?

So, the short answer is "No".

The longer answer -- the reason why the answer is "No" -- is uglier and deeply embarrassing to the legacy media, which is why you will never hear them speak of it.  Because it has to do with what the "Tea Party" actually was.

For several years I bored you all silly with post after post after post about how the Tea Party was not some new, insurgent outsider group who were storming the barricades of the moribund Republican party.  That they were the Republican party: the same ignorant, racist, shoutycrackers Republican base they'd always been, but now that the Bush administration had shit the bed hard enough to crack the Earth's mantle, they needed their own, incredibly inconvenient past to go away so they could get on with the important work of having a full-on, eight-year-long, screaming mental breakdown over the election of a Black man as president.

And they accomplished this by A) Putting on stupid hats, waving Gadsden flags, and swearing that they'd never even heard of George W. Bush and, B) Getting the legacy media to go along with this massive fraud, which the legacy media was only too eager to do, given their own despicable complicity with the various crimes and treasons of the Bush administration.

And it worked.  And, as is our eternal fate, the only people willing to straight-up call bullshit on the whole scam were us dirty, disreputable Liberals who no one listens to anyway.

By early 2010, it was absolutely clear to anyone who wasn't a Republican operative or enabler that the "tea party" was emphatically not a spontaneous movement of concerned citizens with no previous political affiliation, but was just one more, GOP-manufactured re-branding scam.  Ed Kilgore wrote about it, as did Max Blumenthal (pay-walled site) and E.J. Dionne. There was also this July, 2010 Gallup poll that concluded:

The Tea Party movement has been the focus of media attention during the past year, and has had some success in getting its preferred candidates nominated or elected in the 2009-2010 election cycle. However, as Gallup has pointed out, those who describe themselves as Tea Party supporters are in many ways indistinguishable from, and largely a subset of, Republican identifiers more generally.

But here's the thing.  There was absolutely no stomach in the Beltway media for reporting the obvious fact that these idiots in tricorner hats were nothing but the same old Republican wingnuts who, as one wag put it in 2009...

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

No, no, no!  Definitely could not say that because that would violate the post-Dubya Generally Accepted Beltway Narrative that all problem are caused by "the extremes on Both Sides" and in the middle there is a "vital Center" full of millions of political virgins who had been moved by the noblest of motives to abandon their neutrality and take to the streets.

And to this very day, that lie continues to be one of those "Zombie lies", which everyone sorta knows is nonsense -- like Tax Cuts Pay For Themselves -- but has so completely passed into the realm of myth that the legacy media keeps right on pretending that it was actually true.  

In fact, the Beltway's lockout of the truth was so secure that by 2016 Joe Scarborough could finally come right out and say of course the whole "tea party" thing was bullshit and of course we all knew it  and know with perfect certainty that there would be consequences (h/t Heather at Crooks & Liars)

And that's the longer answer.  The Democrats are not facing their own "Tea Party" moment because There. Was. No. Tea. Party.  There was just the Bush-Off Machine goin' like 60 to rebrand the Republican base.  

What corporate Democrats are facing are ... New Deal Democrats.  People who revere FDR as the man who crushed fascism, and whose programs built the Middle Class, strengthened the union movement and helped insure that old age and poverty weren't a death sentence.   

People who remember that FDR was called a commie by the Republican party and the Republican media every inch of the way.

People who look at the mess the establishment has made of this country and think the Middle Class could used some help, the aged, infirm and poor could use some help, that good health care should be affordable, that unions are a good thing, that robber barons and Republican looters are bleeding us dry and, most importantly, for any of that to happen, fascism in America must be discredited and destroyed, root and branch.  

I Am The Liberal Media!

Sneak Preview of Trump's 07/16/2026 Address

 

President Stupid + Star Trek TOS = ...

TRUMP:  Chavez stole the 2020 election.  My good friend Nickolas "Mad Dog" Maduro -- I call him Mad Dog...I invented that -- he confessed after some light persuasion by Stephen Miller's boys.  I am appointing My Pillow Guy as National Election Czar.

KIRK: Watch his mouth.

TRUMP: Also I won the popular vote in 2016 by 35 million votes.  We have it on tape.  We have the files.  Just before he exploded, my friend Lindsay Graham told me.  60 million illegals voted for Demon Rats in 2016.  These scum will be prosecuted and execute for treason.  

SPOCK: Captain, the speech follows no logical pattern.

KIRK: Random sentences strung together.

TRUMP:  Reflecting Pool was sabotaged by Antifa terrorists.  Their headquarters are Barack Hussein Obummer's big, ugly, low-IQ so-called library where there are no books, just Muslim terrorist things.  We have the details.  Chavez has confessed.  Arrests are coming.

MCCOY: He looks drugged, Jim. Almost at a cataleptic state.

TRUMP: Iran is over.  We won.  The Strait is open.  Unlike Barack Hussein Obummer who gave the Strait away to his Muslim terrorist friends.  We're going to make billions.

MCCOY: I have to have a close look at him.

TRUMP: Many people say I am the best president ever.  I am the biggest winner.  No one could have done what I did.  Ballroom.  Reflecting Pool.  Epstein files are a hoax. Stopping 125 wars.... zzzzzz.

Never Forgive.  Never Forget.

 

The "Don't Say The Quiet Part Out Loud" Rule Is Cancelled For The Duration

However you measure modern political history, the media's unwritten rule of politics during this era has been to allow the Republican party to get away with this bit of legerdemain.  Everyone understood that, starting with the Powell Memo and Nixon's Southern Strategy, the base of the party was going to be comprised largely of bigots and imbeciles -- Archie Bunker chumps who listened to Limbaugh and watched Fox News.  

Ah, but the thin, outer shell of the party would be a candy-coated carapace of respectable front men and women who would not embarrass themselves on "Meet the Press", would know which wine paired with what at Beltway cocktail parties, and wouldn't run screaming into the night for fear choosing the wrong Italian meat for their sammich.  

And for as long as I can remember, it has been the job of the media to pretend that the latter was the Republican party...and, despite being the overwhelming majority within the party -- the mob without which Republicans would never win another election -- it was also the media's corollary job to pretend the former did not exist at all, and to mock anyone who said otherwise as unserious kooks and alarmist crackpots.

That was it.  That was the job.  Denigrate Democrats as out-of-touch snobs, laud Republicans as sensible and sober and, when this gigantic hoax inevitably had a containment breach -- when the crazy got  out of the lab and into the world for all to see -- it was time to double down on the Both Sides Do It lie to calm the public and reassure them that, however bad things looked at the moment, Democrats were somehow worse.

My quote searching kung fu has not been sufficient to locate the exact quote, but I distinctly remember, after Trump won and the MAGA lunacy had kicked the doors entirely off the lab and were (and are) abroad in the land, hearing one or more freshly-former Republican ad men or spokescritters -- maybe Michael Steele,  maybe Stuart Steven, maybe Steve Schmidt, but most likely Rick Wilson --- saying words to the effect that of course they knew wide swaths of the Republican base were bigots and loons, but that was irrelevant.  Not their department. Their job was to get their guy elected, period.  And to do that they needed to fire the base up enough to put shoes on, get out of their La-Z-Boys, and get to the polls, all bug-eyed and furious, on election day.  Then shut them back in the basement or attic until next time.

That's how little thought they gave to the toxic waste they were storing in leaky barrels directly under our democracy.  How little thought they gave to doomsday machine they were building, or to what the consequences would be if containment failed completely.  

And then, one day, Donald Trump showed up, swept right past the respectable front men and women, the handlers, the ad men, the complicit media and told they base they didn't have to be ashamed anymore.  That it was, in fact, a great and glorious thing to shout their racism, misogyny, homophobia and batshit conspiracies from the rooftops.   

He shut the containment down.

And that was all it took for the thin, outer shell of Republican respectability to disintegrate almost overnight.  Shown up as the political equivalent of the "whited sepulchres" of Matthew 23:27 -- 

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”

-- as the real Republican party emerged fully into the light.

And you'll never guess what?  That real, emergent Republican party looks exactly like the Republican party about which Liberals had been sounding the alarm for decades, and for which we were dismissed as unserious kooks and alarmist crackpots. Which is why we all have op-ed columns in all the major newspaper now, and, when we can get away from our top-rated, well-funded and heavily promoted podcasts, we try to find time between that and our book tours to hop on MSNOW where we are tirelessly congratulated for being right about the Right all along.

Honestly it's too much!  You're embarrassing us!

Meanwhile, back in the real world, we come now to the today's object lesson in containment failure.  

Meet Jeremy Carl.

Who is Jeremy Carl?

Great question!  This is from one dingy wing of the GOP's policy abattoir.  

Jeremy Carl is a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, where his primary focus is on immigration, multiculturalism, and nationalism in America.

Prior to joining Claremont, Jeremy worked for a decade as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, serving as a policy advisor to many national political figures. While at Hoover, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz praised his “mastery of subject matter” and “ability to write comprehensively and with clarity.”

And right now Jeremy Carl is up for an important job in the United States State Department.  But it looks like maybe he won't get that job.  And do you know why?  From The Rolling Stone:

Trump Nominee Crumbles When Pressed on White Nationalist Posts

Jeremy Carl is the president's pick for a top State Department position, but his confirmation prospects aren't looking good.

Donald Trump last summer nominated Jeremy Carl to lead the Bureau of International Organizations. It’s a top position in the State Department, acting as the primary nexus between the U.S. government and several international organizations like the United Nations, and requires Senate confirmation. Carl served in Trump’s first administration and is now a fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. He’s also a prolific poster with a long history of espousing white nationalism, antisemitism, solidarity with the Jan. 6 rioters, and other extreme viewpoints.

Carl sat before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, which is weighing whether to confirm him to the key diplomatic position the president wants him to hold. Senators pressed Carl on his social media posts. It did not go well.

Here’s one exchange between Carl and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.), for example:

Murphy: “Tell me how you define white identity and what you think has been erased about white identity

Carl: “Certain types of, umm, Anglo, uhh, derived culture that comes from our history…”

Murphy: “Like what?”

Carl: “Umm, let me think about this. Uhhh, you know, senator, I would say if you were to look at the book by one of your Senate colleagues Born Fighting about the sort of Scotch-Irish military culture and certain, you know, pride that went with that, that would be one example. Obviously, you could have sub-elements of that culture. You could have Italians, you could have Irish…”

Murphy: “But you’re now retreating to ethnic identity. You don’t speak about ethnic identity. You speak about white identity. So tell me the values that stitch together white identity, that make it different than Black identity.”

Carl: “I would say the white church is very different than the Black church in terms of its tone and style, on average. Food ways could often be different. Music could be different.”

Murphy: “And those are being erased?”

Carl: “Well, if you look at the Super Bowl halftime show, which was not in English…”

Murphy: “Our ability to access white churches or white food or white music is being erased?”

Carl then said that mass immigration has “Balkanized” what he described as “common American culture,” that this weakens America and that he won’t apologize for his comments on the issue...

It goes on and on like this, proving that Jeremy Carl is a ball-less poltroon.

Because if he we are real man -- a real MAGA man -- he would've gone so much further.  Shit, even a half-bright skirt like Bondi showed way more gonadal firepower than this sorry excuse for a male.   

If he was any kind man he would've told the committee to go fuck themselves.  Shown them the master race doesn't back down and names will be taken!

He would've told the committee that his white supremacist / Christian nationalist beliefs were entirely in keeping with those of Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and JD Vance.  

He would've told the committee that +77 million patriots had put Donald Trump and his white supremacist ideology back in office so he could cleanse the nation of the scum and degenerates who are standing in the way of our national greatness and Trump's thousand-year Reich.  

He would've told the committee that, if they knew what was good for them -- if they didn't want ICE or worse coming for them and their kids... if they didn't want the DOJ, the FBI and the IRS up their collective asses, and raining indictment down on them -- the committee had fucking well better shut up, bend the knee and do as the Dear Leader commands.  

But no, Jeremy Carl didn't do that.  

So much for MAGA solidarity.  So much for 'WWG1WGA'.  

Scandalous!  Shameful!  And don'tcha just bet this limp dick, soy-boy had a big, fat Soros check burning a hole in his pocket the entire time he was rolling over for this so-called committee.  

I Am The Liberal Media!

I Just Threw Up In My Mouth a Little*

The fact that it's a Guest Essay in the New York Times.

The fact that they're casting themselves as the wise and far-seeing "we" here, and apparently everyone else is the "you" that got it all wrong.  

The fact that about halfway through they haul out the hoariest and (surprise!) most New York Times-pleasing of all media lies to elevate themselves above Both Sides:

Each of the major parties has pulled away from the libertarian elements of their coalitions (small-government, free-market types for the Republicans and civil libertarians for the Democrats), preferring instead the instant gratification of grasping power and wielding it as aggressively as possible for the period they hold it.

The fact that it's the fucking Libertarians.

And the fact that it just ain't so.

Meet Anthony L. Fisher:

When I worked for Reason magazine during Trump's rise to power in 2016, I was explicitly forbidden by the editor in chief from writing about Trump's racism, or the violence and racism at his rallies. It was a "sideshow," I was told.

[image or embed]

— Anthony L. Fisher (@anthonylfisher.bsky.social) February 9, 2026 at 8:10 AM

Then there is this from The Daily Beast, which was cited further down the BlueSky thread:

A leading critic of “cancel culture” is being accused of canceling one of its own—for speaking out too loudly and too often against President Donald Trump.

Throughout the Trump era, Reason magazine, a digital and print publication published by the nonprofit libertarian Reason Foundation, has routinely sounded the alarm about the perceived threat posed by “cancel culture,” the modern phenomenon in which people are publicly and professionally ostracized for heterodox beliefs or remarks. The magazine has lambasted other outlets like The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Intercept for firing or pushing out key staffers whose views or actions were determined to have conflicted with their respective editorial missions.

And yet, a long-time Reason columnist and policy analyst alleges that the libertarian magazine dropped her over her vehemently anti-Trump views.

“After 15 years, the curtains came down for me at Reason today. My views, I was told, had become too out-of-step with those of the organization,” Shikha Dalmia announced Tuesday evening in a Facebook post.

“Reason has some amazing writers who do great work on a whole host [of] issues that I will continue to read and share. And it has been an honor and pleasure to work with them,” she added. “However, I had a staunch and uncompromising anti-Trump voice calling out his authoritarian tendencies unambiguously. That this made many libertarians uncomfortable raises all kinds of interesting questions about the state of the liberty movement.”

From The Cato Institute (yes, it makes me feel dirty just writing that, but onward):

What’s Donald Trump Doing at the Libertarian Party Convention?

The Libertarian Party presidential nominating convention is coming up this weekend, with Donald Trump as a featured speaker. This is apparently the first time in US history that a political party has had another party’s nominee at its own nominating convention. And what a choice!

The Libertarian Party was founded to “challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual” and to specifically run candidates for office on a platform of personal liberty, economic liberty, and a peaceful foreign policy.

Needless to say, that’s not Donald Trump’s platform, nor does it describe his actions as president...

To be clear, I do appreciate various Johnny-Come-Latelies (even the Johnny-Galt-Come-Latelies) finally arriving where Liberals have already been for decades

I appreciate it even though, when they finally got to the party, it was already far, far too late. And I appreciate it even though these same people mocked and dismissed those of us who were right all along as alarmist crackpots right up until they had their long overdue moments of clarity.

What I do not appreciate -- what I might even call vexing (if you'll pardon the salty language because I know how important "tone" is in determining whether someone is right or wrong) -- is that every new arriviste to where the Left has been all along carries with them the same overweening, self-aggrandizing, and very thirsty, psychological disorder, best summarized here by the character of Bert Cooper on Mad Men

*(H/T @airbagmoments.bsky.social on Blue Sky for the heads up)

I Am The Liberal Media

Observing MLK, Jr. Day By Judging Republicans by the Content of Their Character.

No Half Measures

A Call to Resist

If everyone waits until the other man makes a start, the messengers of avenging Nemesis will come steadily closer; then even the last victim will have been cast senselessly into the maw of the insatiable demon. Therefore every individual, conscious of his responsibility as a member of Christian and Western civilization, must defend himself as best he can at this late hour, he must work against the scourges of mankind, against fascism and any similar system of totalitarianism. 

Offer passive resistance - resistance - wherever you may be, forestall the spread of this atheistic war machine before it is too late, before the last cities, like Cologne, have been reduced to rubble, and before the nation's last young man has given his blood on some battlefield for the hubris of a sub-human. 

Do not forget that every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure!

--  Excerpt from White Rose Leaflet #1, the first leaflet of the German anti-Nazi group the White Rose, produced in June 1942.

No Half Measures

The Villain Never Thinks They're the Villain

This is a pic of the bros who make up a YouTube channel with the user-friendly name, The Common Sense Conservative.  

Because who can argue with common sense?

And this is the bio of the guy who runs the site:

I'm just a normal guy working a normal job trying to make a living for my normal family. I have never been rich, I have never been bought and paid for, and I have never just followed the talking points. As a nation, we are quickly losing the ability of reasonable thought and common sense. My biggest hope in doing this job is to bring some of that back into our society. I hope to do this by filming events that the mainstream media purposefully ignores, and providing my thoughts and perspective on current events. I do this so that people may just take a moment and reflect on what’s really going on in this country, and at the very least, walk away being a little better informed.

Utterly anodyne stuff, right?  Like the Amazing Randi's famous astrology debunking demonstration -- 

-- it's written in a way that could plausibly apply to anyone of any political stripe.  He's just a regular, normal Murrican just like you!  Who's a-skeered that Murrica is losing its ability to do common sense and rational thought, juts like you!  And we all know there's stuff out there the media won't talk about, right?  But he will, and isn't that great!

But then we fire up the January 7, 2026 episode of The Common Sense Conservative and we find something very different.

Two of these meatheads were clearly reluctant to commit their opinions about the murder of Renee Good by an ICE thug to a publicly viewable medium.  

But one of them was not.  Chris Wyatt, who ran for the Pennsylvania state legislature back in 2024.  From the York Dispatch, March 14, 2024: 

Five Republican candidates make cases at state 92nd House District debate

By and large, the policy positions of the five Republican candidates for the 92nd District in the state House didn't differ much during their debate Wednesday night.

Holly Kelley, Matthew Davis, Marc Anderson, Zachary Kile and Chris Wyatt all said they'd defend the Constitution. All said they were staunch supporters of the Second Amendment. All said they would push for voter ID and in-person voting. They all proclaimed themselves pro-life; while they called it a sensitive topic, several said they'd ban abortion unconditionally if they could.

Turns out, Mr. Wyatt has a lot to say about Renee Good's murder.  And all of it exactly what you'd expect.  This is my own rush, partial transcript, so any errors, typos or omissions are mine.  And I've added emphasis where I felt like it.

Wyatt:  Well I have watched multiple footage of it...and there were a lot of characters out there.  What appears to be the case is that ICE was in a neighborhood and these Leftist Radical Insurrectionists Anti Rule-of-Law people had blocked the road and obstructed Justice Department ICE from conducting its mission...

You can see where this is going, right?

Wyatt:  ...as they pulled forward they drove into an ICE agent.  Now people are refuting this, but if you see it from different angles you can clearly see his life was in jeopardy.  And he drew his weapon and fired four shots...

Wyatt:  Some odd photographs with these lunatic professional agitators out there... running around screaming "Murderer!  Murderer!"   Now look, it's a tactical decision by the agents on the ground so I will not fault them, but there were dozens of ICE agents out there...they didn't form a cordon or security perimeter, they allowed these idiots to run through -- this one woman screaming ran down all the way up the to vehicle, within inches, contaminating crime scenes, yelling "Murderer" and "What the 'F' you doing".  

In my view there should have been some better command and control.  These people should have been zip-tied and muzzled and locked up and arrested for inciting a riot, and for interfering obstructing law enforcement.   They should be in federal prison after conviction for obstructing law enforcement.  That's my take on it.  

This assbag is so horny for Trump to declare open season on Liberals to he can haul out his arsenal and go bag his limit that you can practically taste it though the screen.   

Wyatt:  And we're hearing uh first the governor of of of Minnesota makes a threatening statement saying we need to get out there and protest this instead of using a rational voice saying, "Listen, let's not get this situation overheated. Uh we'll have to see if this was justified, if it was inappropriate." 

Please note that, as been true of all fascists everywhere, "protest" = "threats" and "incitement".  

Wyatt:  But instead of that, he's not a real leader.  Stolen Valor.  Tampon Timmy.  He's a scumbag.  And he incited violence.  After he realized what he'd said, he comes back and tries to calm the situation down, but it's too late.

But it's even worse than that.  The useless, scumbag mayor of Minneapolis said, uh, ICE, y'know, "Get the 'F' out of Minnesota".  You know what buddy?  I got a message for you.  Get the 'F' out of America.  Why don't you go to Ontario?  That's a nice place for people like you.  

Cohost McKinley tries to interrupt, but Wyatt Supremacist is all up in his feels now.

Wyatt:  Hold on!  We're not done!

The slimy former Obama dirtball, Keith Ellison -- the Criminal-in-Chief of Minnesota.  He is out there inciting violence, telling people to protest and obstruct federal law enforcement.  

And on top of that, Ilhan Omar opened her cake-hole up and put herself in a box -- I think she's gonna find herself being removed from the House of Representatives before too much longer because o her shenanigans.  

But all these officials are inciting violence.  Inciting... upping the temperature, and then blaming the federal government for no cooperating.  The federal government is trying to cooperate.  You refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement.  That's what has caused this problem.  

And you shoulda seen the mob out there!  These are insurrectionists!  We have an insurrection which started in Minneapolis with George Floyd and his come full circle back to Minneapolis.  These people are not Americans!  They don't respect the Constitution!   They don't respect the law enforcement!  They hate America!  Just deport them!  I don't care if they were born here or not.  Deport them to Canada.  It's a nice place for them to go.  

Chalk this up as a real world object lesson in why it's pointless to try to reason with MAGA meatbags.

It comes down to the unbridgeable chasm between how MAGA meatheads see of themselves especially when they're talking among themselves -- normal, reasonable, Common Sense patriots -- and what they actually are -- our own, home-grown fascist meatheads with itchy trigger fingers who have been steeping in Hate Radio and Fox News hate and lies for so long that they are beyond saving.  

Burn The Lifeboats

Uniformity Is Not a Blessing

Enough of this "Dems in disarray" nonsense.

Democrats are no more in disarray than your Thanksgiving dinner is in disarray.    No one will look at our table with all the different dishes for different tastes – turkey and vegan "turkey" and my world famous mashed potatoes and stuffing and vegan mac & cheese and cranberry sauce and roasted brussels sprouts – and think, oh my God, we’re doomed!  We’re going to starve because it’s not all one thing, it’s a bunch of different things, and some people might want Tofurkey and taters, and some might want turkey and cranberry cause … and everyone loves sandwiches made from leftovers the next day.  

  It is a straitjacket, and we have a party tent big enough for Zohran Mamdani and Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, which is also big enough for Sharon Owens and Dorcey Applyrs, who were just elected the first black mayors of Syracuse and Albany.

But you know who is not welcome at our table?

Creeps like Illinois' own Mary "Nazi" Miller, whose reaction to Tuesday’s Blue Tsunami was this

Democrats have made it crystal clear: they'll block pay and assistance for struggling American families unless taxpayer-funded healthcare is handed to illegal aliens. 

Fuck You Mary Miller.

And as long as we're on the subject of Nazis, let's talk about about this story in Wired:

The GOP Civil War Over Nick Fuentes Has Just Begun

Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes has led to a major reckoning in the Republican party.

Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist known for his deeply antisemitic, racist, and misogynist worldview, just might be tearing the Republican party apart.

The schism was triggered last Tuesday when former Fox News host Tucker Carlson released an in-depth interview with Fuentes, the leader of the so-called America First movement who has denied the Holocaust, praised Hitler, and shared deeply misogynistic views.

During the interview, Fuentes waxed antisemitic about the threat apparently posed by “organized Jewry” in America, while Carlson slammed figures like Senator Ted Cruz and former president George W. Bush as being “Christian Zionists” who have been ”seized by this brain virus.” Carlson was criticized by, among others, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee for giving Fuentes a platform, and the argument kicked into overdrive after Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, a high-profile conservative think tank, condemned those attacking Carlson as a "venomous coalition.”

“Tucker Carlson remains and always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation,” Roberts said in a video posted to X on Thursday.  

Then came the reaction, which was hilarious.  Not "funny, ha, ha" because none of what these degenerates are doing to our country is funny in that way, but rather in the grotesque comedy way.  

But even this was not the most hilarious reaction of all.  We'll get to that presently/

This was Ted Cruz speaking before the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas last Thursday, hours after Roberts’ video was released:

In the last six months, I've seen more antisemitism on the right than I have in my entire life.  If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you’re a coward and you are complicit in that evil.

Senator Mitch McConnell, wrote on X that conservatives are not obliged “to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats.” Except, of course, that's exactly what McConnell has been doing his entire career.

John Podhoretz wrote on X  “My mother was a Heritage board member for 40 years.  You have befouled her, you rancid wretch of an amoeba.” 

He then deleted the post a few days later, presumably because he thought better of reminding everyone what a dangerous nut job mommy Midge Decter actually was. 

Depending on which pundit rag you read, Ben Shapiro either "slams" or "blasts" Tucker Carlson as a "intellectual coward" for coddling Nick Fuentes.  

From the Jerusalem Post:

'A conspiratorial Right is rising' in America, Ben Shapiro tells 'Post'

US political commentator Ben Shapiro in candid conversation with The Jerusalem Post: 'You get a lot more likes and clicks if you are promoting an anti-Israel, anti-Jewish agenda.'

And depending on which link you click on Mark Levin either "Slams" or "Calls Out" Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes at the Republican Jewish Convention on November 1st.  

Which is the sort of absurdly selective outrage from a mob of professional bigots, hate mongers and conspiracy peddlers not seen since Blazing Saddles hit movie theaters decades ago.

Then came the inevitable backlash to the backlash, which, again, just keeps publicly escalating the dark, absurdist comedy that is the Republican party.  Again from Wired:

“Excellent statement my friend. Proud to stand with you and Heritage,” Eric Teetsel, the CEO of the Center for Renewing America, which is a conservative think tank founded by Project 2025 architect and current director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought. 

And then further down, there is this masterpiece, which almost makes it worth getting up in the morning  

“This is the common ground we need to rescue our republic,” prominent podcaster Bret Weinstein wrote in response to Roberts’ post. “Attempting to police thought, speech, and association is anti-American, and will only deepen our divisions.”

Oh the indignity!  Oh outrage at this thought-policing!    

So much for the Tolerant Right!

This is the end state of a Republican party which has been playing this game for our entire adult lives.  And what makes it such a rich and terrible comedy is how this dynamic keeps repeating itself.

You begin with a base of bigots and imbeciles, who are driven to the polls in election after election by the rage and racism fed to them by Conservative media.  And yet, in election after election, instead of Smashing and Crushing and Wiping Out the scourge of minorities and liberals and feminists and immigrants and LGBTQ+ people who they've been told over and over again are the root of all evil...  the Republicans they elect keep compromising and doing deals.

So to keep getting them to the polls and to keep them watching and listening, the rhetorical hysteria has to keep ratcheting up.  Hillary is running a child sex trafficking ring out of a pizza joint.  Also, she murdered Vince Foster.  Obama's a Kenyan Commie sleeper cell who's gonna kick down your door and take your guns!  Also Solyndra!!!  And Bengghaaazi!

But they don’t call it a race to the bottom for nothing, because it is a race.  Remember how Fox freaked out over Newsmax gaining on them after the 2020 election?  

From the Poynter news service, November, 2020:

Should Fox News be worried about Trump supporters turning to Newsmax?

 The network has become a favorite of President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, while he occasionally claims Fox News isn't what it used to be.

…So is there anything to all this? Is Newsmax actually making a dent? Well, this is true: Fox News’ ratings for certain time slots have dipped a bit since the election, while Newsmax has seen flashes of ratings success. For example, it had a night last week when more than a million people were watching. To be clear, that’s like a third of those who are watching Fox News on a typical night, but it’s quite the leap for a network that very recently was drawing fewer than 60,000 viewers a night.

Newsmax has become comfort food for staunch Trump supporters because it shamelessly promotes baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud. For the moment, Newsmax might be causing a bit of a headache for Fox News.  

And do you remember why the MAGA morons were mad at Fox?  Because, for once, Fox didn't lie to them.  

Fox reported the 2020 Arizona results correctly, and MAGA threw a temper tantrum because that meant Trump was going to lose.  Fox told them stuff they didn’t want to hear, which violates the sacred compact they have with their viewers, and the MAGA base went shopping for another propaganda network who would tell them bigger and better lies.

And everyone involved re-learned what they all already knew:  you’ve gotta keep the base happy and the only way to do that is to lie to them all the time about everything.  

So ... the caravans are coming!  Children are having sex change operations at recess!  They're eating the dogs and cats!  

But rhetoric isn't enough.  The base demands someone who will publicly crush, troll and humiliate their enemies in tangible ways that make those enemies cry.  And they want that someone to promise them... everything.  They want their Dear Leader to make all their dreams come true.  Cheap gas.  Cheap groceries.  Great jobs.  Great health care.  Free IVF.  

And above all, in the name of Freedom, they want someone who will empower them to be the horrible, ignorant, loudmouth racists in public that they've always been in private.

They wanted the freedom to speak bluntly, loudly and proudly about everyone they hated, in exactly the same way US government propaganda talked about the Japanese during World War II.  Sinister.  Barbaric.  Subhuman.   Killing machines who should be wiped out wholesale.  

Demonization without any limits because this was war.  

This, to MAGA morons, is what “freedom of speech” means, except eventually World War II came to an end.  There was a formal surrender and, 15 years later, Toyota was starting to sell cars in America.    

But there is no practical end to the war that MAGA is fighting, because they’re at war with the future.  They're at war with progress and tolerance and science.  And as their forever war on the future drags on and on, the list of enemies they need to blame gets longer, and the rhetoric they use to attack those enemies gets uglier.  

And so every time the fascist party lurches further Right to feed the base’s addiction to enemies and conspiracy, it alienates a few more loyal party members because that was the line they told themselves they’d never cross. 

But the minute they try to police the speech of the ever-more-openly-Nazi Right, they become The Thought Police, and all of their own outspoken defense of LGBTQ+ hatespeech, or racist hatespeech, or xenophobic hatespeech or misogynist hatespeech gets thrown right back in their faces.   I thought we were all about freedom, but Rafael Edward Cruz over here wants to DEI Thought Police us about the Jews!  

So much for the tolerant Right!

And once again the ratchet is cranked one notch further towards the insane abyss… because the MAGA mob is always hungry and needs feeding.

All that being said, the most sublime reaction of all came from over in Never Trump land.  

You may remember that once the Republican base handed the keys over to Donald Trump, a handful of lifelong, loyal party members got themselves run out of the place and were promptly given jobs in the legacy media and tens of millions of dollars worth of media support for their startup, Never Trump websites.  

And almost without exception their alibis were identical:  This was all a total shock!  No one could have predicted the party base would spontaneously turn into brainwashed, racist zombies who would elect a monster like Trump.  All of us Good Republicans were taken completely by surprise.  If only there had been some kind of warning.  

And all of us who had been involved in politics since early days and writing about what was going on with the GOP and the media for decades stood as one and yelled as loud as we could, You lying assholes! You built this thing.  How dare you pretend you never knew.  Your only job was to know what was going on inside your own party. You were the people who made a living feeding red meat to the base, and we could all see it because  it was all happening right out in the open.  Limbaugh.  Gingrich.  Fox News.  Falwell.  All of it.

But they got away with it, because way too many Liberals were willing to let them off the hook scot-free, and because the complicit legacy media needed camera-savvy people who could explain Trump without talking about the 50-year-long trajectory that led to Trump.

And now that the Ben Shapiros and Mark Levins of the Right are pretending to be shocked and horrified to learn that there are raging antisemites in their ranks, you’ll never guess what those same Never Trumpers – who swore they never knew that their party was full of bigots and lunatics – are saying now.

They’re saying “You lying assholes! You built this thing.  How dare you pretend you never knew.  You were the people feeding red meat and conspiracy theories to the base.  And we could all see it because  it was all happening right out in the open.”

And if that isn’t high comedy, I don’t know what is.  

I Am The Liberal Media

Professional Left Podcast Episode 946: So Much For The 'Tolerant Right'

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" -- Captain Renault, Casablanca

• 
  

Stephen Miller Official White House Portrait

 

From Oberdiaperfuhrer Miller today via The Daily Beast:

Stephen Miller Shouts Unhinged Message to Gun-Wielding Cops 

...“Every resource we have federal, state and local we are going to use to dismantle their [criminal] networks without apology and without mercy,” Miller said. “Everything we have, we are going to bulldoze the criminal element of this city and liberate all the law-abiding citizens in this city.”

Claiming he wanted to eliminate “any physical space, anywhere” in Memphis where a citizen didn’t feel safe, a fired-up Miller then took his impassioned rant up a notch.

“This is Memphis, this is the United States of America, and all that bulls--t is done,” Miller blasted. “It’s over, it’s finished.”

“The gangbangers that you deal with, they think that they’re ruthless, they have no idea how ruthless we are,” Miller added.

“They think they’re tough, they have no idea how tough we are. They think that they’re hardcore, we are so much more hardcore than they are, and we have the entire weight of the United States government behind us. What do they have? They have nothing behind them. So we are gonna win, they’re gonna lose.”

Turns out fascists really, really hate being called "fascists", in the same way and at the same volume that racists really, really hate being called "racist.   Also from The Daily Beast:

MAGA Lawmaker Calls for Gavin Newsom’s Arrest After Calling Miller a ‘Fascist’

Remember kids, when it comes to dealing with fascists... 

No Half Measures

Badger and Skinny Pete Play Soldier

From ABC News:

Hegseth rails against 'woke,' lays out standards in speech to top generals, admirals
The president echoed Hegseth's sentiments in a long-winded speech.

In a speech Tuesday morning before an auditorium packed with several hundred of the nation's most seasoned military commanders, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called for an end to "woke" culture in the military and railed against a litany of complaints such as diversity and probes into hazing.

"The era of politically correct, overly sensitive, don't-hurt-anyone's-feelings leadership ends right now," Hegseth said at the gathering at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia -- a secure site an hour south of the nation's capital...

He demanded no more "fat generals," saying all service members would need to meet fitness tests and grooming standards.

"No more beardos," he said. "The era of unacceptable appearance is over."...

"Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading and we lost our way. We became the 'Woke Department,' but not anymore," he said...

He told his audience that if all the new standards he has unveiled makes their "hearts sink," then they should resign...

Trump followed Hegseth with his own speech, saying that as president, he would have their backs and that he is committed to making the military "stronger, tougher, faster, fiercer and more powerful than it 

has ever been before."

The president argued the military's job is not only to protect the U.S from threats abroad, but also what he repeatedly referred to as a domestic enemy in American cities.

"I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard," said Trump, who claimed "We're under invasion from within."...

For the record, the ABC News article pushed back on exactly none of the great, whopping lies and overtly fascist rhetoric that Badger and Skinny Pete threw around in front of the brass.

No Half Measures

Charlie Kirk: Confederate Monument

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

From NPR :

Illinois lawmaker proposes Charlie Kirk Day in the state

 

State Senator Neil Anderson (R-Andalusia) has introduced Senate Bill 2694 to permanently honor the life and legacy of Illinois native Charlie Kirk, who was murdered on September 10, 2025 while speaking to a group of students at a Utah college campus.

“Charlie Kirk, a man of strong faith, a devoted husband and father, dedicated his life to fostering open and honest dialogue,” said Senator Anderson. “He stood unafraid in challenging prevailing narratives and consistently did so through peaceful demonstrations rooted in the belief that free speech is worth protecting. His voice resonated far beyond Illinois, but he never forgot his home state.”

The legislation would amend the State Commemorative Dates Act to recognize September 10 each year as “Charlie Kirk Day” in Illinois. If approved, it would be listed among dates that recognize people or events. It would not be an official holiday...

Get your sick-up bag ready.  Back to NPR:

“Much as Martin Luther King Jr. Day reminds us of the transformative power of one individual’s fight for justice and equality, Charlie Kirk Day would stand as a testament to the enduring importance of free speech and open debate in our society. While their causes were different, both lives underscore the truth that courage and conviction can inspire generations.”

Also too, this, from Raw Story:

Charlie Kirk statues would be mandated on every campus with red state's new legislation

One Republican state lawmaker in Oklahoma now wants to require every public university in the state to erect statues to slain far-right activist Charlie Kirk.

On Friday, Jeffrey Sachs — an assistant professor at Nova Scotia's Acadia University — called attention to a bill by Oklahoma state senators Shane Jett (R) and Dana Prieto (R) that would mandate every public university in the Sooner State build a "Charlie Kirk Memorial Plaza." The bill, which has been filed as Senate Bill 1187 and does not yet have a formal name, would force universities to set aside a portion of real estate in a visible public location — like the quad, the student union or main entrance pathways — "to maximize public awareness and utilization."

Senate Bill 1187 would also make it a requirement for schools to erect a statue of both Kirk and his family, and to include a plaque honoring Kirk as "a voice of a generation, modern civil rights leader, vocal Christian, martyr for truth and faith, and free speech advocate."

Or, to quote Bill Shakespeare,  "Tis too much proved -- that with devotion's visage/ And pious action we do sugar o'er/ The devil himself." 

So let's take a look one of hundreds of similar or worse quotes from Charlie Kirk, man of faith:

"[Joe Biden is] a bumbling, dementia-filled Alzheimer’s, corrupt, tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.” -- Charlie Kirk, "The Charlie Kirk Show", July 24, 2023.

And, of course, there's Charlie Kirk, free speech champion.   From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Charlie Kirk’s Watchlist Made Some Professors’ Lives a ‘Living Hell’

For Tobin Miller Shearer, a professor of history at the University of Montana who had received death threats after being placed on a Turning Point USA target list, news of Charlie Kirk’s murder on a college campus in Utah prompted a flood of emotions. “I cried for our nation, for what this will mean for his family, for all the harm he did in his life, for all of us,” he said. “It was a horrible moment in all of its complexity.”

After those threats, Shearer moved his class on the history of white supremacy to a secret location, with a campus police officer on guard. “I did not want any threats on my life to ripple out and affect my students,” said Shearer, who heads Montana’s program in African American studies.

Shearer was one of hundreds of professors whose lives had unexpectedly intersected with Kirk’s when their names ended up on Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist.

Kirk created the watchlist in 2016 as a signature product of his new nonprofit. Its mission, it says, is to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” It’s based on published news stories about “radical” behavior by professors, but also informed by recordings leaked by students and tips from the public.

The publicly searchable database has grown to more than 300 professors, who are grouped into categories including diversity, equity, and inclusion, climate alarmist, feminism, abortion, terror supporter, racial ideology, and LGBTQ.

And from The Baltimore Banner:

Faculty placed on Kirk’s ‘professor watchlist’ fear for their safety and the future of higher education

Charlie Kirk spent much of his career trying to reshape higher education, frequently attacking professors by name and crusading against colleges and universities across the country.

After the conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA was assassinated Wednesday, some of the professors he targeted worry for their own safety and feel anxious about the climate of distrust the 31-year-old sowed among young people.

“I feel less safe after Kirk’s murder,” said Nathan Connolly, a history professor at the Johns Hopkins University. “I think that his death, like his life, ripens murderous fruit.”

Connolly and more than two dozen other university faculty in Maryland appeared on Turning Point’s “professor watchlist,” a website the conservative activist group founded in 2016 to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”...

And from The Chicago Sun-Times:

Illinois professors face threats after landing on Charlie Kirk group watch list

An online database compiled by Turning Point USA, affiliated with slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, identifies nearly 50 Illinois college instructors it labels “radical professors.”

Nearly 50 instructors from public and private colleges across Illinois are named in an online database dubbed “Professor Watchlist” that was created by a group affiliated with slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk to unmask “radical professors,” WBEZ has found.

Since landing on the list, some professors have gotten hateful emails, online messages and letters threatening rape or death, and in some instances they have seen that activity intensify since Kirk’s death.

WBEZ reached out to all of the roughly four dozen Illinois-based instructors on the nonprofit Turning Point USA list. All those who responded said the allegations lodged against them were distortions of their work.

The site includes the professors’ names, head shots, a brief description on what they did to land on the list and, in some cases, contact information for their department...

I could go on and on, but you understand the point.

This is all of a piece with former Confederate states during the Civil Rights era putting up monuments to traitors and (some) incorporating the Confederate flag into their state flag as a giant "Fuck You" to the civilized world's attempts to drag their bigoted, backwards asses into the 20th century.

It's also of a piece with Grover Norquist's Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, the goal of which was to slap up Reagan's name everywhere, so that every county in the country would have at least one prominent landmark named after Reagan.

It's also of a piece with Trump awarding Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was the equivalent of pinning a halo on a sewer rat.  And yet there was president Donald Trump, during a State of the Union speech, awarding highest civilian honor in the land to a monster whose life’s work was the slow, methodical poisoning of the American mind.  And when Limbaugh finally kicked off in 2021, the Beltway’s Very Serious People and the entire Republican media complex went into full sainthood mode, solemnly concluding that he was a some kind of sage,  patriotic conservative voice and champion of the truth, when what he actually left behind was a half-century-long audio snuff film: cruelty-as-entertainment, industrial-grade racism, pig-eyed misogyny, gay-bashing, and the endless flogging of whatever half-baked conspiracy floated up that morning from the fetid wingnut fever swamp.

It's also of a piece with Trump and Hegseth re-renaming military bases after Confederate traitors, reversing the trend of taking down monuments to Confederate traitors, and the Biden administration removing the names of Confederate traitors from those same military bases.

Lord Whorfin may be right that "History is made at night." -- 

-- but history becomes agreed upon and passed down the generations by the active efforts of those who codify it in monuments, street names, songs, official days of memory and observation, and the texts of history books as yet unwritten.  

For example, the "history" of Horst Wessel, the 22 year old Nazi goon who, in 1930, was living with a a former prostitute named Erna Jaenichen. Their landlord, who had Communist sympathies, got into a dispute with Wessel.  The landlord's friends confronted him, and during the altercation, Wessel was shot.  He died of his wounds a few weeks later.  It was ugly, and personal, and linked to Berlin’s underworld, but Nazi propagandists laundered it into the death of a sainted martyr.   The Horst-Wessel-Lied became a Nazi anthem and was elevated to near-sacred status, second only to the German national anthem during the Third Reich.  His funeral was staged as a massive propaganda spectacle.

And had the Nazis not been crushed by the Allies, that propagandized, fascist "history" would be what American children would be studying in history classes today.  

I Am The Liberal Media