As most of you know, on this blog, on our podcast, and on stage and screen, I
have long maintained a particular theory about how the Republican Party got itself
into this mess.
They kept two sets of books.
The first set of books was for the rubes, the bigots and the chucklefucks, who
make up the Republican base. And those books were full of absolute nonsense.
Liberals are baby killing, gun-grabbing Commie demons. Trans people are coming
for your children. Immigrants are rapists. Tax cuts pay for themselves. The
government is always the problem. Whatever scary story or conspiracy theory
would keep people angry, frightened, and voting Republican -- that was what
went into the first set of books.
And there is no bottom to it. No limit. The Republican base will believe
whatever they were told, because the Republican Party spent decades training
them to believe it. But the point of those lies was never really
governing. The point was power.
The racism, the conspiracy theories, the fear, the culture-war panic -- those
were the keys that unlocked the public treasury. The Republican Party could
use Fox News, talk radio, and an entire conservative media ecosystem to push
those buttons whenever they needed votes. Then, once they were in power, they
could do what they actually wanted to do: deregulate everything, cut taxes for
wealthy people, and serve their donors.
That was the first set of books.
Ah, but to keep the country from complete collapse, Republican leadership had
to keep a second set of books. This one contained reality.
That was the book with the spreadsheets and the data and the boring stuff: how
economies work, how wars work, how logistics work, how science works, how
diseases work. It was the book you actually need if you are trying to run a
country.
And for decades, the Republican Party had a strange arrangement. They would
loudly scream about all the imaginary horrors from the first set of books to
get the base furious enough to elect them, then quietly operate from the
second set of books once they were in office.
They would tell their voters that they were going to deport everyone they
hated, crush their enemies, restore some imaginary golden age, and punish all
the people they had been taught to fear.
Then they would get into office and discover that reality existed. They never
delivered the fantasy. They never actually purged the country of all the
people they demonized. They never delivered the revenge fantasy they sold
their voters. OMG, they even -- gasp! -- cut deals with those baby
killing, gun-grabbing Commie demon Dems!
And as long as the Republican elites and donors controlled the party, the
arrangement sorta worked.
Then along came Trump, and the important thing Trump changed was not the
Republican Party's nature. It was that he simply burned the second set of
books. Trump decided he didn't need the reality-based ledger anymore. He
operated entirely from the first set of books.
He told the base: Yes. I really am going to give you everything you dreamed
of. I will punish the people you hate. I will hurt the people you fear. I will
break the rules for you. And in exchange, you will let me loot the place.
That was the deal. And it still is.
The Republican Party had always used fantasy as a political weapon. Trump
simply stopped pretending that reality existed at all. He looked at the
spreadsheets, the facts, the experts, the institutions, and basically said:
screw it. We don't need any of that.
It was the same kind of thinking that led people throughout history into
disasters: don't worry about the details, don't worry about logistics, don't
worry about reality. We can definitely invade the Soviet Union and
conquer it in two, three months tops because we're awesome! We always
win because we are awesome!
A triumph of the will, if you will. And when the Dear Leader lives in
that mindspace, facts are no longer an issue.
This was from me in September of 2016 -- years before anything called "Never Trump", and decades before Never Trumpers sloooooly and grudgingly began to accept that the real problem with the Republican party is that it's full of Republicans.
Once you start to notice that a depressingly large number of our fellow
citizens have become reprogrammable Orwellian meat-puppets, the rise of
Trump is not hard to understand at all.
And this was the citation from Orwell I was using:
"Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There
is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation -- anything. I
could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish
to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those 19th
century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of
Nature." -- O'Brien, 1984
And this is how Republicans operate all the time now. Everywhere.
Except there are still places where reality has a way of forcing itself back
into the room.
The courtroom is one of those places.
Outside the courtroom, operating from the first set of books, Republicans can
and do say anything. They can invent stories about reflecting pools, election
fraud, conspiracies, whatever. They can feed the base whatever toxic slop they
want because nobody is forcing them to prove it.
But eventually somebody crosses the border between fantasy and reality.
That's what happened to Jeanine Pirro.
When she is on television, playing to the audience, she can live in the first
set of books. She can repeat whatever bullshit the audience wants to hear.
But when she walks into a courtroom, she has crossed into domain of the second
set of books.
Here, there are rules. Here, tangible evidence matters. In fact, it's pretty much all
that matters. In here there are questions that can't be dodged, wriggled out of, or
dismissed with a demeaning insult. And most importantly, in here there
are now consequences for lying.
And once you've crossed the membrane between the domain where Boxwine Pirro spends most of her time, where Doug Burgam and
Donald Trump can lie all they want to because, as long as they keep feeding
the bigots and imbeciles the lies they want to hear, they are rewarded for
lying...
...and the domain of the courtroom, suddenly all the things that worked
outside the courtroom don't work anymore.
In here lawyers and judges get to demand that you show actual evidence.
Where are the photographs? Where are the witnesses? Where is the chain
of proof ? In here, Trump regime's lies and bluster evaporate like fairy gold once the enchantment has been broken.
This stupid Reflecting Pool fuck-up is the Decline and Fall of the Republican Party in microcosm, because reality is the wall Republicans keep slamming into. They have spent decades
building a political machine fueled entirely by bullshit from a fantasy
universe where nothing has to be proven. Because the base doesn't want
facts. They hate facts. They demand the story they were promised
-- the toxic slop they now crave like crack, which is why the people who feed
them that slop keep getting elected.
But science doesn't work that way. The law doesn't work that way.
Reality doesn't work that way.
We saw it with COVID. The refusal to respect facts and science had real
consequences. People died because this administration and its allies chose
political fantasy over reality. And now we see the same pattern in something as small and ridiculous as the
reflecting pool fiasco.
Trump made a bet that he could hire one of his mobbed up stooges to slap some paint, declare victory,
and everyone would accept the story. Which is pretty much his same "strategy" in Iran. When reality pushed back, the response was exactly what it has always been. Find a scapegoat. Find a boogeyman. Blame somebody else.
On questions about depleted munitions, Team Trump struggles to keep its story straight
To recap, the depleted stockpiles aren’t depleted, though they could be better, and everyone should blame Joe Biden.
But eventually you run into the problem that every authoritarian movement runs
into. There are still places where facts matter. There are still institutions where you cannot simply scream louder than
everyone else and reality goes away.
Which is why they keep losing. The more you force them into arenas where they have to answer questions,
produce evidence, and defend their claims, the more exposed they become.
Because their alternative to reality is always the same thing: Scream louder. Blame immigrants. Blame Muslims. Blame liberals. Blame trans kids. Blame anyone except themselves and their catastrophic decisions and failure. And the louder they scream, the clearer it becomes that they have nothing
else.
Look at the Republican campaign ads flooding the country right now. They have
money. They have the machinery. But what do they have to run on? Trump has wrecked the economy. He has driven up prices. His tariffs have hurt
consumers. His foreign policy disasters are piling up.
So what is left?
The first set of books. Fear. Rage. Racism. Resentment.
Because that is all they have.
It cracks me up with I see headlines from anonymous sources about Republicans getting nervous about Trump
hurting their chances in the midterms. Hey dum-dums, what it is about ""Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" that you do not understand? Because that, sure as shit, is what you signed up for.
Trump is the Republican Party. Trump is the movement. You no longer have an independent identity separate from him. You are not partners, or pals, or peers. You are a tool he can use and discard. You are mere cells in the body of Trumpism.
This is the bargain you accepted when you handed your party over to someone who never cared about the second set
of books. Someone who never cared about reality. Someone who only cared about the first set of books — the one where every lie
is true as long as enough people want to believe it.
But eventually, reality always comes looking for payback.
First they enacted Nixon's racist Southern Strategy And I did not speak
out Because I'm not "political".
Then they welcomed White Conservative Fundamentalists into the party's
inner circle And I did not speak out Because I'm not "political".
Then they embraced Hate Radio, Fox News and the whole Conservative
propaganda grievance machine And I did not speak out Because I'm not
"political".
Then they adopted the politics of Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Karl Rove
and Lee Atwater And I did not speak out Because I'm not "political".
Then they cheered on the War in Iraq and used it to demonize all opposition And I did not speak
out Because I'm not "political".
Then they put on stupid hats, called themselves a "Tea Party" and had an
eight-year-long racist primal scream because Democrats elected a black guy And
I did not speak out Because I'm not "political".
Then they put on different stupid hats, called themselves "MAGA," and
nominated and elected the King of the Birthers. And I did not speak
out Because I'm not "political".
Then they nominated the King of the Birthers again And I did not
speak out Because I'm not "political".
Then they tried to overthrow the government when the King of the
Birthers lost And I did not speak out Because I'm not "political".
Then they brought him back and elected him again And I did not
speak out Because I'm not "political".
Then the King of the Birthers looted the treasury, put armed masked
goons in the streets to intimidate and murder American citizens, launched a
disastrous war for no explicable reason, torched our alliances, and generally
fucked this country up almost beyond repair
May 1, 2011: Senior Obama administration officials in the Situation Room waiting for updates on the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound.
July 17, 2025: Senior Trump administration officials in the Situation Room strategizing (screaming at each other) about how best to cover up Donald Trump's fetish for nipple-abuse and the other hundreds (thousands?) of mentions of Trump in the Epstein Files.
Lest you think Trump's manifold acts of corruption, extortion, treason and
unhinged racist lunacy are penetrating the MAGA groundwater, let me disabuse
you of that notion right now.
And to do that, I need us to take a little walk down memory lane.
Specifically, to 14 years ago, before Trump slouched out of the Republican id
to swallow the GOP whole. It was a time during which all your favorite
future Never Trumpers were swearing up and down that everything was fine, that
the Party of Lincoln had never shone so brightly, and anyone who
suggested otherwise was openly mocked as a crackpot.
While they were busy ignoring what was going on with the base of their own
party, this is what your 'umble crackpot scrivener was writing about
the state of the Right:
The entire Conservative enterprise is built on delusion and old dynamite,
which is why every clock much forever remain stopped at one minute after
Reagan's inauguration, every fact must be smothered under the stasis field
of Rush Limbaugh roaring, rage-drunk bluster. It is the sarcophagus of
a dead ideology where the walls are now so densely postered and palimpsested
with the detritus of Conservatism's lurid, lying history that its denizens
cannot find the exit anymore, and its floors are so sticky and pitted with
the grue of its savage, tribal, beat-in rituals that no one bothers to even
look for the door.
Which is why no deviation can be permitted, no error can be admitted
and no apologies can be allowed.
As I wrote last year, this catastrophe all began as a headlong dive into the best fucking high
the Right would ever have ...
Now the bender is over.
Outside, Reality's beating sun is stationed in the treetops, so bright and
close to the Earth that it vaporizes shadows inside of pockets and purses,
and through the sodden walls of their fragile fastness Conservatives they
can feel its slippery photons circling their ideological clubhouse, sniffing
the hinges and lintels like wolves, looking for a way in.
This time, there is no trick-or-treat scamper to safety for them in the
kindly, Tea Party gloaming: no way to scuttle off to the next wingnut spider
hole in a tri-corner hat and tights pretending they'd never even heard of
George W. Bush. No, the rotting hulk of the Party of Lincoln has become
their crypt, and inside of it there is nothing left for them but to sink
forever deeper into the shadows until they become one with the darkness.
And from deep inside their narrow house, you can hear the terrified squeals
of Conservatism's pasty, self-righteous, rigidly ignorant,
sexually-terrified wingnut child-men trying frantically to spackle up the
little holes through which modernity, complexity and reality continue to
leak...
The point of pulling this out of the archives is threefold.
First, labor-saving. Since I've been on this beat for a good long while
and since Republican bigotry and depravity are an endless cycle of repetition
and escalation, why not borrow from my younger and less emotionally exhausted self?
Second, to show why, for all their professed interest in talking with people
whose viewpoints are different than their own, no way no how does any Never
Trumper want to talk about which crew was actually right about the Right all
along, and which team of esteemed paid professionals absolutely blew
it.
Third, and of more importance, is to put the cast-iron obstinance and
denialism of the GOP base in its proper context. They didn't suddenly
get this way yesterday. They've been this way for decades and, year
after year, they've only gotten louder, stupider and more
intransigent. They can no longer metabolize reality. It's poison to
them, so, marching under Trump's banner, they make war on it, and only get
more berserk with fury the more Reality leaks into their lives.
So, while irrefutable evidence of Trump's madness and venom rage all around us
like a hurricane, and we're shouting at these idiots as loud as we can, "Can
you see it now? Can you see how bad it is now!" -- inside the
shuddering hovel of their media bubble, they're busy grabbing anything
they can to nail up over the windows to keep the storm at bay.
Two local examples.
First, there is the case of the Illinois Democratic legislator who, this last
January, proposed giving local municipalities the authority to charge people a
$5 permitting fee in unincorporated areas if they want to have an "open burn",
and the flexibility of levy stiff fines if anyone conducts an "open burn"
without a permit. Important fact: this legislation -- which, I'll remind
you, was proposed by one lone state congressperson in January and has gone
nowhere since -- would in no way affect barbequing in your back yard, or having
a cozy little marshmallow-toasting fire in a
firepit in your back yard.
State Rep. Briel: New bill is not targeting your campfire
The local MAGA meatheads went absolutely ballistic. Jackbooted this
and overreach that and the gummit telling you it's gonna slap you with a
$100,000 fine if you have a weenie roast with the kids in the yard.
And of course the fact that this legislation would do none of those things
was irrelevant to the ginned up firestorm (pun intended) that was whipped up
on the Right. Because all they fucking care about is having something
scary and Liberal to shriek about to drown out all the actual catastrophes
their Dear Leader is inflicting on this country in their name.
How bad is it?
It's worse than ballroom!
This is the pattern: a minor, local policy proposal becomes, through media
amplification, a nationwide moral panic completely detached from
reality.
And remember kids, by the commutative law of MAGA meathead media, what one
Democrat does, all Democrats are responsible for. And if all Democrats
everywhere don't stop what they're doing and unanimously denounce whatever
ginned up claptrap Fox News is troweling out today, then all Democrats
everywhere are guilty!guilty!guilty!
And when you tar the entire party with the slander-brush, don't forget to
cram as many magic conjure words into the headline as possible. For
example, this from Murdoch's New York Post checks just about every
box.
Behind today’s radical, Jew-hating Democratic Party is a monster created
by Barack Obama
Yes, they forgot to squeeze in Hillary's emails and Benghaaaazi, but I'm pretty sure that's a
headline page-limit thing and not some swine of an editor having a mild
attack of conscience and thinking,
"Nah. We dare not go that far."
Speaking of playing the hits is a desperate attempt to distract from how comprehensively Trump is
fucking them over and what utter, drooling idiots this makes all of them
look like, MAGA mouthbreakers are even dragging the already-infinitely-debunked "Clinton Kill
List" out of cold storage.
Because while their soft lizard brains are
incapable of processing facts they don't like, they all have fond memories
of the lies that made them feel smart. Of the glory days of beating up
on Hillary Clinton.
This month's announcement from Liberal High Command of the new regulations
will be of special interest to Liberal podcasters and bloggers:
Henceforth it shall be considered a Class Three Code of Conduct violation
to perform Steel Man or Steel Man-adjacent* "debates" in public.
A "Steel Man" argument is defined as taking an ordinary, stupid,
easily-debunked Conservative talking point and saying,
"Well, OK, but if my opponent were 100 times smarter and not a liar and a
lunatic and a bigot, here's the argument they would have made." then debating that. This absurd ritual is performed
because you're so keen to show everyone how smart and civil and according to
Hoyle you are by debating a sane Conservative that you invent one (known in
the trade as "Sorkening".) Except that species went extinct a long time ago,
so there you are, playing chess in the park against yourself.
What you do in the privacy of your own home is, of course, your own
business. If your kink is "Steel Manning" Ayn Rand or Nick Fuentes
behind closed doors, have at it.
But when you put it out on the street, it becomes public ontological
masturbation.
Stop it.
*(Steel Man-adjacent debates can be identified by the use of phrases like
"To be fair..." and "The most generous interpretation..." and "Even if we grant the premise...")
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.
Note: Given all the time and effort we put into putting together every episode of the Professional Left podcast, it occurs to me that it is madness just to let our show notes disappear into the ether. From time to time, why not use all the stuff we'd already researched and structured into a long for audio essay and reuse it for a... long form written essay! I know. I can be kind of slow.
Anyway, the word of the day today is “effective”. Read it, learn it, use it in a
sentence!
So let’s talk about what it means to be “effective”.
First, you gotta figure out what is it you want to accomplish? So let’s
start there, armed with the foreknowledge the place we'll inevitably end up
will not be as satisfying as you would like. But we’ll have some
rueful laughs along the way.
What does "effective" mean? And as long as we’re doing this, lets also
ask what its antonym, “ineffective”. mean?
Here's an example of "ineffective" from 20 years ago. From
The New York Times,
March 31, 2005:
Editor Hit With Pie
William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and former chief of staff
to Vice President Dan Quayle, was splattered by a pie thrown by a student
during a speech on Tuesday about foreign policy at Earlham College.
Members of the audience jeered the student, then applauded as Mr. Kristol
wiped the pie from his face and said, "Just let me finish this
point."
The pie incident went on to make headlines in the
Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, NPR and
The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Was it satisfying to the person who threw the pie? Definitely. Was
it satisfying those of us who loathe Kristol? Sure. A little bit.
But did pie-ing Bill Kristol 20 years ago slow down the Iraq War or derail his
career or undo the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush? No. Like
Haldeman in the early days of Watergate, when Woodward and Bernstein screwed up, it actually ended up making him
more sympathetic to his audience.
That was ineffective!
Did you know that Rupert Murdoch got hit in the face with a pie in July
2011? It's true, and yet Fox News remains. Westboro Baptist Church’s
hatemongering scumbag Fred Phelps took one in the face in May, 2003.
Phyllis Schlafly, April 1977. Tom Friedman, April 2008.
Milton Friedman, October 1998. Ann Coulter, but she ducked in
time. Bill Buckley. Anita Bryant. Dozens of others.
You might also remember that on May 17, 2011, Nick Espinosa threw a box of
glitter over Gingrich and his wife, Callista, at a book-signing event in
Minneapolis. Espinosa, a gay rights activist, shouted, "Feel the
rainbow, Newt! Stop the hate! Stop anti-gay politics!". And yet,
Gingrich abides.
Remember David Vitter? The senator from Louisiana who may or may not
have had a thing about diapers?
At Netroots Nation there was a movement afoot to send dirty diapers or
something to Vitter which got eyerolls from professional comedians, who went
on to explain why this was a dumb idea.
Do you remember the consistent refrain from the Mark Rylance character in
Bridge of Spies? Every time Tom Hanks asked him why he wasn't alarmed or
afraid he replied,
"Would it help?"
Good question. And if you are interested in saving our democracy, this
is the question you should always be asking yourself: Will what I plan
to do help? Will it be "effective"? So let's move on to defining
what "effective" looks like within the context of what we want to have
happen.
Here's an example of something that worked. That was effective. The
grapefruit ladies of Ireland.
During the Civil Rights movement, in places like Birmingham and Selma, the
mere fact of the stark contrast between the protesters' peaceful discipline
and the violent, segregationist thugs with police dogs and fire hoses was
not enough to force the system to change. It was the fact that it made the national news. That people outside the Jim Crow South got an unsparing first-hand
look at how the South really was. This shocked the public and
helped build the political pressure needed for the federal government to take
action.
The difference between then and now is that thugs with jackboots and tear gas
are there because the White House put them there. The difference between
then and now is that the president of the United States is orchestrating and
applauding state violence, shopping for a race riot, not trying to stop it.
In our bones we know this is all horribly wrong, because in our bones we know
what "fairness" should look like. It's all over our popular
culture. Jack Reacher. Justified. The Black List.
Hell, Superman. Ideally, when we are treated unfairly, we as
Americans believe we should have recourse to someone, somewhere who will make
it right. Beat up the bully. Put the crook in prison. Some
higher authority.
We're sure most of you remember that, in June of 1963, the segregationist
governor of Alabama -- George Wallace -- planted himself in the schoolhouse
doorway of the Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to block
two African American students -- Vivian Malone and James Hood -- from
entering
Malone and Hood had done everything by the book -- signed in early at the
courthouse, picked their classes, and filled out their papers. But when it
came time to actually walk into Foster Auditorium and finish registering,
President John Kennedy's folks knew things could get very ugly very quickly,
because Wallace was itching for a confrontation. He was shopping for a
race riot. So Attorney General Bobby Kennedy basically said, fine, let
the asshole put on his little show -- better that he preen for the cameras
than spark a riot. The feds kept the students in the car so it wouldn’t turn
into some ugly face-off between a segregationist governor and two Black
students. They wanted it clear: this was the federal government versus one
stubborn governor, not Black versus white.
So there’s Wallace, literally standing in a schoolhouse door, putting on his
show for the press. Deputy AG Katzenbach steps up with marshals and tells him
to move. Wallace filibusters with some bullshit about states rights, so
Katzenbach calls President Kennedy, and that's when Kennedy finally lost his
patience and federalized the Alabama National Guard.
Hours later, a Guard general ordered Wallace to move. Wallace rants a
bit more, then steps aside. And then, without fanfare, Malone and Hood walk in
and register.
Wallace was the racist thug. Malone and Hood were the victims. And
President Kennedy was the higher authority which could be appealed to for
justice.
In the here-and-now, you may have noticed that there is now a whole cottage
industry of centrist goofs and social media complainers who spend day and
night carping that Democrats are not fighting hard enough, or doing enough, or
swearing enough. But when you push against that even a little bit and
ask what, specifically, should Democrats be doing.
Remember the word of the day? "Effective".
What should Democrats be doing that will be effective? No answer. You get a lot of handwaving about stuff that is
never going to happen or is structurally impossible without a Democrat in the
White House and a supermajority in the Senate. Something something
Citizens United or Fairness Doctrine or pack the Supreme Court or DC
statehood. They just know that, damnit,
somebody oughta do something!
Because in the here-and-now, what we have lost, possibly forever, is a deeply
ingrained, American sense that out there, somewhere, there should be some
corrective mechanism to which we can appeal for justice.
But thanks to all the millions of Republican voters who voted for this, and
the millions more who stayed home or pissed away their vote because voting for
the smart black lady would have made them feel icky, the fascists who
are now in charge are in the process of smashing those corrective mechanisms
or are turning them against the rest of us
Because now, thanks to decades of work and billions of dollars spent building
a relentless Conservative propaganda machine, the whole
Wallace-in-the-schoolhouse-door dynamic is backwards.
Now the racist thug is in the White House, and runs the Congress and the
Supreme Court by proxy. Now state power -- a federalized national guard
and the United States military -- is in the hands of monsters
because Republican voters wanted it that way.
Now the innocent victims are ... anybody Trump and Stephen Miller want to
harass and destroy. Parents snatched off the street.
Innocent kids, zip-tied and dragged off naked in the middle of the
night. FBI agents fired for honoring George Floyd. James Comey
being indicted for ... nothing.
Now the schoolhouse doors are the cities of Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago,
where brave citizens are working hard to try to find ways to block the
fascists who Republicans have put in power.
In case you didn't know it, this dynamic where the whole idea of the
Apocalypse and the End Times originally came from.
Hong tight because we're going to take a quick jump back in time almost 2,200
years. During the 160 BC's. For centuries, the foundation of most Jewish
thought rested on the biblical idea that if Israel obeyed God's covenant, God
would bless them in this world with peace, land, and prosperity.
And while the American Dream elides the presence of God in that equation, the
ideals behind it are remarkably similar: if you work hard and play by the
rules, you will succeed and prosper.
In 200 BC, the Seleucids beat the Egyptians at the Battle of Panium and took
control of Judea, and for 40 years or so things went along fairly
smoothly. Then under the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes,
things took a hard right turn.
Antiochus IV decided to make it his mission to suppress and destroy Jewish
religious practices. He installed a pagan altar on the sacred altar of
the Jerusalem Temple and slaughtered pigs there as an intentional insult to
the God of Israel. Circumcision, Sabbath observance, and Torah study
were all outlawed. Mothers who circumcised their sons were
executed, sometimes with their infants killed alongside them. Possession of
Torah scrolls became a capital offense. These weren’t political laws—they were
aimed at erasing Jewish identity.
This all led to what became known as the Maccabean Revolt, which radically
reshaped Jewish thought because it wasn’t just a national uprising. It
was an existential crisis. A spiritual crisis.
Under Seleucid persecutions, the most righteous and faithful suffered the
worst precisely because they were righteous and faithful. So where was God's covenant in all of this? What happens when
God’s people do everything right and are made to suffer for it?
And because these deeply religious people could not give up on the idea that
God existed, that God was just and God honored his contract they ... invented
the idea of the End of History. That at some point in the future God
would intervene in history and clean all this shit up. God became like
the divine cable installer: please be in your homes obeying the law between
the hours of Right Now and Forever, and eventually God’ll show up and get you
all straightened out.
The Jewish sects that you might be familiar with that grew out of this belief
in the End Times were the Pharisees -- with whom Jesus has a huge beef in the
New Testament -- and the Essenes, who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. As
part of their End Times theology, they invented the ideas of the resurrection
of the dead, the coming of a Messiah, and the divine judgment of the
wicked.
And psychologically we are right about where the Maccabees were before they
took up arms against the Seleucids.
We might still pray, but as a practical matter we don't look to God to save
our democracy: our democracy has always rested uneasily on the foundation of
"Vox populi, vox Dei". The voice of the people is the voice of
God. And the voice of the people has deserted us, which is why this is a
spiritual crisis and not just a political one.
What are we to do with the fact that, on three separate occasions, nearly half
the people who bothered to show up for elections voted for Donald Trump?
That the first time it wasn't a fluke? That our neighbors and colleagues
are now actively siding against democracy, and have knowingly put the
instruments of government into the hands of fascists and sadists, and
lunatics? That many of those institutions that we supposed would protect
us, are run by cowards and bean counters for whom protecting their corporate
mergers is much more important than protecting democracy.
And very much as it was in 167 BC under the Seleucids, so it is right now
under the Trump regime: those who are the most vocal in speaking up for
democracy and defending our constitution are some of those who are targeted
most aggressively by the regime.
This is White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
...on September 25, President Donald Trump issued a National Security
Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7) called “Countering Domestic Terrorism and
Organized Political Violence,” essentially adding them to an ever-growing
list of what he calls the “enemy within.”
Civil society nonprofits and activists thus join segments of academia, the
legal profession, public health professionals and scientists, and so many
others President Trump sees as his political opponents and critics.
A typical academic year for Mark Bray, an assistant teaching professor of
history at Rutgers University, turned into a nightmare after President
Trump signed an executive order to designate antifa as a terrorist
group.
Soon after the order, conservative activists targeted Bray, who wrote
“Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” and he began to receive death
threats. Once his home address was posted online, he knew it was time to
act.
With the support of Rutgers, Bray and his family fled to Spain, where he
will remain at least through the end of the school year as he fights what
he calls false allegations regarding his beliefs and work...
The further irony is that, on an emotional level, the source of their anger is
very similar to ours. MAGA meatheads believe the system has failed them,
and from their point of view, it has. We also believe the system has
failed us, and from our point of view, it also has. Each side believes
their government has failed to deliver what they wanted it to do, and what
they thought they had been voting for, for decades.
The problem is, our goals are diametrically opposed to one another.
Broadly speaking, we want clean air and clean water for everybody. Good,
safe schools for everybody. Enough to eat for everybody.
Affordable health care for everybody. Affordable housing for
everybody. A decent standard of living for everybody. We want
women to have control over their own bodies.
We want all the things, and all of that horrifies MAGA.
Modernity and change terrify them and have left a lot of them confused and
angry, because they want the 1950s back. They firmly believe their
straight, white, conservative, Christian, male privilege was stolen from them
by George Soros and us dirty, commie Liberals, and they want it back by any
means necessary.
Which is why they are immune to Democrat persuasion. Because while
Democrats keep trying to talk about policies which would materially improve
the lives of the working class and the poor -- as flawed and imperfect as
Democrats may be -- demagogues on the right, who never gave a shit about the
poor or the working class, continue offering their base something much more
emotionally satisfying.
Scapegoats!
Back in 1981, when Reagan told his supporters that their government was the
problem, the Republican Party had already begun its long march down the road
to Donald Trump. To the Republican base, Reagan offered up black and
brown people as the scapegoats for all their fears and troubles.
43 years later, when Democrats were proposing to help the poor and the working
class by doing what used to be bipartisan things like extending the child tax
credit, and more progressive things like offering serious, detailed plans to
lower the cost of housing, Republicans countered with this.
Trump: Can you imagine you're a parent and your son leaves the house and
you say, Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day in school and your
son comes back with a brutal operation.
pic.twitter.com/ChmwpavFAH
As you can hear, the propaganda is the same. It’s just gotten so much
stupider, because the Republican base has gotten so much stupider.
The Republican base don’t see themselves as villains, and they never
will. They see themselves as patriots, who have been cruelly forced by
decadent Liberal culture to endure gay and interracial couples on commercials
for Tide or Cheerios --
-- or just knowing that out there, somewhere, there is a thing called
“Ru Paul’s Drag Race”.
From their point of view, our mere existence and our insistence on diversity
and tolerance and treating people humanely might as well be Antiochus IV defiling the temple. Monstrous! Intolerable! And,
most importantly, the mystical reason why their lives suck.
Over and
over again, they have been told that we -- you and I -- hijacked their
American dream, drowned it in soy milk, wrapped it in a Rainbow Flag, and
buried it in Benghazi, while Obama and Hillary and Kamala and Joe Biden and
George Soros watched it all on closed-circuit TV and laughed and
laughed. Solar panels and windmills are the graven images of our
blasphemous modern god, and Trump is the anointed one who will smash
them. So through the power of “Vox Populi”, they have raised up their own
god based on a new covenant: a promise to smite their enemies and make
Liberals cry
The problem is that the Right has a 40-year propaganda head-start
on us, which is why we’re stuck in this kind of asymmetrical warfare.
Where, through the power of massive fascist propaganda, Fox News can just make
up a story about how “The Entire Democratic Party Is Giving Away YOUR Health
Care to lazy bums and illegals who are also stealing your job!!!” and have it
turn into something which Democrats are obliged to carefully debunk over and
over again.
It’s the same with the ICE goons who are terrorizing American cities.
All the violence and criminality and thuggery is on one side, but let one
person coldcock some anonymous masked brownshirt beating up a kid and
everyone knows, through the power of massive fascist propaganda,
within the hour the headline from the White House all the way down to your
MAGA neighbor will be “Out of control Antifa terrorists attack innocent police
trying to protect your Freedom and your grade school son’s junk”
To repeat, this is not a Trump problem or a Mike Johnson problem, this is a
voter problem. A Vox Populi problem.
Through lies and conspiracies and direct appeals to racism, homophobia,
xenophobia and some good, old fashioned bribery, Republicans convinced enough
people to hate the imaginary Democratic boogeyman under their bed enough to
install a dictator in the White House. Twice. And so, with
appeals to God not an option, and appeals to the government a lost cause
since, at last, Reagan is right – the government is the problem – the only
alternative left is an appeal to the people.
So, back to the word “effective”
No Kings marches are a good start since it clearly scares the hell out of the
Trump regime. October 18, 2025 was too big to ignore, which is the
point. Record numbers. Millions of peaceful, loud patriots in the streets. Catnip for the media. And the next one will probably be even bigger.
And those patriots in frog and unicorn costumes are also using an excellent
strategy. No one is hitting anyone in the face with a pie.
Instead, the ICE goons and their paymasters are being made to look
ridiculous.
And the devil cannot abide laughter. As Thomas More said, the
devil…that proud spirit… "cannot endure to be mocked".
Also kudos to Nancy Pelosi for wheeling around and going straight
after the blond whore from My Pillow TV. Here’s a pro-tip: do not meet any MAGA person on the ground of their
choosing. Do not accept any premises of their arguments. Instead,
be like Nancy. Tell them to shut up and, for good measure, call them
liars and whores.
Also be prepared to deal with the reality that, at some point, some decent citizen may very well find themselves so shocked and indignant at
the way some ICE thug is treating a child or a senior citizen or a pregnant
woman that they will rise in defense of them against Trump’s gestapo and kick
the that ICE goon's ass.
Be prepared for the fact that some "allies" have so completely internalized the asymmetry of this war that they take it as gospel that all Democrats at all times, everywhere must never lose their
cool no matter how brutally they’re provoked. They believe this so
strongly that they’ll be pissed off at the citizen who aggressively got
between the fascist in the mask and the person the fascist was clubbing,
because now Trump has an excuse to escalate.
I don’t buy that. If none of Trump's dickless Cossacks are ever coldcocked by
a righteous citizen… then fascist propagandists will just make some shit up, just like they’re
making up reasons to murder people on the high seas.
In Jonestown, not everyone in the cult drank the poison.
Some had already defected and left when Jim Jones gave the death order.
Some were away from the compound.
When the order came down, some were forcibly injected with poison, or forced
to drink the cyanide-laced Flavor Aid.
Some tried to resist and were shot.
Some escaped into the jungle.
And hanging over it all was the fact that Jonestown was physically isolated
from the rest of the world.
But MAGA cultists are not physically isolated from the rest of the world, are
they?
Quite the opposite: they live in one of the most technologically advanced
societies on the planet, during an era of instant communication and instant
access to information unlike anything that has ever existed in history.
There are no barbwire fences or guards with machine guns forcing them to
swallow increasingly hateful and ludicrous propaganda every day.
They choose this life. Every day they choose to believe liars who laugh
at them as they take their money and their votes. Every day they make a
grotesque mockery of the Christianity they claim to believe in. And
every day they have to work just a little bit harder to make sure that nothing
of the outside world and the horrendous consequences of their electoral
decision leaks into their tiny, suffocating, self-imposed cave.
And now, after a decade of Trump ordering them to swallow all kinds of toxic
garbage in the name of Jebus and Freedumb, he is ordering them to drink
straight cyanide. No additives. Nothing to make it go down
easier. Just shut up and drink it.
Trump blasts 'stupid' and 'foolish' Republicans amid calls to reveal more
Epstein files The president made baseless claims that Democrats
created a "hoax."
Trump can't stop MAGA from obsessing about the Epstein files
MAGA-friendly media has been torn over how to respond to a base that
wants more on the Epstein files and a president who wants it to move
on.
And now they're praying to Republican Jebus like they've never prayed to him
before to please let this cup pass from them. But it won't.
Because it can't. Because faith in their insane conspiracy theories is,
at the moment, synonymous with their faith in the pope of their Church of
Insane Conspiracy Theories, Donald Trump.
So, in then end, most will drink from the cup Trump offers. Rather than
admit they were wrong, they will swallow whatever stupid hellbrew of
transparent lies, deflections of supplementary conspiracy nonsense it
contains. They will shout whatever deranged bullshit he commands them to
shout. They will do this because they really are nothing more than
reprogrammable meatbags. And however humiliating it might be to go along
with Trump Pedophile coverup, the alternative -- admitting they had been wrong
about Trump all along -- is literally unthinkable. To extend the
"reprogrammable" metaphor, the Epstein Files are an "app" but their blind
faith in Trump is their operating system, so do not make the mistake of
expecting better from these dregs of humanity.
In the end, most of them will drink from the cup Trump offers...
... but not all of them. And that is where hope lies.
Those who stay in the cult are lost, damned souls. There is no saving
them so stop wasting your time trying.
But because they live in one of the most technologically advanced societies on
the planet, during an era of instant communication and instant access to
information unlike anything that has ever existed in history, no matter how
diligently they work to keep the blinding nova daylight of Trump's complicity
in his dead best friend's child sex trafficking ring from leaking into their
tiny, suffocating, self-imposed cave, some of it will break through and some
of them will be thrown into panicked confusion.
Some will resist and be cast out.
Some will flee.
And that may be enough.
Do not expect the few MAGA meatheads who make a break for it to show up at our
doorstep offering to knock doors for Zohran Mamdani, Kat Abughazaleh or Ro
Khanna. Decades of relentless Conservative media slander has done its
work: to MAGA meatbags, Democrats are nothing but a Soros-funded cabal of
commie baby-killers, and nothing but the erosion of mortal demography is
going to change that.
But for those few MAGA meatheads who flee the cult, the Both Sides Do It lie
they've used to keep Reality at bay through all previous Republican scandals
may finally pay some unexpected dividends.
Whether they opt to scream
"Uniparty" until they burst a blood vessel and throw their vote down Musk's
third party rathole, or they just quit politics altogether and spend the rest
of their miserable lives hunkered down in their doublewides, getting drunk
watching NCIS, and weeping themselves to sleep listening to a Lee Greenwood
cover of "Didn't We Almost Have it All"... I don't fucking care.
If enough of them take French leave from MAGA to give Democrats enough
leverage to start to drive a stake though the heart of the Trump presidency,
that will be enough of a first step to warrant a toast.
Not be enough to win the war, obviously. Because this is a war. But maybe enough to give democracy
some breathing room.
If you're old enough to remember Count Floyd and SCTV Monster Chiller Horror
Theatre, you may also remember this 1985 commercial. It was commissioned
by an international chemical company called W.R. Grace.
Jesus, Mary and Arthur Laffer, 2017 sure looks scary, which should come as no
surprise since this bit of 60 second cinema was directed by Ridley Scott and
cost about $300,000 in 1987 dollars to produce.
Fun Fact: It was initially rejected for broadcasting by all three networks
back when such a thing was possible. The networks rejected it on the
basis of being too controversial and too one-sided, so W.R. Grace turned
around and bought time on 150 independent stations.
Then-NBC Vice President Rick Gitter was quoted as rejecting the commercial
because
"It's so well done. It expresses a view that budget cuts are a moral
imperative" and didn’t even entertain the notion that, just maybe, raising taxes is also
a valid option to pay down the deficits. The only viable
option that is ever on the table with Republicans are massive budget cuts.
Keep that top-of-mind: The only thing Conservative elites
care about is cutting taxes for the rich. At all times and under all
circumstances, there is no problem so great that they claim can’t be solved
with a big enough tax cut. Wars may come and go. And as for the
traditional battle cry of “Guns, God, Gays” those were all merely means to the
end of getting enough Republicans elected so they could have more tax
cuts.
Even during times of budget deficits, you gotta cut taxes to stimulate the
yadda yadda and you know the drill. Utter bullshit. That’s
it. Class dismissed.
However, under Bill Clinton, Republicans had the opposite problem. One
they’d never anticipated. What to do when, under a Democratic
president, the United States starts running budget surpluses and now has
enough money on-hand to fund those social programs that Democrats had always
wanted to improve, and Republicans were always demanding to be slashed
because, hey, there’s a budget deficit!
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let us go back to one of the
primary reasons George H.W. Bush lost in 1988.
If Bush the Elder is known for one phrase above all others, it's either his
stand on “prudence” --
- or "No. New. Taxes."
That was his keynote address at the Republican National Convention in 1988
where he accepted his party’s nomination. And in November of that year,
he won the election.
But he and his boss Ronald Reagan had spent the last eight years giving
massive tax cuts to the wealthy, lowering the top marginal tax rate from 73%
to 28%, which was the lowest the rate had been since 1925. They also
massively increased military spending. And by Bush’s second year in
office people were starting to freak out about the size of the federal
deficit. And so, in 1990, Bush the Elder broke his promise, and the
opposition that fired up inside the Republican party plus an insurgent 3rd
party run by H. Ross Perot pretty much doomed his presidency.
6 Little Words Helped Make George H.W. Bush (A 1-Term) President
…less than two years after making the no-tax pledge, Bush found himself in
circumstances in which he no longer felt he could keep it. Locked in
budget negotiations with the majority Democrats in the House and Senate,
Bush felt he had to allow higher rates on some existing taxes or the
Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction bill would shut down important services of
the government.
So he signed off on a compromise involving revenues as well as spending
restraints. Democrats exulted at having forced him to renege.
Conservatives seethed. A young Newt Gingrich, elevated to the No. 2 spot
in the House Republican leadership the previous year, made no secret of
his displeasure. He insisted any option was preferable to any new
revenue.
That position helped inspire a major Republican challenger to Bush's
renomination in 1992. He was Patrick Buchanan, a former communications
director for Reagan and a familiar commentator on TV. He announced his
campaign for president in December 1991, saying he was running "because,
we Republicans, can no longer say it is all the liberals' fault. It was
not some liberal Democrat who said, 'Read my lips: no new taxes,' then
broke his word to cut a seedy backroom budget deal with the big spenders
on Capitol Hill."[
This was one of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign ads. Notice that the
objection isn’t about taxes per se, but about Republican unfairness and
hypocrisy. What costs more? Beer and gas. Who gets tax
cuts? Millionaires.
So, for most of the Reagan/George H. W. Bush Era the attitude was
who gives a shit about deficits? We won! Reaganomics rule! Tax cuts
rool! It's morning in Murrica! And if the deficit needs to be cut, just
slash a bunch of programs for those mooching poor and everything will balance
out.
Then Bill Clinton was elected, and overnight, the Republican talking points
about the deficit changed entirely. Holy Mother of God! In the
middle of the night while no one was looking a horde of mooching welfare
queens snuck in here and nearly destroyed Murrica with deficits!
Everyone knows deficits are worse than Hitler! We need to cut
everything -- welfare, Medicaid, Social Security, school
lunches, everything! -- in the next 60 seconds or we're all dooooomed!
Alan Greenspan let Clinton know before his inauguration, that the
situation was even worse than anyone outside Republican inner circles had let
on.
From Bob Woodward’s book "Behind the Boom":
... On the five-hour trip back to Washington, Greenspan tried to assess
what he had observed. Clinton was what Greenspan termed an "intellectual
pragmatist." The term also applied to Greenspan himself. Clinton's
campaign promises included tax increases on the wealthy, a violation of
Republican orthodoxy. But increasing taxes reduced the federal deficit --
and those deficits, Greenspan thought, were such a threat to the future of
the economy that it might just be worth it to support Clinton's
proposal.
One of the paradoxes, Greenspan realized, was that by running up the
federal budget deficits, Reagan had effectively borrowed from the period
that was now going to be the Clinton era. Clinton would have to pay it
back by paying down the deficit in some way. The irony was that Clinton
probably wouldn't have been elected if Reagan hadn't created the deficits.
...
Clinton was told by men like Greenspan that the markets would collapse and the
world would be plunged into a who-knows-what kind of economic apocalypse
unless he immediately put all his Liberal promises and programs on hold and
focused almost exclusively on cutting the deficit.
Which he did.
Plans for improvements to health care, Social Security, education, and poverty
programs were either shelved or greatly reduced. You will remember that
the phrase “Pay-Go” entered the political lexicon: every budget
item had to be accounted for with a matching revenue source, and any new
spending would have to be offset with matching cuts to other spending.
Clinton reluctantly went along with all of it, but he also insisted on some
revenue increases as well. After all, if massive reckless tax cuts got
us into this mess, surely a few sensible tax increases could help get us out
of it.
And true to form, Republicans categorically rejected all of it.
According to them, any tax increase would completely
destroy the economy, and America would be reduced to nothing but a smoking
hole in the ground. Why does Bill Clinton hate America?
Clinton also proposed a modest increase in the minimum wage, which – surprise,
surprise – Republicans also categorically rejected. According to
them, any increase to the minimum wage would completely destroy
the economy, and America would be reduced to nothing but a smoking hole in the
ground. Why does Bill Clinton hate America?
The Tax Reform Act of 1993 aimed to cut the federal deficit by increasing
taxes and reducing spending. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton
in 1993.
Not a single Republican in the evenly divided Senate voted for it and it passed 51 to 50 with Vice President Al Gore casting the
tie-breaking vote.
The Act raised the top federal income tax rate to 39.6%, as well as many other
taxes including corporate taxes, fuel taxes, and more. And by 1998, it allowed
Clinton's administration to achieve – say it with me now –
the first balanced budget in three decades. And by the time
Clinton left office, the United States was running
a steadily growing, multi-billion-dollar budget surplus for the first time
in American history.
Today, at the White House, President Clinton announced figures released by the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB), showing that this year's budget surplus
will be at least $230 billion…
THE LARGEST UNIFIED SURPLUS EVER.
The largest unified surplus as a share of the economy since 1948;
The 3rd consecutive year with a surplus for the first time in over 50
years;
The 8th consecutive year of fiscal improvement for the first time in
American history; and
The first surplus excluding Social Security and Medicare, making it the
only on-budget surplus since Medicare was established in 1965.
From the same press release
THE LARGEST DEBT REDUCTION EVER.
As a result of the budget surplus:
The President's plan to eliminate the debt by 2012 remains on track;
The 12 cents of every federal dollar we currently spend on interest
payments would be eliminated;
The U.S. is on track to pay down more than $360 billion in debt over three
years, the largest 3-year debt pay-down in our history. Under the 12 years
of Presidents Reagan and Bush, the debt held by the public
quadrupled.
Great! Now Ridley Scott can get on with making Black Rain and Thelma & Louise and Republicans can join hands with Democrats
and celebrate the Clinton presidency as one of the most peaceful,
successful, fiscally responsible in living memory, and go on to elect
Clinton's Vice President, Al Gore, to continue Clinton's amazing legacy.
Funny story. True story. The more Clinton succeeded delivering on
the things Republicans had always said they cared about, the more they fucking
hated him. Called him everything but a Child of God. Went
after his wife. Impeached him over some bullshit. For much longer
take on this, see my post
"Like a Virgin" from 2009.
Meanwhile, from The Brookings Institute, December 1, 2000
A Surplus, If We Can Keep It: How the Federal Budget Surplus Happened
“It’s the economy, stupid.” The battle cry of Bill Clinton’s 1992
presidential campaign has been recycled to explain how a $290 billion
budget deficit has been transformed into a $100 billion surplus that is
expected to quadruple in the decade ahead.
Liquidating the deficit ranks as one of the supreme budgetary
accomplishments in American history.
If the 1989 tax structure were still in place, there would be no surplus
to discuss.
So, pretty great right? All those vital programs that Democrats were
forced to postpone or put on starvation diets so they could pay down the
Reagan/Bush deficits could now start to see some real money, right?
Well, that was one possible future for our country.
And then came the presidential campaign of 2000. From The New York
Times, June 13, 2000:
THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE BUDGET ISSUE; Bush and Gore Revise Plans To Match
a Growing Surplus
By Richard W. Stevenson June 13, 2000
Projections of the federal budget surplus are likely to be revised upward
by as much as $1 trillion in coming weeks, leading Vice President Al Gore
and Gov. George W. Bush to prepare differing claims to the windfall.
For Mr. Gore, more money means new initiatives to encourage savings and
improve education, health care and environmental protection, as well as to
speed his plan to reduce the national debt, his aides said.
For Mr. Bush, it is a chance to assert that his plans for a big tax cut,
the creation of private investment accounts within Social Security and a
national missile defense program are not only affordable but would also
leave plenty of money for additional debt reduction, his aides said...
Yes indeedy, Dubya did have very different ideas about
what to do with that surplus. Note the first 60 seconds of this local
news clip:
– and on December 12, 2000, thanks to a 5-4 vote by the Supreme Court’s
Conservative majority:
Just like that, the budget surplus that the Democrats had worked so hard to create,
would be handed over to a dry-drunk halfwit whose attitude was Holy Mother of
God, where did all of these terrible budget surpluses come from?!? Jesus, we need to get rid of them immediately.
Surpluses are worse than Hitler! Can you believe those craxy Libtards
are actually worried about deficits? Wheeee! Who gives a shit about deficits?
We won!
And for the record, here are a few other gifts that landed in Bush’s lap
thanks to eight years of hard work by the Clinton/Gore administration: a
3.9% unemployment rate, a robust job-growth rate and the "problem" of wage
inflation caused by too few workers available to fill all the available jobs.
And you know what comes next, right?
Read. My. Lips. Giant. Tax. Cuts.
Credible economists like Future Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman warned the
Bush administration that their policies would plunge the country right back
into deficit. But did they listen?
…isn't the federal government awash in surpluses? Hasn't Alan Greenspan
told us that our big economic problem is how to give the money away, lest
politicians end up owning the stock market? If there's plenty of money for
tax cuts, why won't the administration give the military at least some of
what it wants and promise to keep its hand out of the Medicare cookie
jar?
Because someone in the White House is aware of the truth, which is that
there isn't plenty of money after all.
…Congress is about to go into a tax-cut feeding frenzy, adding huge tax
breaks for corporations to Mr. Bush's proposal. The spectacle will be
distressing, but it will be over quickly. Pretty soon, quite possibly as
soon as this summer, we'll be worrying about deficits, not
surpluses.
That was on the one hand.
On the other hand, smug, delusional Conservative elites like those at the of
The Weekly Standard had a lot of fun mocking Democrats as feeble-minded
alarmists for worrying about Bush blowing the surplus.
Because that would never happen. Never, ever, ever.
In fact, hey look! It's David Brooks in
The Weekly Standard in 2000, which is why we bloggers have
archives. Because The Weekly Standard doesn't exist anymore, but
my archives do.
The New Stupid Party
LONG AGO, the Republican party was nicknamed the Stupid Party, and at
times Republicans have done their best to live up to the label. But after
the past week, it is perhaps time to acknowledge that when it comes to
brainless, self-destructive behavior, the Democratic party has achieved a
level of excellence that will be unsurpassed in our lifetime.
Last week the Congressional Budget Office came out with a budget forecast.
The report immediately got submerged in a chatterstorm about whether
Congress or the White House would dip into something called the Social
Security trust fund…
The Democratic party proceeded to work itself up into a collective
aneurysm. Dick Gephardt—who, when given the chance to play the demagogue,
never goes halfway—said that the United States now faces "an alarming
fiscal crisis." Democratic national chairman Terry McAuliffe said on Face
the Nation that it had taken Bill Clinton eight years to build up the
surplus, but Bush was able to "blow it in eight months." Other Democrats
rose up en masse to declare that the Bush administration was going to
bankrupt Social Security/the federal government/western civilization
because the administration was going to have to "raid the Social Security
trust fund...
Democrats were bedwetting fools, Brooks’ assured his readers, because even
with "...the economic slowdown, the Bush tax cut, and the recent congressional
spending splurge…the surplus is still projected to grow to about $200 billion
a year in 2004 and close to $300 billion a year by 2006."
This is Brooks again, in the Weekly Standard, March 16, 2001 entitled
"Yes, There Is a New Economy – Thanks to once-in-a lifetime productivity
gains, Bush's plans are easily affordable"
It ends with this paragraph:
We are living at a once-in-a-generation moment of economic opportunity. As
productivity grows, the economy will grow. As the economy grows, revenues
will grow, maybe beyond what the CBO projects. The real question about the
Bush tax cuts, then, is not, Can we afford them? The real question is,
Why are they so small?
Make a note of that date. March 16, 2001. Because now were
going to jump ahead a little over a year later, to a conversation between
then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Vice President Dick Cheney in
November of 2002.
This was reported in the Chicago Tribune, January 12, 2004 (emphasis added):
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said he was told “deficits don’t
matter” when he warned of a looming fiscal crisis.
In a new book chronicling his rocky two-year tenure and in an interview
with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, O’Neill also said President
Bush balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime because
of opposition from “the corporate crowd.”
O’Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing
budget deficits posed a threat to the economy.
Cheney cut him off, O’Neill said. “You know, Paul, Reagan proved
deficits don’t matter,” he said, according to excerpts. Cheney
continued: “We won the midterms. This is our due.”
A month later, in December 2002, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was
fired.
The vice president’s office had no immediate comment. John Snow, who
replaced O’Neill, said Bush is committed to cutting the deficits in half
over the next five years.
But… but… there weren’t supposed to be any deficits. There was going to
be plenty of money for everything and, according to Extremely Respected
Conservative Frauds, there always would be.
So, lets us review
Where the hell did these deficits suddenly come from? And,
If, according to Republicans five minutes ago during the Clinton
administration, deficits were worse than five Hitlers, how is it that now
they’re not only nothing to worry about, but they are the rightful spoils of
Republicans winning the midterms? and ,
“Reagan proved deficits don’t matter”? Really? Kinda
gives the game away doesn’t it?
Well, not really, since the media immediately buried that little tidbit in the
same Memory Hole where they buried the rest of the failed Bush
Administration. And for the rest of the Bush administration, the deficit
grew faster than any point in American history:
From CBS News, July 15, 2003:
Deficit Projections Soar to $455B
The Bush administration dramatically raised its budget deficit
projections on Tuesday to $455 billion for this year and $475 billion for
next, record levels fed by the limp economy, tax cuts and the battle
against terrorism.
"The deficit certainly remains a concern, but it's one that is manageable
and it's one that we are addressing," White House spokesman Scott
McClellan told reporters. "Over the next few years, we will cut this
deficit in half. It is a priority that we are addressing."
Damnit you, Ridley Scott! If only you'd have stopped
Kingdom of Heaven and gotten your ass back into the Scary Commercial
game, we wouldn't be in this mess.
So having entered office with the Clinton/Gore budget surplus gift wrapped and
waiting on his desk on the day they started office, what did the budget look
like the day Bush and Cheney left office?
Well, combined with the Bush Administration's unpaid for Medicare prescription
drug plan, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an economy deep in recession, and
several massive tax cuts, by the end of the Bush Administration, the
annual federal budget deficit had climbed to $1.4 trillion. And
instead of paying off the national debt held by the public – which was one of
the things Al Gore had proposed we do – the total national debt ballooned
from $5.7 trillion in 2001 to $10.7 trillion by the end of 2008.
Then Barack Obama was elected, and in the face of the worst economic calamity
in 75 years, the Republican party instantly flipped once again from the party
of “Deficits, who cares?” to the party of
“OMG, deficits have mysteriously appeared out of nowhere and the Kenyan
Usurper must cut every social program, forget about saving the auto
industry, forget about this crazy American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act, and pay the deficit down now!now!now!”
This was when the Republican party base passed through the
Magical Bush-Off Machine and emerged as Tea Partiers who had never supported Bush and his ruinous
policies, never been politically active, and personally hated
Barack Obama with the heat of 1000 suns and blamed him for all the nation’s
problems.
This was when the legacy media agreed to collectively forget that everything
you have read to this point ever happened, and focus exclusively on, "Why
won't Obama lead?!?"
On December 31, 2012, Mr. David Brooks – The Man Who Swore There
Would Never Be Deficits Again – used his New York Times column to
lecture All Sensible People about what everyone should agree on regarding
deficits:
...except for a few rabid debt-deniers, almost everybody agrees we have
to do something fundamental to preserve these programs (Medicare, Social
Security, etc.) The problem is that politicians have never found a
politically possible way to begin. Every time they tried to reduce debt,
they ended up borrowing more and making everything worse
So the problem is…"politicians"?
Not the Republicans who sabotaged every offer the Obama administration made to
team-up to fix our collective problems. Just…politicians
And Bush? Bush who? Never heard of him?
Another group who are to blame? “Voters”
Brooks again from December 31, 2012:
Ultimately, we should blame the American voters.... Many voters have
decided they like spending a lot on themselves and pushing costs onto their
children and grandchildren.
Anyone else? Of course! Because it wouldn't be a true David
Brooks column without the inevitable Both Siderist razor in the apple:
A large number of reactionary Democrats reject any measure...
...yadda yadda yadda
And:
A large number of impotent Republicans talk about reducing the debt, but
are incapable of...
...yadda yadda yadda,
But The Obama/Biden administration kept after it, dragging the economy back
from the brink of disaster, all while Republicans and the mainstream media
screamed that they should drop everything else and focus on nothing but
massive budget cuts.
And slowly, things got better. Even the deficit went down.
At a union rally on Labor Day, Obama declared "We cut our deficits by
more than half."
The numbers back up Obama’s claim: Thanks to income tax revenues
rising and spending on emergency assistance dropping, America’s deficit
has fallen by more than 50 percent, from its highest point since World War
II to a level $733 billion lower.
We rate the claim True.
Then came Trump who, despite all the shouting and snarling and whining from
the Never Trumpers, actually passes the
“Is he a True Conservative? Is he a Real Republican?” test with
flying colors.
And what is that test?
C’mon kids, we just talked about this.
The only thing True Conservatives care about is cutting taxes
for the rich. At all times and under all circumstances, there is no problem so
great that they claim can’t be solved with a big enough tax cut. Wars
may come and go. And all that blather about Abortion, Guns, the Border
and Trans Right are just a means to getting enough meathead Republican base
voters furious enough to vote enough Republicans elected so they could have
more tax cuts.
And during his first four years in office, what was Donald Trump’s only major
legislative achievement?
What was the reaction from the Republican rank and file (fink and bile?)
Rapture! The Second Coming! USA!USA!USA!
What did this do to the deficit?
Trump flacks like Steve Mnuchin were all over Fox News promising that this
massive tax cut would somehow decrease the deficit by One Trillion
Dollars.
From Fox Business, September 28, 2017:
Tax cut plan will cut deficit by $1T: Treasury Secretary Mnuchin
“We think there will be $2 trillion of growth so we think this tax plan
will cut down the deficit by a trillion dollars—that’s a large number.
We’re focused on growth. We think the 3% GDP is a very moderate aspiration
and we can do higher than that,” Mnuchin told FOX Business’ Maria
Bartiromo on “Mornings with Maria.”
If all this sounds eerily familiar, it should. Once again, Trump and his
henchmen have been throwing around these same colossal lies around to, once
again, defend the indefensible.
Donald Trump, social media post, June 5, 2025:
This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress. It’s a Record
Cut in Expenses, $1.6 Trillion Dollars, and the Biggest Tax Cut ever given.
If this Bill doesn’t pass, there will be a 68% Tax Increase, and things far
worse than that. I didn’t create this mess, I’m just here to FIX IT.
Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget,
social media post, June 4, 2025:
OMB just reviewed the new CBO score of the One Big Beautiful Bill. It
confirms what we knew about the bill at House passage. The bill REDUCES
deficits by $1.4 trillion over ten years when you adjust for CBO’s one big
gimmick — not using a realistic current policy baseline. It includes $1.7
trillion in mandatory savings, the most in history. If you care about
deficits and debt, this bill dramatically improves the fiscal picture.
But back during Trump 1.0, what was the actual effect on the deficit of
Trump's giant tax cuts for the wealthy?
From The Washington Post, January 14, 2021:
One of President Donald Trump’s lesser-known but profoundly damaging
legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on
his watch. The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will
wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt. The
national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s time in
office.
And the Republican party – from its leadership to the base to the
propagandists on Fox – didn’t care one little bit.
Ah, but once Joe Biden was in office?
From Bloomberg News, October 24, 2023:
Deficit Worries Making a Return as a 2024 Political Issue
After lying dormant as an issue for the past couple of elections, the
soaring US budget deficit is starting to matter again in Washington.
From the National Review, March 24, 2023:
Taxing the Rich Isn’t the Way to Reduce the Deficit
From The Cato Institute, MAY 4, 2023:
Biden's Budget Is an Unserious Attempt at Reining in Runaway Deficits
From The Heritage Foundation, Sep 27, 2023:
How Washington’s $7.5 Trillion Deficit Spending Spree Is Bankrupting
America
From the National Review, October 24, 2023:
Markets Are Sounding the Alarm on Deficits
From The Heritage Foundation yet again, November 3, 2023
The Fuse on America’s Debt Bomb Just Got Shorter
So, the question before us during this post has been,
"Is Trump a True Conservative? Is he a Real
Republican?"
And the answer, obviously, unanimously and resoundingly is, fuck yes! Of course he is.
He checks the only important box Republicans / Conservatives have ever
truly cared about.
What's more, he checks it
strongly, powerfully, hugely, and bigly.
And the party and the media are only to happy to follow his lead.
And now, for your viewing pleasure, Monster Chiller Horror Theatre presents
Tip O’Neill’s 3D House of Representatives!
