But For One Misplaced Decade

Andrew Sullivan's radically expurgated Alternate History of Modern Conservatism might not sound so fucking idiotic.

See if you can spot which decade the World's Greatest Blogger has carelessly mislaid...

Fighting Al Qaeda To Fight Liberalism

In 1993, Irving Kristol wrote "My Cold War":

There is no "after the Cold War" for me. So far from having ended, my cold war has increased in intensity, as sector after sector of American life has been ruthlessly corrupted by the liberal ethos. It is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other. It cannot win, but it can make us all losers. We have, I do believe, reached a critical turning point in the history of the American democracy. Now that the other "Cold War" is over, the real cold war has begun.

Michael Lind extends the metaphor:

9/11 fortuitously provided the American right with the external enemy that allowed it to go back into business demonizing the internal enemy, liberalism. And the idea of World War IV enabled the right once again to smear American liberals as defeatists or appeasers, if not traitors, in a struggle on the scale of the world wars and the Cold War. ... World War IV was never really about bin Laden or al-Qaida. It was always about American domestic politics.

I think it's fairer to say it was about both. I do believe that the reaction to the end of the cold war was a classic moment in conservatism's divide. I was relieved we no longer had to fight a global war, with all the draining of resources and fraught spasms of McCarthyism and far leftism it created. Others - mainly neocons - were desperate to fight another war. They picked China first, but then Jihadism took its place. There is a conservatism of nonviolence and a conservatism of violence.
...

And then it ends with yadda-yadda-yadda Strauss, yadda-yadda-yadda Oakeshott.

The reason I bothered with this particular post was that -- like an ant-farm -- in it you can actually see the specific sub-genre of mental illness that is Expatriate Conservatism in situ.

So anxious is Mr. Sullivan to sprint the Hell away from his former fellow travelers -- to cook up some bullshit distinction that allows him to continue to pretend that the Movement to which he has given his life (and which, in exchange, gave him a career) was not born in corruption, failure and sin -- that he has managed to elide over the entire Clinton Administration.

Andrew, I know none of your buddies will tell you this, but forgetting the Clinton years is not an insubstantial omission.

I know that whole True Conservatism Kabuki you and engaged in depends 100% on the Big, Self-Absolving Lie that Good, Reagan-y Conservatism was somehow undone by naughty external forces and evil political body humors, but that Real True Sullivan Conservative Snake Oil was once our national salvific, and could be again if purchased from a reputable dealer and used according to the instructions printed in very, very tiny white font on the bottom border of the white label.

This is, of course, a great, big, whopping lie.

Like racism, anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, homophobia and Dominionism, Conservative "Team B"-ism has been a vital organ of the Right since before Mr. Sullivan was in long pants: just one more ally in the vast, ignorant yahoo army which the Right deliberately invited into the Big Tent and carefully flattered and cultivated year after year in order to win elections and enact their horrible, horrible ideology into law.

However hard Mr. Sullivan claps his hands and pretends otherwise, there is no good "conservatism of nonviolence" and bad "conservatism of violence" that stand apart from and opposed to one another: there is only one Modern Conservatism -- one that has shown that it will, without hesitation, lie, cheat, slander and destroy opponents, play on the darkest fantasies and fears of the public, and recruit the scum of the Earth in order to win at any cost.

For decades, decadent Liberal fifth columnists have warned clowns like Mr. Sullivan that as they sow, also shall they reap, and that one day the mindless, hateful, fact-resistant Devil to whom the Right long ago sold its soul would one day come for His due. That day has finally arrived, postage due, wrapped in a flag, carrying a Bible and shrieking like a banshee, but Mr. Sullivan is neither emotionally nor intellectually strong enough to look this reality square in the eye and face all of its implications.

And so if people like Mr. Sullivan decide to barber a decade here or there right out of history to smooth over all the inconvenient loose ends caused by their ideological perfidy, who remains who can say otherwise?

For those of you who have forgotten the 1990s and the Conservative Movement's contribution to it, this extended clip from "The Power of Nightmares" is well worth your time.


Also, it is slightly delicious that the Michael Lind whose quote got Mr. Sullivan all stirred up is actually the same Michael Lind who is interviewed in this documentary.

Blood

The original advanced super combat dog.

Professional Left Podcast #72

A healthy democracy requires a decent society;
it requires that we are honorable, generous, tolerant and respectful.

-- Charles W. Pickering

Links for this episode: our appearance on The Matthew Filipowicz show, at the 9:10 minute marker.

Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic at the ProLeft website and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget, our archives are available for free with no downloads at Professional Left.

57 Crises and Nothing On

David Brooks and Gail Collins burn a dozen NYT column inches reprising a scene from "Thirty Two Short Films About a Still Photograph of Several Species Of Government Officials Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With a Pict: A Love Story” in one of the most amazingly insipid columns I have read in a long while.

Honestly, at first I though it was a joke.

Here is a better version which, from a distance, I swear is indistinguishable from the original (Actual remarks from the original are so noted.)


David Brooks: Gail, I think it was Karl Marx who said "Duck... duck... duck... duck... duck...... duck...... goose!"

Gail Collins: I believe Marx made that remark at the premier of “Das Kapital VI: The Proletariat Take Vegas.” (actual remark)

David Brooks: The White House has just announced that it will not release the photo of the dead Bin Laden. At this point, my Republican Party is only accepting “Inception”-level proofs of anything Obama says about anything. If Obama is willing to spin bin Laden’s decapitated head around on a table – live, in Fox News – and it tips over after a few seconds, they would be willing to accept that as provisional proof that OBL really is dead thanks to the hard work of George W. Bush.

Gail Collins: I kind of think that if you show conspiracy theorists a photo of the dead Bin Laden they will come up with an explanation for why it’s really a photo-shopped picture of Bin Laden asleep. Or his dead cousin Fred. Donald Trump apparently believes that Bin Laden is dead, so that ought to be enough for the Middle East. (actual remark)

David Brooks: Given my track record of getting everything wrong about everything, this is probably not a subject people like me should be passing judgment on. Nonetheless, observe now how I do it anyway.

Gail Collins: I couldn’t help noticing. Aren’t you afraid of frightening little children?

David Brooks: Outside of my own children and the little stick figures I invent in my terrible books, I do not accept these “children” as you call them actually exist. All I see are tiny, tiny Socialists. I will now collect another political product placement paycheck by gratuitously working “Israel” into our “conversation.”

Gail Collins: As long as you buy be lunch. Remind me again why we do this horribly stilted “conversation” thingie once a week?

David Brooks: I believe is has something to do with our marginal costs versus the price hiring a new writer to write new stuff. Hey, speaking of pictures, looking at a single still photo of Obama’s crisis team, I couldn’t help being reminded that people in gummint sometimes make hard decisions. On a human level I’m struck by the fact that photographs show people’s faces. Also that, while Bob Gates appears to tie his tie full-Windsor, Denis McDonough looks very four-in-hand, and John Brennan appears to favor clip-ons. I suspect many of you human will relate to this.

Gail Collins: Your intimate knowledge of the sartorial habit of the Washington Power Elite make you even more credible!

David Brooks: I’m also hoping it will make more human females want to mate with me.

Gail Collins: Did they have to pick the one where Hillary had her hand over her mouth? The secretary of state doesn’t need to prove her toughness, but it would be nice if the definitive photo didn’t show the only woman in the room looking stricken. (actual remark)

David Brooks: The second thing the photo shows is how small the room is. I assumed they would be working in a TARDIS, or under a big, fake volcano, or on a wide open savannah, or in the Thunderdome, or inside that VGER thing from that crappy first Star Trek movie.. It is confusing to me. Then again, maybe they are in a miniature room or have all been rendered temporarily gigantic. Truly, crowded workspaces teach humility.

Also, that couch and chair arrangement looks distinctly like the one that human actors on the “Bob Newhart Show” used during that program’s successful television run. I believe that configuration in the photograph is designed to convey a sense that “The doctor is in” in a lighthearted and comforting way to the humans who see this photo.

Gail Collins: The president really did put all his chips on the line. These are the kind of moments we elected him for — we knew from the financial crisis that when all hell breaks loose, he doesn’t lose his cool. (actual remark)
…

David Brooks: In the case of Obama’s perch in the Situation Room, I think what happened is this. Biden had been down in the mess all afternoon just pounding the cheddar and liverwurst. The President had told him to cool it, but you know how Biden can be once he starts getting his wusrt freak on. And so by showtime, Vice President SBD is basically a Hindenburg with hair-plugs, cracking off one-cheek daisy-cutters right and left. So finally, Obama pulls rank and calls the corner seat, which is right under the AC blower, thus shielding himself from the Joecano. After that, he just let his people sort out proximity to Biden by rank or status or olfactory sensitivity.

He’s very hands-off that way: not at all like Carter. Much more Reaganesque!

Gail Collins: The careful observer will also note that that there is not a Mac in the fucking room. Suck it, Steve Jobs!

David Brooks: Macs are elite, Left Coast computers that Real Americans just don’t trust. This was Obama’s way of distancing himself from the extremist base in his own Party and aligning himself with the independent and swing voters, and disaffected Republicans.

Next Week: What the decline in the popularity of the Baby Ruth bar can tell us about the 2012 election.

The Tiny Purple Fishes

Run laughing through your fingers.

Da Mare's concluded his final meeting of the Court of Versailles City Council Meeting thus:

“It’s never been a rubber stamp,” Daley said of the council, shortly after aldermen spent an hour and a half praising him and his leadership.

Afterward, the aldermen all went into the back room and presented Hizzoner with a banner the size of Meigs Field Northerly Island in which they had spelled out "We Love You Mare Daley" in their own blood.

Da Mare was reportedly so moved he took them all out for snow cones and regaled them with

tales of Brave Ulysses.

A Little Something

just for the hundreds of Godforsaken, morally malformed, Conservative losers gathered around the Brietbart Big Miscreant site, warming their mingy souls on the bonfire of their own, collective psychosis.

Because the Nut Bar in Crazytown never closes.

A Wonderful Thing is a Trigger*

A Trigger's a wonderful thing.
Their tops are made out of rubber,
their bottoms are made out of spring.
They're bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy,
fun, fun, fun, fun, fun,
The most wonderful thing about Triggers is:
I'm the only one!

I'm the only one!

* If a "Truther" is an promulgator of one of the "secret truth about 9/11" conspiracies, and a "Birther" traffics in "the secret truth about Obama's birth" conspiracies, then a "Trigger" would be...

Only in this case one can make a clear and direct case that not only has Sullivan become an Ahab without a whale on the specific subject of Trig Palin, but that the general critique he makes of the Palinites -- that their dog-loyalty to their leaders depends entirely on the invention and constant maintenance of a wholly a counterfeit past specifically designed to let the Base of the GOP continue lie to themselves about their long and catastrophic record of being wrong about everything -- is a critique that fits Sullivan and his gang of Conservative outcasts every bit as snugly and damningly as it fits Palin and Bachmann and Limbaugh and Beck.

Which is why Conservatives like Sullivan will never debate or even acknowledge this subject in public or in print.

Chicken!

The Deep Waters Have Covered Them:

They sank to the depths like a stone.

-- Exodus 15:5