The Real Cancel Culture

No Half Measures

Shuck and Blather

There was a turtle by the name of Mitch
And Mitch the Turtle was Putin's bitch
When danger threatened him he never got hurt
He knew just what to do

He'd shuck and blather, shuck and blather
He'd hide his head and tail and four little feet
He'd shuck and blather...

No Half Measures

Professional Left Podcast #589

“Wish you were here.”

-- Pink Floyd

Don't forget to visit our website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all those sweet bells and whistles:  there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store,  our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for building it all for us!

Links:  

• 
  

The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

Your Bulwark Quote of the Day: "If You Had Told Me Ten Years Ago..."

Last week, The Bulwark co-founder Charlie Sykes was briefly sidelined by his reaction to his COVID shot, so his Bulwark co-conspirators Bill Kristol and Mona Charen filled in for him.  And boy howdy was the ersatz childlike incomprehsion of the Dry Drunk Republican mind when faced with what it has created ever on full display.  

One sentiment in particular stood out.

Kristol:  ...the failure of Republican elected officials and Conservative,  y'know, elites to stand up to the Big Lie... uh... and to stand up to Trump and Trumpism has been a huge problem.  Even the ones who haven't echoed it and... a lot have just... the failure to ... to, you say, to confront it when you have a real chance whether it's writing in the Wall Street Journal or... or speaking on the floor of the Senate or speaking at CPAC where you're going to get national attention, that's itself a huge problem.  It sort of implicitly suggests, well, it's a little... maybe these views are a little odd or a little off but they're not a serious problem.  But they are a serious problem.  Why do you think... I am sort of... this I've been struck by... I wouldn't... 

And here we go...

Kristol: ... if you had told me ten years ago,  y'know, the Republican Party could go in a pretty wacky direction and foreign policy could go Buchanan or Isolationist... it could go protectisty... it could go uh, y'know, I don't know, some really, y'know, flat tax or something like that... um even it could go... it would go very anti-immigration, I... all those...I wouldn't... I wouldn't have liked it.  I would have been surprised at how much it might have happened, y'know, I wouldn't have thought it would happen.  But I would have realized it  could  happen obviously -- you could see those strains very visibly.  

Translation:  Bloody Bill Kristol bloody well knew his party was nuts, but figured he and his elite cronies could still keep it safely lashed down in the laboratory and only take it out for walks on a short leash when they needed to win an election.  

Remember, that ten years ago, Bill Kristol was a very well-paid Fox News contributor who hewed closely to Team Evil's party line of always being on the attack, constantly slagging Liberals as America-hating monsters, and advancing whatever lies and conspiracy theories were on offer that week.  In 2008 Kristol was on Fox advising John McCain to forget all that stuff about the economy which no one understands anyway and go after "Liberal Democrat" Barack Obama hard on character.  Start beating the drum about Reverend Wright, Bill Ayrers, etc.  For example, here he is in 2011 in top, smarmy, smirking asshole form doing advance work for the glorious Republican plans for the reconstruction of Iraq health care alternative to Obamacare that never existed:

And here he is in a rare 2011 MSNBC drive-by explaining why it is silly and unreasonable to expect Conservatives to police their lunatics:

Well, since Mr. Kristol brought it up, just what exactly were those dirty, disreputable Liberals (who also turned out right about the Right all along) telling him ten years ago?

Ten years ago, Liberals were reminding people of the words of Steve Gilliard from an even earlier time of darkness under the regime of a Republican monster:

People say I'm optimistic. Fuck no. I know American history. Bush is a piker compared to the people who ran Mississippi in the 1950's. That was a police state, complete with secret police, disappearances and mob rule. Most American have forgotten that, but they shouldn't.

Bush's power came from our weakness and fear, we didn't protect what we should have when we should have. We gave him too much trust and he failed us all. Now, we have to reclaim it and that will not be easy. But is has to be done. Compared to the other challenges Americans have faced, it's not a massive thing, no one has to steal Tory land at gunpoint or dodge German bullets on Omaha Beach or face fire hoses and dogs, but it won't be easy either. But it needs to be done. And no matter how shitty it seems at any one moment, like reading the Times this morning, you don't get to lose heart. Why? Because if you can read this, you probably aren't doing that bad.

We were continuing to doggedly report week after week after week what an utter midden pile of Republican bad ideas and bad faith the Sunday Morning Shows had become.

To get past the establishment guardians at the media gates by any means available and get word out that the GOP had become an existential threat we became podcasters.

We pointed out that the Right was the way it was because it has never gotten over losing the Civil War. 

That the GOP's worship of mad dog Capitalism was, y'know, a bad thing.   

We pleaded with Americans not to forget which party Who fought like wild animals to let poor women die to pay for tax cuts for the rich and to make their scumbag base happy.

We used stick figures and simple language to try to warn Bill Kristol that the base of his party was a mob of reprogrammable meatbags under the sway of a racist ghoul named Rush Limbaugh.  

We passed along portions of the single greatest post of 2010 -- Russell King's Open letter to conservatives -- 

...You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum have become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some examples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

-- and pointed out that despite the staggering size and depth of the proof Mr. King offered in support of his position, it had absolutely zero impact on thoughts or actions of Conservatives.  

It had gotten so bad that by 2011 even Andrew Sullivan had gotten tired of Kristol's act:

Bill Kristol's Mindset

Every now and again, the mask slips and we see what the neocon scion really cares about. Fiscal responsibility? Debt reduction? This was a man who barely mentioned the debt or spending under the fiscally ruinous Bush-Cheney years, and mocked those who did. And the reason is simple: this is a writer concerned solely about partisanship and power...

They can't even bother to disguise their rank cynicism and partisan tribalism any more. Their core objective in this Congress: what Mitch McConnell said.

Hell, as far back as the earliest days of the Liberal blogosphere -- 16 years ago -- we find your host going so far as using a children's bedtime stories to try to get through to the thick skulls of wingnut hobgoblins like Bill Kristol that something nightmarish had become dangerously unmoored and was running amok at the very heart of their party:

Little Red State Fundy sez... 

I picked a few examples from my own archives, but there are literally decades of writing -- tens of thousands of posts -- from all over the Liberal blogosphere making the same points over and over again.

And this from Crooks & Liars from 2014 is certainly worth your time:

Rachel Maddow Savages Bill Kristol, Ignores Liberal Blogs That Have Written About Him For Years

And yet in 2014 we still find Bill Kristol -- after he'd been sacked from Fox News and mere months before Donald Trump came oozing down the escalator and into the hearts of Fox Nation --  with that  Death's Head grimace still glued to his face, still touting Fox as fair, balanced, "real" news, still reflexively slagging Liberals as commie dupes, still trashing Obamacare as just another failed, Liberal job-killing, social engineering experiment gone horribly wrong and still shitting on MSNBC, the cable network that was soon become his employer.

So with all of that behind him -- the Left's history of sounding ever more dire warnings about the trajectory of the GOP and Kristol's ever more smug, condescending denialism that anything was wrong at all -- imagine my complete lack of surprise that Bill Kristol in 2021 is "a little amazed" at the willingness of his now-former party to "go just Authoritarian."

Kristol:  I am a little amazed by the willingness to go just Authoritarian.  To really go anti-democratic.

Charen: Yeah.

Kristol:  Both among the elites, but... and among the voters obviously. I mean the willingness to just take that extra step and this is why this Big Lie is somewhat different from the other Big Lies. By... the other lies -- the lies about immigration are damaging and then... and should be refuted -- but this is a Big Lie about the actual political system and constitutional system and is that... what... what I mean... has that surprised you too? I mean just I guess I thought there would be more... more attachment to the constitutional order, in some sense or other, and to, y'know, the political order that... of America against the... the Trumpist assault.

And what is there left to do but shake one's head in amazement when Mona Charen -- whose contributions to the sum total of human knowledge consist of three odious books, "Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got it Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First", "Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us)" and "Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense" -- casually lets slip that she never had the slightest fucking clue what was really going on insidr her own party, right under her own nose ever as she was making her living mocking Liberals as credulous chumps.

Charen: Especially coming from a political party whose leaders are constantly beating their breasts about being constitutionalists, right?  That was their big selling point.  And, in fact, that was at least part of the supposed message of the Tea Party which, I now think, I vastly overestimated the sincerity of. Um, but they supposedly were, y'know, wanting to return to a more... um... an older version of the constitutional order and so forth.  And, uh, with their tri-cornered hats and whatnot, um yeah...

Finally, Bill Kristol obligingly lays out the two halves of the Dry Drunk Republican mind.

First, the obligatory self-congratulations for noticing the threat from inside their own party -- the threat they created and lied about -- 40 years too late.

Kristol: You know we all warned [that] four years of this would have would do damage back in 2015/2016 and I think it has done a lot of damage. 

Second, looking back with nostalgia and wishing the GOP could return to the good old days of...2014/2015.

Kristol: I guess that's what... and I think, therefore, these debates about what we're... what do we do now?  I think it would be great if the Republican Party could frankly come back to the Republican Party of 2014 or 15...

Have I mentioned recently that busted up lifeboat timbers make excellent kindling?

 

Burn The Lifeboats

We Join The Weekly David Brooks/Maggie Haberman Phone Sex Appointment...

...already in progress.

Haberman: My inside sources tell me you've had a bad week, David.

Brooks: Rough week, Mags. Rough. First they took my Aspen money away...

Haberman: Bastards!

Brooks:  I know, right?  And then they had the nerve called me a bad journalist just because I'm bad at journalism.

Haberman: Double bastards!

Brooks: Double bastards...on stilts!

Haberman: Will with this "accountability" madness never end?

Brooks: Tell me about it.

Haberman: So...

Brooks: So I need something special today. I need the Nasty!

Haberman: I think I understand. How much Nasty can you handle?

Brooks:  I need the works. No holding back. I need the dirtiest, filthiest Nasty you've got.

Haberman: You sure?

Brooks: Damn sure! Give it to me. Give it!

Haberman: OK, brace yourself.

“Both administrations deserve credit, although neither wants to grant much to the other.” https://t.co/dM7Ol93gdK

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 10, 2021

Brooks:  Yeah, baby!  Yeah!  That's what I'm talking about!  That's the shit!

Brooks lets out a wail like Biden's dog had taken a chunk out of his leg. 

This is followed by a long silence.

Haberman: David, you still there?

Ragged breathing.

Haberman: David?

Brooks: Still here Mags. That was great. Just great.

Haberman: Well, I am a professional. 

Chris Cillizza (breaking in):  Hey, anybody up for the three-way!

"When the histories of the Biden presidency are written, there’s a fair chance that this will be looked upon as a serious error of judgement—one that may plague this administration for a good while." -- @CharlieCookDC on Covid stimulus billhttps://t.co/nZEKI8Cm4k

— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) March 10, 2021

Haberman: Get off this line and wait your turn, Cillizza! 

Cillizza hangs up.

Haberman:   Jesus, these kids today, amirite? 

Brooks: I know.  I married one.

Haberman:  So, same time next week?

Brooks: Until the end of the world, Mags. Until the end of the world.

 

Both Sides Don't

Spleenwald vs The Lincoln Lads: Game Recognize Game

The Lincoln Project was the most obvious and glaring fraud in modern history but also -- due to the utter gullibility of #Resistance liberals -- one of the most successful. They enriched some of the worst slime in the country and got nothing in return but videos made for liberals https://t.co/Qs2ceDweW3

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 8, 2021

When grifters fight, we all win.

I Cannot Promise To Slay All The Dragons 

Or To Singlehandedly Save The Republic

The Lincoln Project: Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing

Thousands of Several people have stopped by recently to tell me that The New York Times just expended several thousand words reporting on the various woes and scandals of The Lincoln Lads.

Here's the link if you are interested.  It repackages a lot of material that anyone who has been following  the story probably already knows, and adds some new reporting that may be of interest to the deep divers.

And then there's this, which looks like the digital equivalent of someone skipping a stone across all the stuff your host has written about The Lincoln Lads, the Never Trumpers and their media enablers since Day One:

Hi! here is your unroll: 🧵THREAD🧵 Today we learned more about how awful @ProjectLincoln is. If… https://t.co/LlUSkRPTkT Enjoy :) 🤖

— Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) March 9, 2021

Not exactly super thrilled that a bylined National Review/Federalist typist is the one pulling the trigger of this Twitter Gatling gun, but back when I was posting Dire Warnings about The Lincoln Lads, among the Never Trumpers and their media enablers --

-- there was not only absolutely zero interest in that angle in the "friendly" media --

-- but I took endless shit from my savvy "allies" who told me in dozens of different ways to just sit down and shut up.

Remarkably like the way my savvy "allies" came at me when I began saying things about Glenn Greenwald that they did not want to hear.  

What I have learned from such experiences is that, for the Believers, no argument is ever going to be enough.

Like Republicans during the collapse of the Bush Administration or Both Siderists during the rise of Trump, Believers will go right on angrily defending the pillars of their faith against heretics like me long past the point when that pillar has become indefensible, and the worse their cognitive dissonance becomes, the more they come to hate the heretics who tried to warn them.

Eventually, once the torque between the observable world and their cherished doctrine becomes unsustainable, something changes.  Some Believers break one way -- following Greenwald all the way down the rabbit hole and onto Fox News or building golden idols to Donald Trump.   Others break a different way -- Republicans putting on tricorn hats and pretending they'd never heard of George Bush or Matthew Dowd pretending his past never happened and suddenly becoming an anti-Both Siderist evangel.  

But in virtually every case, none of these people ever forgive the heretic for being right.  That's just human nature:

And I have every reason to believe suspect that deification of the Lincoln Lads will stumble to the same end.  

At the moment, no argument is sufficient put a dent in the faith of the Lincoln Lads' savvy Liberal supporters.  Not the Weaver scandal or the subsequent coverup. Not the obvious grifting. Not the founders extremely problematic pasts. Not the fact that they have always been professional mercenaries -- hired guns -- not patriots. Not even the mathematical fact that they failed pretty spectacularly to meet every one of their own benchmarks. 

And since none of that matters, this puts the Lincoln Lads in the position that every con man dreams of.  Their marks have now sunk so much money and faith and reputational currency into the Lincoln Project frammis that they are not only no longer psychologically capable of seeing the scam for what it is, but are peddling excuse after excuse on behalf of the grifters, offering themselves as human shields to protect the scam.  

Which, as one heretic recently put it, is not helpful:

Well now we all get to brace ourselves for a long round of stabbings (which have already begun) by Fox News, PowerLine, Brietbart, OANN, Newsmax, every loyal member of the House of Trump and on and on and on using the Lincoln Project sword that Liberal teevee and all my fair-weather Liberal allies forged for them.

So however the Lincoln Lads' sound and fury eventually shambles to a close, I can predict at least one outcome with near-certainty:  none of the Lincoln Lads' righteous supporters are ever going to forgive the heretics for being right all along.  

 

No Half Measures

Ronald E. Lee

To become enshrined in history, a monstrous cause needs a genial face and an army to True Believers working tirelessly to radically whitewash the past.

Burn The Lifeboats