The People's Front of Republicanism


Another in my long-running series on Republican Detachment Disorder.

These days you can't throw yourself down a flight of stairs without landing in the front row of the ongoing comic opera that is The People's Front of Republicanism as they belligerently insist that the Republican People's Front aren't real Republicans.

From Michael Gerson's disquisition in The Washington Post on the rise of Roy Moore which acts as if Moore had just precipitated out of thin air instead of -- just like Trump -- being the perfectly logical and predictable destination of Mr. Gerson's Republican party based on where it has been plainly going for the past 40 years --
No, Moore is not really a theonomist. The boundaries of his worldview, it turns out, almost exactly coincide with those of the Breitbart agenda. Moore’s study of divine law has led him, in the end, to the shabby, third-rate gospel of Stephen K. Bannon.
-- to the going's on at my own state capitol --


-- it is clear that the "No True Scotsman" protocol is in effect party-wide.

I even listened to the latest episode of "With Friends Like These" to see if  the assertion made to me by Ana Marie Cox was actually true:

I listened very carefully.  I made many notes.   And I reached several conclusions.

First, upspeaking the end of your sentences a couple of times to indicate a slightly increasing level of dubiety does not rise to the level of not letting Mr. Steele off the hook.  Not even close.

Second, if you think slightly upspeaking the end of a couple of sentences actually means you are holding a Republican accountable for the nonsense they're peddling,  maybe that explains why we Liberals lose so goddamn much.

Third, according to Mr. Steele, the reason he is a Republican is that, back in 1977, while living in a home with a dynamite mom (I have a dynamite mom too, so at least we have that in common) and pictures of JFK, MLK and Jesus on the wall, he researched the party and discovered that Harriet Tubman was pretty cool.  So he decided that he wanted to join the Republican party...as it existed in 1893.

Beyond that, the simple, irreducible truth is that Mr. Steele has made a very comfortable life for himself fronting for a party of racists, con men, theocrats, gun nuts, xenophobes, imbeciles, misogynists, demagogues and assorted other malfunctioning humans and he will go right on doing so as long as A) the checks clear and, B) he can continue to hold himself suspended in a dissociative state of denial, dissembling and dismissal.

So here we go...

Like virtually every other Republican I know, Mr. Steele hides the indefensible absurdity of his political position behind a welter of vainglorious bullshit (rush transcript from Ms. Cox's podcast) --
Steele:  I've run into the racism.  I've dealt with the bullshit.  All that.  But I also look at what I have been able to do in the party.  I also look at what I have been able to accomplish.  And the voice that I can try to represent on some critical issues at critical times.
-- and Both Siderist nonsense in which, again, like virtually ever fucking Republican in Christendom, he keeps attributing distinctly Republican malice and depravity to "Congress" and "politicians" and "the voters" and "the people" and "us" and "the country".

And, conversely, Mr. Steele inclusively absorbs distinctly non-Republican actions and attitudes into the category of things "we" are doing.

"We" had this march on Washington. "We" elected a black president.  And so "we" dumbed ourselves down about being post-racial, and "we" don't want to talk about "it".  

Not since "A Rose for Emily" has the second-person plural voice worked this hard:
Steele: This is what happened to Hillary and the Democrats. They were so concerned with the polls and the statistics and "the country" was, like, we're not feelin' her.  We're not feelin' that.  We're not over here where you think we are. 
See, according to Mr. Steele, polls don't count and numbers are meaningless because "real people" lie to pollsters all the time.  In fact, black people will vote in large numbers to cut their own economic throats "just to fuck with you."  Because Political Correctness!

But what about factors like the GOP's massive, coordinated, well-financed program of voter suppression?
Steele:  You say voter suppression on the Republican side.  I say voter control on the Democratic side.  It works on Both Sides. I'm beyond excuse-making.  I want to get to why things don't work the way we want it to work.
And of course, inevitably, this...
Steele: The president is much more of a Democrat than he is a Republican.  He's not a Republican. He's certainly not a Conservative.
It went on and on like that, most of so howlingly, predictably preposterous in all the ways that all Republican Detachment Disorderlies are howlingly, predictably preposterous these days that any of it could have been easily knocked to bits and vivisected, live, on-stage, if that had been Ms. Cox's goal.  

But Mr. Steele is a dear friend of hers.  The man she called for coffee and consolation the day after President Stupid was elected.  So she let one slow pitch after another glide over the plate untouched.

I promised Ms. Cox (whose podcast I listen to fairly regularly even though she doesn't listen to mine)  to hear her out before critiquing her efforts.

I have now kept my promise.

In summary, my opinion of Mr. Steele was not budged one iota from where it was back in the Olden Days when Lower Manhattanite would make mock of Mr. Steele's hi-larious hijinks.  


Republican Detachment Disorder: Michael Steele, Patient Zero


While some scientists believe that Republican Detachment Disorder is a Trump-era affliction, in fact, the RDD pre-dates the rise of Il Douche by many years.

For example, back in 2010, between excursions to bondage-themed strip clubs and lecturing George Stephanopoulos that government jobs aren't real jobs, Michael Steele -- the RNC's "Break Glass in Case the Democrats Elect a Black Guy" desperation-hire -- was faced with a vexing demographic problem:  98% of African-Americans hated the Republican party.

And like his predecessor (Ken Mehlman, a closeted, self-loathing gay American who fronted for the virulently anti-gay party) Mr. Steele (a self-loathing African-American who fronted for the racist party.  Are you noticing a pattern?) was forced by the existence of well-documented historical fact (man, those were the days) to acknowledge the existence of something called "The Southern Strategy".

Steele: African-Americans 'Really Don't Have A Reason' To Vote GOP

Appearing Tuesday at DePaul University in Chicago, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said that the Republican Party has not given African-Americans a reason to vote for them.

"You really don't have a reason to, to be honest -- we haven't done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True," said Steele, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Steele said how the Republican party had been founded as a pro-civil rights party, with Frederick Douglass among its early members. However, Steele explained, the Republican Party has alienated those voters: "For the last 40-plus years we had a 'Southern Strategy' that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South...
However, Mr. Steele quickly added that the GOP's racism had ended long before his time:
...Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, 'Bubba' went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton."
And yet based on the long, grim-faced sad I just saw Mr. Steele having on MSNBC this morning (no video available yet), like herpes, all of the seething racism that powers the GOP and somehow magically disappeared during Mr. Steele's time as a party leader...

...has magically reappeared now that he has left!

How amazing!

You see, RDD appears in many forms.

Sometimes it is of the relapsing/remitting Michael Steele variety in which party loyalty (and unhinged Liberals bashing) appears and disappears depending on who is footing the bill.

Sometimes it a mass pandemic event like the "Tea Party" in which millions of life-long Republican racists who were eager to get a jump on hating the Kenyan Usurper from Day One without having to answer a lot of embarrassing questions about all the shit they had been talking for the previous eight years, all burned their "Bush/Cheney 04" lawn signs, put on funny hats and swore on the lives of their children that they had never even heard of Dubya.  Just look at their fucking tee-shirts!  These good ol' boys are obviously Constitutional Conservative Christian Libertarian Independent Patriots, so why would you come 'round here callin' 'em Re-publicans.

What are ya, ignernt!

See like all Republican cowards tragically afflicted with RDD, the madness into which the GOP has been steadily descending for the last 40 years is never, ever about them.  Never about the things they said and did, the abominations they countenanced, the beasts they helped tinker together and turn loose.

The blame is always laid at the feet of some other group of irresponsible Republican elites waaaay over there.

Some other group of craven Republican bigots who let us all down.

Oh, and the Kenyan Usurper.

Who pals around with terrorists and works tirelessly to destroy Murrica.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is accusing President Obama of intentionally weakening America at home and abroad. 

“It’s now abundantly clear: Barack Obama has deliberately weakened America,” Rubio said early Monday during a speech on national security at the American Legion in Hooksett, N.H.
And Hillary Clinton, of course.


And should be locked up.
Obviously.

There are no more party insiders or outsiders or victims or naifs on the Right any more.

There are only those who long ago walked away from Omelas or refused to live there in the first place, and those who stayed and profited because deep down they either do not care about the bigotry and sadism that powers their party, or they just plain revel in it.

On the Right there are only collaborators, co-conspirators and quislings now, and as Brother Charlie Pierce notes, Trump bought them all at fire-sale prices:
Last Night Chris Christie Had the Living Definition of a Shit-Eating Grin on His Face

Trump owns them all now.

CLEVELAND, OHIO—Once the deed was done, and folks were filtering out to celebrate the elevation of He, Trump to the toppermost of the poppermost of the Republican Party, it was time for the Volksgerichtshof portion of the festivities. One after another, the establishment pols came rolling out to pledge their undying fealty to the new boss. I'm surprised that He, Trump let them keep their belts on so their pants wouldn't fall down...



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Professional Left Podcast #408


"Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to."
-- Tyler Durden, Fight Club
I'm going to go right on directing everyone to visit our new website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all of the sweet bells and whistles:  there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as a links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store,  our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for building us such a lovely home.


Links:

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-- and real listeners like you!




Once He Was No Longer In Uniform Percy Fitzwallace Would #TakeaKnee


You know damn well he would.


David Brooks Writes About What He Knows Best


Rap music and sincerity.

What Sincerity Looks Like

...That’s what Chance the Rapper did on Monday on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”
And since nothing improves music more than having it disassembled with a cold* chisel by America's Most Unctuous Conservative Public Intellectual...
He begins, not completely originally, by implying...

Then he compares his own first-world problems with actual problems...

The first part of the song is about...

Then it changes mood with each verse.

The chorus is...

Sometimes that sounds like a hopeful...

Sometimes it sounds like an angry...

If you watch the video from the show, you see Chance just sitting on a stool...

It’s interesting to compare Chance’s song with Taylor Swift’s new song...

Swift is a phenomenally talented and beautiful songwriter who has lost touch with herself and seems to have been swallowed by the ethos of the Trump era.

The crucial lyric is ...

This is a song for a society without social trust...

It’s interesting how corporate the video looks and the song sounds... 
It’s been a long time since the Sex Pistols burst on the scene...
I could have gone one million years without getting David "Mr. Music Explainer Guy" Brooks' Hot Take on the Sex Pistols.

The Acela's Corridor's resident Lester Bangs continues:
The first thing you notice in comparing the Chance and Swift songs is the difference between a person and a brand.

The second thing you notice is the difference between sincerity and authenticity.

Back in the 1950s, sincerity seemed treacly and boring, and authenticity, in the form of, say, Johnny Cash, seemed daring and new.
Johnny Cash was a rebel hippie of the First Water --


 -- who would have eaten Mr. David Brooks alive.



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*Thanks for the catch, alert readers!

Lindsey Graham Discovers That They're All Bozos on His Bus


It turns out that three-term United States Senator Lindsey Graham -- the co-sponsor of the most recent, hideous, malformed, stillborn monster of a Republican Repeal and Fuck You bill -- had no idea what he was doing.  

Yes, very much like Republican party base voter template boy, Homer Simpson --
Homer: "Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time. Just like that rain forest scare a few years back. Our officials saw there was a problem and they fixed it, didn't they?" 
Lisa: "No, Dad, I don't think..." 
Homer: "There's that word again!"
-- Lindsey Goober Graham just assumed that out there, somewhere, some other Republican congress that wasn't packed to the rafters with braying demagogues, racist con men and assorted other complete dolts had been tinkering away for the last seven years on some superfuckingawesome Republican health care bill.  And that, when it came time to slap his name on something, he could just rip off their notes, walk it around the Senate and the Sunday shows sounding smart, and then, bing-bang-boom, Lindsay Graham, Health Care Genius is born.

Unfortunately, Senator Graham only reads lurid David Brooks Beltway porn about The!Amazing! Republican!Renaissance!That!Is!Always!Just!Around!The!Corner! and does not sully himself with dirty, low-brow blogs like this.  Because if he did, he would have learned that we here at the driftglass blog blew the lid off of this whole "there's a whole 'nother Republican congress hiding in the woods someplace doing terrific, groundbreaking work on stuff" rumor a long time ago.

But Senator Graham had to find out the hard way.  

And it went a little something like this (from The Intercept):

LINDSEY GRAHAM ON OBAMACARE REPEAL: I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING

Ryan Grim, Aída Chávez

Senate Democrats and their progressive allies spent the last week and a half in a full-blown mobilization against an existential threat to the Affordable Care Act.

Now that it has fizzled out, the lead author of the measure, known as the Graham-Cassidy bill, has an admission to make: He had no clue what he was doing.

“It’s been the most amazing journey of my life. I’ve taken the eye off the ball on terrorism, I’m just amazed the whole planet hasn’t crumbled because I wasn’t on it,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said of the weeks he’s spent leading the health care repeal effort.

Toward the end of the senator’s bid to rewrite the health care system, as the mirage of the bill’s momentum began to be exposed, the typically charming and witty Graham began to turn acidic in the halls of the Senate, denouncing colleagues in both parties who were objecting to his legislation. “I’m speaking English, right?” he snapped at one reporter.

But now that it’s over, the old Graham is back and more than willing to laugh at how improbable it was that a national security expert briefly held the national limelight as a supposed health policy wonk.

Graham, though, said he was not alone in his lack of understanding of health care. “Nobody in our conference believes Obamacare works. It must be replaced. But until now, we didn’t know how to do it,” Graham told reporters in the Capitol on Tuesday [audio available in the original article].

A reporter pointed out that such ignorance at this late stage is hard to understand. “You’ve been working to overhaul this for seven years. Why is this so hard?” she asked.

“Well, I’ve been doing it for about a month. I thought everybody else knew what the hell they were talking about, but apparently not,” Graham clarified, adding he had assumed “these really smart people will figure it out.”...
Three-term.
United States.
Senator.




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Gary Cohn Knows Where The Tax Cuts Are


They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.


Here is a true fact.

Once it became perfectly clear that the Bush Administration would pay no price whatsoever for lying us into the wrong war and then botching that war --


-- the rise of a Republican monster like Trump became highly likely.

Here is another true fact.

Once it became perfectly clear that the Republican base would pay no price whatsoever for giddily supporting the Bush Administration -- that the media would simply let them lie en masse and pretend they were "independents" and "Tea Partiers" who had never heard of George W. Bush, but were also somehow all suddenly politically-active and hysterical with fear over the Kenyan Commie Usurper and his Death Panels and Sekrit Plan To Seize Our Guns -- the rise of a Republican monster like Trump became inevitable.

Right now, literally the only thing sustaining the Republican party is a fragile, interlocking, co-dependent flotilla of massive, ridiculous lies.  President Stupid and his goons lie incessantly about everything.  GOP Congressional leadership lies about basic math, about what "The Murrican People" do and do not want and about the obvious raving, racist incompetence of President Stupid.  The Republican base lies to itself about itself, about its belligerent ignorance, about its racism, about its own party's leadership and about its complicity in all that has gone before, all that it happening now, and all that is to come.

And the mainstream media?  Our Fourth Estate?  Our last line of defense against tyranny?  By and large they lie about all of it.  Little lies of omission.  Big lies of commission.  A full orchestra of straw men keeping the beat under the baton of the Last True Scotsman.  Reflexive "Yeah, but..." deflections and pretty much every fallacy of relevance in the book, from argumentum ad populum to argumentum ad verecundium.  Random, drive-by hippie punchings and David Brooks or one of his clammy, overpriced clones dealing from the bottom of the "Both Sides Do It" deck every fucking day.

No institutions have failed us more lethally and comprehensively than the Republican party and the mainstream media.

And no class of people have been allotted more immunity from the consequences of the vast, systemic damage they have done to the rest of us than brain caste Republican party and the moguls and celebrities of the mainstream media.




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ABC News' Chief Political Analyst Is Terrible At Politics And Analysis


Mr. Dowd now lives full-time in a lachrymose cocoon where he doesn't understand why anyone does anything, but firmly believes that the way out of this catastrophe (which people like Mr. Dowd helped create) is for everybody to just love everybody and never judge anything or say hard-but-true things about anyone, man!


Which is terrific for, say, a Unitarian Universalist pastor, but ridiculous for the chief political analyst of a major American teevee network.

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