The following excerpts are from some brilliant tweets I read earlier from Vox writer, David Roberts.
It sums up perfectly the current state of conservatism and trump's takeover of the right in America.
Here's the main point: the contemporary right-wing in the US has become, in Lionel Trilling's immortal words, a bundle of "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." It's just a tangle of resentments & bigotries, driven by the erosion of white privilege.
There's always been that element, but for decades it was overlain by a class of DC conservatives who code switched, spoke the Very Serious language of ideas & policies. This is the conservatism that white moderate libs still imagine: an actual ideology, with arguments.
Trump's rise has shown that purported principles of conservative ideology meant virtually NOTHING to the conservative masses. Trump abandoned the Very Serious script & the RW base didn't care, at all. He voiced their anger & resentments. That's all the RW base is any more.
So @nytopinion faces a dilemma. It claims to want to expose its readers to the perspectives of the conservative masses. It claims to want to connect liberals to the heartland. But there's a problem.
If NYT printed the *actual, real-life* sentiments of today's conservative masses, it would print a bunch of paranoid, Fox-generated fairy tales and belligerent expressions of xenophobia, misogyny, racism, and proud, anti-intellectual ignorance.
The people who work at NYT & the vast majority of its readers would find those sentiments ... what's the word? oh, yes ... deplorable. They would recoil. The truth of what's going on on the right today is worse than virtually anyone in the political mainstream acknowledges.
The NYT's commitment to "intellectual diversity" doesn't go THAT far -- not far enough to expose its readers to that reality. It is too invested in America's own Noble Savage myth, the idea that conservative Heartland Americans are more authentic & in touch w/ simple virtues.
So NYT needs "a voice from the right," but not a voice from the ACTUAL right (which is oriented around white resentment, not any discernible governing philosophy). They need a voice from the Conservatism of the Mind, the noble, principles-base conservatism they imagine.
That's what conservative columnists on mainstream opinion pages have been for years now: voices who will present conservatism as a coherent intellectual argument, what liberals desperately want it to be.
It is no coincidence that these guys - Gerson, Douthat, Brooks, Stephens - have little voice or influence inside actual conservatism, or that they're all anti-Trump (unlike 95+% of Republicans). They are anomalies, idiosyncrasies, not representative of anything broader.
And notice, even those invested in pretending that contemporary conservatism is a governing philosophy have thrown up their hands lately. Claim something for conservatism today & Trump could disavow it in a tweet tomorrow. It's become impossible to even maintain the pretense.
And so what do the mainstream "voices of conservatism" have left? Wan, half-ass whataboutism. "Sure Trump & the GOP are terrible but whatabout that time that one person on the left said that one bad thing?"
That explains why everyone on the right has suddenly fixated on Farrakhan. It explains why every conservative columnist is writing (again and again) about campus speech intolerance. It's not much, but it's *all they have left*. There's nowhere left to go, intellectually." [Read more here.]
Conservatives have always offered a cover for the racists and more crass folks in their movement. That uneasy political truce worked just fine until Obama came along and made them (the trumpbots) restless. After Obama they got tired of playing pretend, and so, much to the surprise of the intellectuals in their gang, they elected trump. Now it's their movement. And sadly for conservatives, there is no political place to call home.
60 comments:
I'm not conservative. I did realize that the "new left" (actually Marxist would be more accurate) want to murder me. So, there's no reason for dialogue or gestures (well maybe a middle finger).
Conservatism is at best the home for the rich white Christian male persuasion and who barely if at all know or care that any other persuasion exists. Does that make them bad people? Maybe so. At worst it is an ideology united and driven by inbred misery hatred bigotry and ignorance. Incoherence is not a trait that applies in either case. As for Douthat Brooks and Stephens yeah they do get stuck on the campus intolerance thing, not much if any whataboutism. Douthat mostly deals in evengelical-babble but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that it is coherent to someone. Brooks is also given to flights of philosophical mind excursions. Overall there seems to be some decency about them. Not sure what David Roberts is bitching about. Would he prefer the NYT feature Bernie Goldberg or Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin, or Farrakhan for that matter?
Conservatives did lose their shit after 08. Now they just troll around spoiling for a fight. As an example the older white academic instructors here at the training center capture all the tv remote controls and put on Fox news. I actually had to walk across the room to the table where they were sitting to retrieve the remote for the lounge area and one guys says "as long as you don't turn on the Commie News Network you're ok. Being the asshole who likes to fuck with other assholes you can guess what I'm watching from here on out, well except for a little college ball. I mean who the fuck elected these goofy mofos kings of the tv? Just so petty and goofy. And these are old ass grown men. Sad.
PilotX elected himself King of the TV.
Self-awareness is not his strong point.
If NYT printed the *actual, real-life* sentiments of today's conservative masses, it would print a bunch of paranoid, Fox-generated fairy tales and belligerent expressions of xenophobia, misogyny, racism, and proud, anti-intellectual ignorance.
Well, that's a reasoned and intellectual statement grounded in reality.
The left does not bother to try to understand conservative viewpoints. It's much easier to create their own cartoon version of what conservatives believe so that they don't have to examine the validity of their own ideology, which is at its core a war on reality.
Conservatives know much more about liberals than liberals do about conservatives.
This is why you are losing.
Well, first off, there are liberals in the "heartland", but apparently there isn't any money in sending crews out to interview every last one of them like there is for Fergus' supporters.
One of those heartland liberals just by chance posted about this very subject today. Oh, and most other days since about 2005:
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2018/03/david-brooks-triumphant-return-of-team-b.html
As for the population of the NYT opinion page with imbeciles and morons who have been so spectacularly wrong about the politics they are paid green American dollars to write about that in any other occupation they couldn't find employment sweeping the floors, it's the business model.
They are so invested in the long-dead idea that the problem is the "extremists on both sides" and the solution is the point they have measured exactly halfway between the latest Republican atrocity and the imaginary dirty fucking hippie they desperately need you to believe in the existence of, despite there being no functioning political left in this country to actually make a bogeyman out of, so they don't lose their phony-balonay jobs and the access to the Republican politicians that they are paid to maintain.
Those Edmund Burke worshiping, noble Whigs who David fucking Brooks is forever assuring his wealthy shut-in readership are right on the cusp of leading his Republican party out of hicksville and the racist hicks who live there (and comprise the base of the party) haven't existed for many decades, so the very concept of right-wing intellectualism, by their own standards, is a lie.
Also, we told them this would happen if they built their party out of the slavering reprogrammable meatsticks who are now addicted to Fox News and hate radio, because we remember things past the point when Fergus rode the escalator of doom: Those slavering reprogrammable meatsticks used to be Democrats, but fled the party after the passage of the civil rights laws, so we know what the consequences of having them in your party are.
The political right would collapse without the both-siderist media enablers who make their attacks on decent society seem like just what happens in politics, so as dull and insipid as they are, it's worth calling them out on their bullshit.
-Doug in Oakland
Anonymous said...
I'm not conservative. I did realize that the "new left" (actually Marxist would be more accurate) want to murder me. So, there's no reason for dialogue or gestures (well maybe a middle finger).
---
Right on, brother. There's a lot of stupidity in mainstream conservatism (Hannity et al), but people on the right mostly want to be left alone, to be allowed to keep their culture and traditions and not be forced by the heavy hand of the state to conform to the ever-changing standards of crusading leftists. It's not racist to want a place in the future for your progeny, it's basic human nature. When the Right starts pushing their ideology on society, it's things like stop killing babies and stop promoting sexual degeneracy. The time for dialogue is over.
When the Left starts pushing their ideology on society, it's things like limiting first and second amendment rights and eliminating whites from the planet. Just read the comments from people like Doug from Oakland if you doubt these people thirst for anything less than murdering millions of people they deem deplorable.
dinthebeast said...
The political right would collapse without the both-siderist media enablers
---
To Doug, the problem is the media is not yet sufficiently propagandistic and one-sided enough.
Conservatives who try to articulate their views are shouted down and called the usual names. The Left deserves to be marginalized and destroyed.
Left is a joke. Jews turned it into 'man with a dress is a woman'.
Right is a joke. Jews turned it into 'Muh Israel'.
There can be true politics ONLY WHEN people emancipate themselves from the Jewish matrix of power.
"PilotX elected himself King of the TV."
Nope, I'm not the one who puts the tv on a specific channel and physically takes the remote across the room. Now in fairness to everyone I WILL take the damned thing and put it in its proper place so whomever comes into the lounge can watch whatever they damned well please, you know like an adult.
Doug said...
"Those slavering reprogrammable meatsticks used to be Democrats, but fled the party after the passage of the civil rights laws, so we know what the consequences of having them in your party are."
The meatsticks must be eradicated!
Of course there are liberals in all fifty states. I think the next state to flip will be Texas. Arizona is going to take a little bit longer. Oklahoma will always be OK. Who knows what all those stoned-out libertarians are even up to in Colorado? I hope someone is thinking about public libraries for all of the stoned students to enjoy.
I agree with PilotX, in stating the obvious, 2008 was more or less the psychotic break.
But I would posit that the true death of intellectual conservatism coincided with the rise of the crazy neo-conservatives, or neo-liberals, whichever term you prefer. The PNAC fucking knuckleheads. They more or less threw out the baby with the bathwater.
The current Nazi-Charismatic Dictator thing is so fucking disgusting I find myself actually missing Dick Cheney and Karl Rove like they were old buddies of mine. Bush is like a guy I used to get stoned with.
"The Left deserves to be marginalized and destroyed."
And therein lies the problem. Conservatism isn't the be all end all answer to everything. You should really open your mind to different ideas.
"You should really open your mind to different ideas."
Murder is murder to me, I don't need to open my mind to it. I stare it down daily. You really expect people to willingly go to the slaughter house for their eradication.
The more conservative a white boy is, the smaller his dick is. That is why they are always so angry and racist. They are just compensating for not packing much between their legs. That is also why most black men are not conservative.
I never much liked black people growing up in the 70's and 80's, but now I realize just how shitty you people actually are. I tell my daughters regularly to stay away from you people lest they want to get beaten and/or raped. Fucking animals, all of you.
Maybe some of these anti-tr**p conservatives will finally see the light and realize that conservatism will get America nowhere. I doubt they will completely abandon their ideology, but they can at least see that the tr**p movement is toxic for everybody...or at least to everybody with a working brain.
Kill white men.
Fuck white women.
Also, "right-wing intellectualism" is an oxymoron. There is nothing intellectual about people who are so insecure about their micro dicks that they take it out on black people, black men especially, for the obvious reasons. The cult of Butt Trumpet proves this.
The deformed white race is a detestable odor, and the black race is the pure air needed to destroy it. The white race's time at the top is coming to an end, and they will not go easily, but they will go eventually. This is indisputable.
#BlackPride #BlackPower #BlackisBeautiful
I agree with PilotX, in stating the obvious, 2008 was more or less the psychotic break.
Again, such myopia. It is not the Right that has been waging a culture war offensive for the last 50 years. Since 2008, the Left has forced on society gay marriage, tranny bathrooms, nuns made to pay for abortifacients, bakers and photographers forced to violate the tenants of their religion, conservative speakers shouted off campus, Trump supporters beaten by Antifa scum, and anti-white rhetoric being mainstreamed in media, entertainment, and academia.
If you'd ask your own self from 25 years ago, he'd tell you that the ones pushing sex reassignment freaks in front of Kindergartners, tearing down statues, and pathologizing masculinity and whiteness are the psychotics.
You can see why (((Ivy League))) colleges favor, for their affirmative action quota slots, blacks who are of foreign stock or who have a white parent (or some combination of the two) by comparing the post-Harvard Law School careers of Barack and Michelle Obama.
Michelle Obama benefited from affirmative action getting into Whitney Young HS, Princeton, Harvard Law School, and Sidley Austin law firm. Then she flunked the Illinois bar exam (passing it on her second try). Then she gave up practicing law.
Nowadays those affirmative action slots go to the kid of some Nigerian or South African natural resource ‘regulator’ with millions. They pay full tuition and (((Harvard))) doesn’t need to bother with American blacks anymore.
Conservatives who try to articulate their views are shouted down and called the usual names.
Ungawa, oogie boogie, huh, duh, I'm the victim, he took my lunch money. Fabulous articulation by stoopid fucking wingnuts.
Anonymous said...
I'm not conservative. I did realize that the "new left" (actually Marxist would be more accurate) want to murder me. So, there's no reason for dialogue or gestures (well maybe a middle finger).
You flatter yerself too much. Murder you? Put you out of yer misery is more apt. Mercy killing. Death with dignity for swine that don't deserve death with dignity.
Anonymous (((The Game))) said. Derp! There is nothing stopping either Obama from practicing law in the future, if they so desire.
Q: Did Barack and Michelle Obama “surrender” their law licenses to avoid ethics charges?
A: No. A court official confirms that no public disciplinary proceeding has ever been brought against either of them, contrary to a false Internet rumor. By voluntarily inactivating their licenses, they avoid a requirement to take continuing education classes and pay hundreds of dollars in annual fees. Both could practice law again if they chose to do so.
"It is not the Right that has been waging a culture war offensive for the last 50 years."
So the right has no part in the "culture wars" huh? So the attempts to force religion into schools and other public places isn't happening? I guess you missed the law in Florida that passed and the one in Wyoming currently being formulated is nothing? The more restrictive abortion law in Mississippi that doesn't allow victims of rape and/or incest to terminate their pregnacies isn't part of a religious culture war? The anti-Sharia law hysteria? The push to eradicate evolution from schoolbooks? C'mon man, you cannot be serious. The right invented culture wars.
"Murder is murder to me, I don't need to open my mind to it. I stare it down daily."
Really? That sounds interesting. Tell us more about how you stare down death daily. Are you a cop? In the military?
"I tell my daughters regularly to stay away from you people lest they want to get beaten and/or raped. Fucking animals, all of you."
Heh heh heh. All of us huh? You do know they are more likely to be beaten and raped by a white male right? Irrational hatred never helps anyone. So thought exercise, you would rather your daughter date a white guy who abuses her than an educated professional brotha who treats her well? Interesting and insightful.
Field, you hit a nerve with this topic. As if on cue our resident conservatives show how binary their thinking is. Nuance is never part of the equation. Liberals don't have a point of view worth discussing because they only want to kill them so therefore I don't need to have dialogue yet I'm the one who's shouted down and called names. Just wow.
Hey mike from Iowa...you're from Iowa. Therefore you aren't qualified to say anything of intelligence or substance. Shut the fuck up, little boy.
Hey mike from Iowa...you're from Iowa. Therefore you aren't qualified to say anything of intelligence or substance. Shut the fuck up, little boy.
----------
More proof the article is accurate. This is an example of conservative thought.
Joke from Shithole SW, Only in yer peyote fueled deliriums could you aspire to be iowan, kola. Boy? I was 10 when Kennedy was assassinated.
The death of stoopid wasicu intellectualism- https://www.thoughtco.com/dumbest-bush-quotes-of-all-time-2734076
Couple corrections from earlier, Michele Obama DID not fail the Illinois bar exam. It was Washington DC's exam she failed. She passed on her second try.
Michele Obama still has her lawyers license, it is just inactive and can be re-activated quickly if she chooses to do so.
On the other hand stoopid fucking wingnuts are still stoopid fucking wingnuts. Somethings can't be deactivated.
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-hasnt-appointed-a-single-black-or-latino-judge-0dd0cc5383de/
Oh my.
Fuck white people. Fuck the white race.
"The meatsticks must be eradicated! "
One more time for the illiterate wingnuts:
The goddamn meatsticks (and pig people) deserve to be represented in government like everyone else. I have said this maybe forty times here, but you need to accuse me of something to try and invalidate my arguments, and for some reason you have chosen to call me a murderer, or a murder advocate.
I'm not the one advocating the murder of tens of thousands of poor people by taking away their access to healthcare. That would be the Republicans.
You know, the Republicans? The ones who hired Lee the fuck Atwater and Newt the fuck Gingrich?
"You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”"
and the Nam Shub of Enki, I mean "Language, a Key Mechanism of Control" respectively.
It's not really a culture war, so much as it's a political strategy, by reptiles who could care less about it, to scare rural, white, voters into voting against their own economic interests to avoid whatever bullshit bogeyman they have dreamed up today.
Nobody gave a rat's ass about abortion before the goddamn Republicans made it into a "wedge issue", not even evangelical Christians.
The earliest record of abortion is from Egypt in 1550BC.
But NO! Republicans knew they could get a lot of political mileage out of calling the disposal of a 5mm wide ball of cells "baby murder", and didn't even bat an eye when they decided that the children poor women are forced to carry to term, that they can't afford to raise, shouldn't have access to healthcare so they can die, or live fucked up lives over a goddamn cheap political stunt.
Fuck you, and the goddamn lies you rode in on.
-Doug in Oakland
I get to have sex with a black woman tonight! Yippee!!!
Jake from Arizona proves my point about Arizona being an especially difficult case. That doesn't mean there aren't beautiful people and places in Arizona. I'm just glad those little dogs never smelled my weed. I've never been through so many checkpoints since I drove to Guerrero Negro. There are wonderful Native American sites to visit. Sedona is breath-taking. All you need is a 4WD to get to Oak Creek. The west fork is the best swimming hole I know. I used to hang there with McCain before he took me back to his ranch for Barbacoa.
Mrs. Junior bought a beautiful turquoise bracelet in a modern design by Benjamin Piaso from a Navajo trading post.
But as far as the rest of you ignorant, racist, xenophobic... Don't get me started.
How about this one for some Trump love you dumb fucking loonies? Sung to the tune of, "Sweet Home Alabama," by Lynrd Skynrd.
In Phoenix we still love the Sheriff! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!
We all did what what we could do;
I hope you beaners will remember;
Us real Murkins don't need you! I tell you true!
One problem with that way of thinking might be that Arizona was part of Mexico at one time and most of the Mexican-Americans and Native Americans have been living there for millenia.
From the land that brought us Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The political climate that shot Gaby Giffords. We decent citizens don't need the likes of you, Jake. Joe just confessed to contempt of court although he was too stupid to realize that was what he was doing when he accepted a pardon.
What is this white privilege???
Progressive Center Left is a mental disease....
Anonymous said...
Progressive Center Left is a mental disease....Like alt-right is a venereal disease full of giant, saber-toothed crotch crickets.
Wasicu wastey is a permanent, untreatable yeast infection. Don't worry, stoopid fucking wingnuts. No harm to yer brains because you seemed to have left them someplace and forgot them.
"Intellectualism" is not a word most people associate with black people, and for good reason. You people rarely display anything close to it. I'm Chinese-American, so I know a thing or two about it, unlike anybody here.
See more at:
bigwowo.com
reddit.com/r/aznidentity
Hey mike from Iowa, my crotch itches, and I live just outside of Des Moines, so will you come over and scratch it for me?
I believe you are stoopid fucking wingnut enough to need help scratching. Go ask Braindead or his braindead brat Eric for help.
Stoopid fucking congressional wingnuts have shutdown their Drumpf lovefest saying they didn't bother to look for and didn't see any collusion between Drumpf and Russia. One investigation down and at least 7 more to go to get caught up with Benghazi witch hunts.
Imagine, Russians contact Drumpf with claims of dirt on HRC before the election, and stoopid fucking wingnuts can't find any collusion. Plus, Dems haven't been allowed to sdee wingnuts final report. We know there was collusion between the WH and Numbnuts Nunes. They were feeding him info in clandestine late night meetings.
Lookee what I just found- another family values stoopid fucking wingnut resigning from iowa congress after pics showed him sucking face with a lobbyist not his wife. Bill Dix. Nice name dick.
http://time.com/5196610/bill-dix-iowa-senator-resignation/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=time.com&utm_campaign=ideal-media-internal-recirculation&utm_term=68737&utm_content=2202400
You didn't even need to say white man, most of the stupid shit being said these days is coming from white men.
Fuck you, Caucasian Negligible Ninny!
"What is this white privilege???"
Ask Betsy DeVos.
It's being named Sect. of Education without having a clue about public education in America.
She has a clue, she just doesn't give a damn.
Fuck the gooks and chinks!
Moron says...
"I was 10 when Kennedy was assassinated."
I was 10 and a half but will give you a full point.
Doug yelled!!!
"You know, the Republicans? The ones who hired Lee the fuck Atwater and Newt the fuck Gingrich?"
Never heard of them, does that make me guilty? Are you going to kill me? Can I tell my family before you murder me? Please don't murder my family!
God help us!!!
Or being nominated for a federal judgeship while only having practiced law for 3 years and not being able to answer simple legal questions.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/us/brett-talley-judge-senate.amp.html
Yisheng = nigger
lilac = cunt
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Moron says...
"I was 10 when Kennedy was assassinated."
I was 10 and a half but will give you a full point.
2:22 AM
Actually, headfuck, you lose 10 points for lack of originality and stoopid fucking wasicu whining.
There is no one at the tiller on the ship of state. Tillerson is out finally.
Rod said...
I get to have sex with a black woman tonight! Yippee!!!
4:42 PM
make an appointment to have a STD test......
anon 11: 06 needs to schedule a paternity test to see if his mother is his sister or auntie or both.
African American Females
Among African American women in the United States and six dependent areas, heterosexual contact was the most frequently cited mode of transmission, accounting for 91% of cases diagnosed in 2014.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/healthdisparities/africanamericans.html
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