"Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up."
-- Robert Frost, writer
Links:
...Bobo’s runty, privileged, gated-community self-image could not bear up for one second if he were ever obliged to lock eyes in the clear, noon light with the vast, greasy army of bigots and madmen to whom he offers pastel-toned cover-fire from the good, gray pages of the New York Times.And yet all around him he sees the Conservative Revolution evaporating not from external threats or Dirty Hippy sappers inside his perimeter, but in a toxic cloud of wholly internal corruption, incompetence, delusion, fascism, demagoguery, racism, homophobia and a slimy and hateful perversion of genuine Christianity.There is, in the end, no one to blame for the ruin and failure that Conservatives have left in their wake but that army of bigots and lunatics who have always been at the core of the Modern Conservative movement.And they won’t even go decently into hiding so that men like Bobo can plausibly pretend they don’t exist!In fact, quite the opposite has always been the case: Falwell and Roberston, Limbaugh and Coulter, DeLay and Gingrich, Atwater and Rove and all the rest of that sick, sadistic litany of degenerates and frauds have always been the leering, drooling, outspoken, very public and unapologetic soul of the GOP.And Bobo has finally reached that place where reality and delusion can no longer be coaxed into coexisting....So like Ishmael and Queequeg in “Moby Dick”, to save himself from going under forever, Bobo clings to Reagan’s coffin; to that last soggy relic of those Glorious Wingnut Days of Yore That Never Were which has not yet been entirely smashed to matchsticks and sent to the bottom of the sea by the deranged leaders of his doomed tribe...
In The Beginning There Was Reagan...
This is a column directed at high school and college students. I’m going to try to convey to you how astoundingly different the Republican Party felt when I was your age.
The big guy then was Ronald Reagan. Temperamentally, though not politically, Reagan was heir to the two Roosevelts. He inherited a love of audacity from T.R. and optimism and charm from F.D.R.
He had a sunny faith in America’s destiny and...
When [Reagan] erred it was often on the utopian side of things, believing that tax cuts could pay for themselves, believing that he and Mikhail Gorbachev could shed history and eliminate all nuclear weapons.
The mood of the party is so different today. Donald Trump expressed the party’s new mood to David Muir of ABC, when asked about his decision to suspend immigration from some Muslim countries: “The world is a mess. The world is as angry as it gets. What, you think this is going to cause a little more anger? The world is an angry place.”
The big Republican accomplishment is that they have detoxified their brand. Four years ago they seemed scary and extreme to a lot of people. They no longer seem that way....
Every party in opposition goes a little crazy. For Republicans in the early Obama era, insanity took the form of the Sarah Palin spasm. Veteran politicos took the former Alaska governor seriously as a national figure. Republican primary voters nominated the likes of Todd Akin, Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle. Glenn Beck seemed important enough to hold a big rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
Fortunately, serious parties eventually pull back from the fever swamps. That’s what’s happening to the Republican Party...-- David Brooks, "The Governing Party", November 6, 2014
Trump has changed the way the Republican Party sees the world. Republicans used to have a basic faith in the dynamism and openness of the free market. Now the party fears openness and competition...
It’s not that the deals had changed, or reality. It was that Donald Trump became the Republican nominee and his dark fearfulness became the party’s dark fearfulness.
We have a word for people who are dominated by fear. We call them cowards.
There's a house on my block that's abandoned and cold
The folks moved out of it a long time ago
And they took all their things and they never came back
It looks like it's haunted with the windows all cracked
Everyone calls it the house
The house where nobody lives...
@NYTNarrative huh??? I didn't vote for Trump or Clinton. The duopoly is broken.— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) January 26, 2017
The State Department’s entire senior administrative team just resignedAnother timely reminder that genuine patriots and people of faith should feel no compunctions about yanking out fascism's carburetors whenever and however the opportunity presents itself:
Franklin Yarn Store Throws a Knit FitAnd then all the heretics of Franklin saddled up their horses and rode to Bliss Yarns, or Haus of Yarn, or to the municipal library to use the public internet machine to order all the yarn they want.
Shop's owner bans women's march supporters ... days after Nashville's women's march
Yesterday the owner of The Joy of Knitting, a boutique yarn shop in Franklin, posted a message on Facebook:
With the recent women's march on Washington, I ask that you if you want yarn for any project for the women's movement that you please shop for yarn elsewhere. The vulgarity, vile and evilness of this movement is absolutely despicable. That kind of behavior is unacceptable and is not welcomed at The Joy of Knitting. I will never need that kind of business to remain open. Two wrongs will never ever make it right.The author of the post, Elizabeth, cited her Christian beliefs as the main reason for her stance, saying, "The women's movement is counterproductive to unity of family, friends, community, and nation."...
@GlennKesslerWP @dandrezner @ABC And David Muir called him on none of them.
— Roger Cohen (@NYTimesCohen) January 26, 2017
I have faith in our fellow Americans, i have faith in our country and constitution, and i have hope that President Trump will evolve.— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) January 24, 2017
@matthewjdowd Yes! Right now this behavior is destructive on R side, but Ds are guilty too— testudo (@winters53) January 24, 2017
Me: Trump has worst initial approval of any Pres— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) January 24, 2017
T Fans: fake news!
Me: those are facts.
Fans: So what
Me: just information
Fans: F#$k U
When history looks back, i wonder who will be seen as the principled founding fathers and mothers of a 21st century America? I hope I am.— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) January 25, 2017