Random Pandemic Thoughts

I'll never forget the time my Mother-In-Law came down to visit us a few years ago, while Ebola was the story making headlines. She said after we watched a news report on Ebola that she was so worried about it because "I have no confidence in the government to keep us safe." You know, directly cribbed from Fox News. Now this was during the Obama administration, which was fielding crisis after crisis while being sabotaged at every turn by republicans, republicans whom my in laws vote for every time without fail. The irony of worrying about government being able to handle an outbreak of an exotic disease when every time she had a chance to vote for people who would do their best to prepare government agencies and the healthcare system overall she instead voted for the people who hate the very idea of government being able to do anything of consequence and love that their sabotage made people fear and distrust government could be seen from outer space. Of course, Ebola blew over in short order and I doubt Fox or any other corporate media outlet apologized for sensationalizing the story and scaring the crap out of people who didn't take an active role in unilaterally disarming the country to viral outbreaks.

This time around, media coverage seems more balanced and factual, while being less sensational and scaremongering but that doesn't stop right wing media or republicans from claiming whenever they can that "liberal media" is trying to "use" the story to bring down doughfacedonny. Jim Wright summarized it well by saying:

Population: This thing concerns us.
Leader: Your concerns are valid. Here's what we're doing to protect you. This is where you can get verified information. This is how you can help.

Population: This thing concerns us.
Trump: YOU'RE MAKING ME LOOK BAD! FAKE NEWS! WHAT ABOUT THE MONEY? DID YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT THE MONEY?!

Max Brooks portrayed a pretty realistic scenario about societal indifference, media disinformation, and panic regarding an outbreak of disease in World War Z (the book, not the movie). While Coronavirus is not a zombie apocalypse in the works, the pattern of denial, government being woefully unprepared for the coming crisis and executing hastily-concocted plans incompetently, pharma wildly overcharging for treatments that don't work, huge profits off of suffering, and total failure to contain the outbreak seems awfully prescient. Brooks had as his template the Dubya criminal syndicate for the beginning, which I hate to say actually seems borderline competent compared to this bunch of con men and imbeciles in charge of the Executive Branch today.

I don't know why my picture doesn't show up with the posts on Social Media so I'm just going to plop it into each post from now on.

So if doughfacedonny states that the virus is contained and that coming warmer weather will cause it to fade away, does that mean the opposite of truth? As over 12,000 other statements he has made have been lies? What do we make of the official "correction" of the stock market, that bastion of pure capitalism that has been the major marker behind the claim of a strong economy by republicans? Or can we finally cut the crap that stock market gains mean anything? If $3.4 trillion can evaporate in a week, maybe all those rural white republicans who keep claiming everything is great and fuck you libtards will have a crack in their Dunning-Krueger armor and ask a few questions. CNN has been awfully candid in this story, repeatedly stating that Wall Street loves doughfacedonny's "low tax and light regulation approach" so a Coronavirus outbreak could mean his defeat, which they wouldn't like. Because fuck democracy, the rule of law, and the ability to govern Wall Street demands more sacrifice.

Establishment without Conspiracy. Part 2

Instead of writing one big, long essay examining what the Democratic Party establishment is and what the various sides of the debate think about it, I want to block off an hour or two to get one thought down in a running series. Then I can actually finish a post instead of getting into something, then having to abandon it and when I finally return to writing I can't remember what in the world I was on about. So, a couple paragraphs on one idea each time. Maybe there are readers out there who would appreciate this approach too, we'll see.

Not long after doughfacedonny "won" the election, the DNC sent me a survey asking what I thought they should do. Here was my reply:

To the incoming chair of the DNC,
You are not prepared for what is coming, no one is. We have entered a completely new era of unified authoritarian rule, you will have to approach every aspect of your job with that in mind. I'm sure that you are aware that Democrats will be completely shut out of governance, and the party will have to act like a shadow government. Do not collaborate in any way with the republicans, resist in the strongest terms any attempt by them to pin blame for their actions and failures on you or our party. It is time to become an unabashed voice for working people of all shapes and sizes. And you must really mean it. The party will be in the wilderness for a long time, there will be no reason for to remain tied to a party that surrenders or compromises our values. The national government is lost, aim lower at local levels. The republicans must fail alone, only when they have inflicted so much pain and suffering on so many people that not even Fox News and breitbart can make excuses for how bad they are can democracy return.

There was supposed to be some kind of arrangement between Tom Perez and Keith Ellison on power-sharing, or so I thought at the time. It was also supposed to be a compromise and truce over the Clinton/Bernie feud. But apparently that didn't hold and the Clinton/Obama candidate Perez came out on top. Things were awfully cloudy at the time but it was clear that republican fascism was going to rub directly on the populace going forward without even the veneer of Executive authority standing in the way. The people were standing alone against a right-wing occupation.

No one really knew what lay ahead. We can take some solace in knowing just how blatheringly incompetent all of the trump people have been to this point. But I wanted to remind myself how apocalyptic things seemed at the time. Now the Democrats are stepping up to the plate again and how we deal with the divide will be important. 

Establishment without Conspiracy

Last time, we discussed the unconvincing attempts by Jacobin executive editor, a certain Mr. Ackerman, to assert a conspiracy to lose by a cabal within the Democratic Party rather than allow a progressive to win. This particular conspiracy theory bothers me, not because I don't believe there are unsavory corporate types in positions of influence within the Democratic Party who play act at being an opposition party but just want to maintain the status quo and personal gain, but because I don't think they are as powerful as the far left would like to believe. And well, the cabal is either a shadowy group working in secret or they are real people we can see and hear, with names and positions or public office. If they have names, use them, tell me and all the other naive Democrats out there who have faith that we can push towards a more fair, just society who exactly are the bad guys. It is lazy to just say "the establishment" is conspiring against Bernie, or rigging things for Joe Biden or whoever.

Be more like another executive editor of a left-leaning periodical, David Dayen, and break down the dynamics of the establishment. If you are an actual journalist, you can do better than the left wing authoritarian follower's version of "both sides do it" and be more specific. We, the naive flock of Democrats who have faith in our party to advance democracy and justice, need specifics to understand better what is clogging the pipeline of reform and what we can do to remove the calcified blockages. Mr. Dayen of The American Prospect does more than wave his hands and say "they" won't let Progressives win, he gets into the details. More than that, he actually links to other sources that can elaborate on the concepts and ideas he is explaining. Even if sometimes those links are to other articles he and other good faith Progressives have written.

I may not be as far out in a cornfield as DGBG, but I'm also a single shingle blogger without the means to subscribe to every newspaper and paywall-protected news magazine, and only a master's from a Midwestern university to help guide me. And they, Driftglass and Blue Gal, have each other, and a network of like minded detectives of politics to work with. We all have limited resources and politics is a realm of constantly-updating, every changing, facts and information. It's so important to stay informed because, more than ever, politics affects us and our day-to-day lives. People like Seth Ackerman, with actual paid positions and titles at news outfits, have a responsibility to aggregate, analyze, and then break down the complex news cycles for all of us who lack those resources. I write in my spare time, I do research with Google in that limited time and really depend on professionals to get those details out to the public.

So I don't have time for the assumptions and leaps of conspiracy that Mr. Ackerman throws out there, even when I understand and agree with the larger ideas. In my next post I will explain how Mr. Dayen does a better job of elucidating exactly what the "establishment" is within the Democratic Party and why it is a far better way of understanding the challenges faced by reformers and those naive enough, me for sure, to think we actually had a team on our side for fighting republicans for power.

A Fresh Look at the New Republic

I just wanted to write a few words about a rather old publication that has really impressed me lately. The New Republic magazine used to be thought of as a dinosaur with little relevance to the liberal community. But recently, and due mainly to the efforts of a staff writer named Osita Nwanevu, I have found new life and energy there and highly encourage my readers to give them a chance if you haven't already.

I think the first time I had heard of NR was in one of Jello Biafra's spoken word albums where he cited them supporting Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, a book length chastisement of higher education. Jello was angry that this supposed keeper of the Liberal flame that his dad subscribed to since he was 18 was endorsing a book that Jello felt was everything that is wrong with mainstream liberalism. So I had basically written them off after picking up a couple of issues from the one old school independent bookstores in my little 'burg and not finding much of interest there. This was in 1999 when the internet was still an exciting possibility for the future but not really relevant in every day life yet. A little later when I was really getting serious about understanding politics I ventured out to the public library and found some of the other magazines that Jello mentioned in his spoken word albums such as The Nation, The Progressive, Mother Jones, and Harper's that I found much more interesting. The New Republic fell by the wayside for a long time after that.

Especially when I got a job that allowed me to have a radio at my machine and I could listen to CDs. I discovered that what we always called "books on tape" had progressed and were much better in the CD format, this was still during the early Dubya years. My knowledge of politics, ideology, and intellectuals/writers was growing rapidly during those years working the night shift. The magazines reviewed books that were interesting and I went out to find them on CD whenever I could. Three big ones that concerned the media were very important and I often look back on them as the bedrock of understanding the ways that the mainstream political press interacts with the public in contrast to right wing media. These were Al Franken's Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media?, and David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine.

Of these, Alterman told the most complete story about the New Republic that I have found, though now I suppose it is out of date and I will have to do some research to find out where and how they turned it around. NR was bought by a appliance maker's heir, who didn't do a great job managing it and was caught under the spell of the DLC school of liberalism for a long time if I remember right. One of these three books talked about how NR marketed itself with endorsements from FDR and Orson Welles even into the new millenium, which is to say it was coasting on past lustre well past it's present situation.

As I said, I am still early in the process of evaluating the current form of The New Republic, but Mr. Nwanevu essay entitled End The GOP really caught my attention and I have shared several of his other articles to the blog's Facebook page. I see a few familiar names on the website's masthead and many more articles that portend great analysis and hard-hitting reporting. I haven't subscribed yet but I'm thinking about it. So I am encouraging my readers to give them a chance and not dismiss the name as just an irrelevant relic of the past, because the New Republic is definitely not that anymore.

More Political Irony than Jacobin intended

I started off feeling pretty good about the situation. Bernie won in New Hampshire, the cast of centrist misfits were scattered and disorganized. It was sad to see Elizabeth Warren not get the support I think she deserves but I kind of got on the Bernie train. "Alright, let's go" a little voice in my ear said, the New Dealer is finally going to get center stage and reorient the party from outside to return to its roots as a party of the people. But you cannot ignore the sniping from the left that is going to make the unity, energy, and motivation needed to remove the cancer of republicans unnecessarily difficult.

My friend, a history professor I have great respect for, posted this story from Jacobin magazine recently. It contains many ideas worthy of consideration, but also glosses over a big problem--it doesn't address the massive conspiracy theory at its root. Nor does it even pretend to isolate and reveal who exactly is in the conspiracy and barely addresses what they want. Now Jacobin is definitely the "it" destination for left-wing authoritarian followers, the permanent rebels that will turn on Bernie the minute he has to negotiate the varying priorities of the coalition and not deliver exactly what they want at that moment. Yes, that is kind of a challenge. Prove me wrong you in the "holier than thou" crowd that you can compromise with your fellow liberals. I am always skeptical of unnamed conspirators within some shadowy group out there, somewhere, that controls everything. Which is what this article does. Do not give me a mealy-mouthed response about having to know the meta-narrative perpetrated by Jacobin, I want names named before I take it seriously.

What makes Bernie Sanders so threatening to the Democratic establishment is that he stands for what millions of Democrats thought their party stood for all along.

"The Democratic establishment" is the kind of weaselly generalization that raises alarm bells. He offers one example: President Obama. Later, Joe Biden gets added but dang, two people control the "Democratic establishment"? Yes, there are things I wish Obama had done differently, I wish he could have pushed harder for Progressive change but his hold over the government was always tenuous at best as the Congressional caucuses of the party were never fully in agreement. I have written about Wailers before on this blog (here and here for starters), in short is it a term coined by the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. to describe the kind of left-wing intellectual who is content to write columns for various weeklies decrying the state of the world but do nothing beyond that to actually pitch in and fix things. I'll be the first to admit that the Democratic Party has problems but it really chafes to hear Wailers assert that this "establishment" would rather let doughfacedonny win again than let Bernie or another actual Progressive get the nomination. Obama was just as subject to the Driftglassian "Four Front War" as any other Democrat, he also was handed an economy in collapse, failing wars, and a prevailing perception of being too young and inexperienced to fix the mess republicans had left for him. So considering all of that pressure, it sounds more like Obama was a victim of this establishment than its leader.

The author of this article, Seth Ackerman, then wags his finger at all of those precious, naive Democrats voting in the primaries.

But that’s not the same as a fundamental ideological difference. My hypothesis is that when Sanders condemns the depredations of the “billionaire class,” or calls for a major power shift from corporations to workers, a majority of the party faithful assume he’s saying out loud what popular Democrats like Barack Obama truly believe in their hearts but are, perhaps, a little too politically prudent to state so baldly. 

Why would loyal Democrats labor under such illusions about their party leaders? Because those leaders go to great lengths to cultivate those illusions — and for the most part they succeed. Many of us on the Left tend to tune out the stump-speech platitudes of mainstream Democrats, which makes it easy to lose sight of the fact that, to the ideologically unarmored, those platitudes can make a  speaker sound a lot like someone who shares the values of, say, a Bernie Sanders.

The irony he talks about in the title is that the mythical establishment's platitudes about addressing inequality collapse when the real deal shows up. But you cute little Democratic sheep don't know the difference do you? Isn't that quaint? As though the people who can be bothered to show up and vote in primaries are stupid and beneath an intellectual heavyweight like Ackerman and the mighty Jacobins. There is real irony as well that he refuses to write one word about the similarity to doughfacedonny's supposed takeover of the death cult of human suffering. Bernie cuts through the crap to sincerely stand for the forgotten ideals of the Democratic Party and throws the fakes in disarray. Trump took the platitudes of the really-existing fascist propaganda machine built by the asshole he gave the (now meaningless) Presidential Medal of Freedom to recently among others and regurgitated them apparently more sincerely to the ravenous mob of right-wing authoritarian followers. I say apparently because, being a know-nothing loser, doughfacedonny was among the prime targets of brain-washing by the propaganda and therefore sincerely repeats the ideas shit into his skull the same way the average republican voter internalizes the interests of billionaires as his own. Trump just said the quiet parts out loud, republican voters understood that they had to settle for dog whistles and the implicit understanding that corporate insider establishment republicans they elected would do what those voters wanted, namely to punish their enemies and the brown-skinned others.

My point is that assuming a powerful insider conspiracy without actually naming names is rather lazy thinking. Especially when we just went through a blue wave election where lots of progressive outsiders were elected and genuine progressive organizations were built. Does that mean in the Jacobin mind that those things happened with the establishment's blessing? Or could it be better explained, the mainstream elite rejection of Bernie Sanders' campaign, as the toothless whining of a small number of public leaders who actually do not exercise that much power? I wish I could remember who taught me that you should never assume a powerful conspiracy pulls strings behind the scenes when simple explanations like timidity, greed, incompetence, and coincidences can also explain out of the ordinary behavior. Especially when the meta-narrative of Democratic conspiracy allows you to wave away very real patterns of abuse and bullying the last time around.

The obvious solution, of course, is to resort to electability arguments. Indeed, if Sanders once seemed to have a ceiling of support, it wasn’t because Democratic voters were alienated by his “extremism” or turned off by his “rabid fanbase” (a hilariously solipsistic explanation that doubles as a diagnostic test for Terminal Onlineness). They worried about whether he could beat Trump. 

Sanders is old, he’s strident, he’s Jewish. He calls himself a socialist and speaks with what is easily the least presidential accent of any nominee since Al Smith. He isn’t anyone’s textbook image of electability. That gave Democratic elites an opening: “We would love to see a President Sanders,” they implied, “but nominating Bernie will just give us another four years of Trump.” [emphasis mine]

Maybe it was "Terminal Onlineness" last time that turned me off. I decided to give Sanders another chance this time because all of the people I know IRL and most of the ones I follow online supporting him were genuinely good people. After all, I did vote for Sanders in the primary and I did write a pretty long blog about his sincerity as a New Dealer and Progressive. I guess I cut myself off too much and forgot that BernieBro culture is alive and well. Why take a perfectly good premise, that voters are voting for their first choice who represents what they believe is good and can be what the Democratic Party stands for again, and turn it into a conspiracy theory? I'm sticking with my friends who haven't lost their innocence and given into lazy cynicism like Ackerman.

For decades, those leaders propagated the conceit that intra-party disagreements are never about ends, only means; that they’re merely differences over how best to realize the ideals that everyone in the party supposedly shares: ideals of justice, compassion, defense of the little guy. Now, to their horror, they realize that this conceit has left their flock wholly susceptible to the charms of any politician who can speak with evident sincerity of justice, compassion, and defense of the little guy — and they are powerless to stop it without destroying the conceit. 

Again, the real irony is this is exactly what happened to the republicans last time, a genuine fascist (charlatan) won the allegiance of the party faithful who were tired of the conceit that their leaders wanted the same things they did. Enough of the cutting taxes for the rich, when are we going to see some concentration camps? It's a genuinely opposite position for the Democrats, perhaps the one that will really get through the fascism and snap the demographic jaws shut on the right wing.

New Hampshire Primary Reaction

Now that we have some results, beyond the clusterf*ck in Iowa, it is time to revisit something I wrote four years ago. Silly title aside, and remember this was before the bitter bunker busters were being thrown between Bernie supporters and Clinton supporters, I said then:

[Sanders] is the real deal. It is hard to look at his life and his record and not see that this is a genuine and sincere leader who really cares about people. Average people, working people, middle-class people; Sanders stands for them and stands against the very wealthy and the powerful interests who have made it so hard to get ahead. He is exactly the kind of person who should be president. (emphasis mine)

While I am still remaining neutral about the primary, except Pete because smarmy arrogance aside I just am not ready to vote for someone younger than me for president, I am warming up to a Sanders nomination. This is not because I have forgiven the frat boys who acted like entitled left-wing authoritarian followers always personally attacking anyone who wasn't on board with their idea of "revolution". Not because he isn't running against an "heir apparent" candidate. I admit being somewhat fixated on the idea that Democratic succession would cause the stinking edifice of fascists and permanent rebels to creak and wobble enough that we could get back on track to a functioning democracy. However, the party has shown time and again that they aren't really interested in changing, that Thomas Frank was right all along and left to their own devices Democrats will continue the elite meritocracy while the majority of people fall behind.

Outsiders are the only people who seem to ever ignite the popular imagination. I don't believe in some supernatural force that corrupts politicians once they get to DC, but it is easy to fall in line and continue to do the "business as usual" thing. We are well past that point now. Everyone outside the death cult of human suffering that is the entirety of the republican party had better get used to the idea that you don't get to fall back to sleep after a Democrat wins the White House, as happened after Obama's victories. The midterm election of 2018 showed that if people get out and get involved they can overturn even the hardest and most calcified structure, it is possible. Now, 2020 is the real deal, a chance to overthrow the tyrant and his equally evil supporters, enablers, and apologists. Moreover, the "revolution from within" aspect of Bernie should energize people to get involved and keep it going after winning an election.

If Sanders is the nominee, the Democratic Party leadership becomes obsolete. His supporters get to build a new infrastructure within the party, if they can keep together and organized. If having Bernie at the top of the ticket will inspire some young people to get out and do something, at least vote, there is a chance that democracy can survive. But then we have to stay involved, keep tweeting, keep telling Chris Matthews, David Brooks, and all the "both siderists" that they are full of crap. Start blogs, build networks, challenge the old fossils that talk down to you but don't know a damn thing about politics. Keep hope alive. All of my friends who are politically active are behind Bernie 100%, there may be an element of bandwagon jumping in this post but so be it.

After doughfacedonny's "victory" the Democratic Party sent me a survey asking what I wanted to see them do in the face of a fascist takeover (not their words certainly), they did not do any of the things I suggested. The political press has shown over and over that they do not understand the threat democracy and the constitution face. As Driftglass often writes, the Democratic Party is always fighting a war on four fronts: against the republicans, against the cynical political press and both siderism, against the self-proclaimed left of Glenn Greenwald/Jill Stein who just want to burn it all down, and against the inert half of the country that cannot be roused to give a damn about anything in their government. Bernie supporters are not among these groups, from what I have seen they do not want to blow it all up and are smart enough to realize that this would just play into the death cult's hands. But Tom Perez, James Carville, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer are not up to the task of leading this war on four fronts. If the torch is passed to leaders in the Sanders campaign, it will be up to them to fight this war.

I want to be a part of this movement, but I don't want to lead. I have never inspired anyone to do anything political. I can nurture and build enthusiasm that is already there, I can counsel leaders with what wisdom I have but I am not someone who can go out and take power in any capacity. Here's the deal, no one's reach is too small. Build your blog or your podcast, share it with me and I will do what I can to increase that reach. Start dialogue, on my page or somewhere and I will contribute where possible. Build and include; Bernie's "revolution" as I understand it, is to organize a self-sustaining movement to enrich democracy and advance justice. Democratic socialist, social democrat, or whatever label you want to affix to it is fine, but having a real team that supports each other is the important part. Instead of a group of consultants and media specialists that talk at us, beg for donations, scream about how bad republicans are and how catastrophic the fall will be if they don't raise X by tonight, then go back to their comfortable lives doing as they please.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm willing to take a chance.

No More Respect

Watching a former porn model present a former drug addict with a medal is how we all imagined 2020 would go, right? https://t.co/1KeuNKe2Qw

— Frank the Bunny (@DeadBunnyFrank) February 5, 2020

I cannot recall exactly how many times I was admonished to "respect my elders" as a child but it was a nonzero number. The idea holds for most people, most of the time. You are supposed to grow intellectually as a person and acquire wisdom, achievements, good works, and knowledge as you grow older.

Then there are Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump. Old, white men who have been coddled and rewarded with material success for many long decades now without any of the qualities that would garner respect from the standard of my grandparents' generation. They deserve nothing because they have earned nothing and are, intellectually, still children. All of the coddling and wealth extraction has gone into nothing more virtuous than stoking their own egos and insulating them from reality.

The hashtag #okayboomer has gained a little bit of traction recently and boy do they hate it (see here, here, here, and here). I also do not like over-generalizations but as an historian working with generalizations really comes with the territory. It is simply impossible to describe individual or even small groups of an entire generation without using them, finding common traits that to a greater or lessor extent characterize the larger group. Especially not within the constraints of a medium like blogging. That said, the ground rule here is: if an individual boomer is among the 63 million republicans who voted for Trump, or one of the 14 million Limbaugh listeners then my generalizations about boomers hold; if you were born between 1946 and 1964 but have not aligned with these two monsters and have tried to understand science, the harsh reality for many younger Americans, and the simple fact that you don't know everything but want to continue to learn then the generalizations do not apply.

I can also state with some confidence that narcissistic assholes like Limbaugh and Trump have probably existed in every generational cohort since the founding of Jamestown. But like so many things about the boomers, the size of that cohort has allowed more of every personality type to influence the larger society. Just as more do gooders during the Civil Rights Movement, black and white, allowed for change and improvement over the very strong objections of the elders. But what happened after that? A lot. What happened to those do gooders since the 1960s and how did so many boomers fall under Rush Limbaugh's spell? From the perspective of a younger person like myself, the majority of boomers had this small span of youthful activism and a far longer stretch of greed, self-indulgence, nihilism, authoritarianism, decadence, narcissism, and gullibility. There had to be some measure of gullibility, Limbaugh isn't that smart, charismatic, or persuasive to win over such a huge audience. Historians, linguists, sociologists, and concerned citizens will be studying why so many boomers embraced fascism... long before Donald Trump ever announced he wanted to sully the office of President with his doughy ass.

So this, then, is the real reason why I no longer reflexively "respect my elders". I cannot put my finger on exactly when first I realized that a boomer who was lecturing me on something I was "too young and stupid" to understand was completely full of shit. But I started noticing it more and more, especially after each "adult" milestone. You could always tell when a lecture was coming and that the precious advice they were offering was almost never solicited or welcome. Usually the unqualified ranting came when you were in a situation that made it difficult or awkward to extricate one's self from, like the dinner table or in a car. That combination of helplessness and entrapment in their victims must give these "conservative" boomers a real feeling of power. The same power that Limbaugh exercises over them.

Watching the porn model, mail order trophy bride of a wannabe gangster pin the presidential medal of freedom around the neck of a bully really hits it home how much this cult leader has degenerated the nation. That medal is now just a trinket to all the worthy beneficiaries that came before. Throw the outdated axiom of respecting our elders out the window, respect must be earned. Never again assume that someone has wisdom and should be deferred to because they are older. This generation of baby boomer conservatives, led by Limbaugh and Trump, never again get the benefit of the doubt. Never again do any of us have to take criticisms from boomers seriously when they sound like the hollow spouting of Limbaugh.

Dittohead

H/T to Driftglass for combining the monster with the rock band so well

Not to date myself but this song was my first exposure to Rush Limbaugh's thinking. I was a little too young to understand irony and satire at the time despite being a fan of George Carlin and Monty Python. In a way, interpreting the lyrics the way I did is decent evidence that intelligent people can fall victim to authoritarian propaganda. I was basically scared that this was prophetic, that violent criminals would overrun the country and the cops would not be able to stop it. I guess even today, well-meaning people get it wrong. This song is not meant to be taken literally, it is satirizing what came out of Limbaugh's mouth a couple of hours a day about the criminal justice system and how his dittohead followers interpreted the news. Yes, there was a crime wave that peaked in the early nineties and TV news sensationalized travesties of justice so that the impression of many Americans was that crime was out-of-control well beyond the great downward trajectory of violent crime rates. Limbaugh got mileage out of this frame for decades, doughfacedonny's inaugural speech about American Carnage directly parrots the story sold to credulous white, rural boomers by Limbaugh and the right wing noise machine for a long time.

   

Men die all the time, but the evil they do can have an impact long after they go to hell. Limbaugh may not have been that relevant in the age of doughfacedonny's fascism but he honed and programmed an entire generation of right-wing authoritarian followers to the point that they reflexively spout his rhetoric, loudly, at every opportunity. I can only hope that a tiny fraction of the suffering Limbaugh's venom has caused our society, our democracy, the idea of America and a more perfect union is revisited upon it's opportunistic progenitor during his cancer treatment. To use a tried and true Limbaugh tactic of inoculation, I know I should not speak ill of other people when they are suffering. But why not? Dittoheads cheered when Ted Kennedy died, they used 9/11 as a cudgel to attack and demean anyone who dared question republicans, increasingly irrelevant Ann Coulter tried to capture some Limbaugh magic by saying 9/11 widows were self-obsessed millionaires and "enjoying their husbands' deaths" because it made them celebrities, Limbaugh has a long list of racist remarks on the air and laughed after calling President Clinton's daughter a dog. Why would anyone expect you to treat someone with respect if that individual spent a career gleefully shredding that very concept. When they go low, you should stomp on them. Being above that is why 63 million dittoheads supported the chief dittohead for president and have suffered no repercussions for it.

Rush Limbaugh is the epitome of every rotten baby boomer characteristic there is. Draft-dodger, college dropout, drug addict, lazy, opinionated while knowing nothing, and bully are a few descriptors for these boomers. They abused the system their parents and grandparents fought and suffered to build, took no responsibility for their poor choices because that system always bailed them out, were never stimulated or forced to learn more but always acted like an authority on every subject, and now have been busy ripping up that system to enrich themselves while consigning their children and grandchildren to a hot, chaotic, and impoverished future. Limbaugh was a failure in broadcasting until events aligned in such a way that he could take advantage of those vices to reap untold wealth and power by lying and flattering the prejudices of people just like him. If AM radio had not reinvented itself as a profitable propaganda machine that could fly under the radar of the rest of society, Limbaugh would be suffering late stage cancer in obscurity and may have garnered some sympathy. Doughfacedonny would still be a bridge and tunnel guy if Limbaugh hadn't made millions priming the rubes to hate their country, democracy, and the rule of law.

And that my friends is telling it like it is.