It’s true that technology made blogging and citizen journalism possible, but it was the media’s tendency at the turn of the century to report outrageous lies without identifying them as lies that caused the emergence of a progressive blogosphere. When millions of people who had been impotently shouting at their televisions found a way to talk to each other online, a new force in American politics was born. I was there in Las Vegas from June 8th to June 11th, 2006, when we met each other in person for the first time at the inaugural Yearly Kos (now Netroots Nation) Convention. It was exhilarating and restorative.
My, how things have changed. That the present administration lies is no longer disputed by the media nor does it go unreported. In fact, the topic is beginning to crowd out all other reporting about everything else that goes on in the country and the world. This actually presents a challenge for a guy like me, because I used to have an obvious angle on nearly every new article on a Republican presidency, which was that the reporters didn’t fully explain how much bullshit we were being subjected to and that the result was to allow people to take seriously what should be dismissed out of hand.
If I do that today, it’s pretty much redundant, because the reporters are doing a fine job most of the time in debunking every utterance of the president and his surrogates. That something is seriously wrong is no longer doubted, even among a growing number of Republican lawmakers and their aides.
For example, observing the Trump administration’s behavior this week, a senior Republican Senate aide was just quoted saying, “It has to stop … never seen anything like this in my entire career.” Asked how the Republicans in Congress are feeling, a top House leadership source said, “Lot of anxiety, don’t know next shoe to drop.”
After the first generation of progressive bloggers met in person in 2006, we felt like we had a purpose and we could change the world. After the excellent outcome of the 2006 midterms, we were even more optimistic, and following that up by electing the first black president gave us the sense that we were on the crest of a giant wave.
Before long, we began to splinter and whatever progress we made as a country during the Obama years (and it was substantial), it’s now obvious that the right wing spent all that time devolving. The result is that things are immeasurably worse for the country under the present Republican leadership than they were under the previous leadership, and that’s something that was almost unimaginable on Inauguration Day in 2009.
We can’t fix this house by shoring up just one side of it. There has to be a movement on the right to take back some semblance of sanity and decency. They won’t take this old progressive blogger’s advice, but I have some stories to tell if they want to listen.
By itself no. But just as bloggers kept everyone’s sanity during Bush now the MSM has discovered that investigating and fact checking and calling him a liar makes them money, big time.
So, maybe the Left can’t fix Trump or the Right but with the MSM’s stumbling along help we have a better shot at turning the tide than we did 6 months ago.
The right HAS devolved, devolved beyond all reason. And we thought it couldn’t get any worse.
You cannot reason with the unreasonable. The entire right reminds me of a cornered, rabid dog. Even worse, much of the dysfunction is of their own making. Consider of late the tendency by the Right to cast Liberals as racist, when they are calling out the Right for their racism…
These words apply today as much as they did over a century and a half ago:
I’m forced to agree. The extreme right has become a malignant cancer on our our society and we have no real alternative to meeting them head-on and defeating them. It is not obvious that is possible, but the right has cut all ties to rationality and decency. There’s now way back for them.
Lincoln was brilliant; the one and only Republican President of transcendant leadership and anathema to the modern GOP.
But the Democrat (sic) Party supported slavery!
It’s really too bad modern GOP won’t take a dirty librul’s advice. But if they aren’t going to take Lincoln’s advice, they aren’t going to take anyone’s.
Mainstream media is doing a passable job of mentioning Trump’s blatant lies – largely, IMO, because they’re often so ludicrous they can’t keep a straight face. But the reality distortion field around policy is very much intact. We’re still subjected to endless propaganda lies about tax cuts generating growth, safety net programs being unsustainable, exaggerated threats from Islamicist terrorism, and many more. We also hear next to nothing about corporate corruption and the brutality of most US military interventions. We all know the massive opioid epidemic derives from a deliberate program from pharmaceutical comporations to sell highly addictive drugs knowing full well they’d kill a lot of people. How often do you hear that on TV?
Absolutely 100% spot on…
“…never seen anything like this in my entire career.”
It really needs to start by calling out this horseshit. McConnell lies just as much as Trump does. Until the media starts calling out the entire GOP platform as BS I don’t see much changing.
A movement on the right to bring sanity and reality-based ideas back into the fold isn’t going to occur until their asses get handed to them at least once (and possibly several times). It’s my hope that the tragedy that is politics today will keep the left banded together in common cause because we cannot afford to fracture. No more bullshit sitting out elections. No more circular firing squads.
I’m still pissed at a bunch of my friends who bitched and moaned when Bernie didn’t get the nomination and then didn’t bother to vote. Right after the election they bitched and moaned about the reality of Trump in the White House. To which I replied, “I’m freaked out too and THAT’S WHY I KEPT BEGGING YOU TO SUPPORT HILLARY! (imperfect though she clearly was).”
When Kos first arrived on the scene, his focus was clear. We would strive to nominate better Democrats and then once the election rolled around we would strive to elect whomever got the nomination (at all levels). We need to do that again. We need the maturity to recognize that any Democrat is better than any Republican because the GOP has devolved into the party of sociopathy writ large. They are a danger to democracy, a danger to each of us, and a danger to the entire world. Too much is at stake to pout and bitch when we don’t get a candidate who matches our ideals. We’ve got to be mature enough to select the best among remaining options and work hard to get that person elected.
The right has devolved, they are no longer conservative . Any yet they keep winning, at the local, state and national levels. Why should they change anything? They will only change when the left can beat them. And maybe not even then, judging by the Obama years…
Very simply, Democratic candidates at all levels, or at least at state government need to point out that the GOP is a dangerous party that is not even going to support taxing for basic services much less anything more higher level. And this needs to be hammered home because the average American citizen just doesn’t pay attention.
The right and left are in an intimate and inseparable relationship. In couple’s therapy, we learn that we can’t change the other person, even when they desperately need to change. We can only change ourselves. This is why some bloggers (and even commenters) sound like purity rainbow unicorns who want to seize the means of production, always focusing their desire-for-change on their own side. Not because the other side isn’t far, far, far–far!–more flawed. But because it’s the only side they even in theory can change.
(Your parenthetical tells a whole story.)
The right is unhinged and possibly irredeemable. This is undeniable.
The left has moved rightward for decades, which in a two-party system acted to encourage the other party to seek separation by moving farther in the same direction. We are the party of strong-military, law-and-order, welfare-reform, Wall Street bailout, Kissinger-acceptance, and single-payer-is-a-childish dream. Even if those things are all good and true, when we claim them as our own, the other party naturally takes contrasting views. (Well, except with Kissinger. We all embrace him.)
All that is politics. What is wrong with the right is their apparent acceptance of Russian money influencing our election. Three top advisers left because they were paid by the Russians for services rendered. Where did the money that was laundered thru the casino in Atlantic City go? Oh and who are these people, named Smith with addresses of vacant lots, who donated millions to the inauguration.
Sorry off subject, but, where are the donald’s children and the inlaws? The seem to have been disappeared.
I remember a Senate Democratic caucus with John Stennis and James Eastland in it, sitting next to Ted Kennedy and Walter Mondale.
Since then, obviously it has moved rightward.
I mean, we were able to repeal Taft Hartley under Carter — we could ever do that today….
The belief, flying in the face of reality, that the Democratic party has been moving continually to the right is fundamental to the purity pony left. The fact that the party has moved decisively to the left over the last decade plus must never be acknowledged.
Purity ponies, unicorns, pixie dust, and rainbows for all! Now there is a winning platform!
As I’ve mentioned before, I have several friends on Facebook who are solid Trump and right wing screw balls. We’ve gotten in many arguments over this last election. I have tried my level best to make common cause and agreement with them. It simply does not work. I sometimes think it just makes it worse. Thankfully over the past month or more they are not posting. A relief for me and others. But I do not believe that anything has really changed.
Anyhow, small as my sample is, this leads me to believe there is no commonality with them. I have no idea how any of this gets resolved. But I cringe every time some democrat talks like maybe they can all get along. They can’t, not yet anyway. I mean how can you agree on anything with someone like Trump as President, a guy who lies with every breath and now has entered into the land of obstruction of justice with the Comey firing and threat. And here is the next thought. Would Pence be any better?
So yep, we can’t fix what is wrong with the rights brain.
Either we view it as the final, desperate grasp of a (literally) dying demographic which history will leave in the dust…or we view it as the Roman-Empire turning point where the inevitable and irreversible rot and collapse — and fall from grace, power, and dignity — begin in earnest. I don’t see any third choice.
The world is moving forward into greater stages of enlightenment and progress. Whether the United States is an engine on that process or a brake is what’s being determined right now (and, probably has already been determined; we’re just waiting for the biopsy results).
I like your comments on other platforms, e.g. Rectification. But I would like to point out as a professional environmental guy, there has already been a shift to the state and city level in the U.S. in, e.g. climate change adaptation and mitigation and there is a lot of community and NGO activity in this area as well. Basically, they’re saying: yes, the GOP and Trump will paralyze the federal government but lower levels of government will do whatever can be done. Is this enough? No. But the Trumpists and the GOP Congress represent only a small minority of citizens and the same is true of family planning and LGBTQ issues.
John Cole nailed this problem back in 2009, and it has only gotten worse since. John wrote: “I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.”
https:/www.balloon-juice.com/2009/02/05/youll-never-get-this-21-minutes-of-your-life-back
One of many reasons I love Balloon Juice.
There is a real danger that all of America is written off as a screwball nation during the lifetime of the current administration, and that the rest of the world won’t make any fine distinctions between the American left and right especially when so many on the left seek to find common ground with the right.
The USA may still be the overwhelming military power but its dominance of the world economy and ideological pre-eminence is fading. It can no longer count on help from its NATO allies if it goes on another military adventure and if it abrogates trade treaties no one will be in a rush to cut deals on other issues or do business with US corporations.
Trumps meddling in Brexit will lose it all friends outside a narrow band of neo-fascists in the UK and eastern Europe. The EU, China, India, Russia and increasingly Latin America have no time for and no need of US “help” and will increasingly plough their own furrows.
The bottom line is that you deal with the devil at your own peril. If the US left wants to preserve some modicum of legitimacy and influence in the world it had better not be doing any deals with Trump.
this is the kind of issue that can lead to bloodshed
Back in 2000, in another forum, we discussed it was obvious the GOP was dead. It has morphed into a particular version of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Endorsing and enforcing policies which did not affect its leadership nor sponsors; but promoting those policies to the public at large through Big Lie propaganda. That it succeeded is based on the cowardice and profit motive of large media corporations.
If you want to look for the source of our current troubles and the complete moral/intellectual bankruptcy of the GOP, I place it on Newt Gingrich. His raw pursuit of power, to the detriment of all else, was the model which they have followed for a generation. One tool was the "word list" he promoted which called opponents not " respected colleagues who are wrong"; but "traitors, radical, corrupt", and so much more.
A whole generation of Republican politicians and voters have heard this drummed into their heads.
So is it any wonder that they are unwilling to compromise? That they would respect an opposing view? How do you compromise with Evil? You can’t.
So the only logical path is the destruction of the GOP. Deny its legitimacy. Refuse to give it any. Don’t participate in forums. Don’t acknowledge them but in the most cursory way. Laugh off any proposal as coming from infants and lunatics. End every speech like Cato the Elder, "The Republican Party must be destroyed."
After all, they have given us Donald Trump. A man who any legitimate political organization would have tossed aside in a second. However, they went along because Power is Everything; the Nation, nothing.
But above all, push repeatedly for another Center-Right Party that will respectfully share the burden of governing and advancing the United States. Repeatedly ask the electorate, "How can they be trusted after this?" They can’t.
Ridge
. . . “word list”: Read it if you haven’t (and a review even if you have is never unwarranted):
Language: A Key Mechanism of Control
Newt Gingrich’s 1996 GOPAC memo
Note “liberal” sandwiched in there right between “intolerant” and “lie” among
To be “contrasted”, of course, with Newtie’s other list of
You’re absolutely right about its import, and that GOPers have slavishly followed Newtie’s script ever since. (To the point that many of them seem no longer to do so just out of cynical political expediency; rather they’ve by now internalized the demonization of their opposition as their own dogmatic “Reality” — “scare quotes” obligatory — immune to correction/revision by the facts comprising Reality.)
I’ve previously recommended that memo, coupled with *Suskind’s “Reality-Based Community” anecdote, as comprising the Rosetta Stone for translating what’s so very broken about our politics/public discourse, who deliberately broke it, and to what purpose.
*
## (universally assumed to have been Rove, though I’ve never seen bulletproof confirmation of that)
I’ve always found Newt to be a completely despicable human being; beginning with his rise from the back benches. Comments after a Friendly Fire shoot down over Iraq during the beginning of Clinton Admin sticks in my mind. Later finding out how he treated his first (2nd?) wife just cemented the impression.
I also think we have to look at another aggravating circumstance to frame the descent of the GOP into squalor. The disappearance of the Great Depression/ WWII/Cold War generation. No matter one’s political orientation, they had a ethos of shared purpose and shared responsibility.
Compare Newt to Bob Michels who was Gingrich’s Minority Leader until Newt replaced him. Weathered the Depression as a child, served in the Army during WWII, wounded in combat. Awarded for bravery. Returned in ’46. GI Bill college graduate. Worked staff for a Congressman, then ran himself from Ill. Served for years and recently died. His Chicago Trib obit said, "a congenial lawmaker adept at crafting compromise during a bygone era of bipartisan cooperation". Compromise, congenial..
Newt? Not so much. young father and college student deferments during Vietnam. Then small college professor who was denied tenure. then politics. Macho political talk with no life experiences to back up.
Rise to power using that talk and then constant confrontation. No life experience of shared national purpose, just "I got mine, to hell with everyone else" Republican philosophy promoted by the backroom wealthy of the GOP.
Anyway, I think this lack shared national purpose can also explain the current GOP attitudes, or at least make them susceptible to "psyops" type influence like word list, propaganda, etc….
Ridge
And to add a little playful paranoia to the mix. Newt was in Brussels 6 months in early 70’s as a PHD research student. Who did he meet there? What ideas about psyops were discussed over beers? What compromising things might have been "recorded"? Wonder what his file in The Lubyanka has in it?
Just some idle speculation. It would be irresponsible not to ask.
R
Iinked the Ben Sasse interview on Face the Nation above [twice] so I won’t link again here. anyway, his point – issues he has with T aside, he expresses concern about lack of shared concept of civic life, loss of confidence in institutions as a foundation from which to discuss policy;
Part of this has been the failure of an effective opposing political philosophy from the Democratic Party. Has to be more than "Not GOP" Moving away from roots, Clinton Admin "information age economy" dream talk, fragmenting the electorate into ethnic/social/gender/orientation blocks that require servicing….
If we are going to recover from the disasters of the last election and move forward, we will have to identify those social/political values still shared across ALL America and begin to address them. I don’t think its hard, but will require guts to do it; because it will mean bucking those power centers in the Dem Party that are getting fat off servicing those blocks.
R
I agree. three people/ two incidents I’ve found interesting recently – the bipartisan road trip of Beto O’Rourke dem with Will Hurd (Republican) from El Paso to DC; don’t know if you saw it, but they live streamed their driving (O’Rourke drove, Hurd navigated) a rental car and took call in questions on every topic caller wanted to discuss, the entire two day drive. O’Rourke and Hurd [both oppose the wall, of course] are very very interesting on the strengths of diversity and their area. Ben Sasse I find interesting because he’s interested in the problems todays economy creates for some kind of commonality and shared values. he comes out of a very conservative background (Missouri Synod Lutheran, now Reformed) but trained as historian at Yale and was president of a small liberal arts college where he encountered, and was taken aback by, the brave new world his students face.
I think these guys, all in their early/ mid 40’s are showing the way to engage. Sasse’s been interviewed recently because he’s on judiciary and banking. during the campaign he said he would not vote for T – questioned his commitment to the Constitution, nor for Hillary. anyway, just mentioning b/c I believe in looking for the constructive. btw re: your comment, Gingrich treated both wife 1 and wife 2 very badly
O’Rourke is running against Cruz, but will run against Cornyn if he gets appointed to FBI
and I guess, re: Ridge’s comment, i disagree, Booman, with this post. we all have plenty to work on. dem’s need to work on a constructive opposing political philosophy.
I’m assuming that the current situation is reenergizing some of our 2006 era fellow bloggers. We’ll see.
That would really come in handy. Let’s hope. More important – assuming some rough equivalent of 2006 and 2008 comes to pass – is to avoid fragmenting at the first sign of success. Wish I could say I was optimistic about that.