Per usual, Driftglass hits it right on the head with the "reasonable conservative" columnists, your Bobos and Frums and Gersons and such like. Brooks, despite his current ongoing emotional meltdown, continues to peddle his pablum in both column and book form, platitudinous observations as to the nature of tradition and character and constancy, sweet constancy. (No link to Bobo's book; I will not be your enabler. Use the Google if you must, and vaya con dios with that.)
The trouble with these middle-aged lackeys and their fusty observations is obvious -- aside from the fact that even their words wear black socks and flip-flops, they collude to present a sensible face on what has become a lurching, shambling, mauling creature of destruction. The idea that, as Driftglass point out, an experienced hack like Frum can (presumably with a straight face) assert that the "liberal left" lead the United States shows that either Frum is a smoother liar than he lets on, or the spectrum shifted tectonically without him -- again, a career professional in peddling this nonsense -- even noticing. Surely the ripples in his empty backyard swimming pool must have hinted at something.
Our collective political perspective has shifted drastically, to the point that Democrats are conservatives and Republicans are authoritarians, and any true liberals remaining are sure to be harangued into voting for Hillary, as early and often as possible. It has taken place in perfect coordination, coincidental or not, with the rise of the permanent campaign and its ancillary industries, with the rise in the money machine behind it.
It never stops anymore, will never stop anymore until public campaign financing takes precedence in some meaningful way (which will never happen). There's just too much money in the machine for the industry players to walk away from; we can blame the Koch brothers and their assorted parasites and dogsbodies, but the fact of the matter is that all that filthy pelf is going into someone's pocket, mostly into the maw of the multi-armed PR monster.
And so your reasonable middle-aged male columnists, their verbal libidos flagging in accord with their physical ones, engage in a different, more financially rewarding type of sexual congress -- weekly attempting to slather a sensible face on a party that now routinely engages in the utterly indefensible. That such diehard, shameless intellectual fraud has not only been elevated, but become an institution in "mainstream" discourse, shows how far we continue to fall.
The trouble with these middle-aged lackeys and their fusty observations is obvious -- aside from the fact that even their words wear black socks and flip-flops, they collude to present a sensible face on what has become a lurching, shambling, mauling creature of destruction. The idea that, as Driftglass point out, an experienced hack like Frum can (presumably with a straight face) assert that the "liberal left" lead the United States shows that either Frum is a smoother liar than he lets on, or the spectrum shifted tectonically without him -- again, a career professional in peddling this nonsense -- even noticing. Surely the ripples in his empty backyard swimming pool must have hinted at something.
Our collective political perspective has shifted drastically, to the point that Democrats are conservatives and Republicans are authoritarians, and any true liberals remaining are sure to be harangued into voting for Hillary, as early and often as possible. It has taken place in perfect coordination, coincidental or not, with the rise of the permanent campaign and its ancillary industries, with the rise in the money machine behind it.
It never stops anymore, will never stop anymore until public campaign financing takes precedence in some meaningful way (which will never happen). There's just too much money in the machine for the industry players to walk away from; we can blame the Koch brothers and their assorted parasites and dogsbodies, but the fact of the matter is that all that filthy pelf is going into someone's pocket, mostly into the maw of the multi-armed PR monster.
And so your reasonable middle-aged male columnists, their verbal libidos flagging in accord with their physical ones, engage in a different, more financially rewarding type of sexual congress -- weekly attempting to slather a sensible face on a party that now routinely engages in the utterly indefensible. That such diehard, shameless intellectual fraud has not only been elevated, but become an institution in "mainstream" discourse, shows how far we continue to fall.
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