Conor Friedersdorf Needs More Subversive Monuments

A statue to The Civil Rights Struggle in Birmingham, Alabama - clearly showing American whites playing a leading role in the over-100-year fight for equality in this country - because they cared so much, about the meaning of the constitution, before uneducated blacks even knew to start marching.

No, yes, no - here's your cultural proof right here - there's been no Nazi tendencies roiling through our history (Rolls Eyes) and no Apartheid, and never has been. Black American life has just been a darker-skinned version of Leave It To Beaver and, if we still can't get ahead with that, it's been our own fault. We should've packed treats for the dogs. Boy-howdy.

Oops - it's in my brain now

TMR's liking the way Conor's New American Vision's shaping up:

"The J. Edgar Hoover Building could feature a statue of its namesake trying to foist a suicide note and a gun into the hands of Martin Luther King."

Not exactly DEVO but we'll take it

It'll confuse the liberals-are-the-cause-of-black's-problems types for a while (Hoover was a liberal?) but - like their racism - that, too, will pass,...

I'm Out: What It All Means Is Now Left For U To Decide

Jonah Goldberg blew big chunks a few days ago. Conor Friedersdorf finger wags today. 

Might be related.

And I found 12 Years A Slave online for free. 

Completely unrelated - maybe.

 

Taking To The Streets (Only To Discover You're Toast)

"What I think, when I see that memorial closures are the thing that gets conservatives in the streets, is that movement leaders and rank-and-file activists alike cannot be counted on to identify and take on the most serious issues facing veterans, or the most serious threats to liberty. Instead they spend their time seizing on symbolic issues that promise to result in the best optics for a given news cycle—World War II veterans traveled to Washington and can't visit the memorial dedicated to them! Think what victory would mean in this instance: The barricades would come down, which will happen anyway as soon as the government reopens. In other words, there's no substantive upside for this particular rally, whether you're concerned about benefitting veterans or safeguarding liberty. It was held so that Cruz and Palin could aggrandize themselves, so that conservatives could revel in their self-image as liberty loving patriots who honor veterans, and so that the Obama Administration would look bad. Protests are nothing more than political theater for these people. Or if they actually intend to effect change, their strategy verges on nonsensical."

I Got Too Much Milk In My Tea So I'm Throwing It Away

Conor Friedersdorf - the man with the last name that would've kept me up at night as a kid, wondering if somebody was fucking with me - was another who famously couldn't stomach Mitt Romney enough to vote for him, and now sees the "phony affect" of Ted Cruz. 

That makes us The Rational Two again, Tea Party Giant Killers.

Mind you, we're a dynamic duo who don't kill actual Tea Party giants.

Rick Santelli's still safe with us. 

Just little Teas the even littler shitstains over-inflate until they look like Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons. 

A couple of pin-pricks before the fun begins and whadda ya got? 

Not exactly a fun-filled Election Day with the family, that's for sure.

But that's alright because, let's face it - unless he's being shot out of a cannon - who wants to hang out with a "family" excited by Ted Cruz flying overhead? 

Their entire race-obsessed hispanic focus has been the stuff of nightmares.

Conor's been mentioning the solipsism, and racism, inherent in the "win by losing" strategy, as it's performed by that comedy duo, Rush & Reynolds. 

I would've preferred they "blacken up" before beginning the minstrel show but, looking at the audience in their robes and hoods, I can see why that wasn't gonna fly. 

Their crowd's so anti-black, even make-up ain't politically incorrect enough. 

Conor and I can't really be bothered with 'em no more, only posing for family photos if there's an opportunity to stand faaaar to the side, and then get out of there right after the flash finishes fucking with our eyes. 

Rush, at least, admits he understands why:

We got one factor here that nobody knows how to deal with, and that's race, the race of the president. That's what's got everybody stymied and shut down on our side.  That's what's got 'em palpably afraid to say or do anything. 

And if that's their problem - I repeat: their problem - that's fine by me. 

See, I know I'm not a "real" conservative - I've thought about it, and I know what I am - I'm a Republican. 

I've always openly had sympathy for Speaker Boehner, having to deal with having new nutjobs in Congress, just as, I think, any Republican would also see what we have to endure outside of Congress. 

And it's no secret I've also always been sweet on Chris Christie and George W. for quite some time. 

I'm not like them. 

And I don't want to be.

I've chronicled both the Left and Right, making clear everyone understands this airy talk of "principles," and even the more substantive language of the debt ceiling, are really Tea Party euphemisms for "Is this a good day to die?" 

But, um - as a member of The Republican Party - dying was never going to be an option for me. 

For starters, black people - the folks the party freed - we don't think like that, because it's not survival.

   

 If you don't understand a desire to live, and come to me, I don't know what I'd tell you, poor thing, except you probably gotta go. 

Since the the Tea's entrenched themselves in statehouses throughout the nation, it's going to be necessary for Republicans to "drain the swamp," but - as far as our immediate situation - it's best to remind them how ugly and unpatriotic suicidal posturing is, so they might as well get on with it, and the sooner the better. 

That'll save us some work later.

Plus, it'll finally validate their creation in such a real and lasting way, even most wannabe ernest morons will understand - despite not being able to share in the rewards.

If you think about it, they've only ever really done it one other time since 2010.

Actually providing a noble service to the country,...

 

There Might Be Another Tea Party Brewing (Below,...)

 

 Wow - except for on this blog - I have rarely seen our current culture summed up as well as the other guy, who bailed on Mitt, has done here:

"Vapid, paranoid, philosophically incoherent nonsense."

I have got to get this guy on speed dial,...

 

"May The Best Man Win" (Only In Your Lucid Dreams,...)

Republicans weren't beaten only by arithmetic this time. 

They lost through willful blindness.

-- Sandy Banks (great name) echoing my thoughts throughout the last year, in an aptly-titled column, "Reality crashes the Republican Party"

Despite all the public recriminations, I see no sign the Right has learned anything. Instapundit is still ideologically rolling along, as though nothing significant happened, and Ann Althouse is still in full-on conspiracy theory mode, about Benghazi - let nutjobs ring. Straight from the horse's mouth:

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I think chasing conspiracies are counterproductive. But I know our side, and where this is going to lead. The calls that this is all part of the cover-up, that Petraeus didn’t really cheat on his wife, this was all a calculated way of driving him out in order to keep him from making Obama look bad, all the nefarious reasons why this happened now and in this way, are going to spin this story in a very unhealthy direction. And that will be tragic. 

What happened in Benghazi is not, and should not be able to be turned into the equivalence of birtherism and trutherism.

May The Force be with you. 

First, you've got to convince these insulated and well-paid losers they're wrong - which, as we've just seen, even a devastating loss can't do. 

So good luck with that!

How wrong were they? 

Hot Air's "witchcraft" polling coverage speaks volumes about the Right's whole enterprise:

The one thing that is no longer in question is that we need to stop trying to read sinister motives into the professional pollsters and poll analysts and see what might be gained from the product that they’re putting out there. And since we’re on the subject of bad news, it’s also worth asking.. which pollsters were the most accurate, though most of them did pretty well? It was PPP. Gallup and Rasmussen – who we quote here frequently – came in tied for 24th.

Ouch! Gallup and Rasmussen were the polls Ann Althouse threw out most often as well. Sigh. It's so sad to see your friends lose it - and acting so superior as they do so. (I wonder if Ann will be doing any defiantly "fun" posts, now that the premature party's over?) It's just - well, Mark Levin said it, but, if you ask me, he didn't cast his net far enough:

“You know, I’ve always known this but I’m coming to the conclusion yet again, that Republican leaders are really stupid people. And I’m coming to the conclusion that there are an awful lot of stupid people posing as commentators on cable TV,…What a bunch of self-defeating morons.”

"Self-defeating morons." Leave it to Mark Levin, another Bugs Bunny to mediocrity, to give it to 'em rough. Is there a black one out there? On the conservative side? Could there be?

Could that even be allowed?

I remember folks repeatedly saying "Be Humble" in the face of the facts they were "willfully" ignoring, as though their control over online word choice (and that's all it is) is more important than the facts themselves. Nice dodge, and very NewAge behavior. ("Be Humble"? What is this, an ashram?)

They never had to deal with being wrong as long as other's behavior modification was the issue. 

Walk away. They didn't care. They're wrong, but they're together.

And now, their world is sliding out of their control.

Conor Friedersdorf nails the problem as well:

Musing on Mitt Romney's loss, Jonah Goldberg makes several sensible points and one assertion that bears examining. "I have a different view from some about the coming wave of recriminations: I welcome it. I don't know that things need to be vicious or personal, but they do need to be honest," he writes. "This is one of the great and abiding strengths of the conservative movement and the thing I love about it most. Contrary to the conventional wisdom among liberals, conservatives are actually far more willing to examine their dogma and their first principles than liberals or 'centrists' are. This has been the source of conservatism's lasting strength." 

It's something I've heard him say before. 

My experience is different, Jonah, but let's not debate. Instead, help those of us unfamiliar with these vibrant conversation to find them. If these self-examinations of principle and dogma are a strength of the conservative movement, point us to five examples that are worthy of a wider audience.

When you consider, just the number of blogs out there, somebody's still fooling themselves. The fact is, these guys don't want to deal with anybody who's not like them, and yes - whether racial or not - that can get "vicious or personal." This is, for all intents and purposes, a family argument.

It's been treated, instead, as a mob scene.

Another, more personal, example. 

Gawker has lucid dreamer and  NewAge Assassin Jared Lee Loughner's "dream logs"
and here's one of them:

Now, looking at that - and remembering all the online speculation at the time, "looking for answers in/arguing politics" - is there any wonder why I would write of Reynolds & Co. "Today's Intellectual Class Couldn't Catch A Cold"? And this was a prime example of letting Obama exploit an issue (Oh man, the shit was flying fast and furious then!) because the Right refused to see what was in front of their eyes - and ripe for the picking.

But how could they know? I still read people, to this day, who - understanding the shooting of Gabby Gifford wasn't just (or even mostly) political - say Laughner's merely "a crazy man."

They're right, but they, too, have succumbed to the same madness. (You must look at that link.)

That's the hard one to take - unless, of course, you're sitting on Oprah's couch.
Funny how that works. Tell me:

What's the difference between the trade-off Loughner was making, with his values, and what just occurred between the Right and Romney?

Very little that I can see.

But then, unlike them, I'm in what Ann Althouse called the "ugly" business of getting it right,...