I like Andrew Sullivan, but his infinite credulity on certain subjects tends to over shadow his good work on others. His over-the-top support for the Iraq war and the general neo-con con about ‘regime change’ by force of arms was one example. Over time, reality seeped into his world view and he changed his mind. His game plan for ending DADT was another example. Sully’s ability to change his mind is what makes him interesting. His weakness to naively embrace certain tactics and ideas as the only possible course of action–regardless of facts and reality–is what makes him tiresome.
His latest infatuation–that the only way to be serious about deficits is to put the hurt on the middle class and the poor–is a fresh example of his credulity and his bias for an idealized patrician class. John, E.D., and many others (here and elsewhere) have written about Sully’s embrace of the growing fad to scream ‘DEBT CRISIS’ to justify transferring wealth to a few while passing along the pain to the many. The Thatcherite appeal of this kind of wealth redistribution appeals to Sullivan’s credulity weakness in the same way that Thatcherite appeals to Empire led him to naively support the invasion of Iraq.
The truth about Sully’s idealizes elites is that they are always fighting a class war against workers, the middle class and the poor. Theft of labor is how they get rich and keep their wealth. In the 1930s these elites were dealt a setback. The theft of labor became harder and so did hiding the cost of goods though environmental destruction and harm to consumers. But in the last 80 years they have clawed back and now are on the verge of erasing all the gains of the last four score years. The goal to push America back to the 19th Century is in view and Sully wants to help. Like a bearded Marie Antoinette, sully’s response to the pain this wealth transfer will cause is an updated “Let them eat cake” or as he puts it: “But Cutting Spending Will Hurt People!”.
In the 1930’s “The Ruling Clawss” was a series of cartoons that New Yorker cartoonist Syd Hoff published in the Daily Worker under the pen name A. Redfield. As the Daily Worker was Communist paper we must take a moment to condemn Stalin and broccoli, but with that disclaimer done the work of A. Redfield could easily be used to frame today’s Ruling Clawss and their attack on the rest of America.
I’ve included a couple of these cartoons for Sully and all the other defenders of a new Gilded Age. This call to transfer wealth up and pain down is not a way to be serious about debt and it is weak thinking to pretend that it is.
I look forward to the day when Sully realizes he is wrong on this latest infatuation (which is almost certain to come) and I hope this change comes soon and not like with the Iraq War–after it was too late to stop the damage. Time will tell.
Cheers
NobodySpecial
His ability to lie with great facility is a wonderful tool for making people think he’s changed his mind, as well.
chopper
all sully’s history really tells me is that he has no real deep seated political or moral compass based on anything more than naive emotion and black-and-white thinking, and no ability at all to sympathize with anyone. he’s a classic narcissist.
ben
The snake oil the right has been selling in various forms all comes down to one thing: that the interplay between the government and the private sector is a zero-sum game.
If you believe the zero-sum principle (or act like you believe it), then there is no other solution for a deficit than to cut, cut, and cut some more. For these people, if they think of the revenue side of the equation at all, they see it as utterly constrained and inflexible.
Corner Stone
God damn it. Fuck you Dennis for another one of these worthless motherfucking posts.
pk
Why does every post about Andrew Sullivan start with “I like Sullivan but….”. I think you guys are trying too hard to like him.
kdaug
Think this just about nails it. Though, I would add, he skews hyperbolic in whatever trajectory.
I suspect he’ll come around, and if/when he does, he’ll be the most bad-assed mutherfuxin populist around, and we’ll all be back to singing his praises.
Prediction: Catalyst will be the impending elimination of his August vacations in the Hamptons (or wherever, not going to look it up).
PurpleGirl
Thanks for the link to Syd Hoff’s cartoons. They are still very relevant to the mind set of the uber rich. The cartoon of the CEO speaking to the workers about he works so much/so hard (“we who turn the wheels of industry”) really hits the spot. The banksters who talk about going Galt might find out just how needed they aren’t if they really did go Galt. After all, it wasn’t the company head who drove the spikes to build the railroad tracks but thousands of Irish and Chinese workers (among others, but these of the two groups I can think of right now).
A Commenter at Balloon Juice (formerlyThe Grand Panjandrum)
In the linked Sullivan piece he quotes McArdle. Game over, Andrew. You can’t quote a know nothing like McArdle as part of your response and expect us to take you seriously, can you?
Arclite
Great point about Sully, Dennis.
@pk:
Sullivan is complicated. There is lots to like in his blog, but sometimes he inexplicably goes off the reservation.
Judas Escargot
Irony Alert: I have a “Date the Wealthy” ad showing right next to this comment box.
Nick L
@pk:
Sully’s generally pretty good at calling out bullshit when he sees it – being right 75% of the time is a pretty good record, even if he’s disastrously wrong the other 25%.
More substantively, his ruminations on conservatism are genuinely interesting, informative, and fresh, while managing to avoid the irritating presumptuousness of Friedersdorf and the Reasonites. His conservative case for gay marriage was highly influential among powerful conservatives such as Ted Olson, and unites a branch of conservatism behind gay equality.
This isn’t even to mention that The Daily Dish practically defined the modern political blog. Sullivan deserves his admiration, but intelligent people aren’t immune from being total fucking morons.
inkadu
Sigh.
The Balloon Juice side-project of psychoanalyzing Sullivan continues apace. This subject really needs its own tag.
Thanks for the cartoons, though, Dennis. The last twenty years have felt like I’m arguing against people who didn’t study the nineteenth century in history class, and we might as well make the regression of our economy manifest through the New Yorker’s comics archive.
PeakVT
Sully’s ability to change his mind is what makes him interesting.
No. What makes him interesting is that he is a clever (or simply naturally gifted) writer. If you look at his body of work, it’s clear that he’s a menace to the republic.
I don’t know why I don’t just paste this into every Sully thread, instead of typing something new.
David Richey
The Conservative Rules of the Game:
You can be consistently and disastrously (and demonstrably!) wrong and then lie like crosstracks onna rail-line and still wield undue influence on our truly idiotic political discourse. (viz Bill
"Hey-I-lie-for-yer-own-good-cuz-I-care!"
Kristol)Or you can be a conservative like Andrew
Fifth Column
Sullivan who commits all of the errors of omission and commission mentioned above and then change yer mind when reality rudely obtrudes on yer"wouldn't-it-be-pretty-to-think-so!"
world (after it’s too late, mind!) and still get props for being “interesting”.This, to me, illustrates the age-old “stupid or lying” conservative conundrum. (Tho’ it must be allowed that these options are not, in any way, mutually exclusive.)
No, what I find extremely “tiresome” (and, in truth, demoralizing) is that we must patiently contend and re[f]udiate the (oft-bad faith) arguments of transparent charlatans and fools. When yer as wrong as consistently as Bill Kristol (or Sully, for that matter), it is extremely dispiriting to know that any-fucking-one gives a shit what you think, much less allows you to speak in public w/o suffering well-earned scorn, derision and mockery.
It’s like the Special Olympics of sophistry, where being wrong is a fast-track to success. And that’s the world we live in. Amazing.
Mark S.
Sully isn’t complicated. If he weren’t gay, he’d be indistinguishable from George Will.
And he gets way too much credit for opposing torture. Ten years ago, saying you were against torture was about as bold as saying you were against child molestation. It just shows how far we’ve fallen as a nation.
gbear
Could you guys please stop framing all the shit that’s happening right now in terms of how it relates to your view of Sullivan? Jesus fucking christ, you stomped on Kay’s Ohio post for this? It’s way past pathetic. Talk about the real stuff that’s happening instead.
Arclite
@A Commenter at Balloon Juice (formerlyThe Grand Panjandrum):
As part of his terms of employment, he must reference three other Atlantic writers once a day.
freelancer
You’re so Shrill, DG.
anticontrarian
Sullivan is a tool of the parasite class, who only comes to his senses when the damage is done and it’s too late. I personally haven’t been able to take him seriously since his feature in the Atlantic where he urged George W. Bush to apologize for authorizing torture, instead of, oh, I don’t know, urging his prosecution as the war criminal he is.
I don’t doubt he’s quite intelligent. It’s just that when you start from such bad premises (like, for instance, that the deficit is the biggest problem facing America today, and the only way to address it is to keep sticking it to the middle class while leaving the top earners alone), it doesn’t matter how good you are at reasoning from them, you still end up with bad conclusions.
I mean, come on, the man cites Megan McArdle with a straight face.
Xenos
Syd Hoff is great, but the greatest master at skewering the plutocracy was Peter Arno.
That is not even his best, but it has been ages since I have gone through his collected works.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
Sullivan and Brooks are twin sons of different mothers. Each a wise fool infatuated with his own education and the gloss of intellectualism it gives him, and somehow having persuaded others that he’s as smart as he thinks he is. They both live in mental hothouses, socially and economically insulated from the reality of the world they think can and should operate according to their Great Books.
With summer coming, I look forward to Sully blogging about the need for austerity whilst he summers in P-Town.
Violet
Those cartoons are excellent. I was not aware of them. I wonder if someone like Rachel Maddow could use one on her show every day while the WI protests are happening.
eemom
@gbear:
I’d agree with you, but I’m afraid it’s hopeless. This is some serious obsessive shit they got going on here. They need help.
MattF
As Sullivan has said, over and over again, he’s a conservative. One must suppose that he understands what this means, what with a Harvard Ph.D. in Government, and all that. I think that the various people who find glimmers of liberalism or ‘growth’ in his views are kidding themselves.
tomvox1
As far as I’m concerned, all conservatives are assholes and Sully’s no different just because he is pro pot and gay rights. His mancrush on Cameron and the Tories’ severe belt tightening on the backs of the poor and middle class in the UK have led him to openly wish that Obama would morph into an American Cameron. And yet he never seems to get around to suggesting that tax rates on the rich return to Clinton-era levels as a way of “sharing the pain” of debt reduction. Wonder why that is? Oh, right. I forgot my first sentence for a second there. Once an asshole, always an asshole. Goes for the “reasonable” conservatives just the same as the loonies.
Sorry, Sully–until you pull an E.D. Kain, you’re just another masturbatory courtier carrying water for the wealthy. And all the ostentatious concern for global human rights can’t change the fact that you don’t give two shits about the poor and working class in the developed world.
Dream On
Lost interest in Sullivan. He spent way too much obsessive time on what baby may or may not have been in Sarah Palin’s womb. I’ll skip that horror story, and stick with the old Peter Cushing & Christopher Lee.
Xenos
Ok. With all that public acclaim, I will link one more famous Peter Arno cartoon, here.
No accounting for taste, I suppose.
Donut
@pk:
A-FUCKING-MEN.
Give it a rest, front-pagers. The guy is a HACK. He is a repeat-loser-asshole who can’t find the time or wherewithal to create his own material. He is damaging to our discourse in every way possible. I’ve had enough of these posts. I’m done reading them.
Tim
@pk:
I have long thought the same thing. Which is why I remain suspicious of what chummy emails our front pagers exchange with Sully and other bloggers behind the scenes. It smells like there’s an unseen subtext to the BJ Sully-love.
freelancer
We are all Punchy now.
Tim
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist:
With summer coming, I look forward to Sully blogging about the need for austerity whilst he summers in P-Town.
Bingo. But, you know, Sully EARNED his exalted status without help from ANYONE, so he thinks he’s entitled to it.
Of course, we never have heard the true story of how Sully escaped drug crime prosecution for smoking pot on the beach in Provincetown…which would have put the Kabosh on his hoped for U.S. citizenship.
I must admit it would give me giggles to see him shipped off back to England.
Joe Bleau
The moment that I gave up on Sullivan is the moment I realized that pretty much every issue on which he is on the right side is one where he is either a member of the actual cohort that he is defending, or else it is one from which he is so far removed that he himself is never likely to see any adverse consequences of his advocacy. He is a homosexual who advocates GLBT rights – he is pot-smoker who favors legalization – he is a Cafeteria Catholic who rails against the static dogma of the Church Hierarchy, etc. etc.
A real profile in courage, that one.
I am convinced that the only reason that Sully ever found his way to enlightenment on issues such as torture and Sarah Palin is that they make conservatism look bad – they offend his tender sensibilities of how “conservatives” ought to be perceived, and he feels the need to defend the brand because he thinks that he literally wrote the book on True Conservatism.
Citizen Alan
On economic matters, that day will never come. He switched on Iraq because it was incompetently executed, but I don’t think he has ever wavered on the idea that going into Iraq was something we needed to do. With regard to economics, the man won’t even mention the words “rich” or “poor.” It’s all about the “successful” and the “unsuccessful.” And at this point, when he says that, he might as well be saying “human” and “sub-human” as far as I’m concerned.
Andrew Sullivan came to America to help rape it to death, just like his god-queen Maggie Thatcher did to his birth country. His utopia is one in which “successful” people at the top 5% represent a hereditary aristocracy, and the “unsuccessful” people in the bottom 95% are god-damned serfs.
fasteddie9318
Fuck it, just change the name of the blog to “I like Sullivan, but…” The front pagers will save time not having to write wordy exposition to each post when it’s made explicit up front that they’re just dancing to whatever tune Sullivan is playing.
joe from Lowell
What was Sullivan’s about-face on DADT repeal strategy?
HumboldtBlue
Jesus fucking Christ shaving his beard and spending 12 hours fucking a mule, who the fuck cares what Sullivan thinks? Seriously, Doug, you continue to devote blog space to a shitbag who wouldn’t know an ethical position if it slapped him in the face. He writes for the fucking Atlantic, he’s an ass-kissing golem to anyone who has wealth and yet, you seem to think that those of us who go out of our way to avoid reading his shit are just as happy as fucking clams to read what you think about what he writes. What a fucking waste of space, as if Sullivan has any impact on anything other than proving on a daily basis what a shitbag he is.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
I think it’s important to bitch about Sully, and Broder, and Richard Cohen, and David “This isn’t about the fat cats, it’s about people like you and me” Gregory. However influential they are, or aren’t, as individuals, this is what filters down to the low-info but high-turnout voters, people living middle-class but paycheck-to-paycheck who voted Republican in the mid-terms because Obama had “over-reached”, so somehow cutting gov’t spending will improve the economy. And Sully and Broder and Gregory and Joe Klein and Cokie et al really do think they’re just regular folks. It may be a willful self-delusion, but it isn’t any weaker for that.
var
Sullivan is a conservative. In his heart that means that all taxes are bad and money must go to the top 1%. Why is anyone surprised by this?
At their core, they may disagree about teh gays and weed and blowing up this country vs. blowing up that country but they all worship at the church of the top 1%
Judas Escargot
His utopia is one in which “successful” people at the top 5% represent a hereditary aristocracy, and the “unsuccessful” people in the bottom 95% are god-damned serfs.
Close, but he’s a globalist too. Those top 5% would represent a global upper-class, with no real fixed abode. Those 95% would be a pious working class, distributed across the world in various, adorable little parliamentary republics. He either doesn’t realize that this would make the Chinese ‘factory/hive’ model the dominant way of life for most people, or doesn’t particularly care.
I’m basing this opinion on his occasional links to articles on global upper classes and post-humanism/extropianism. I’ve never read anything of his from the 1990s, but (again, based on choice of links) I get the hunch that he must have at least known of/heard of/been exposed to some of the Max More/Transhumanism stuff from that era.
cleek
and … Sully fights back!
it’s on like Donkey Kong.
HumboldtBlue
Sorry, Doug, I meant Dennis.
freelancer
@cleek:
Dude, he’s spinning like McMegan.
Cole’s just too harsh, and he’s sponsored by OIL companies!
Is he intimating that Cole is sick in the head or something? Is that a reference to John’s cat’s anal glands? I’m lost.
A Commenter at Balloon Juice (formerlyThe Grand Panjandrum)
@cleek: Who gets to play Sully in the movie?
Judas Escargot
@freelancer:
But I wish their own sick blogger all the best and hope he recovers soon.
I found myself wondering if that was a dry, dry joke referring to EDK’s recent public ‘conversion’.
freelancer
@A Commenter at Balloon Juice (formerlyThe Grand Panjandrum):
Billy Mitchell.
var
Sully’s response is interesting but it would be useful for him to maybe read Krugman every now and then to find out that means testing for the top 2% of income earners for Social Security only really saves you…2%. Rolling back the tax cuts for everyone over $250,000 is only real money he himself mentions to be raised through taxes.
Allan
Does anyone believe that Sully is so ignorant of how ads come to appear on websites that he honestly believes that BP is an actual sponsor of the site?
No, I didn’t think so…
PS, this blog is now brought to you by ATT UVerse. Until I refresh…
freelancer
@Judas Escargot:
I just figured it out. From the post and the comment that he linked to, he thinks Cole is still recovering from his acute shoulder injury from a year ago.
El Cid
@fasteddie9318: No shit. Personally, I don’t care if Sullivan writes well or happens to coincide with so many others on a few things like “torture is bad”. I guess if you’re into reading right wingers who adopt sane views on this or that issue, well, okay.
Or that it may be a great idea to “liberate” people from tyranny, but the actual likely effects of our government’s actions in the real world matter more than noble fantasy ought weigh more when it counts.
On the plus side, if Sullivan has some sort of notable impact on elite opinion, I’m glad I don’t have to read him for it, and have those who are interested in such things note it for me.
I can see the parallel with McAddled, because this silver-spoon untrained shit-for-brains is considered a valuable pundit on our public radio.
This is one of the biggest reasons why I don’t listen to this show anymore.
At least they have comments on their program page for this.
They like her because she comes from a nice wealthy family and went to a nice wealthy person college, and says things that conservatives and “free market” economists.
Stupidity and falsehoods and inanity don’t bother the hosts.
Keith G
and/or
No. Just no.
When is too far too far? Sullivan makes money advocating policies that hurt people – most often people weaker than himself.
What the fuck is there to like about that? So, he gets criticized and then changes his mind. How many times will you forgive his ever-present attacks on common folk just because he apologises,is witty, or hates torture (after the fact)?
I don’t get it.
PeakVT is right. Sullivan is a menace.
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@inkadu:
Amen.
I think Americans simply tend to be unduly impressed by anyone who is able to wrap their bullshit in an excess of big words and those who have mastered the art of prevaricating about the shrubbery. (In other words, Oxford Union-style crap.)
At least, that’s the only explanation I’ve ever come up with for the continuing popularity of people like Sullivan and Hitchens.
John W.
Andrew Sullivan lives in a world without a decent pop up blocker?
No wonder he’s so cranky.
Barb (formerly Gex)
This change of mind will never happen. Deep down, he believes that his kind are superior. He is as misogynistic as one can get. He was more than willing to accept the premise of the Bell Curve. There are things that he will change his mind on, but the superior deserving Galtian class is not one of them.
Anne Laurie
Thanks for these cartoons, Dennis — I vaguely remember being told that the author of Danny & the Dinosaur was a Commie, but I did not know about his ‘alter ego’!
LT
“I like Andrew Sullivan, but his infinite credulity on certain subjects tends to over shadow his good work on others.”
That’s exactly right. It’s hard to take “fifth column” man seriously in any case, and he keeps adding to over the years. And now he’s al “Oh John Cole was so nasty to me!” Weak.
Joe Bleau
Wow, Andrew. You support certain proposals that make the well off just a little bit less well off, while throwing a pissy little tantrum because the Obama’s budget doesn’t explicitly endorse draconian cuts to the social safety net that would literally push millions of Americans further into crushing poverty.
Gee, I guess we stand corrected. You really do get it!
inkadu
@Barb (formerly Gex): Hey, he’s willing to forgo his $1,000 monthly social security payment so someone else can have their social security payment merely cut in half. Shared sacrifice and all that.
LT
@pk:
Because he has had moments of brilliance. There’s just no denying it. That’s what makes crap like this so weird and disappointing.
schrodinger's cat
@Ozymandias, King of Ants:
My theory, BS sounds so much better when delivered with an English accent
Keith G
@Joe Bleau: You typing that Sullivan endorses “draconian cuts to the social safety net that would literally push millions of Americans further into crushing poverty.” took the words I was trying to formulate and used them to greater effect.
Hear, hear!
Sullivan is sniping at Cole to cover the black-hearted indecency of his own proposals.
inkadu
@Ozymandias, King of Ants: I like Hitchens, because when I agree with him, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s very entertaining and he can skewer opposition like no one else. However, I know he’s a contrarian and a deeply unhappy person. When I disagree with him, however, I don’t have a crisis about it. I’m not fighting for his soul. I realize his limitations and I know he’s beyond anyone’s attempts to influence, and I can probably enjoy the next flak barrage he throws up.
People seem to have a different view of Sullivan, though. I guess there’s something seductive about a gay-rights conservative … like if you could only get him alone, you could convert him all the way. Maybe that explains BJ’s unique obsession with him, as the home of the converted conservative.
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@Ozymandias, King of Ants: @schrodinger’s cat: Yes, and yes.
Triassic Sands
You can like Sully all you want. He’s an ass. His negatives vastly outweigh his positives and what little interest he provides by being willing to change his mind occasionally (usually in the face of overwhelming evidence) is greatly overshadowed by how boringly predictable and wrong he is on so many important issues.
Go ahead, read Sullivan. It’s your time to waste.
daveNYC
Bullshit, at what point has he actually talked about the revenue side of the budget? Every post I’ve seen has been specific calls for slicing and dicing the entitlements, vague handwavium about how it’d be nice to cut defense, and bugger all about raising taxes. I’ll admit that he will complain that people won’t talk about taxes other than about cutting them, but I’ve never read anything by him concerning how we should actually raise income taxes on anyone.
Tim
@HumboldtBlue:
Or…you could, you know, just NOT READ DJ’s posts about Sullivan. Just a thought. ABL annoyed me for a while, so I just scrolled past her posts, now I’m back to reading them. There is that option…
EconWatcher
I actually did think Cole should have thought a little more carefully before taking the jab that Sully took a month off because of a cold–before I even read Sullivan’s response. The impact and dangers are obviously different if you’ve long had HIV and have been taking the protease cocktails to stay alive. So I think the jab was unintentially but thougtlessly cruel.
All that being said, I join those who’ve given up on Sully. He tends to get to the right answer in the end, most of the time. But I just don’t see the point of all the narcissistic and melodramatic preening you have to endure on the way.
Ruckus
Stopped reading Sully a couple of years ago, for all the reasons everyone has already stated.
So why do we keep rehashing his wrongness? Are you waiting for his come to glory moment? His attainment of reality?
He reminds me of Monty’s neighbor
Tim
@A Commenter at Balloon Juice (formerlyThe Grand Panjandrum):
Who gets to play Sully in the movie?
Hmmm… Zack galifianakis?
tomvox1
@freelancer:
Looks like someone got their fee-fees hurt. And yet…
…this is perfectly acceptable:
lllphd
@Nick L:
this is the best analysis in the comments.
i too ‘like’ sully, but he is frustrating as all hell, precisely because he’s so conflicted and does in fact on occasion bend to his conscience. and he will admit to it, which is a damn good thing.
the hyperbole is to be noted; i’ve been sensing that his more manic and compulsive tone reflects issues of fear. he then turns irrational and says really stupid stuff. and will then defend himself. sigh.
but, like hitchens, i fear he has a deeply ingrained snob streak, however much he hard-scrabbled for it. either way, that tone he takes with the manic hyperboles are not only hypocritical, they’re dangerously irrational precisely because he is so internally conflicted and contradictory.
sad dude. i too pray he’ll come ’round on this.
hey, someone needs to send him a copy of ‘grapes of wrath’!!
EconWatcher
inkadu:
Any comparison of Sullivan and Hitchens should be counted as unfair. Yes, Hitchens has done unforgivable things. But when he’s off the bottle and at his best, he’s the best and most interesting essay writer in the English language. At his best, Sullivan is still just an internet hack.
jwb
@Corner Stone: Hey, what do you mean? Dennis condemned Stalin and broccoli. That’s worth something.
I tend to agree with you on this. Sullivan may well change his mind. That may seem to make him seem interesting. The problem is that he keeps finding very stupid ideas to agree with in the first place, and he changes his mind on one thing only to find an even more regressive position on something else. It’s become a very tiresome routine.
jazzgurl
Normally lurk daily at Sully, but after last week’s temper tantrum re the budget I have decided to give him a wide berth as I was kinda getting all pooped out anyway with the gay story/the torture rage/ the Catholicism/the make pot legal story and the Palin story..! The fact is he does make sense at times and I was quite looking forward to him returning because that little arrogant little upstart Conor Freidersdorf that he thrust on us was intolerable to say the least.
Anyway,each to their own!
fasteddie9318
@EconWatcher:
Name one issue aside from torture on which he’s gotten “to the right answer in the end.” Gay rights don’t count because he was already there.
You can’t do it. Even on Iraq he can only get to “it was mismanaged.” This idea that he’s so thoughtful that eventually he’ll come around on any issue is a myth extrapolated from one isolated incident.
Tim
I’ve long thought the only issues on which Sully shows any empathy for others is when he is personally affected, such as regarding HIV (but only if you already have insurance), gay rights, gay marriage, U.S. citizenship for HIV carriers, etc.
It’s been weird for me because I began reading him regularly in 2,000 shortly after reading “Love Undetectable,” parts of which I found to be amazingly compassionate. And then he spews all this “conservative,” selfish bullshit from the other side of his mouth. It’s disorienting.
But I have to admit that is part of why I read his blog everyday. The drama of what the hell unself-aware crap he’ll write next is part of the fascination when combined with the occasionally moving and compassionate post.
I think I’m not supposed to say this, but I have often wondered if his HIV meds/testosterone regimen has affected his brain and thinking, especially the testosterone which is known to cause aggression/anger, etc. in otherwise balanced people.
jcricket
True with one major difference – he has plenty of sympathy, but no empathy and it’s his major blind-spot. He’ll never admit it – but the difference between a liberal and Sully basically boils down to his lack of ability to understand anyone in a situation not like his own.
Well, that and casual racism + inability to do math. But mostly the sympathy/empathy thing.
Someone should create a sully filter that prevents you from reading the first 10 posts on a given subject, so that by the time you read something from Sully on a subject he’s come to his fucking senses and posted something reasonable.
Sully reminds me a lot of Ayn Rand – in that his negative experiences with the government while growing up so clouds his judgment that he embraces a political philosophy that basically states “whatever is the opposite of that government I loathed is the right and moral thing”.
Then when reality intrudes he twists himself into Burkean knots trying to reconcile his inflexible belief system with pragmatic reasoning.
(Rand, of course, was so afraid of communism that she thought there’d be no place for any government – as if there’s nothing in between).
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Another classic Sullivan troll article.
Starts out with “I like him” and then goes on to say at length why nobody with a brain or any intellectual integrity could possibly like him.
Brilliant, really. Drunk fuckheads that troll all day and all night could not do a better job than this post. I mean it, it’s really good. If you like shit.
PeakVT
But just because I believe that the debt will kill us unless we tackle defense, revenues and Medicare
I’m not going to trawl his entire archive, but here’s some of the budget related things I found:
A post linking to the Tax Policy Center, after which implies that high marginal rates are about to appear any second. That’s obviously stupid. But aside from that, higher marginal rates would be an excellent way to raise revenue. And the super-rich certainly can afford much higher rates.
A link to Reason which implies that public employees are the cause of California’s budget problems. That is stupid. The problem in California is Prop 13, which caps property tax increases, and the 2/3 requirement in the legislature to raise taxes. California’s current “staggering” DEFICIT is about 1.5% of GSP, so it could easily be solved under a rational tax system without any cuts whatsoever. Also, the Reason quote mentions “taxpayers will most likely be on the hook for somewhere between $325 billion and $500 billion.” Well, does that mean the California state government is expecting to pay out that much over the next ten years, or does it mean that potential future payouts over some unspecified time period will have a current value of $500B within the next ten years? There’s no link to the source, so we don’t know. But it sounds a lot like the fear-mongering about the federal government’s liabilities, and those numbers have been shown to be BS.
A post in which he cities McAddled. If that wasn’t enough, down below he says “The current math simply demands either massive tax hikes or massive benefit cuts in the future.” If he wasn’t an idiot, he would know that the current deficit is about 10% of GDP, and that putting taxes collection rates back to their historic average would raise about 4% of GDP, and that security spending – which includes a lot of money for an entirely unnecessary war that he supported – can be cut by about 2% of GDP ($950B to $750B). So now we’re down to 4% of GDP, which is still significant but not scary. Boosting taxes by another 4% – which would leave the total tax burden (F + S&L) in the US much lower than just about every other industrialized countries – would cover the rest. And, and, AND – a zero deficit budget isn’t even necessary to keep the total debt burden from rising as a percentage of GDP. So I guess “the math” is a lot like Rove’s 2006 math: unfounded feelings spun as fact.
I have better things to do than wade through the dozens and dozens of basically content free posts to find more. But nowhere on the first 4 pages or so do I see him supporting tax increases (he mocks them), a rethink of our global security posture, or supporting an overhaul of our health care non-system, the latter being the only way to save Medicare.
It’s pretty clear Sullivan knows nothing about the budget or economics. Like I said, he’s a menace to the republic.
jehrler
Eh, I posted this in the old thread but am going to add it here (cause I loved the cartoons!)
Just read Sully’s response and, while I too see that the “cold” thing was a bit much from John, I also see Sully “doth protest too much.”
Sure he may be advocating for a financial hit on himself and others with similar financial resources, but he seems incapable of seeing that such hits on those with more limited resources can be disastrous, and not just a hit.
Which is ironic because, as one suffering with HIV, he should be acutely aware that one’s status (be it financial or health) has huge import on how well, or even if, one can recover from adversity.
For example, if you’re a coal miner then raising the retirement age may mean one never can actually retire (other than to the grave). But if you are white collar, with health insurance, it may not be that big a deal and you can still look forward to golfing in Arizona starting at 67 or 70.
This is the hypocrisy from Sully that bothers me.
piratedan
well I guess I can of understand both sides here… obviously some folks consider Mr. Sullivan a journalist, a thinker of sorts who they once identified with and noted that he did have cetain gifts that they admired or envied. I myself, never read him, perhaps because i’ve been something of a hinterlands liberal all my life who only truly became passionate about politics over the last ten years or so because of the pervasive screwing over of the middle class by folks who preached “family values, faith over science and zero sum economics”. The thing is, folks need to get over their fixation with Sullivan, in short “fuck him”, let’s make him irrelevant by encouraging our own folks who write relevant, researched pieces of informative opinion and promote them. The best way to deal with dog shit isn’t to comment on how stinky it is, rather pick the damn thing up and dispose of it properly and move on.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@piratedan:
Your post is way too rational and sensible, it has no place here.
Graeme
I have mixed feelings about Sullivan. He’s so much better than most American pundits he really does deserve credit.
I stopped reading him a couple months ago, as I have less time than ever for political bullshit. Because I have a real life to manage. Business & money is where the real power is, anyway. The politics is basically papering over the machinery with a more exciting narrative.
Sully’s narrative is faith based. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and his heart is with the rich, the powerful, and the beautiful. His faith in these things is like his faith in the Catholic Church: it’s powerful, so it must reflect god’s grace, despite its flaws.
He’s an earnest little schoolboy when it comes to his prejudices. At least he’s generally self-aware enough to admit it.
Graeme
Oh – forgot to add Joe Bleau is exactly right. Sully is quick to come out swinging in favor of his own interests, such as gay rights & smoking dope.
HumboldtBlue
@daveNYC: Or Tim, I could let Dennis know that I read Balloon Juice and not Sully’s house of fucknuttery for a slew of fucking reasons, number one being he’s declared himself a sociological enemy of mine and those like me who actually work to help make the lives of others around us better instead of haughtily proclaiming bulshit Reagan-Thatcher economic theories that benefit only the wealthy assholes Sullivan spends his time wiping.
Dennis G.
@Anne Laurie:
Yep, That’s the guy. Author of Sammy the Seal too.
SoINeedAName
Geez … GIVE IT A REST!
Bob
Part of the problem with Sully and Megan is they believe politeness is more important than getting it right. They both scold people for being uncivil, but then pretend people are honestly making mistakes when lying. But of course, it’s much much worse to be labeled as shrill than…well…constantly getting it wrong over and over and apologizing after the damage is done.
bob h
Sully’s ability to change his mind is what makes him interesting.
His seeming inability to get things right the first time is also interesting. He’s an example of the beautifully educated Briton who comes here, immediately loses the plot, and never finds it again.
Dan Carmell
@Mark S.:
I think there’s truth to this comment. Sullivan is liberal when his ox is gored (gay rights, especially gay marriage, and on a handful of other topics). On most other topics, he’s a conversative, trying to be a British conservative in the US and usually failing. I can’t help but think that the poor fellow, gay and Catholic, has never been able to stop seeking approval from the elite. Anyway, I’ve stopped reading him because Conor F. drives me to fits and Andrew’s interesting posts fell below the 2-to-1 ratio against his false premise blogs that I seemed to need to keep reading.
Mike B
Thank you for saying this. It needs to be said more. I’m tired of the usual liberal meme about how the rich need to be more compassionate and “share” their wealth. It’s anathema in our society to talk about where their wealth came from in the first place.
All of the wealth that exists in this country in the hands of our oligarchy was created by the labor of workers, and now it is conventional wisdom that the workers must sacrifice — after we’ve already seen our healthcare costs rising out of reach, have lost our homes to a grand financial scam, have in many cases lost our jobs so the oligarchs can protect the riches they extracted from us, and now we must sacrifice more so the oligarchs can continue to live like Saudi royalty. And when we complain of this, we are told we are “greedy” and that the frayed threads of a social safety net many are left to cling to is a “cow with a thousand tits”.
I am so fed up with this bullshit, and it is so frustrating to see how many working people in this country have internalized the elitist, classist worldview promulgated by the
ideological mercenaries of the oligarchypundits and news media. Somehow it has become the fashion to speak of kleptocrats as “producers” and those of us who create the wealth that they appropriate are “parasites”. What a pathetic lie.I really hope the resistance in Wisconsin sparks something deeper and broader in this country. We need a new workers’ movement desperately. If it is to accomplish anything, though, it can’t just be a movement for advancing the careers of Democratic politicians. We need a grassroots movement based on broad-based solidarity among working people and the willingness to flex social strength to force change — including direct action when it is called for. The progressive reforms you speak of would have never come about if it had not been for such a movement in the 1930s. They didn’t happen just out of the goodness of the heart of liberal politicians. And we are not going to protect our interests without building such a movement today.
And no, this is not intended as an endorsement of any of the fringe cultish anarchist or Marxist groups around today. But as deluded as these groups are about many things, they are right about some things. One is that we are being beaten down by a one-sided class war. Another is that the wealth they appropriate was created by the workers, not themselves. And another is that the state is inextricably bound up with broader social relations; it is not — and never will be — an impartial arbiter or agent of social change. The impetus for social change must come from organized civil society groups — ones that don’t just “lobby” for change, but flex the necessary social muscle to force change.
Every positive change that ever happened was forced from below. We need a movement to force change from below again.