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You are here: Home / They’d send a limousine anyway

They’d send a limousine anyway

by DougJ|  March 6, 20142:55 pm| 109 Comments

This post is in: Green Balloons

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Vote here!

The Daily Caller wants to know. pic.twitter.com/SJRYcUDV2y

— Luke Brinker (@LukeBrinker) March 6, 2014

It Putin is Hitler, and wingers would vote for president Putin…..

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Previous Post: « Dispatch from a Free Market Paradise
Next Post: Nothing to celebrate »

Reader Interactions

109Comments

  1. 1.

    pacem appellant

    March 6, 2014 at 2:57 pm

    It’s a trap! They want me to log in using Twitter or Facebook. Nah-ah. Not gonna do it.

  2. 2.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 6, 2014 at 2:59 pm

    Why not phone up Robin Hood
    And ask him for some wealth distribution?

  3. 3.

    BGinCHI

    March 6, 2014 at 3:00 pm

    Putin/Palin would look pretty good on a bumper sticker.

    In fact I don’t see any reason not to go ahead and print those up now.

  4. 4.

    Ash Can

    March 6, 2014 at 3:00 pm

    I’ll say it again — I easily envision Ronald Reagan being forced to watch all this Republican Putin-love from the afterlife, as punishment for the damage he inflicted upon this nation.

  5. 5.

    chopper

    March 6, 2014 at 3:00 pm

    you knew it was inevitable.

  6. 6.

    Felonius Monk

    March 6, 2014 at 3:01 pm

    The Monk-epedia defines The Daily Caller as a publication (term used loosely) by Assholes for Assholes. So I think they can take their poll and put it in the obvious orfice.

  7. 7.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 6, 2014 at 3:07 pm

    It Putin is Hitler, and wingers would vote for president Putin…..

    They wouldn’t really be changing their votes, or their overcoats for that matter.

  8. 8.

    Elizabelle

    March 6, 2014 at 3:07 pm

    I am getting burned out by the disrespect shown President Obama.

  9. 9.

    Belafon

    March 6, 2014 at 3:08 pm

    Someone should reply that every person who votes for Putin gets a one-way plane ticket to Moscow.

  10. 10.

    mike in dc

    March 6, 2014 at 3:10 pm

    One People, One America, One Leader!

  11. 11.

    dmsilev

    March 6, 2014 at 3:11 pm

    @BGinCHI: Wingnuts swoon at the thought of either one of them shirtless.

  12. 12.

    Ash Can

    March 6, 2014 at 3:14 pm

    What’s the over-under for Putin winning CPAC’s straw poll?

  13. 13.

    Amir Khalid

    March 6, 2014 at 3:15 pm

    Is it Putin, because he’s a macho man pursuing macho-manly pursuits? Or Putin, because he always opposes what Obama wants? Or Putin, because he’s white? Or Putin, because he’s a reactionary, power-hungry git? It’s so hard to pick an answer.

  14. 14.

    Bighorn Ordovician Dolomite

    March 6, 2014 at 3:15 pm

    Wow.

    I don’t really beleive in “Peak Wingnut” but this could lead to some form of a wingularity.

  15. 15.

    BGinCHI

    March 6, 2014 at 3:15 pm

    Summary of comments at Daily Caller on this poll:

    Obummer is a totalitarian. If only we had Putin to run this country.

  16. 16.

    Gravenstone

    March 6, 2014 at 3:15 pm

    @mike in dc: Kinda catchy. I think you might be on to something there.

  17. 17.

    cokane

    March 6, 2014 at 3:16 pm

    @Ash Can: that’s not how over/under works.

    Try: What’s the over/under on Putin’s percentage at the CPAC straw poll?

  18. 18.

    Belafon

    March 6, 2014 at 3:17 pm

    @BGinCHI: I bet they’d love having the Putin that would throw them in jail for putting the poll up.

  19. 19.

    cokane

    March 6, 2014 at 3:17 pm

    @Amir Khalid: I’ll go with militarism and gay hating.

  20. 20.

    jl

    March 6, 2014 at 3:18 pm

    Ho kay, You people win. I thought this Putin curious phenom among the wingers was kind of a joke. I guess it isn’t.

    I still don’t understand why Obama body surfing shirtless is girlie-man stuff, while Putin riding a horse shirtless is he-man.

    Unless Obama is a very good body surfer, I’m surprised the security people let him do it. But, I guess they have to let him do it. But maybe Obama body surfs girlie-man waves. Hard to tell from the pix I have seen.

  21. 21.

    Suffern ACE

    March 6, 2014 at 3:18 pm

    Well, you wouldn’t vote for Chamberlain, now would you? I’d vote for Hitler. He won at Munich!*

    *Although a few years later, he was dead, his cities were rubble, his people were starving, his country occupied by his enemies, the territory he claimed given back to other countries. But he won at Munich!.

  22. 22.

    Jamey

    March 6, 2014 at 3:18 pm

    What keeps me awake at night is this question: What if 27% of respondents pick Obama?

  23. 23.

    Lee

    March 6, 2014 at 3:18 pm

    They have to be trolling their readers…right?

  24. 24.

    schrodinger's cat

    March 6, 2014 at 3:19 pm

    @Elizabelle: Don’t worry, this is off-putting to almost anyone except for base of the Republican party, the famous 27%.

  25. 25.

    Bokonon

    March 6, 2014 at 3:19 pm

    The right wing is really longing for their very own version of General Pincochet to arrive, aren’t they?

    As H.L. Mencken once said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Apparently, that includes getting rid of democracy and longing for a vicious, corrupt, brutal dictator when it would screw your enemies and get your agenda rammed through.

    I don’t recall the right wing pining for Krushchev back in the 1950’s. Or Breznev in the 1970’s. Or a scary SOB like Yuri Andropov in the 1980’s. Something has changed. And not in a good way.

  26. 26.

    Ash Can

    March 6, 2014 at 3:20 pm

    @cokane: That’s what I meant — that he’d win, and we’d just be betting on the size of the margin. I didn’t put it too artfully, though.

  27. 27.

    schrodinger's cat

    March 6, 2014 at 3:20 pm

    DougJ@top
    The title of this Putin post was inspired by you!

  28. 28.

    jl

    March 6, 2014 at 3:21 pm

    As long wingularity is the topic, another item for the annals of GOP outreach:

    Paul Ryan: Free School Lunch Means Poor Parents Don’t Care About Kids
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/paul_ryan_free_lunch_means_parents_dont_care_for_kids

    Since the poor is a rising demo in the U.S., I guess the GOP thinks its time for a campaign specifically targeting them.

  29. 29.

    SatanicPanic

    March 6, 2014 at 3:21 pm

    @BGinCHI: I guess saying the most ridiculous things possible is one way of avoiding being the object of parody.

  30. 30.

    schrodinger's cat

    March 6, 2014 at 3:22 pm

    @Bokonon: The crazies are in control of the GOP, that’s what has changed. The fringe isn’t fringe anymore. Thanks to our ridiculous MSM they get a lot more exposure than they deserve.

  31. 31.

    Gin & Tonic

    March 6, 2014 at 3:22 pm

    @Suffern ACE: Well, you wouldn’t vote for Chamberlain, now would you?

    I always preferred him to Russell. I know LeBron dissed them both, which was really stupid.

  32. 32.

    Belafon

    March 6, 2014 at 3:22 pm

    @Bokonon:

    Something has changed.

    It’s some quality of the man in the White House.

  33. 33.

    ranchandsyrup

    March 6, 2014 at 3:23 pm

    @Elizabelle: Me too, Sister. I remember the good ol’ days in the early aughts when any disagreement with C+ Augustus was TREASON!

  34. 34.

    GxB

    March 6, 2014 at 3:23 pm

    @Amir Khalid: All of ’em, Khalid!

    Couldn’t resist…(dodges rotten tomatoes)

  35. 35.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 6, 2014 at 3:24 pm

    @Bokonon: A fundamentalist protestant Franco would make them quite happy.

  36. 36.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 6, 2014 at 3:25 pm

    @Gin & Tonic: Kareem.

  37. 37.

    jl

    March 6, 2014 at 3:26 pm

    @Bokonon:

    ” I don’t recall the right wing pining for Krushchev back in the 1950′s. ”

    IIRC from my reading, Krushchev saw himself as a reformer, who was getting ready to do a half-Gorby before he was forced out after losing face in the Cuban missile crisis.

    So, he would have been a source of wingnut suspicion and contempt, as was Gorbachev, had he stayed in office. He would not have provided the appropriate kind of geopoltiical/military drama that they crave.

  38. 38.

    Frankensteinbeck

    March 6, 2014 at 3:28 pm

    @Amir Khalid:
    They want a posturing asshole. Those are the traits they consistently praise, using words like ‘brave’ and ‘leader’ to describe someone who kicks puppies and is always looking to start a war. They might or might not approve of poisoning journalists, but they certainly approve of a leader who would. The gay bashing while posing shirtless gives many of them a self-hating homoerotic buzz. The train wreck that is Russia is immaterial to them. Putin postures in a tough cowboy way asshole way, and that’s what they like. They sometimes have to be his enemy when he’s acting against America, but in an ‘I wish he was on our side’ way. That he’s a dictator with absolute power adds emotional power to him being their kind of guy. The conservative movement right now is freaking out because they know they can’t get their way anymore, so they don’t just want an asshole cowboy, they want an asshole cowboy who doesn’t have to obey the law or majority opinion to give them what they want.

  39. 39.

    Ash Can

    March 6, 2014 at 3:28 pm

    @Bokonon:

    Something has changed. And not in a good way.

    When Obama was first elected, I heard numerous folks of color saying that his election would drive white Americans completely nucking futs. I understood the sentiment, but thought the wording was a bit on the hyperbolic side. I’ll never make that mistake again.

  40. 40.

    Trollhattan

    March 6, 2014 at 3:29 pm

    Can somebody please learn me what the heck is an “URGENT NEWS POLL:”? If the responderers don’t respond quickly enough and with a lack of vigor, does the NEWS POLL go to the pound?

    Did they misspell POLE?

  41. 41.

    raven

    March 6, 2014 at 3:30 pm

    Nixon loved the fucking Chinese because of their “discipline”.

  42. 42.

    schrodinger's cat

    March 6, 2014 at 3:31 pm

    Manly man Putin is short, has a thinning, receding hairline. The other night, I saw him with Yanukovich on BBC World News, he was head shorter. Is he even 5ft 6?

  43. 43.

    Gin & Tonic

    March 6, 2014 at 3:31 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Well, sure. But I always loved the fact that Wilt was able to do what he did without being a monk. Same reason I appreciated Paul Haber.

  44. 44.

    jl

    March 6, 2014 at 3:32 pm

    @Belafon:

    ” I bet they’d love having the Putin that would throw them in jail for putting the poll up. ”

    Putin is more sophisticated than that. This offense would probably merit house arrest or firing followed by change of management for the company.

    Putin may actually practice the kind of authoritarianism that they admire. They just can’t admit it explicitly.

    I don’t think the U.S. can produce a competent leader who could do what Putin does. We would have vicious goofballs like Cheney who would produce pointless messes like the Georgia crisis. But, the reactionaries and wingnuts can dream about it.

  45. 45.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 6, 2014 at 3:32 pm

    @jl: Back then they had Franco. Find an issue of Triumph sometime.

  46. 46.

    Belafon

    March 6, 2014 at 3:33 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: I read 5’5″.

  47. 47.

    DougJ

    March 6, 2014 at 3:34 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Reading that VDH column again I made “I can neutralize you by my demonic personality alone” a new rotating tagline.

  48. 48.

    raven

    March 6, 2014 at 3:34 pm

    @Suffern ACE: This was really good

    30 for 30 Short Films Wilt Chamberlain: Borscht Belt Bellhop

  49. 49.

    Trollhattan

    March 6, 2014 at 3:34 pm

    @Ash Can:

    Maher had Bloody Bill Kristol on last Friday and he was pshawing Maher’s claiming the Tea Party existed solely for their racism against the blah president. Kind of a tell, actually. Kristol took all of a half minute to yell “bullshit” over something or other.

    Lord, he’s a piece of work. Margaret Hoover seemed like a DFH in the next chair, illuminated by Kristol’s orange-red rage glow.

  50. 50.

    Amir Khalid

    March 6, 2014 at 3:35 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    Daniel Radcliffe is about the same height, and everybody loves him.

  51. 51.

    Gin & Tonic

    March 6, 2014 at 3:35 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: Pre-receding hairline, could this be him?

  52. 52.

    Mary Brown

    March 6, 2014 at 3:36 pm

    @pacem appellant: I won’t do that either. But I won’t do much if it gets to complicated.

  53. 53.

    Ash Can

    March 6, 2014 at 3:36 pm

    The GOP Outreach panel at CPAC obviously generated considerable interest. I’m sure the attendees (both of them) got a lot out of it.

    PS: The gist of the discussion reportedly was “Our message to minorities is fine just as it is; we just need to get it out there.”

    (H/t the wags at LGF)

    ETA: For jl @ #28, on the topic of the annals of GOP outreach.

  54. 54.

    kc

    March 6, 2014 at 3:36 pm

    Really, wingnuts? Really?

  55. 55.

    Petorado

    March 6, 2014 at 3:37 pm

    I’m sure the vociferous birther contingent at the Daily Caller will point out some dude born in Leningrad shouldn’t be a US president, and the strict Constitutionalists will note that Putin couldn’t be president by law. …Any minute now.

  56. 56.

    raven

    March 6, 2014 at 3:37 pm

    @Trollhattan: Mornin Joe has had his smirking fucking mug on a great deal lately.

  57. 57.

    Frankensteinbeck

    March 6, 2014 at 3:38 pm

    @Ash Can:
    It should be noted that when I say they’re freaking out because they can’t get their way, for a very large number of them this is exactly the same thing as white people being completely dominant over black people. For most of the rest, oppressing black people wasn’t high on their list (until now), but they know that if their side was in charge a black man could not possibly become president. This has to be stopped. Same freakout, differently weighted bigotries.

  58. 58.

    jl

    March 6, 2014 at 3:39 pm

    @Trollhattan:

    I read about that. I think Maher was being simplistic, so I would call BS too. Bigotry and racism are not the teabaggers’ only problem. Or Kristol’s only problem.

    Maybe bigotry and racism are the most easily diagnosed problems.

  59. 59.

    Amir Khalid

    March 6, 2014 at 3:39 pm

    @Ash Can:
    As I understand, their message to minorities is “We don’t like your kind. Now vote for us.”

  60. 60.

    Gene108

    March 6, 2014 at 3:40 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:

    LeBron’s wearing a #6 jersey in Miami. I think it’s more of an unintentional “homage” to Russell than trying to honor Russell ( and/or Dr. J).

  61. 61.

    Tokyokie

    March 6, 2014 at 3:42 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: Think his official height is 5’5″. Which makes him taller than Mickey Rooney, but not even Tom Cruise.

  62. 62.

    SiubhanDuinne

    March 6, 2014 at 3:46 pm

    @Amir Khalid:

    Or Putin, because he’s white?

    Vlad the Paler.

    ETA: Alternatively, “Vlad. I’m paler.”

  63. 63.

    Raenelle

    March 6, 2014 at 3:46 pm

    Eh. Between Bush and Stalin, I’d have gone with Stalin.

  64. 64.

    schrodinger's cat

    March 6, 2014 at 3:46 pm

    @Tokyokie: I saw he is probably 5ft 2 or 3 at most when standing on his bare feet.

  65. 65.

    Villago Delenda Est

    March 6, 2014 at 3:47 pm

    Well, obviously, Putin. He’s not blah, after all.

    Tucker Carlson’s death needs to be prolonged, painful, and inflicted by a black lesbian Russian Orthodox socialist.

  66. 66.

    Belafon

    March 6, 2014 at 3:48 pm

    @Raenelle: Hoping this is snark.

  67. 67.

    Villago Delenda Est

    March 6, 2014 at 3:49 pm

    @Raenelle:

    Stalin had a much better business sense than the deserting coward failed MBA, as Fred Koch discovered to his eternal regret, so great that he was one of founders of the outright fascist John Birch Society.

  68. 68.

    geg6

    March 6, 2014 at 3:50 pm

    @Amir Khalid:

    Why not all of the above?

  69. 69.

    Trollhattan

    March 6, 2014 at 3:50 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I see wut you did dere. [golf clap]

  70. 70.

    Citizen_X

    March 6, 2014 at 3:51 pm

    However much Putin wins by, the results should be shown in Dem attack ads for the next two years.

  71. 71.

    Chris

    March 6, 2014 at 3:54 pm

    @Bokonon:

    The right wing is really longing for their very own version of General Pincochet to arrive, aren’t they?

    The Pinochet analogy is one they’ve been making for years and with a lot less embarrassment. It’s still mainstream on the right to consider Pinochet a hero who did the right thing and saved his country from a tyrant almost as bad as Obama. Apartheid South Africa, General Franco, these other characters they’ve learned to shy away from, but Pinochet they unapologetically love.

    Really tells you all you need to know about the movement.

  72. 72.

    RuhRow_Gyro

    March 6, 2014 at 3:59 pm

    After Hitler changed management in the Netherlands, he eliminated bicycle taxes. This was good for workers.

  73. 73.

    jl

    March 6, 2014 at 4:05 pm

    Authoritarian-envy, and might-makes-right envy, implicit or explicit, seems to be a GOP theme now. From the CPAC follies, which are getting underway:

    GOPer: World ‘Laughing At Us’ While ‘Kerry’s Flying Around And Drinking Merlot’
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scalise-kerry-drinking-wine

  74. 74.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 6, 2014 at 4:07 pm

    @jl: I always saw Kerry as more of a Cabernet guy myself.

  75. 75.

    Villago Delenda Est

    March 6, 2014 at 4:07 pm

    @Chris:

    The perpetual, enduring problem for fascists worldwide is the excesses of the German version of fascism. It’s tainted the brand irreparably, and they thrash around looking for new examples that are not quite so out there. It’s summed up by the musings of the excreable Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who made the distinction without a difference (especially if you’re undergoing “enhanced interrogation techniques”) between “authoritarian” and “totalitarian” regimes.

    These people are all utter scum.

  76. 76.

    Chris

    March 6, 2014 at 4:08 pm

    @jl:

    Once again, it can never be emphasized enough how much of the GOP worldview revolves around the simple insecure belief that someone, somewhere, is laughing at them.

  77. 77.

    Seanly

    March 6, 2014 at 4:09 pm

    I was trying to explain to my wife why conservatives want us to attack Russia for invading Crimea but still love Putin. The best I could do was that they hate the Russians (still aka Bolsheviks & Soviets), but love Putin because he’s such a manly man dictator & hates the ghey.

  78. 78.

    Villago Delenda Est

    March 6, 2014 at 4:09 pm

    @Chris:

    Well, their belief is well founded. Because they’re clowns.

  79. 79.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 6, 2014 at 4:09 pm

    @Chris: Someone usually is, but not for the reasons they think.

  80. 80.

    Tokyokie

    March 6, 2014 at 4:11 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: Well, official heights are usually fudged, so you’re probably right. I was behind Charlton Heston once in an airport security line, and he sure as hell wasn’t 6’2.5″.

  81. 81.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 6, 2014 at 4:13 pm

    @Tokyokie: Well, not after you kidney punched him, he wasn’t. You did kidney punch him, right?

    @Villago Delenda Est: Clowns are scary.

  82. 82.

    Yatsuno

    March 6, 2014 at 4:16 pm

    @Seanly: Becuz getting your war on ALWAYS trumps homoerotic man-crushes. Every. Single. Time.

  83. 83.

    Mandalay

    March 6, 2014 at 4:23 pm

    @jl: @jl:

    Maybe bigotry and racism are the most easily diagnosed problems.

    They are also one of the most devastating accusations that can be hurled, and the recipient doesn’t come out unscathed even if completely innocent. Not that the Republicans are innocent at all, and I’m sure Maher truly believes what he says. But anyone hurling a ‘racism’ bomb really has some obligation to back it up, and shouldn’t do it casually.

    “Fuckface” and “Shithead” are fine as gratuitous ad hominems, but “racist” not so much.

  84. 84.

    Ian

    March 6, 2014 at 4:28 pm

    @Jamey:
    The wingnutiest of the wingnuts. 27% of 27% are so batshit crazy, they vote the other way then their wingnut brethren.

  85. 85.

    jl

    March 6, 2014 at 4:32 pm

    @Mandalay: I agree with you. And if you are going to have Kristol on, who has so many other smoking guns on other issues in his past, in writing, why did Maher go with simplistic BS about the teabaggers?

    The racism of many teabaggers is so obvious and clear. There are a lot of related and unrelated issues that need more attention. And with Kristol, their confused issues with radical democracy and authoritarianism, and their being dupes of various manipulations by Kristol’s buddies among the neocons and economic oligarchy seem important to mention.

    Maybe it was part of a Palin gotcha strategy, since Kristol’s crush on Palin got him to promote her as a GOP player. I just read about it, didn’t watch it, so don’t know what Maher was trying to do.

    Edit: And note that Kristol wrote a famous piece that encouraging foreign crises was a good way to get some domestic jingoism on, which as Kristol said, would benefit the GOP politically. If I had Kristol I would have damn memorized that piece, and gone after him about that. Especially with the Crimea crisis, and GOP sniping at Obama.

  86. 86.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 6, 2014 at 4:40 pm

    Vaguely related to the post title: @eemom (if she stops by), Soft Cell played its farewell concert at the Hammersmith Palais.

  87. 87.

    Ian

    March 6, 2014 at 4:41 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    black lesbian Russian Orthodox socialist.

    Is there a dating website for those?

  88. 88.

    Suffern ACE

    March 6, 2014 at 4:42 pm

    @Chris: I think Pinochet might be singular in that he had lots of leftists murdered and really was a dictator, but was one of the few dictators who didnt end up looting the country to boot. I may be wrong about that. But compared to the other dictators we were allied with at the time, he limited himself to the torture and death of leftists (defined widely as anyone who didn’t want the military in charge). I think its how they would want their dictatorship to be.

  89. 89.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 6, 2014 at 4:43 pm

    @Ian: Christian Mingle would be a good place to start, wouldn’t it?

  90. 90.

    jl

    March 6, 2014 at 4:46 pm

    @Suffern ACE:

    ‘ but [Phinochet] was one of the few dictators who didnt end up looting the country to boot. I may be wrong about that. ‘

    I have a relative who worked on large construction projects in Chile towards the end of the Pinochet regime, as well as other parts of So America. He would say that you are wrong about that. The take was at SOP levels for corrupt So. American countries. In fact, it was worse in one way for the actual people involved, since sanctions for not delivering the take were worse on average.

  91. 91.

    SiubhanDuinne

    March 6, 2014 at 4:53 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Life is a Cabernet, old chum.

  92. 92.

    boatboy_srq

    March 6, 2014 at 4:53 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: Height isn’t everything. There are records of one short Frenchman who did rather well.

  93. 93.

    MattF

    March 6, 2014 at 4:54 pm

    They look at Obama, they look at Putin. Obama drives them into a rage-filled frenzy, Putin is a corrupt, homophobic authoritarian who sends anyone who offends him to a labor camp. The concept of ‘making a choice’ is ‘waaay too complicated– Putin is their kind of guy.

  94. 94.

    boatboy_srq

    March 6, 2014 at 4:55 pm

    @Belafon: TABMITWH, indeed.

  95. 95.

    Chris

    March 6, 2014 at 4:55 pm

    @Suffern ACE:

    Kirkpatrick summarized it as “Traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies.” Which was often complete horseshit when you consider that some of those regimes she supported as “less repressive” (Guatemala I believe) ended up being found guilty of genocide against their Indian populations.

    Exactly where Pinochet falls on the spectrum, I don’t know, but I really can’t think of any metric by which he was better than the democracy he overthrew. Because that’s what makes Pinochet especially egregious and memorable to so many people. He wasn’t just the latest in a long line of thugs like some of our other friends south of the border, he was a giant step backwards for a country that had actually been running democratically for some time.

    The only real difference between Kirkpatrick’s “totalitarian” and “authoritarian,” IMO, was “regimes that kept American-based multinationals happy” versus “regimes that didn’t.” Kirkpatrick was just spinning bullshit to make it sound like something nobler.

  96. 96.

    Mandalay

    March 6, 2014 at 4:57 pm

    @jl:

    And if you are going to have Kristol on, who has so many other smoking guns on other issues in his past, in writing, why did Maher go with simplistic BS about the teabaggers?

    Yes, there are so many ways in which Maher could have gone for the jugular and made Kristol squirm, and it really was a wasted opportunity. But as others point out from time to time, Maher is actually not particularly knowledgeable, and pretty weak at doing his homework on his guests.

  97. 97.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 6, 2014 at 4:59 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: I am a camera?

  98. 98.

    randomworker

    March 6, 2014 at 5:04 pm

    @pacem appellant: Me either. Who’s winning?

  99. 99.

    Suffern ACE

    March 6, 2014 at 5:06 pm

    @Chris: What she meant was “They don’t take things from already wealthy people.” In Guatemala, all they did was round up the natives and make them work on coffee plantations to protection. That apparently is the right kind of oppression. The kind that distributes up and represses down.

    What I meant about “Pinochet, the honest” isn’t that he was free from corruption, its that unlike say, Marcos or Suharto or Mobutu or Samosa, he didn’t flee with billions. He could have…but that’s not the story that gets told. Which is why he can be the “Good Dictator who only killed leftists.”

  100. 100.

    Mandalay

    March 6, 2014 at 5:14 pm

    @Chris:

    The only real difference between Kirkpatrick’s “totalitarian” and “authoritarian,” IMO, was “regimes that kept American-based multinationals happy” versus “regimes that didn’t.”

    Pretty much. We’ve actually gone backwards since Kirkpatrick’s time. Now we don’t even bother with the word games. If we don’t like a government we bestow our approval when it is illegitimately ousted, as with the brief CIA led coup against Chavez, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and currently in Ukraine.

    We don’t really give a shit about democracy or legitimacy, or how power is gained or lost, as long as our guy ends up in charge.

  101. 101.

    Chris

    March 6, 2014 at 5:16 pm

    @Suffern ACE:

    And unlike Hitler and Mussolini, he never turned and bit the hand that fed him. He never started the kind of world war that would’ve made his Western pals unhappy, and he never had to worry about that war bringing his entire society crashing down in a way that made domestic elites unhappy.

  102. 102.

    jl

    March 6, 2014 at 5:19 pm

    @Suffern ACE: Maybe Pinochet didn’t flee with billions, but my aforementioned relative says the corruption and graft of Pinochet’s generals was massive, at least from what he saw at the projects he was working on, and was told about by the people he worked with.

    So, I see no reason to give Pinochet a pass on corruption, just because he did not get a lot of it stuffed into his ditty bag right before he left, or there was a not a huge stash recovered in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands and shown on the news.

  103. 103.

    Suffern ACE

    March 6, 2014 at 5:28 pm

    @Mandalay: I don’t think we “Ousted” Morsi and I think what was happening on that ill advised discussion between our officials in Ukraine was trying to prevent another Morsi. We did actually say out loud that we’d support whomever got elected in Egypt and we did. But it turned out if your country’s elite won’t accept the elections, it doesn’t matter if the US supports or doesn’t support a president.

  104. 104.

    jl

    March 6, 2014 at 5:28 pm

    I spent some time in college working as a statistical drudge at one of the less extreme noecon thinktank. What I remember is that they were pretty cynical about Kirkpatrick’s mental gymnastics to distinguish authoritarian versus totalitarian regimes.

    One example I remember was that with totalitarian regimes were ‘total’ in that everything was political, and any challenge to them in any sphere, while authoritarian regimes would be more tolerant except in the overtly political sphere. As long as you did not mess with them in terms of explicit political power relations, they would leave people alone.

    Well, I wandered into this crowd late in the Reagan years, when it was quite clear that among their Latin American strong men, this distinction was total nonsense. And they said things like “weeelllll, ‘political’ is kind of a flexible term, it means different things in different times and places’. I had to endure long discussions among them that reached the happy conclusion that in certain circumstances, that always seemed to hold when it came to their favorite strongmen, that everything at critical times was political after all, you just had to be careful during those critical times. It was a sad spectacle of rationalization and cynicism.

  105. 105.

    Applejinx

    March 6, 2014 at 6:09 pm

    @Suffern ACE: You are wrong about that. Pinochet was the true-believing muscle arm of a conscious and carefully planned attempt to impose right-wing free-marketism on a socialist country by force.

    That’s very nearly the MAIN point of Naomi Klein’s ‘Shock Doctrine’ book, which I’m currently and painfully rereading.

    There’s also a great deal of subsequent effort to decouple those things so it seemed like the terror was just right-wing death squad horrors for no good reason, and it’s complicated by things like the Ford Foundation laying groundwork for the destruction of the country, being complicit in much of it, and then pulling a U-turn and funding peace activists and being a primary source for the means to right such wrongs (I may be thinking of Argentina, which is a very similar story). The cost of that is, you can have the new and improved Ford Foundation come to your rescue but it would be very poor sport to point out that they were involved in the problem in the first place…

    This is how it’s done: much effort spent to hide that an extreme radical right economic ideology was a primary goal behind these country-smashings. You can fix the country once the terror is discovered, but don’t ever question that the terror was just for ‘no reason’ and had nothing to do with the looting of the nation by private interests! That’s totally different and who could possibly think those things were related?

    It’s kind of more horrible that guys like Pinochet, true-believers, weren’t even filling their own pockets cynically. They bought the whole Milton Friedman story. It became an economics holy war, waged on the Chilean and Argentine peoples.

  106. 106.

    Chris

    March 6, 2014 at 6:46 pm

    @Applejinx:

    There’s also a great deal of subsequent effort to decouple those things so it seemed like the terror was just right-wing death squad horrors for no good reason

    Funny enough, I think that’s also kind of the story of World War Two in popular consciousness. All the bad things that happened are tossed into one big pot labeled “the Nazis” (and/or another smaller pot labeled “the Collaborators”), which everyone agrees were lunatics who did lunaticky things for no good reason…

    … while carefully ignoring the role played by all the other people, especially by conservative elites (clergy, military, industrialists) who did so much to turn the Nazis from a group of freaks not so different from modern day skinheads into a respectable and powerful political force. And carefully ignoring why they did it, namely, because they were 1%er assholes looking for help in crushing a rising left (meaning not just the commies but socialists, labor unions, and pretty much anything that threatened their privileges – beginning with the Weimar democracy).

  107. 107.

    SRW1

    March 6, 2014 at 7:03 pm

    @boatboy_srq:

    Not in Russia!!

  108. 108.

    Raenelle

    March 6, 2014 at 7:28 pm

    @Belafon: No. It wasn’t.

  109. 109.

    Ecks

    March 6, 2014 at 7:47 pm

    @Jamey: someone make a new internet, because this one just hot eon. Cracked up hard there.

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