Further to my disdain below, I can’t say anything to gloss what Andrew writes in tonight’s RNC liveblog.
Truly, all you need to know about Andrew’s political and intellectual honesty is right there:
8:18 p.m. We have to answer this core question: how is it that liberal democracy in America is now flirting with strongman, ethno-nationalist authoritarianism? What happened to the democratic center?
It seems to me that the right bears the hefty majority of responsibility, moving from principled opposition to outright nullification of a presidency, trashing every important neutral institution, and now bad-mouthing the country they hope to “govern.” But the left’s abandonment of empiricism and liberalism – its rapid descent into neo-Marxist dogma, its portrayal of American history as a long unending story of white supremacy, its coarse impugning of political compromise and incrementalism, its facile equation of disagreement with bigotry – has also played a part. Liberal democracy needs liberal norms and manners to survive. Which is why it is now on life-support.
In between, moderate Christianity, once a unifying cultural fabric creating a fragile civil discourse, has evaporated into disparate spirituality on one side and fundamentalist dogma on the other, leaving us with little in the center to hold us morally together.
Annnnd, Scene!
Have at it, friends.
Image: Frits Van den Berghe, The Idiot by the Pond, 1926
K488
is why I haven’t read poor Andrew for years. Besides, I’m still irate about his role in first publishing The Bell Curve. And that’s quite a while ago!
Downpuppy
If there was one person in this blessed land who was heavily influenced by Andrew Sullivan, it would indeed be a tragedy.
I have not met that fool.
Frankensteinbeck
This is such a true and perfect example of the Moderate Republican’s cry: ‘Why can’t we go back to pretending that shitting on minorities is polite and responsible?!’
jl
What is ‘neo-Marxist dogma’ supposed to mean?
Is there a neo-Marxism? And does it have a dogma?
Emma
I’m telling you three times, and what I say is true: Andrew Sullivan will never give up his prejudices. He will bend logic into a double-pretzel and close his eyes and ears to truth. He’s the polite Boris Johnson.
schrodinger's cat
Show your work, Andy. I need proof to justify these broad brush strokes.
Smiling Mortician
Christ, what an asshole.
Tom Levenson
@jl: It’s word type things strung together in strings that appear to express thoughts but are actually the groat clusters that nourished Porgy Tirebiter in his old age.
JPL
Tom, There’s always Megan Mcardle or David Brooks, if you need a fix. Andrew is not worthy.
Major Major Major Major
He’s now a classical liberal democrat, occupying the center? I thought he was a true Niebuhrian Conservative??
@jl: yes and yes. It’s where we get the term ‘late capitalism’, for example.
Tom Levenson
@JPL: You go to war with the predictable useful idiots you have….
ThresherK (GPad)
Andrew, I won a $50 wager when you pivoted on Buuuuuut the left. I hope my friend never wises up, the same way you haven’t.
Major Major Major Major
@ThresherK (GPad): that’s some pricy water.
Edit: dang it
Omnes Omnibus
Alternate title: The Idiot from Across the Pond
Anoniminous
I’m thinking Sully-baby knows as much about Marxism as I do about forensic entomology. Which is to say, “nothing.”
different-church-lady
Did he use the postmodernism generator to come up with that?
Baud
That’s deep. Deep bullshit. But deep.
different-church-lady
@Anoniminous: Now don’t underestimate yourself like that.
SFAW
Yet another sterling example of “both sides do it” where the “balancing facts” are complete bullshit.
I have been told that Sullivan is smart enough not to merit the appellation “moron,” but I have yet to see evidence that he isn’t one.
Matt McIrvin
The Left just wouldn’t stop being a fifth column in its enclaves on the coasts, and it made everyone else so darn paranoid!
RepubAnon
@schrodinger’s cat: “Neo-Marxist Dogma”: “failing to take whatever position a Republican orders you to take.” (Source: Luntz’s Dictionary of Prevarication.”)
schrodinger's cat
Why is he back? Didn’t he flounce off sometime ago?
Amaranthine RBG
Most of what Sullivan says is correct
I take it most here would agree with his criticism of the putative right?
Major Major Major Major
@RepubAnon: the people on “the left” *are* like this, it’s just that he’s conflating the Bernie dead-enders and Stein-or-bust’ers with The entire Democratic Party
Nice work, if you can get it.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Fair point. But those people are generally too weak to contribute to the downfall of America.
gwangung
As been said elsewhere, Sullivan’s solution to American racial problems: Keep everything the same…minorities just shut their mouths.
bluehill
Guess we can compare and contrast Trump’s speech with that of another well-known dictator.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0OtwfYahyg
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: He is over here, though.
Downpuppy
@Anoniminous: Avoid forensic entomology. It will cost you your vast fortune & put you in a wheelchair
schrodinger's cat
For all his sucking up to them, his buddies Boris and David never let him into the Bullingdon Club.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat: Stupid Brexit.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: He’s most likely referring to critical theory. It is, for the most part, a revised, neo-Marxist theoretical approach in the social and behavioral sciences. That said, I’m not convinced he’s actually smart, well read, and well educated enough despite the snobbish airs and posh accent to actually know this. Andrew Sullivan, to paraphrase, is a stupid American persons understanding of a smart and well educated English person. He’s a hack with a good vocabulary and fancy accent.
RandomMonster
He should consult the neo-Marxist dogma for the term “false consciousness”.
Turgidson
Sullivan eventually realized that he had thrown in his lot with a bunch of snarling, ignorant and mean-spirited thugs, but he still can’t bring himself to admit that liberals have been right about most everything the past 30 years.
He just can’t stop himself from being smug and dismissive (and wrong) towards liberals like he learned to be when he was reading Oakeshott for succor at Oxford or whatever in the 80s.
Haydnseek
@Tom Levenson: Thanks for the Firesign reference. There are only two of them left, but their artistry will never die. There are only two of them left, but Phil Proctor still gets a letter published in the Los Angeles times now and then. National Treasures.
Patricia Kayden
@schrodinger’s cat: People like Sully always come back. They love the spotlight and being read by the masses. I’ll never get over his live meltdown during the first debate between President Obama and Romney. He called Obama lazy because Romney gish galloped to “win” that debate.
eemom
Srsly? 2 Sullivan posts in the midst of the monstrosity that is the world this evening?
Sir, do you realize that it is mathematically impossible at this point for any opinion, thought, word, or grunt about Andrew Sullivan to be uttered by any being in any language that has not been said on this blog before and repeated a million times over? The subject is EXHAUSTED. The horse is DEAD.
different-church-lady
@Tom Levenson: A stab from the past!
Baud
Anyone else tired of seeing the prefix “neo-” attached to everything. It’s like we’re not even trying to develop an original thought anymore.
henqiguai
Really? Can he explain why, then, in America there is an A.M.E., Black Baptist church, and black Catholic parishes? And ‘civil’? As I recall, the KKK were/are staunch (Protestant) christians.
Josie
I’m just an old get-off-my-lawn white person, but even I can see that what he writes is a load of privileged horse shit. He has no clue what a liberal is or how we think, and he has no right to sit in judgment on us.
jurassicpork
For the fourth and (mercifully) final night, Mike Flannigan tweets the RNC Convention live from the floor. Check in regularly for updates.
Gin & Tonic
@Tom Levenson: Question. Have you ever tried to get any of your children to appreciate Firesign? I tried, and it didn’t work.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I invented a word yesterday.
EriktheRed
So did Andy attend a Ron Fournier both-sides-are-always-just-as-bad seminar?
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: neo-Baudism!
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: It’s the school of punditry where “Lena Dunham called sushi cultural appropriation on Twitter” == “America is turning into a nation of decadent illiberal neo-Marxist children”.
calling all toasters
Andrew Sullivan will only be remembered as the shittiest editor the New Republic has ever had, and Michael Kelly once held that job.
lamh36
Major Major Major Major
@eemom: you’d rather watch the RNC?
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: How cromulent!
Frankensteinbeck
@gwangung:
It’s called ‘Reaganism’!
JWR
Just heard a clip of Pence on PBS, and Judy Woodruff asked him about Trump’s NYT article as regards his commitment to NATO. After proudly pointing out that he doesn’t read the NYT daily, he said that Trump used the word “absolutely” to describe how he would respond to a request for aid from a NATO country. Here’s where Trump used that word in that context:
Now it’s on to Rinse Preisbus..
Anoniminous
@Baud:
Intellectually speaking, this is the most exciting period in human history. Won’t find that out from Sully-baby, et. al., because they are deeply ignorant of the trends in modern thought.
SiubhanDuinne
That painting is terrifying. After three straight nights of insomnia, I had high hopes for getting a good night’s sleep tonight. So much for that impossible dream.
Haydnseek
@Gin & Tonic: It’s very difficult. Try Nick Danger. It’s not topical, but it does assume knowledge of the conventions of 40’s film.
Davey C
@Adam L Silverman: Although his faults may be many, I don’t think being poorly-educated is one of them. The guy does have a PhD.
different-church-lady
@Gin & Tonic: You should re-evaluate what you did as a parent.
scav
“moderate Christianity, once a unifying cultural fabric creating a fragile civil discourse.” Most segregated hour of the week and he worships it as holy city on the hill.
Major Major Major Major
@Haydnseek: and radio plays. And drugs.
I love Firesign but getting a youngling into it is gonna require a special youngling.
Edit: what church lady said :P
hueyplong
Teacher says when people waste time reading so much as a fking paragraph of Andrew Sullivan, an angel loses its wings.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davey C: Possessing a degree does not necessarily indicate that one is well-educated.
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: I was 14. The cover to “Dwarf” fascinated me at the public library, so I gave it a whirl. I remember thinking, “I have no idea what’s going on here, but it’s pretty amazing.”
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: I have an MS and I don’t even know how you’re supposed to write it out.
Masters? Master’s? Google suggests “Master of Science” but that’s weird.
Adam L Silverman
@Davey C: He’s poorly educated.
different-church-lady
@Davey C:
Maybe his brain is rejecting it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Go with what is says on the diploma.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: I think that says Master.
Bow before your master, science!
Haydnseek
@Major Major Major Major: I just don’t see it happening. I try, but not too hard, because I don’t want to inflict my passion on unwilling kids while they’re staring at their phones. Their later work, like “Boom not Bust,” is a bit more modern, but their best work is contained in the first LP’s. I knew these guys in LA. It was a great time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Glad to be of service.
rikyrah
Sullivan was never in the center. Phuck him.
Culture of Truth
Of all the people responsible for decline of the right into insanity and the rise of Trump, Andrew Sullivan is at top of the list.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Major Major Major Major: I guess wager is a word that is allowed even if house of gaming isn’t.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: He gets in some cracks about seeing racism everywhere, though, which is not so much the Stein-or-Busters as mainstream Democrats who think it’s racist to, say, uncritically reprint excerpts from The Bell Curve.
Mike in NC
Sullivan has lived over here long enough that he hardly has an accent anymore, so he’s just a pretentious dickhead.
Mike J
@Adam L Silverman:
When I’m around my family from Arkansas, I pick up their accent. When I’m in the City for a few weeks, I pick up hints of RP. If I could maintain it past US customs I could pass for a public intellectual in the US.
Truegster
So we were too Neo-Marxist before the “Marxist fascist Obama” took over?
I’m a little over 40, when in the F did I have dogmatic Neo-Marxists running the country?!
Was that Batman movie where Bane killed all those rich people actually a documentary?!
Please someone translate Sullivan’s bullshit…
eemom
@Major Major Major Major:
Well, it’s not like I don’t ALSO have the option of scooping up dog doo in the backyard.
rob!
I had forgotten what it was like to read Andrew Sullivan, now I remember all over again why I stopped. He’s in an absolute PANIC over Trump’s speech tonight. It reminds me of how he shit himself during the first Romney/Obama debate, about how Romney was going to be the next President, etc etc. And of course that turned out to be true. Oh wait…
terben
I don’t think Andrew Sullivan would recognise ‘neo-Marxist dogma’ if it drove up his butt in an SUV. With the doors open!
Tom Levenson
@Haydnseek: FTR: my radio teacher was David Ossman, who also narrated my first film. You know him as Porgy, among others.
Ferd ofthe Nort
You guys have all wrong. Sullivan for the play-by-play histrionics.
Anybody else for the analysis. He is a homer announcer. Totally in the bag for the home team.
JanieM
@Adam L Silverman:
He’s also a perpetual sneering outrage machine, which in the end is what made me quit reading him.
I started reading the Dish because of Terry Schiavo, and I appreciated some of what I was exposed to on that topic through his writing and his links. I read him on and off for many years after that, knowing it was unhealthy but appreciating the variety of topics and issues his blog exposed me to (literature, art, etc., not just politics).
Then one day it was one sneer and one stupid outrage too many, and I quit cold turkey. I never missed it and I wished I had done it years earlier. This was not too long after Sally Ride died and he applied the sneer generator to the fact that she hadn’t come out as gay while she was alive.
What an asshole.
cokane
OF COURSE the loss of Sully’s specific brand of Christianity is the most important thing
rumpole
Proof once again that learning does not teach a man intelligence.
cokane
Also Sully’s always subtly rewriting history — “moderate christianity” was severely anti-gay for almost the entire 20th century, as well as anti woman, as well as dominionist in over seas adventures
divF
@Tom Levenson: You’ve been on a roll this last couple of days. First a Joycean reference to omphalos (of evil), now a Firesign drive-by. Plus you took radio from Dave Ossman.
Miss Bianca
Excuse me. All I have to say is “fuck the fucking fucker.”
Juju
@Tom Levenson: It’s word type things strung together in strings that appear to express thoughts but are actually the groat clusters that nourished Porgy Tirebiter in his old age.
You should have someone do that sentence in needlepoint and have it framed, because that is truly a work of art.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: are we neophytes really supposed to *beg* for your neologism?
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Shudderp – derp so full of derp that it makes you shudder.
Jim Parene
@Tom Levenson: Love the Firesign Theater reference! Thanks!
Darkrose
It’s unnerving to read this on my phone accompanied by two ads asking me to donate to Trump.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Good Lord, you weren’t just snarking to make a point?
That amazement being expressed – OK – I like it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I said I invented a word, didn’t i?
Regnad Kcin
@Tom Levenson: But can’t we all just cut the soles off our shoes, climb a tree, and learn to play the flute, George Tirebiter….?
lurker dean
@Adam L Silverman: ha! well put!!
Mothra
But the nation WAS built on white supremacy. It’s not the only thing America has been or done, but we can’t ignore centuries of exploiting people with dark skin.
Why do racists keep wanting to BE racist but not be CALLED racist?
Mothra
@schrodinger’s cat: Ha! Love it. I’ve been trying to figure out how I became a neo Marxist without even knowing it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mothra: Fluoridation.
Ruckus
@eemom:
The horse may be dead but the fucking moron who rode in on him isn’t.
RaflW
Andrew Sullivan is completely blinded by some sort of fantasy left that maybe, maybe existed in early Thatcher years. In England.
He is useless. Life was better during the recent era when he (in an all too rare fit of wisdom) shut the hell up.
Omnes Omnibus
@RaflW: Sully is my age-ish. There was an element with in Labour that fits his fantasy – The SDP didn’t appear out of nowhere. But from things I have seen that he and Niall Ferguson wrote, they felt rejected by the leftish, SDP supporting, posh people. Becoming a Thatcherite was the way for a clever middle class kid to move up. Andy and Niall recognized the main chance and yee howdy.
wenchacha
@Tom Levenson: Respect!
I wasted many hours of the late 70s listening to those guys’ “LPs.” Oh, Presbyterian colleges.
Jeffrey Kramer
@Adam L Silverman: Basically, then, when Sullivan speaks of “the right,” he’s talking about every Republican in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and every Republican governor and state legislator. When he talks about “the left,” he’s talking about some people in Comparative Literature departments. It seems only reasonable to assign both parties equal responsibility for the state of the nation.
sherparick
Andrew Sullivan is a symptom (as well as being a contributing cause over the last 30 years) of the structural problem of MS corporate media. His utilization of the “both sides” meme, and setting up an imaginary strawman neo-marxist left to balance out the obvious viciousness and selfish nihilism of the Republican Party and Conservative Movement is as much to make sure he will be invited on all the TV shows (at least the MSNBC, ABC, and CBS ones) so he and Ron Fournier and John Dickerson and Chuck Todd can all confirm to each other and the old white folks that watch them that its “Both Sides.” For more on the uselessness of Andrew Sullivan see DriftglassS: http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2016/07/today-in-conservative-detachment.html.
sam
Had to delurk for a minute to say,
I’m sorry, when was the right EVER the party of “principled opposition”? When they were abandoning the democratic party specifically to filibuster the civil rights act? or was it when Reagan’s campaign secretly negotiated with the Iranians in 1979 to NOT release the hostages so that Carter would lose the election? or wait, was it when we spent eleventy-gazillion dollars on seventeen witch hunts in the 90s and all we got for it was the discovery that Bill Clinton lied about cheating on his wife, while it turns out in the end that the one guy held up as a paragon of virtue to lead this so-called “principled opposition” was actually a god damn child molester?
aaaaaargh.
Bruce Baugh
This may all be yesterday’s news now, but I have experience introducing folks of college age and a bit past to Firesign Theatre in recent years. If you know someone in that bracket, who has liberal-ish political views, hit them with the American Pageant. Also, look up some good Looney Tunes cartoon on Youtube – there’s no point in trying to get someone who doesn’t like Looney Tunes to like Firesign Theatre, in my experience – then ply them with shorts (also on Youtube; Firesign Theatre has a channel there) like chinchilla farming, Shoes For Industry, and Bear Whiz Beer.
To gear them up for Nick Danger, turn them on to The Maltese Falcon if they don’t know it, and a couple cartoons with Daffy Duck as a private eye.
There are a few allusions I’ve needed to explain, but they’re most easy. Rockefeller? Republican establishment, ’60s-’70s Martin Buber? Dense theologian. Etc.
Keith G
a test
Keith G
It’s all good!! Remember, we now live in a social media driven noise
windfuck tunnel. Every step along this path gets over-analysed to the point of obsession.Christ, it’s like evaluating a football game one play at a time. Sometime the offense make a good gain and you’re sure that the heavens are smiling. Once in a while the defense turns your QB into goo and you know the apocalypse has arrived. Step away from the Twitters unless you have faith in the big picture.
Ignore the noise. That alone will kill the noise makers. Trust that the media will indeed take the lazy route and substitute bullshit for intelligence. And know by Wednesday of next week, none of this will matter.
Except for a few key speeches – and we know that they will be great.