I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the Western right’s love for Vladimir Putin. Here’s another example:
Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit movement in the UK and formerly head of the far-right UK Independence Party (he retired after the Brexit win), is in talks with the Russian government owned RT news network to a be roving reporter covering Donald Trump’s presidential campaign this fall.
And who knew crunchy cons loved repressive dictatorships so much (via)?
[N]ews broke about a young Russian atheist provocateur who got himself arrested by playing Pokemon Go inside a large Orthodox church in Yekaterinburg, his hometown… [….]They say he faces up to five years in prison. I find that excessive, but I don’t feel sorry for this jackass. His fellow atheists committed mass murder of and terror against Orthodox Christians when they were in power during the Bolshevik tyranny.
I don’t think there’s any measure by which Putin has been a successful leader, other than his ability to simply remain in power. He’s the head of a petro-state with a terrible economy and a GDP roughly the size of Mexico. He has a high approval rating in Russia but my impression is that they’d like any leader who is strong like bull (hope I’m not offending anyone).
But in a world under constant siege from black Jewish homosexual atheist feminazis, he’s the last bastion of white Christian male strength, I guess.
Amir Khalid
Nigel Farage will make a fine Trump TV pundit, don’t you think? He’s as far right as they come; he gets along with the Donald; he’s not fussy about telling the truth; he’s got a British accent, even if it’s not a posh one. What more do you need?
RandomMonster
The far right (including the far right of the Republican Party) is pro-fascist, so Putin’s authoritarian image is all they need to consider him “successful”.
Wapiti
They’re authoritarians. That’s it.
Roger Moore
My impression is that he’s been generous in throwing some of his petrorubles their way. He’s very happy to support any Euroskeptic party, since they support his goal of destroying the EU and NATO.
rk
Why wouldn’t a bunch of awful people love an awful strongman. No one should ever ask how is it that Hitler could get away with doing such horrible things. A significant number of republican voters today would be ok with gas chambers, internment of blacks, browns and homosexuals. It’s who they are. I did not think I could be shocked by anything anymore, but I was shocked when I heard Gohmert call Hillary Clinton mentally impaired and the audience laughed.
piratedan
@Wapiti: it also fits the needed requirement of the guy being in charge is a white dude… and ty Doug for the XTC lyric
plus he hates who they hate, liberals, anyone not of the same faith and queers, for your patriotic American, what’s not to love?
Mike in NC
@Wapiti: Yup. Got a survey in the mail today from the Drumpf people, seeking a donation to the scampaign. You could check several boxes and contribute up to $5000. There was no box that read “FUCK TRUMP!” so I wrote it on the margin and mailed it back.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
Does this make Trump the Mayor of Simpleton ?
Droppy
@Wapiti:
I think it really is “1984” – doesn’t matter if you call it “right wing” Hitlerism or “left wing” Stalinism, it is the boot-stomping-on-the-face they seem to be longing for. Is it some misguided idea that it is better to have order than anything else? And, of course, in true Orwellian fashion, they say “freedom” a lot when they’re talking about this stuff.
oldgold
Trump is an authoritarian who unambiguously announced during the CIC interview that he wants to overtly politicize the US military. That is the most frightening thing he has said to date. It represents an existential threat to the our constitutional republic. That more people are not screeeeeeeeaaaming about this is surprising.
redshirt
This is one of the purest examples of IOKIYAR ever.
Imagine a Democrat running for office with all kinds of Russian ties and lavishly praising Putin. You can’t, because it’s literally impossible. And yet here we have not only a crazy Republican doing it, but then getting support from other Repukes.
It’s amazing.
Omnes Omnibus
Dreher is a fucking asshole. Because some atheists were were shitty in the past, it is okay to be shitty an atheist now? WTFF?
Splitting Image
They’re becoming more open about admitting that “the conservative movement” is all a big scam.
Farage campaigned against immigration to the UK, including immigration from Eastern Europe. Putin is as responsible for destabilizing Eastern Europe as Daesh is for destabilizing the Middle East, and the lack of stability in both regions is what is driving people to move to more stable countries like the UK. Logically, Farage should oppose Putin as much as he opposes Daesh. But he doesn’t.
Why? Primarily because Putin is a white male who would call himself a Christian. Not like those swarthy animals in Syria and Iraq. Farage wants to be Putin, as does Trump, but failing that they will bask in his glory.
Cacti
Trump’s candidacy has been useful for tearing the mask off the American right wing.
In their hearts, they don’t give a toss about low taxes, lack of regulation, or shrinking the size of government. They want a white, heterosexual, (nominally) Christian, authoritarian ruler to put all of the undesirables in their place.
America’s fascist moment has arrived. How this generation of Americans will be regarded by future ones will be decided in November.
raven
Nouvelle Vague – Making Plans for Nigel
Rob in CT
@Wapiti:
This. Thread ovah.
Peale
Putin does like cranes and has given money and state resources to support saving the species. Other than that, I got nothing.
catclub
@Amir Khalid:
Most of us in the US cannot tell the difference. So it would not matter.
Patricia Kayden
You all should read that entire Dreher article at American Conservative. It’s shocking that Dreher is perfectly okay with someone facing a possible 5 year prison sentence for playing Pokémon in a church. It’s one thing for the Church to get upset with someone who disrespects their worship service by playing a game and possibly interrupting parishioners. It’s something else altogether when the government puts the disruptor in jail.
Dreher argues that based on the fact that in the distant past, atheists mistreated and killed Russian Christians (possibly in the millions), the government has a right to crack down on this atheist for disrupting a church service. Doesn’t make sense at all and is very scary. Separation of church and state has worked well for the U.S. and would work well in Russia too.
enplaned
In the run-up to WWII, there were all kinds of western sympathizers of Hitler, Mussolini and others. Oswald Mosley in the UK (and many others across Europe — e.g. Quisling) but the US had its share too.
It’s the GOP Daddy tendency on steroids. The firm smack of authority, shiny leather boots and uniforms, etc. Many, many folks just aren’t happy unless they’re being told what to do and/or telling others what to do. They NEED certainty, even if it’s just an illusion. They want to be deluded rather than face reality.
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
Certainly not Putin, because he opposes so many things that the Democrats like, but it’s fairly easy to imagine a Democrat who admired, say, Hugo Chavez and had ties to Venezuela. Admittedly, Chavez wasn’t a geopolitical threat on the scale of Putin, but openly admiring a foreign dictator is not an exclusively right wing phenomenon.
hovercraft
Martin Longman aka Booman
Lizzy L
I’m not going to read Dreher at AC, because I’d like my blood pressure to stay where it is, thank you very much. But I’m guessing that Dreher doesn’t actually believe in the separation of church and state, and if he does support it, it’s only for the U.S., not for anywhere else, and even in the U.S. it shouldn’t apply to, say, women, because women might choose to have abortions because they’re whores and sluts, or to gay, bi, trans people because anything but straight sexual orientation is contrary to “natural law” and should be illegal.
And now my blood pressure is up again anyway.
hovercraft
@Amir Khalid:
So he’s a poor mans Stuart Varney?
JPL
Leadership means killing one adversaries, locking up the gays, invading other nations, and tanking the economy. Who knew?
PUTIN Net-Favorability (YouGov/Economist Poll) among…
Democrats
July 2014: -54
Aug 2016: -54
Republicans
July 2014: -66
Aug 2016: -27
Peale
@redshirt: Once the Russians cracked down on the homosexual lobby, there has been no time when the right wouldn’t find Russian ties to be a net plus.
JPL
I don’t think there’s any measure by which Putin has been a successful leader, other than his ability to simply remain in power.
Doug, it’s easy to stay in power when you rig the elections. just sayin
Shell
New Jerseys not exactly a swing state, so Im surprised at the frequency of the Clinton ads Ive been seeing. Trump? I think there was one floating around, about a month ago. So what about you folks in Florida, Ohio, Texas…. Any heavy Trump rotation? What are the ads like?
hovercraft
@Shell:
I’ve been only seeing the Ads on cable, almost all Clinton’s, but just a couple from Trump and his supporters.
catclub
@Shell:
How close are you to Philadelphia? It could be spillover from there.
jacy
You know, saying Putin is an effective leader is like saying John Wayne Gacy was an effective serial killer. I mean, he was successful for a long time, right? He was well-liked in the community for many years. You have to admire the fact that he really accomplished his goals. I’m not saying that you should go out and rape and murder a bunch of kids and hide the bodies in your crawlspace, but if you were to do that, you’d really have to give Gacy some props for doing it so well for so long.
Cacti
@Shell:
I usually see about 1 primetime Clinton ad per night here in deep blue western Washington. No Trump ads. I don’t figure he’d bother here.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
It’s pretty strange. Signing statements are an unpardonable executive power grab. Militia’s are mobilizing to resist the overwhelming tyranny being imposed by the Federal Government. So…lets put a dictator in charge, ’cause, like, that will enhance everybody’s freedom?
The bottom line is that the average GOP voter just does not recognize the legitimacy of a non-GOP administration. They feel they should have a monopoly on power. They’d welcome a dictator so long as the dictator came with an R next to his name, whatever they say about freedom and tyranny when someone with a D next to his (or hopefully? her) name is in the Oval Office.
eric
@Omnes Omnibus: such would be an interesting standard for Catholics around the world. And perhaps Southerners.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Cacti: I’m seeing a lot of Trump ads in the Maryland Suburbs of DC, which I’m sure are targeted to the Northern Virginia portion of the DC metro area. Depending on where you are in NJ could they be targeting PA voters? PA is supposedly a swing state though last I checked Hillary had a fairly comfortable lead.
Gin & Tonic
Man, ol’ BiP must be seething that he got the hammer and can’t come over here and educate us all.
scav
“Leader” has become an essentially a content-free descriptor of someone in charge that the right (especially) approves of. “Not a leader” means they disapprove of them: nothing more. A Not a Leader can have positive internal polling figures and be respected internationally and a Leader lack both. People can stand behind and alongside Not a Leaders while Leaders stand solitary in the plains shouting at clouds. As in, du-uh. Post-Truth is al Post-Reality is also Post-Definitions. See also the difference between bright/flashy and intellectually brilliant.
NorthLeft12
@Wapiti: What you said.
The one good thing about Deadbeat Donald is that his campaign is helping to clarify how the right wing feels, I mean deep down believes, about democracy, and equal justice and rights for all. They don’t support those principles. Never have, and never will.
There is no hiding it or denying it now.
Cacti
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Seems most likely. But NJ ads would show up in the Philly market, and Philly is Dem country. But I’m not a PA native, so maybe there’s something about it that makes sense.
Or maybe Trump’s vanity wants to believe that he can win NJ when the polling says he most definitely won’t.
burnspbesq
This is really stupid, Governor
Peale
@scav: I can’t wait until they really discover Duterte. His moment in the global pantheon of rulership hasn’t even begun. I mean, its only been 3 days since he claimed that he would call Obama a son-of-a-bitch to his face.
rikyrah
@oldgold:
The thing is.. the military people are screaming. They really are. They understand the threat that Ferret Head is to the republic
PIGL
@Patricia Kayden: It makes perfect sense if one lusts after the killing of one’s enemies, and plans to use state power in order to do it. In other words, if you’re a republican.
NorthLeft12
@Roger Moore: Oh really?
Well Roger, please name the Democrat who admired Chavez, or who you “imagined” praised him like numerous, high profile Republicans are praising Putin. More of the “both sides do it” BS.
rikyrah
@redshirt:
.
True that.
Can’t begin to wrap your mind around the possibility
Matt McIrvin
@Patricia Kayden: Authoritarians tend not to believe that a situation without a master really exists. They can’t conceive of government keeping its nose out of religion. If it’s not enforcing their religion, then it must be enforcing atheism, or enforcing some other, worse religion. If the President isn’t a strong master to all Americans, then there must be some other master, who is probably a bad master.
PIGL
@Roger Moore: except, darling, that Chavez was not a dictator. He won elections fair and square. I realise that both he and Putin are on the USA official, bipartisan, enemies list, but they are not equivalent. The right hated Chevez for his policies, they love Putin for his ruthlessness. The left: more or less the converse. Both Sides Don’t Fucking Do It.
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
I think Chris Christie evaluates his moves on how much weight he gets to throw around, given that … No, I really shouldn’t finish that thought.
Matt McIrvin
@hovercraft: Not only that… most of the people Mao murdered died in famines (if I recall correctly). His body count specifically came from his inability to run his economy competently.
RoonieRoo
Dreher has been having a growing love affair with Putin for quite a while now. If you go back in his archives, he has a ton of posts about how great Putin is with his patented “But I don’t like the evil man” updates. Dreher’s comboxes are also infested with alt-right nationalists that he pretends to not see. He’s always “shocked! shocked I tell you!” when one of his regular commenters shows his alt-right face just a little too boldly.
catclub
@PIGL:
Putin also wins elections. Fair and square is complicated.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: The people most directly affected aren’t allowed to express their misgivings in any official capacity.
Schlemazel
@Roger Moore:
Names please! And, please not some obscure – or even semi-obscure – blogger but actual elected Democrats. Hell I’d settle for nominated ones if you can produce a quote as clear as Drumpfs
@NorthLeft12:
Ok. I’m second
catclub
@rikyrah: I really want a Trump interviewer to ask him if he is going to take Erdogan’s approach to reforming the military brass. Also ask Trump if he thinks the White House should be remodeled on Erdogan’s lines. Hijinks would ensue.
I also would like a pony.
Gravenstone
@Patricia Kayden: It’s just one religious fanatic sticking up for the right of other religious fanatics to fuck over non-believers.
Roger Moore
@NorthLeft12: @PIGL:
Fine, how about Fidel Castro. Bernie Sanders has openly praised Castro for doing good things for Cuba, and that wasn’t enough to stop a lot of Democrats voting for him.
Corner Stone
My God! Michelle Bachmann is *HAWT*! That orange outfit might as well be flames because she’s burning her way right into my ..uh..heart.
Roger Moore
@RoonieRoo:
I assume at least some of Dreher’s interest in Putin is because he’s Orthodox, and Putin has portrayed himself as defender of the Russian Orthodox church. I’ve noticed at least some of the same tendency with Daniel Larison, who has definitely tended to take the Serbian side in disagreements within former Yugoslavia.
PPCLI
Chris Cuomo was pressing Kellyanne Conway about Trump criticizing the US on Russian TV. Her response was to plead ignorance: “First of all, as you know, former CNN superstar Larry King has a podcast, and Mr. Trump went on his podcast — nobody said it was going to be on Russian TV,”
Note to talking heads: when someone from the Trump campaign pleads ignorance in something like this, your next line has to be: “It’s not up to them to tell you — it’s up to you to find out. Presidents, and the people around them, have to be aware of things like this. If Trump can’t do that, he shouldn’t be president.”
Feathers
The right (as somewhat apposed to “conservatives”) have always had a thing for dictators. Lindberg’s famous infatuation with Hitler, widespread admiration for Franco, and let’s not forget Kissinger et al’s work on behalf of Pinochet. Add in the Shah of Iran and that most dictatorshiplike of democracies, South Africa and you almost have a pattern.
It sort of went underground for a while when they no longer had the figleaf of “anti-communism” to hide behind. But Trump made so much subtext text, hasn’t he?
patrick II
@JPL:
Trump is lucky his adversary Obama isn’t the “leader” Putkin is, otherwise he would have been shot in the back while walking down the street by now.
Peale
@NorthLeft12: I’m pretty sure that if Sanders were the candidate, there would be quite a few ads targeted to Hispanics about his praise for Ortega.
ruemara
He’s been funding them. It is that simple.
JMG
@Cacti: Ads run to remind your voters to vote for you, or to create doubts about your opponent (the negative ones) Clinton is running ads in the Philly market because that’s where she needs to run up the score to win the state.
rikyrah
“Educational Choice” is a Slogan Slick Enough for Donald Trump
Rhetoric can’t hide a failure to address inequality
by Andre Perry
September 9, 2016 1:30 PM
Donald Trump outlined his policy and philosophy for K-12 education in a speech at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy (CASSA), a for-profit charter school in the largest city of battleground state of Ohio.
The Republican presidential nominee and founder of Trump University accused Democrats of trapping black and Hispanic youth in failing public schools and offered the postern door of school choice through a proposed block grant, voucher-like program in which per pupil expenditures would follow students to the school of their parents’ liking.
“I want every single inner city child in America who is today trapped in a failing school to have the freedom, the civil right to attend the school of their choice,” Trump said in his Sept. 8 speech.
The philosophical basis for Trump’s policy should sound familiar. It seems to come out of the playbooks of both Republican and Democrat reformers who advocate for vouchers and/or charter schools. Charter and voucher advocates may distance themselves from the nuclear Trump and his policies, but they will have a hard time distancing themselves from his rhetoric, which reveals how gamey the word “choice” is.
RoonieRoo
@Roger Moore: Absolutely. I think that is very accurate. But what gets under my skin is his complete, willful ignorance of why Putin has become this defender of the Orthodox faith.
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: Orthodoxy (Christian) is not monolithic. The Russian Orthodox patriarchate made a deal with the devil under the leadership of Aleksey II, and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Kremlin. There are many other patriarchates that are antagonistic to Moscow.
I don’t know what branch Dreher belongs to and don’t care, just pointing out that (as always with religion) it is easy to oversimplify.
Peale
@rikyrah: sorry, but didn’t Romney and Bush run on that as well? How is the “vouchers” new for a presidential candidate? And it is always sold as being something to help inner-city minorities (minorities who go to sucky schools in the country, well good luck).
scav
@PPCLI: The guy that knows all the best people, is going to hire all the best people, who’s relying on his media fascination from a TV show about his managing and identifying all the right people has been hoodwinked! and taken advantage of! like a tender, still-blind kitten by that mean mean Larry King. Leadership!
PPCLI
@hovercraft: Mao was an “effective leader”? Mao was very good at setting factions against one another to keep iron control, it’s true. He also unleashed a mob of fanatical students and anti-intellectuals on the country and shattered an entire generation of educated Chinese. He created a massive famine that cost the lives of tens of millions by starvation and disease by pursuing lunatic, fact-challenged fantasies such as that steel could be produced in backyard furnaces. And on and on….
Being able to keep iron control of your helpless, desperate subjects is not what makes an “effective leader”. Being the head of a kleptocracy like Putin’s that effectively channels the wealth of the country into the pockets of the nomenklatura while killing journalists and dissidents and leaving the huge majority of the country in hopeless poverty is not being an “effective leader”. Being a boot stomping in a human face is not “being an effective leader”, even if the face can never make the boot go away.
“Effective Leader”. Jesus Christ what is the matter with these people?
Enhanced Voting Techinques
Google “shirtless Putin” and you will understand why the strictly hetrosexual, totally NOT gay fascination with Putin from these godly, Christian conservative men.
Aleta
Just a wild guess, but:
Evolution of ideas since 1988 (?)
A leader who works across the aisle with Democrats to pass compromise legislation is weak.
A leader who works with the other side is weak.
Making agreement with foreign powers is weak. (A useful position for blocking climate change agreements and tax and environmental regulation.)
Therefore Obama is weak. (Useful branding if you want reject Democratic candidate for President. Seems to have stuck if you talk to pro-Trump voters.)
Therefore Obama is the reason our country is weak.
The system of democracy causes our country to be weak.
Right wing solution:
1. Subvert democracy with voter laws and redistricting and corporate payments to AGs; and
2. Convince voters to elect a (pretend) strongman.
Expressing admiration for Putin’s “strength” is supposed to make us want Trump’s uncompromising toughness on the one hand; and believe that only Trump can stand up to Putin on the other. Unfortunately Trump has botched the second part of the message. First by promoting Manafort to visibility, and now by the undisciplined way he answers questions about Putin.
oklahomo
@Droppy: Yes, and in Room 101, they shove Trump’s hair in your face to break you.
boatboy_srq
There are times I think what’s really needed is a plague that only affects the 1%. And I don’t mean affluenza.
sigaba
@Roger Moore: I have a conspiracy theory that The American Conservative’s foundation is propped up with Russian money. They do a lot of Russia coverage.
gene108
Putin is estimated to be a billionaire by skimming money.
The U.S. has a $15 trillion economy and the government has a $4 Trillion dollar budget (I think).
If a guy like Trump, or somebody else like minded, can get in and skim a bit of that money for himself, like Putin has in Russia, they could easily become the richest person in the world.
Is there any wonder Putin is so admired?
I think not.
Cacti
@srv:
OTOH, it makes a handy forum for blowing kisses at your favorite dictator mancrush, as certain Republican candidates are wont to do.
You know it’s bad when the best excuse he can come up with is “I was tricked by Larry King”.
RoonieRoo
@sigaba: I have seriously had that thought over the last year. I don’t take it seriously but I have had moments where I wondered.
geg6
@Cacti:
Philly suburbs, where all those highly desirable college-educated white people, especially college-educated white women, live.
jl
I think Doug! meant ‘black Jewish homosexual atheist feminazi leather daddy bears’.
The Storm is coming…it is HERE!
gene108
@hovercraft:
Whatever her shortcomings were, she did connect with a lot of people in this country. Her endorsement, in 2010, got people elected, like Gov. Haley in SC.
The only two other politicians, I’ve seen with that sort of pull, have been Obama and Reagan.
Cacti
@geg6:
Makes sense.
I was reading in WaPo that if Trump loses NC, it will largely from rejection by college educated white women.
While he leads with white women overall in NC, he’s polling about 11 points below Romney’s in-state performance with that group.
geg6
@Corner Stone:
Number one thing I’ll never get about men. How can you find someone so stupid and repellant hot? I can’t get past that when evaluating the attractiveness of a man.
sigaba
@RoonieRoo: It’s hard to tell because the only people I read there regularly are Larison and Dreher and they’re totally in the Russia tank (though not necessarily the Putin one). Their coverage of Putin and Russia can be “critical” from time to time but it’s pretty obvious to me that Dreher and the other so-cons think tampon machines in the ladies’ room is a bigger threat to world peace than Putin. Is that bias? Or just stupid? Dunno.
Iowa Old Lady
@geg6: One of my proudest moments was when my teenaged son said girls who weren’t smart were boring.
Aleta
If T is put into office, I’ll always remember the week he tried to fire the generals. : )
gene108
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
NJ really does not have its own media market.
Southern NJ is in the sphere of the Philadelphia media market.
Northern NJ is in the sphere of the New York media market.
In Southern NJ, you will see ads for the PA candidates and if a Southern NJ race is competitive, ads for those races broadcast on Philly stations.
So NJ is not targeting PA voters, it is the other way around. NJ gets the spill-over from ads broadcast in Philadelphia for the PA market.
@geg6:
They used to go Republican. They are the folks that kept electing Arlen Specter to the Senate.
After Bush 43 that started to change.
As long as Republicans are dominated by Southern Fundies, I do not see it changing.
If Republican Presidential candidates cannot win back the suburbs, it will be hard for them to win PA.
Bitter Scribe
“Retired after the Brexit win”? That motherfucker just about left skid marks getting out of politics.
Ruckus
@Mike in NC:
It wouldn’t be worth it to go to the store and buy a red sharpie and write that in nice big legible letters across the entire thing? Seems only proper to me.
geg6
@Cacti:
Hilz’s campaign has also put a lot into getting Katie McGinty elected to Toomey’s seat. Pretty much the entire Dream Team has been here campaigning for her (Kaine, Big Dog, Hillary, Uncle Joe and, this weekend, Elizabeth Warren). Anything that gets out the Hillary vote will probably help Katie.
cokane
alt right love for Putin has been brewing for awhile, i can say that. Old school cons, sure I understand the consternation. But Putin as a contrast to politicians like Merkel, Hollande, Cameron… Putin perceived as strong anti Muslim
Aleta
@Iowa Old Lady: You raised a good one. A smart kid who admires his smart mother, and can recognize female intelligence. I’ve noticed that his kind are increasing.
geg6
@gene108:
Fixt.
Brachiator
I suspect that Trump will dump Putin in favor of a new crush, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
I don’t know how many world leader’s Trump has actually met, but I expect that some of this stuff is slick (and sick) showmanship.
It’s easy to point to Putin, because he is not only a strongman, but a strongman who has supposedly directly checked Obama. So Trump gets his reliable two-fer: Putin strong, Obama weak.
It’s easier for Trump to sell himself as a strong leader to his dopes, uh, I mean his base, by using Putin as a convenient proxy for steely leadership and strength.
Also, since Trump doesn’t really know jackshit about foreign policy, he has an easier time relating to an authoritarian than to a strong leader who has to deal with a Congress or a parliament.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Cacti: Your ego explanation is pretty convincing…I’ve read that Trump doesn’t have much of an analytics team helping him target ads. Take the DC area for example – he’s bought heavily here even though MD and DC are completely out of reach and VA is pretty much out of reach too. I’d guess that he’s doing especially poorly in Northern VA which is the part of VA covered by the DC media market ad buy. So, spending here is stupid, but he’s doing it because he doesn’t know any better.
Hillary ran a few ads here and then stopped, presumably because her analytics team knows this area is locked up for her so she can focus resources elsewhere.
RoonieRoo
@sigaba: Larison and Dreher are pretty much who I read too. I like Larison’s writing and I can understand where he goes on stuff. But Dreher I kind of hate read. I’ve been enjoying his implosion and it’s purely schadenfreude reading. Am I bad person?
Lizzy L
I know that this should go in the post about the Korea nuke test, but since nobody is hanging out there, I’m putting it here: TPM is reporting that Donald Trump’s campaign is blaming Hillary Clinton for the Korean nuke test.
Dmbeaster
@NorthLeft12:
Just like Obama has resulted in an increase and acceptance of overt racism, Hillary an increase and acceptance of open misogny, then the threat of more Democratic Party success has resulted in open acceptance of any authoritarian means to achieve power.
Yes, that is what the embrace of Trump by the GOP means.
A rather large % of Americans have abandoned our traditional values in favor of hate that justifies most anything for power. It really is that bad.
The biggest failure of mainline opinion makers is to ignore this gross radicalization of the GOP. It is impossible to imagine anyone in today’s GOP repeating the GOP senators’ march to Nixon in 1974 informing him that he had to resign for gross abuse of power. They are cheerleading someone who openly embraces those means.
Aleta
@Brachiator: Dear Diary, Kim loves rockets that explode, and so do I ! (OMG I’m so glad I got new nukes this year.)
Lizzy L
@Dmbeaster: This. Well said.
And our feckless press will avert their eyes. Not their problem, right?
Mike J
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Ad buys in DC/NoVA are rarely target voters. Chuck Todd is the target audience.
Iowa Old Lady
@Lizzy L: I was thinking today about media types analyzing Trump and saying he speaks for a discontented, angry part of the public. It’s disturbing to me that no one says one role of a leader is to encourage us to rise above our difference, to listen to our better angels.
Iowa Old Lady
@Aleta: He was a good kid who’s grown into a good man. I’m proud of him.
SenyorDave
@srv: Gohmert said that Clinton has “made clear” that she is mentally impaired,
Louis Gohmert is claiming someone else is mentally impaired? If it weren’t so pathetic, the jokes would write themselves
Cacti
@srv:
“How dare you cast aspersions on my asparagus.”
-Louie Gohmert
Miss Bianca
@srv: Yeah, I’d trust Louis Gohmert, the Dumbest Man in Congress, to be making judgements about anyone else’s mental capabilities. Or in other words:
Otto: “Apes don’t read philosophy.”
Wanda: “Yes they do, Otto. They just don’t understand it.”
Come on, man, your schtick is getting shopworn. It’s so threadbare by now, the seams are showing!
Dmbeaster
@srv: Hey srv, I am sure you are one of the cackling crowd the loves Gohmert’s stand up routine.
Peale
@RoonieRoo: Combine orthodoxy with lack of concern with human rights and you get more “I don’t see anything wrong with it, plus it pisses off feminists so let’s put it out there” thinking.
Shell
Spending more than 2 seconds caring about anything Gohmert (Sandy Hook would never have happened if the teachers were armed,) said would be an indication of mental impairment.
hovercraft
Charlie Sykes, Trump is a Vladamir Putin fanboy who is easily flattered, what’s gonna happen if Putin says something nice about the size of his fingers?
Matt McIrvin
Paleocons like Larison and Pat Buchanan got a lot of unearned respect from liberals for opposing the GW Bush administration’s war plans. It made sense to make strategic common cause with them, but I think we’re seeing the down side of this now.
(As we may well come to regret making strategic common cause with the neocons against them. But at the height of the antiwar movement I think there was blindness to the extreme creepiness of some of the paleos’ positions.)
Shell
I forgot about his support for the Alaskan Pipeline, because it would help the caribou have more sex.
Yes, seriously.
Gelfling 545
@Patricia Kayden: I still can’t get over it – Vladimir Putin, Defender of the Faith.
hovercraft
@Cacti:
I live in Middlesex County, NJ, the only Ads I’m seeing here are on cable, which are national buys, most of Western and South Jersey do overlap with the PA market. Even with his ego, he’s too cheap to advertise here, we are part of the Tri-state market which covers NYC and CT, he’s not spending that kind of money.
Patricia Kayden
@Shell: Gohmert? That “aspersions on my asparagus” idiot? Naw.
Terry chay
@Gin & Tonic: no. RT cut him off because the has to save money for Farage. Oil prices are just not what they used to be.
Uncle Cosmo
@srv: Gohmert Piles (R-Bedlam) only knows what mental impairment looks like from inside it. Just like you, shitstain.
Mart
@raven: Thought I was familiar with another version of the song, but DougJ is very clever.
Patricia Kayden
@PPCLI:
This was partly explored in the sci-fi novel “The Three-Body Problem” by Liu Cixin. Horrifying.
Tony J
Dreher, Christ, what a spineless little whiner. I used to hate read him, I even commented occasionally, but now I avoid his columns because he’s so frigging predictable. Whatever the topic, however obviously wrong the approved AmCon line might be, even if he starts off taking a different slant he’ll always, always, always knuckle under because somehow, somewhere, one of those evil SJW/Feminazi types said or did something that forces him to reevaluate and change his mind.
I’ll always remember his cowardly little backtrack over the racist scandal some TV Chef go into a few years ago, Paula something, I think. Southern ‘lady’ who was sued by her staff for being a raging bigot who let her brother racially abuse black staff and held ‘Ante-Bellum’ parties. He started off saying how awful she was, then got a full dose of how his regular commentators had no problem at all with anything she’d done, and was soon changing tack after ‘re-evaluating’ how awful and hypocritical the ‘Left’ was being.
But the real sheen on the turd came when he opened a fresh thread explaining why he was now sure the scandal was overblown and proof of Leftist scapegoating. His reasoning? He’d been listening to some Stones and really listened to the lyrics of ‘Brown Sugar’ for the first time ever, realized they were terribly racist, further realized that ‘The Left’ had never condemned the Stones for being so terribly racist, so concluded that ‘The Left’ were hypocrites who were only attacking Deen because she was Southern and therefore Conservative. Obvious, yeah?
TL:DR – Dreher, what a spineless little whiner. But don’t point that out to him because he’ll just ban you.
Gelfling 545
@PPCLI: Got power; kept power = their definition of an effective leader.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@NorthLeft12:
I almost agree with you.
The only thing holding me back is the Barry Goldwater I read about in Before the Storm.
The problem today is *finding* conservatives such as Goldwater.
Sure he was extremist but he wasn’t a not-so-closeted Nazi like so many of them are today.
Miss Bianca
@Tony J: Well, I don’t know about the rest of “the Left”, but I’ve been hatin’ on “Brown Sugar” for its racism and sexism for years. I can haz blog gig now?
Mnemosyne
@Tony J:
“Brown Sugar” was released when I was 2 years old. Gee, Rod, maybe we have higher standards for shit people do today than the shit they did forty-five years ago.
Patricia Kayden
@Peale:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-07/duterte-outbursts-taking-toll-as-philippine-stock-losses-mount
That “son of a whore” insult is costing the Philippine’s much dinero. Duterte has just learned that you don’t insult President Obama and get away with it.
Tony J
@Miss Bianca:
Absolutely. Just as long as you’re willing to spin on a dime and defend the Stones for their brave stand against paying taxes I’m sure the American Conservative would be delighted to put you on the Putin payroll.
Consistency? Not in that market.
Miss Bianca
@Tony J: Consistency?! Bugbear, small minds, argle-bargle etc.
Thanks for the laff!!
Tony J
@Mnemosyne:
What really boggled my mind was his contention that the Stones are somehow a foundational icon of ‘The Left’ because… I don’t know. They’re British? They came out of the 60’s Counter-Culture? Because they’re into Free Love and don’t go to Church much? I mean, WTF?
And the frigging album was in – his – record collection. He was the one listening to it. But ‘The Left’ are all hypocrites who don’t really care about racism because… I don’t know, he needed a revelation to pivot around and that was the first thing that came to mind? Arsehole.
aangus
@Mart:
This one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfsYSPCNWCw
Gravenstone
@Tony J: Good heavens! Imagine what might happen if Dreher ever actually listened to the lyrics for “Under My Thumb”?
Miss Bianca
@Gravenstone: Oh, *that’s* no problem – remember, it’s only racism that’s apparently giving this Dreher creature the vapors – plain ol’ sexism is still A-OK, far as I can tell.
Tony J
@Miss Bianca:
8-)
Seriously though, do not be tempted to pop over there just to see how awful Dreher can be. He recently had a series of post that basically postulated that Obama and the BLM movement were raging hypocrites because they weren’t personally rowing fleets of small boats to Lousianna to rescue people from the floods (while white, Christian Gool Ole Boys were) so who’s the real racists, eh?
Your blood pressure shouldn’t have to deal with that just to confirm what a raging peacock of alt-right crap he is. Not worth it.
Tony J
@Gravenstone:
Oh he’s probably saving that one for when he needs to ‘explain’ how ‘The Left’ don’t really care about sexism either because ‘they’ haven’t arranged to have every copy of the track ritually smashed under the heels of sensible shoes.
Miss Bianca
@Tony J: Don’t worry, I’m perfectly happy with the “I read him so you don’t have to” precis you’ve been providing!
Villago Delenda Est
Authoritarian shitstains love other authoritarian shitstains.
Film at 11.
bystander
@srv:
Any chance the Phelps family will show up? I’d like that. Schlafly did after all not stone her son to death in Laclede’s Landing.
Mnemosyne
@Tony J:
Fred Clark at Slacktivist was my introduction to Dreher. I’m pretty sure that the phrase, Christ, what an asshole was invented to refer to Dreher. *
* not intended to be a factual statement
sigaba
@Tony J: For laughs Google Dreher’s old film reviews, his last job in the real world was as a film reviewer for a chain of fish wrapper Daily Shopper papers in south Florida.
laura
Pussy Riot. Best response to authoriarianizm and mysoginy in recent years.
That is all.
Tony J
Someone gave that petulant shrew a job reviewing the product of Secular Liberal Hollyweird? Really? Did he write a one-handed cri de coeur about the awesomeness of ‘Passion of the Christ’ that struck a chord with some Born Again publisher?
Let me get a few more drinks in me and I’ll see if I hate myself enough to delve in.
Miss Bianca
@Tony J: Please to review the reviews. I’m looking forward to a post-work cocktail and some giggles.
RoonieRoo
@Tony J: OMGosh!! I hate read Dreher pretty regularly but I don’t know that I could survive diving into his old movie reviews.
Frankensteinbeck
@geg6:
I am sure I’m too late to this thread, but…
You have a point about personality. Even without it, I do not see the attraction in Bachmann or Palin. Hate carves your face. It produces a stiff, leathery mask. They are grotesquely ugly women.
That is the least of their flaws, but hey, it came up.
Gretchen
Rod Dreher is on a tear lately with that Pokemon kid. Obviously going to jail for 5 years for offending someone’s sensibilities is perfectly reasonable. And letting a miscarrying woman bleed to death in a Catholic hospital because their religion objects to removing the doomed fetus before its heart stops is just what religious freedom requires. The dead woman’s freedom isn’t important. He doubles down today: Atheists don’t deserve and quarter because 100 years ago Bolsheviks were atheists and look at all the Christians they killed: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/american-blasphemy-laws/#post-comments
Gretchen
I keep trying to stop hate-reading Dreher but his awfulness keeps drawing me back in.
Barney
@hovercraft: No, he’s posher than Stuart Varney, both in accent (Varney has a vague Australian twang, to me, though I can’t work out why, but definitely not ‘posh’) and in background – Farage’s father was a stockbroker, he went to Dulwich College, a prestigious private school (alumni include Sir Ernest Shackleton, Sir P G Wodehouse, and Raymond Chandler), and was then a commodities trader in the City of London. He does openly enjoy booze and cigarettes, which gives him a ‘common man’ appeal.
Maybe a ‘stupid man’s Stuart Varney’ – Varney was at least intelligent enough to get into the London School of Economics, Farage didn’t go to university, though you might put that down to greed, and wanting to get trading as quickly as possible, since he didn’t need university with his father’s conenctions.