Atrios writes:
I get the corruption and the MINEMINEINE selfishness, but I admit I don’t get the pure cruelty for cruelty’s sake. I mean, it’s one thing to not think you should have to pay to keep the poors alive, it’s another to actively root for them to die.
I used to think the poor had to die to maintain the sanctity of our civilization. It’s not that our Galtian overlords need the money, it’s the future Mr. Gittes! But now I think that the poor have to die because principles.
I used to take a reasonably benign view of principles. I saw them as a Miss Congeniality prize, or as something you still had (like your health) no matter how much of a mess you’d made of things. “He has principles” — it’s always a “he” that has them — is what you said about a one-term president or a coach who went 3-8 but at least managed to avoid any major scandals. Nothing wrong with that, I like Jimmy Carter, and those recently-fired college football coaches often seem more decent than their still-employed counterparts. But…no one talks about FDR’s principles or Bill Belichik’s principles, so if people are talking about your principles, you can be pretty sure you’ve failed at whatever it is you had set out to do. (I’ll admit one exception: if you are assassinated young, like Lincoln, you may be described as having principles rather than the toughness and strategic acumen you actually possessed.)
But I’ve started to realize that principles are much more sinister than that. Principles are often cited as arguments in favor of decisions for which no favorable financial or public policy reasons exist. Sure, austerity causes the GDP to contract and throws millions of people out of work, but when I have to tighten my belt, the gubmint should too because principles. Yes, getting rid of Obamacare would strip 20 million people of health care but the thought of strapping young bucks buying T-bones with their Obamacare subsidies offends many very principled fee fees. Moral hazard, or something like that. And why should college students be forced to listen to white nationalist speakers? Principles, of course.
If you’re a liberal, the best way to show you have principles is to attack other liberals. Hippie-punching was once all the rage, and it’s still big (see Chait, Jonathan), but the more principled hippies are punching the neo-liberal shills pretty hard these days, too. Just as to be a principled mainstream liberal you must demonstrate an obsessive hatred of safe zones and teachers’ unions, to be a principled member of the true left you must see Obama and the Clintons as the corrupt, neoliberal shills that they are (to be truly principled you should collaborate with Russian intelligence to help defeat Hillary). Chris Hitchens was a real trail-blazer in this regard. I’m not sure what leftist principles compelled him to become a neocon, though I suspect they had more to do with Johnny Walker than Leon Trotsky. True left principles can be surprisingly lucrative, as Hitchens showed, and I’d understand if Freddie deBoer used his principles to get a regular gig on Fox attacking Democrats as the real hypocrites.
There’s a bit of a distinction between the two ways of showing principles mentioned above. Hippie-punching makes you a principled person in the eyes of establishment media whereas Hillary-punching makes you a principled person in the eyes of Glenn Greenwald and Breitbart (but what’s the difference at this point?).
How about with conservatives? That’s more complicated because conservatives like the idea of principles more than liberals do (at least non-baby boomer liberals) — that’s a big part of why conservative policies are so often a big failure in practice. But establishment media tends to see conservatives as most principled when they are endorsing and enacting policies that are both inhumane and politically unpopular.
Hence, the enormous Beltway crush on Paul Ryan.
schrodingers_cat
Auditioning for David Brooks gig at the NYT? That’s a whole plate of word salad.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: it’s a little hard to follow, but the content is not Brooksian.
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
ouch
Roger Moore
No one talks about Belichik’s principles because they want to say nice things about him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Alec McGillis reposted his own take on Ryan-as-a-fraud from 2012, and it mentions that things got quite snippy with Ezra Klein when McGillis pointed out that Ryan was pretty much full of shit. And Klein made the most amazing declaration of Broderism on the ObamaBros’ Pod Save America podcast this week. I wish there were a transcript, or I weren’t too lazy to go find it and try to type it up. Roughly: “I want to be fair, I don’t want to say that RyanCare is bullshit, but I have to”. Somehow truth is now considered unfair.
WereBear
Now we know. This is how they talk to each other when no one else is around.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
as I recall, Hitchens came to believe that US was capable of bombing the world into a state of peace and the only thing stopping it from doing so was Bill Clinton’s cowardice and corruption. It started with Yugoslavia and extended to Iraq, and he seemed to think if Clinton had gone to Pyongyang it would’ve somehow opened up the hermit kingdom.
Lee Hartmann
quoting Marx: “I have principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others”
smintheus
Beltway insiders see the Democratic Party as hostage to a coalition of special interests; when Democrats advocate for something, they instinctively assume it’s rarely because it’s the right thing to do, just the expedient thing.
The same insiders always resist seeing the Republican Party as held hostage to a coalition of special interests. Therefore their policies, however malign and stupid, are principled first and malign/stupid second (if that).
lollipopguild
@Lee Hartmann: Also Marx-“whatever it is I am against it!’
Jim, Foolish Literalist
a week or so ago, before the reveal, I heard Andrea Mitchell say in all earnestness that the problem with Trump’s promises on health care was that he had to deal with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who care about numbers and deficits. If only Mrs Greenspan knew somebody who knew something about Ayn Rand, and could explain Paul Ryan to her…
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
If you ever notice, the people who always talk about making “tough choices” on everything from scaled services (like telecom access, public worker pensions, medicaid, Medicare and social security) to welfare and its reform never ever have to actually personally suffer the “tough” side of those “tough choices”.
I suspect that some of that framing could shift the rhetorical dynamic and make those services easier to sell.
Ruckus
@smintheus:
I think conservatives have used the word principled because otherwise you’d look at their policies and either laugh your ass off or be so pissed you want to club someone with a baseball bat. I think conservatives look at liberal policies and see that they might just help someone and they see no principle in that.
Betty Cracker
I’ll wager most of us agree money is a corrupting influence in politics and that it’s dangerous for the CIA or FBI to meddle in political matters. But in the sense you’re describing, the most principled stand against these issues happens when liberals rail against their own side for perceived transgressions.
Mnemosyne
As I brought up in John’s fetus fetishization post earlier, right now “pro-life” principles in Texas are demanding that mothers and infants die so Texas can take a “principled” stand against Planned Parenthood and all their works, including prenatal and pediatric care.
When your principles demand that other people die to fulfill them, you’re a fucking sociopath.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@schrodingers_cat:
Does have a bit of a hot take vibe, I agree. Some good points in there, but letting it set until cool, followed by revision is always a good idea.
Doug R
It’s a privilege to see both parties as the same. It don’t look that way if you don’t have privilege.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Roger Moore:
*guffaw*
Something akin to the Swarzchild radius – the closer you get to Belichik, you still don’t see any principles, and once you get inside the Belichik radius, no information about any principles ever becomes visible outside….
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
As I linked to in #15, sometimes the principles themselves are malign and stupid.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: @Doug!: Agreed, content is not but style is. I lost track what I had read in the first paragraph after I finished with the second.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ezra Klein was one of the biggest attack dogs in the ACA glitchy computer roll out phase.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Belichik is sort of a principles event horizon.
Roger Moore
@smintheus:
Because those beltway insiders are mostly members of one (or more) of the special interests the Republicans are beholden to. IOW, politicians doing what I want are principled statesmen; politicians doing what I don’t want are unprincipled hacks beholden to special interests.
zhena gogolia
@Doug!:
She does not spare the stiletto!
XTPD
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There actually was a recent Vox podcast where Klein admitted that even with the knowledge that Repubs are full of shit, he temperamentally can’t help but presume good faith. (Matt Y hasn’t had this problem, or at least is affected by it to a much lesser extent).
XTPD
@Ruckus: Or a flanged mace.
smintheus
@Mnemosyne: Unfortunately, all my school principals were malign and stupid, so I’m all too familiar with the general problem.
Brachiator
@Doug!: I agree somewhat with @schrodingers_cat:
For example:
Today you mean iPhones not T-bones. You need to upgrade your cliches if you want to keep up with the David Brooks of punditry.
I remember Litttle Freddie when he posted here. An interesting variation on your theme of principles. As far as I could tell, he was as inhumane as someone like Ryan. His vision of “progressive” economics always seemed to want to control poor people, and to direct them to outcomes he thought best for them.
Spanky
@Ruckus: Hang on …
Fixed!
smintheus
@Roger Moore: They certainly don’t hang with the kind of people many Democratic policies are designed to help.
ArchTeryx
And here I was hoping for a nice Sunday off from it all. :-/
MattF
Hitchens was a professional party-goer– the one and only certain way to get his attention was free cocktails.
Roger Moore
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The people who talk the most about making “tough choices” are dodging actual tough choices. Pissing on the little guy to protect the interests of the big guy is not a tough choice. IMO, the toughest choices of all come when times are good and the treasury is flush. Then everyone wants to pretend the good times will last forever and we can take advantage of the money to pay for everyone’s favorite pet project; saying no and using that money to pay down debt and build up a rainy day fund is making a genuinely tough choice.
Villago Delenda Est
Hence, my nym.
Wipe them out. All of them.
debbie
@lollipopguild:
Also “I would never belong to an organization that would have me as a member.”
MattF
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s those blue eyes.
Tami Ross
I worked for more than a decade in ophthalmology. Patients were informed at every visit that the charges for a refraction, the testing to update your eyeglass prescription, is not considered a covered service by Medicare or any other insurance. It was a $25 dollar charge. Once it was submitted (as a courtesy) and then rejected, these same patients would be on the phone to argue in a flash. It must be a mistake. It must not have been submitted correctly. It wasn’t a routine service. This should be a covered charge! And most endearingly, it wasn’t that they couldn’t afford to pay the charge, IT WAS THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING. I shudder every time I hear that phrase.
Roger Moore
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Belichik has principles. Actually, he has one principle: winning is everything.
Droppy
It’s not just “principles” redefined to mean what they want; it’s the other side of the coin – the vilification of any language normally connotating good behavior: compassion, fellow-feeling, kindness, generosity, hell “liberal” itself. All are seen as mushy and unrealistic and not how a hard-nosed realist with principles deals with the real world, when, in fact, they are the only things that make living with other people a worth-while endeavor. How anyone can advocate a “conservative” political philosophy and sleep at night has been a deep mystery to me for many years.
bemused
@Villago Delenda Est:
Without knowing a thing about Ryan’s politics or party, just seeing his exercise photo shoot should have dropped big clue he is full of himself/shit.
Ruckus
@Spanky:
Of course. The only principle is profit. Or liberal death, but these are the same thing to conservatives.
Mike J
We all know that the forced birth coalition don’t really believe their nonsense about abortion killing babies. The best way to prove it is with the principles test. If you could eliminate all “baby killing” tomorrow by raising your taxes $1/year and providing universal birth control, would you? If abortion really is just like the holocaust, it would be an easy decision. Their principles won’t allow them to pay anything, even for things they claim to believe.
Villago Delenda Est
@Spanky:
A further refinement. If the poors benefit in any way, “principle” requires that such a scheme be rejected.
hitchhiker
During my junior year of high school (in 1969) I read Atlas Shrugged, which I’m confessing to b/c it matters that I do have familiarity w/ Ryan’s bible.
It’s just astonishing that he doesn’t see that he’s become a version of the bad guys in that book. There are 2 kinds of bad guys in Ayn Rand’s world. One is guys who mooch & complain & never do any work. They think the world is unfair. (The “takers.”)
The other is the bureaucrats who never do any work and who think their boss status will enable them to keep grifting endlessly off the honest labor & intelligence of heroes.
The premise of the book is that the heroes “shrug” and absent themselves from the field, whereupon all the bad guys stand around whining. The pathetic bureaucrats think they can force the heroes to produce & innovate at gunpoint.
Ryan claims to love this book. At some point he might understand that he’s become one of the stupid bureaucrats — a guy who produces nothing and never will, but who thinks he has the right to order people around and order the very culture into a shape that pleases him. His pride reflects his certainty that if he felt like becoming a “maker,” he could have. It’s a joke. As the current debacle is showing the world, he doesn’t have the brains.
Cacti
@Droppy:
Liberal principles are the foundation of the enlightenment and consequently the modern world. Conservative politics has been a 500-year rearguard action against it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike J: Beyond that, it’s about punishing sluts and denying women agency, at all times.
Fred Fnord
It’s always funny listening to someone like you saying something like this.
There are literally no arguments to be made without principles. Who cares if the GDP contracts and people lose their jobs, except because your principles say that people should be able to be employed? Who cares if 20 million people lose their health care unless your principles say that they have a right to health care.
What you’re really saying is ‘people with principles that are different than mine in smaller ways need to shut up because they’re hurting the people whose principles are exactly the same as mine’. Which is to say, you’re doing exactly the same thing that the people you’re yelling at are, you’re just couching it in terms that places you as superior to them, and as worldly and wise.
Which is to say, you sound like a beltway centrist, except one who isn’t actually making any money off the gig.
lollipopguild
@Roger Moore: Bill Clinton not only balanced the budget he created a surplus which for his good deed W was elected Preznut. We live in a world where honest people who do good things are punished while people who lie their asses off are rewarded. Hilz told the truth and got “rewarded for it” Not sure how this ever fixes itself short of our country crashing and burning.
Ruckus
@bemused:
he is full of himself/shit
In his case these seem to be one and the same substance.
bemused
@Ruckus:
Exactly.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tami Ross:
It was the money. It’s always the money.
Cacti
@lollipopguild:
Thank goodness then as now, we had Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon telling us there was no difference between Democrats and Republicans.
smintheus
Speaking of principles, will Tom Price resign as soon as it becomes clear that somebody will indeed be worse off under TrumpCare?
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Plus he was strangely obsessed with Lena Dunham and her HBO show.
Baud
@Cacti: They are principled.
@smintheus: No. SATSQ.
Villago Delenda Est
@smintheus: You just made me startle the cat…
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est: I wish your cat were HHS secretary.
lollipopguild
@smintheus: LOL! Please do Not hold your breath waiting for Price to pay any price for anything he says.
Ruckus
@Fred Fnord:
Except that isn’t what he said at all.
He was complaining that conservatives and liberals are not treated the same because one side (conservatives) is principled and the other (liberals) isn’t, according to many in the media or in politics.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodingers_cat: Freddie? I never saw it, but from the internet it would seem that half the ratings must’ve been due to people, mostly ‘wingers, hate-watching it for reasons not entirely clear to me.
I have only vague memories of him posting here, and when I see him quoted or mentioned, it all seems like gobbledygook. I know he was a big supporter of the BernieBro who doxed Joan Walsh and another woman, which had nothing to do with their being women because “hags” is gender-neutral.
Cacti
@Baud:
Indeed.
Helping Republicans get elected seems to be their most consistent principle.
schrodingers_cat
In other election news, Prime Minister Modi’s party swept the assembly elections of the biggest states in India, by wait for it, going feminist. They campaigned against triple talaq ( say divorce three times and you are divorced if you are Muslim) made significant inroads in the gaining the votes of Muslim women. It also did not help that non-BJP leaders made stupid misogynist statements like boys will be boys condoning the rampant hostility towards women in public spaces in northern India.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
O/T, aren’t you supposed to be on a plane about now? Hope the leg is better and that your travels are uneventful (except for all the parts you want to be memorable!)
Mnemosyne
@ArchTeryx:
We’re admiring the Obamas’ new fashions in the thread below, if that helps. And re-litigating Vietnam war protests.
schrodingers_cat
@Villago Delenda Est: You have a kitteh? I did not know that! Now we need pictures.
Shell
Ironically,Trump told the truth and got rewarded as well. The ‘truth’ as far as telling and showing people exactly who he is and what he said he would do.
Lizzy L
@schrodingers_cat: Is this all “optics” and smoke & mirrors, or is Modi’s party likely to do anything to help women, or to address violence against women?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Roger Moore:
Or an actual tough choice would be to tell the electronic digit hoarders (Koch Bros, Adelson, Thiel, Mercer and their shills) to go pound sand, that there are genuine needs and that there will be zero impact on their lives by higher tax rates or regulations.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Interesting.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
This is absolutely sickening. And not only do they die, they die often in excruciating pain. There is no excuse or rationale that justifies this kind of legislation, least of all a so-called “pro-life” stance, and most certainly not any kind of “economic” reasoning.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
Avoiding this class of question is why they’ve advanced the bullshit claim that hormonal contraceptives are actually a form of abortion; it gives them a principled reason to oppose contraception as well as abortion.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes it’s the money but they paid for health care insurance in one way or another and it is difficult to understand how people can be healthy with bad vision. Bad vision which may have made it impossible for them to read the contract they signed or to find HR and have them explain why healthcare insurance doesn’t pay for you to receive healthcare that might allow one to do a better job. The same can be said for dental care. A person can after all die from an abscess.
lollipopguild
@Shell: You are correct in that. It will be interesting to see the public and trump’s fans react to all of his lies coming out. Of course most of his fans knew he was lying to them and they liked it. When trump hurts them badly it will be a new “tell”.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m taking the redeye, so my plane doesn’t leave until almost 11 pm. I hate taking the redeye, but it was the only way to guarantee I would be in Orlando before my nieces.
I am currently icing my knee while my last load of laundry dries, and then I finish my packing and (hopefully) have time for a nap before we head out. We’re heading towards the airport very early because (a) LA traffic sucks and there is no way to really know how long it’s going to take and (b) we’re hoping to have time for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in Santa Monica, Finn McCool’s.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodingers_cat: Check your blog address email. It’s a bit fuzzy, but that’s the Princess, in all her hammy glory!
Baud
@Mnemosyne: Have a safe and fun trip.
Roger Moore
@lollipopguild:
The liars can get away with it because the news media has given up on distinguishing between truth and fiction. If they would actually start pointing out when politicians are lying their asses off, we could actually get somewhere.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: “Heath Care” of course is narrowly defined, because the first rule of acquisition is “Once you have their money, never give it back”.
lollipopguild
@Roger Moore: Condoms also cause abortions don’t you know. Breathing(while liberal) causes abortions.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
This is because making such a distinction has nothing at all to do with their business model.
raven
@Mnemosyne: LAX or Burbank?
Villago Delenda Est
@SiubhanDuinne: Punish the sluts, deny women agency. All there is to it.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
I like to distinguish between the good and bad kinds of exciting. I think you mean to wish her a trip that’s the good kind of exciting.
p.a.
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
since we’re quoting lyrics: “… and when we ask them how much should we give they only answer more more more…”
schrodingers_cat
@Lizzy L: I have no idea. Indian politics, especially UP politics is extremely confusing and I have no particular insight. BJP was the party out of power at the state level and Indian voters like to throw the incumbent party out, ever so often.
Betty Cracker
@Ruckus: Yep. That seems to have flown over several readers’ heads.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Thanks! I’ve been ranting about it to you guys for so long that it seems surreal. I won’t really trust that it’s happening until I meet my nieces at the airport tomorrow.
@raven:
LAX. Burbank is good for flying to/from the West Coast and western states, but anything east of Arizona usually requires a stopover.
lollipopguild
@Roger Moore: I understand what you are saying but so many of our fellow americans only want to hear the lies that I think we have gone past a point of no return from which we cannot recover. If enough people in this country want the country to be destroyed then it will happen one way or another.
Chris
@Droppy:
THIS.
The phenomenon of sneering at the word “liberal” as a catch all term for everything that used to be called ordinary decency, in order to convince yourself that your sociopathic side is really hard nosed realism, is a pathology that’s increasingly plagued the nation for decades.
Roger Moore
@raven:
Must be LAX. She lives in Burbank, so traffic would be a non issue. Also, IIRC, there are no late night flights to or from Burbank; it’s part of the deal they cut with the neighbors to stay in business.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
America’s business climate is best defined as a place where slick corporations can overcharge you for services they refuse to provide while the government, media players and predominant religious institutions enable, encourage and celebrate the perpetrators.
p.a.
@Mnemosyne:
The gift that keeps on giving.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Plus it would be quite silly for us to drive down to dinner in Santa Monica and then back up to Burbank for the flight. ;-)
sunny raines
its a simple value system:
have money = good
don’t have money = bad
republicans actively seek to eliminate poor people because their value system sees them as bad people because they’re poor.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Nothing like a dad who has kids strewn across my locker so I can’t change after my workout.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Just take off your clothes. The kids will move.
Chris
@hitchhiker:
Revering a book without understanding it is practically the definition of fundamentalism. Even when the book is as vile as Ayn Rand’s.
Roger Moore
@lollipopguild:
I think the number of people who actually want to be lied to is insufficient to keep the Republicans in power; they depend critically on people who want to be well informed but are actually misinformed by listening to the news.
gbbalto
Just the Modern Decalogue:
Thou shalt not kill
But needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive
Cant link but was well said in the 19th century..
raven
@Roger Moore: Yea, forgot about that.
Another Scott
@hitchhiker: Yup.
I too read several of her books long ago, along with a biography of her by Barbara Branden. I was quite taken with the “you have to work and do things yourself in spite of all the stupid roadblocks in your way” aspects of it. I eventually grew out of liking her so much – the biography helped. ;-) The silliness and two-dimensionality of much of it (“Who cleans the toilets in Galt’s Gulch?”) became even clearer to me later.
Just as Chris Christie can love Bruce Springsteen while acting in ways and implementing policies that are antithetical to his message, Ryan is the same way. He picks and chooses and probably completely missed the contradiction between him being in Congress forever and the anti-bureaucrat aspects. Naturally, he quickly, and disingenuously, threw her under the bus when it suited his purposes..
Cheers,
Scott.
p.a.
@Baud: Possibly they will move in the direction of the nearest cop…
p.a.
never gets old
lollipopguild
@Roger Moore: Yes but. How bad is it going to have to get before these folks wake up and smell the fire?
Baud
@p.a.: Sounds like they are in a men’s locker room.
Baud
@lollipopguild: I don’t know. But remember that most of them are still enjoying the Obama economy and haven’t yet been adversely impacted by Trump’s or Ryan’s policies.
p.a.
@Baud: assume nothing!
Mnemosyne
@p.a.:
If you take your kids into a locker room, I don’t think you get to then complain that other people are taking their clothes off. That’s what a locker room is for, after all.
gbbalto
@gbbalto: Sorry, should be the Latest Decalogue. Arthur Hugh Clough nailed it that long ago.
.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@p.a.: should be included in any story discussing Paul Ryan, read aloud at the beginning of any TeeVee segment about him (to which the background screen should be those laughably bro-y workout pics he posed for… I still can’t believe he did that as a grown ass man)
Brachiator
@Roger Moore: RE: If you could eliminate all “baby killing” tomorrow by raising your taxes $1/year and providing universal birth control, would you?
Free market principles would prohibit a conservative from raising taxes for any social purpose. Other nutcase conservatives would oppose universal birth control because, dammit, poor people should get jobs and pay for their own birth control, or exercise self control until they could afford the potential consequences of having intercourse.
After you get through his maze of principled BS, you end up with the religious nutcases arguing that birth control is against Gods will.
To the contrary, some people, particularly conservatives, demand that the news conform to and reinforce their world view. Oddly enough, the easy availability of accurate information via the Internet has given rise to sites that deliberately foster lies, conspiracy theories and easily debunked nonsense. But if you “live” in these sites, you never have to deal with anything that might contradict your principles and deeply held beliefs.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
And then once you fight through that maze of religious bullshit, it comes down to women being lesser beings who don’t deserve to be allowed to make decisions on their own behalf.
Villago Delenda Est
@Betty Cracker: Some people are not familiar with the oeuvre of Doug!. Today’s post is well within what we’ve always seen.
lollipopguild
@Baud: When things do go south it will be wait for it…….. Obama’s fault!
El Caganer
I like principles; they’re so much easier to work with than, say, evidence. That’s why I can say Trumpcare is the yugest, greatestc bigliest program in American history ever, ’cause it promotes FREEDUMB. And I don’t need some dumbass CBO score.
Mnemosyne
@lollipopguild:
That’s why, in a weird way, I actually don’t mind Trump immediately claiming that the increase in jobs is all thanks to his election. That means it’ll be a lot harder for him to weasel out of it when employment starts crashing.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Everyone knows facts and reality have a liberal bias. Must be fair.
lollipopguild
@Mnemosyne: You are correct, but when things do go south it will Never be trumps fault.
schrodingers_cat
@Villago Delenda Est: Some are well aware, some just want to pull his leg, knowing what a fan he is of Uriah Brooks.
sp98
@Mnemosyne:
“The first thing a principle does – if it really is a principle – is to kill somebody”
Lord Peter Wimsey in Gaudy Night by Dorthy Sayers
lollipopguild
@hovercraft: We live with Millions of people who if all of “those people” vanished today and only white conservatives were left in the country would start complaining and never cease to complain.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Sadly, as I have grown older, I have to acknowledge that some men have the deeply held principled belief that women should defer to and seek the protection of men. In return, men will love them, or at least not beat them to death. Certain conservatives will insist that this is either human nature or God’s will. That women should not ever make decisions on their own behalf follows from this.
hitchhiker
@Another Scott:
The tell for me was realizing that — like Rand herself — none of the heroic people had babies. They liked to screw, but nobody got pregnant because they were all cartoons. It makes me get the spins to think that there are adults walking around for whom this caricature of our country is the best guide to action.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
And these men need to go the fuck away. Forever.
ThresherK
@hitchhiker: Better they didn’t try. The idea that Rand could write something plausible about how those Gone Galters propogate their species stops at the fact that there are, perhaps, eight women of childbearing age in Galt’s Gulch, and hundreds of men.
Or, at least enough men to mine, farm, run factories, build railroads, and mint tiny gold coins.
low-tech cyclist
@lollipopguild: Also Marx – “If you think this country’s bad off now, just wait ’til I get through with it!”
low-tech cyclist
@Mnemosyne:
This. A thousand times, this.
Brachiator
@low-tech cyclist:
Karl or Groucho?
glory b
@zhena gogolia: Mean girls of balloon juice represent!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
He had three boys, The commandeered about 300 square feet by spreading their shit EVERYWHERE!
James Powell
@schrodingers_cat:
Ezra Klein is going to be his generation’s Richard Cohen.
No Drought No More
And some asshole liberals construe any criticism whatsoever of Hillary- such as her whole hearted support of the Bush-Cheney plot to war- as unjust.
Another Scott
@No Drought No More: Enjoy your pie! It’ll go really well with your strawman.
Cheers,
Scott.
mainmata
I would like to suggest that when posters start shitting all over Liberals for “hippie-punching” and enabling conservatives that they be clear they are talking about certainpolitical commentators in the media and not ordinary Liberal voters or even the vast majority of Liberal office holders. Otherwise, it cheapens the honesty of the dialogue.
J R in WV
@No Drought No More:
Anyone who thinks Secretary Clinton – then Senator Clinton – whole heartedly supported the Bush-Cheney fomented war on the contry that didn’t attack America… is too dumb to have real reasoned or thoughtful opinions.
Like you, super-genius not. My favorite pie is pecan… with vanilla ice cream. Although sour cherry pie is awfully good too.
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore:
Since when?
Chet Murthy
@XTPD:
FTFY.