This piece, from "the only strident critic of Donald Trump serving a pro-Trump populist readership across all of conservative media," is worth your time today: https://t.co/k59RTbI5Ok
— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) September 2, 2022
I don’t read Hot Air, but I do read Yair Rosenberg’s twitter feed, and given the circumstances / due respect to our Blogmaster, I was curious enough to click over:
… At this point I must be the only strident critic of Donald Trump serving a pro-Trump populist readership across all of conservative media. And that’s been true *for years.* Since 2020, at least.
It was possible only because of Townhall’s sufferance, a show of integrity for which they don’t get enough credit. But I think all of us knew it couldn’t last. When you hire someone to run your hot-dog stand and he starts telling the customers that hot dogs are bad for them, that relationship won’t endure. Even if he’s right about the hot dogs.
Thank you to my critics — the earnest ones, who weren’t just axe-grinding because I wouldn’t join a cult. I am not dishonest but am frequently stupid and you were right to call me on my moments of stupidity. Accountability is good. The right needs more of it from its own side, urgently. If the average populist slobberer had a few like you in their ear, we wouldn’t be in the fix we’re in.
Lastly, to those who spent the last seven years barking insults at me in the comments for not genuflecting to Trump, I’ll give you this: You’re not phonies. You believe what you say. We have that much in common. I respect honesty and paid you the respect of being honest. It would scandalize you to know how many of your heroes sound like you in public and like me in private. Audience capture has brought most of conservative media to ruin by making it predictable and shrill…
Partisan media serves two masters, the truth and the cause. When they align, all is well. When they conflict, you choose. If you prioritize the truth, you’re a traitor; if you prioritize the cause, you’re a propagandist… Propagandists lie to others, then lie to themselves to justify propagating the original lie. Propaganda rots the brain, then the soul.
That’s one reason why, when I’ve been forced to choose, I preferred to be a traitor than a propagandist. Here’s another: What is the right’s “cause” at this point? What cause does the Republican Party presently serve? It has no meaningful policy agenda. It literally has no platform. The closest thing it has to a cause is justifying abuses of state power to own the libs and defending whatever Trump’s latest boorish or corrupt thought-fart happens to be. Imagine being a propagandist for a cause as impoverished as that. Many don’t need to imagine.
The GOP does have a cause. The cause is consolidating power. Overturn the rigged elections, purge the disloyal bureaucrats, smash the corrupt institutions that stand in the way. Give the leader a free hand. It’s plain as day to those who are willing to see where this is going, what the highest ambitions of this personality cult are. Those who support it without insisting on reform should at least stop pretending that they’re voting for anything else.
I agree with others* who say that, fundamentally, the last six years have been a character test. Some conservatives became earnest converts to Trumpism, whatever that is. But too many who ditched their civic convictions did so for the most banal reasons, because there was something in it for them — profit, influence, proximity to power, the brainless tribalism required by audience capture. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer wrote. We’ve all gotten to see who the racketeers are…
Never forget, it’s not the 30 percent of Trump worshipers within the party who brought the GOP to what it is. It’s the next 50 percent, the look-what-the-libs-made-me-do zombie partisans, who could have said no but didn’t. I said no. Put it on my tombstone…
(*The linked article is a not-very-good pastiche of Dorothy Parker’s ‘Who Goes Nazi?’)
Baud
What a stupid idea for a name.
Jeffro
Stealing this
and posting it where a few select family members can see it. ;)
Thanks Allahpundit! You might actually do the world some good, just with this one quick ‘take’.
eversor
This link there is a gem and fucking brutal
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-normal-politician/
Elizabelle
Dorothy Thompson, not Dorothy Parker, in Harper’s (August 1941).
And thank you for that link.
SpaceUnit
Seems to me that if you’re a strident critic of Trump serving a pro-Trump populist readership then you either should have spent a little more time in the guidance counselor’s office or you just really like wasting your time.
Scout211
So AllahPundit is leaving HotAir to write for The Dispatch. I have never heard of it so I clicked over. It’s a Substack with the likes of Jonah Goldberg writing there, among others.
Yeah, no. I won’t be reading anything there. Just like all the HotAir posts I never read.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
This clown is simply professing Driftglass’s “Republican Detachment Disorder”.
When asshats like this one start voting for Democrats, I’ll start cutting them some slack. Until then, they’re lucky I’m not king.
Poe Larity
I always thought he has John’s alter-ego who stayed with the dark side after Schaivo.
SpaceUnit
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Exactly. This schmo can climb down off the cross and fuck off.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
If people like that stop voting FOR Republicans, that is enough for me to cut them slack. They don’t have to vote for a Democrat. Not voting or throwing their vote away on some rando independent is enough.
J R in WV
I posted this comment on a thread that was already dead, but thought it was worth posting on a newer thread so someone might see it who cares:
I have read the King James Bible, and paid particular attention to the teachings direct from Jesus. No one can be a member of the theocratic right wing and still be an actual Christian — can’t be done.
No one who is a white supremacist, is also a Christian. No one! No one hating on refugees can be a Christian, Christ was a refugee himself! These MAGA Republicans are NOT Christian, and the Theocratic Calvinist Pastors aren’t either. That’s why so many of them commit sexual predation on people less powerful than them… women and children, little boys and girls. Amazingly frequently, given the lack of power women and kids have in Theocratic Calvinist organizations.
Michael Gerson, in the WaPo said recently:
These folks are not Christians, not by any definition of that understanding. They’re barely human. They certainly shouldn’t be telling other people how to behave, nor what is right and wrong. And their support of Donald Trump is so fitting, as they are fascist haters, just as TFG is.
There it is… my opinion of the Christian Right today… hateful unChristian monsters! Willing to slaughter a little girl’s beloved pet goat, even !!!
Never heard of Allahpundit, good that he’s leaving Trumpism, but if he isn’t voting a straight Democratic ticket this fall, fuck him too!
West of the Rockies
@eversor:
In looking at the comments after Williamson’s piece, it looks like it’s about 85% against, 15% in agreement (but with most of them saying they’ll keep voting Red).
Still, if the Republican vote diminishes by just two percent, that would be a million less Trump voters in ’24. Meanwhile, they continue to decline from Covid and age.
I hope Trump runs, castrates DeSantis and Abbot, then gets crushed, producing a beaten and dejected GOP.
Roger Moore
@SpaceUnit:
Rosenberg has been working for Hot Air for 15 years, so he didn’t start out writing for a lunatic, pro-Trump readership. I can completely understand how he could stick with the anti-Trump approach, trying to convince his readers that they were wrong and should not follow the crazy demagogue. Maybe he should have recognized the futility and given up sooner, but I respect people like that who tried to keep the Republican party from going ever deeper into the fever swamp.
SpaceUnit
@Roger Moore:
Yeah maybe. But I have very little patience for those who’s loyalty to their party ( however idealistically they imagine it ) is greater than their loyalty to their country. At the end of the day Liz Cheney can also fuck off.
Elizabelle
@West of the Rockies: I don’t want Trump to run. Ever again. DeSantis is even more horrible, but perhaps the coming months and years will chop him down to size.
I don’t even like to talk about Trump running again, or being a nominee. He sucks all the fucking oxygen out of the room. Enough. Don’t ever, ever wish for that.
May he be in court or already in prison. We don’t have unlimited patience.
MagdaInBlack
@J R in WV: I can’t find a single thing to disagree with in your post.
Baud
@J R in WV:
I am Christlike.
Scout211
@Roger Moore: Well, maybe not pro-Trump lunatic but Michelle Malkin wasn’t what I would call a reasonable journalist during the time she was in charge at HotAir.
Gravenstone
@Baud: What’s a Baud party without hookers and blow, right?
eversor
@West of the Rockies:
II’ve held various clearances over my life for various jobs and I don’t want Trump to run. I want him hung. He didn’t serve in uniform so he doesn’t get the firing squad, he hasn’t earned that right/final dignity. Failing that multiple life terms in solitary. I’m well aware that’s not going to happen.
Everyone here who’s held a clearance has had their blood pressure rise through the roof and gone through an odd range of wanting to strangle someone, utter confusion as to how this could happen, to sheer panic of what it actually means.
It still gives me headaches just thinking about it. I’d even be willing to tolerate another Republican winning rather than them losing with Trump because what happened is actually that bad. I don’t think most people get how staggeringly bad this is because anybody who knows can’t fully really explain it. Caused we’d break an oath and get hauled off and also know how dangerous that would be on a massive scale. A lot of us also walked to work in halls with pictures (mug shots) of people who did break the rules and got lectures on the loss of life and other shit that happened from it.
And now I’m making myself mad again and driving my blood pressure so I’ll end the rant.
lowtechcyclist
@J R in WV:
Hope you don’t mind my scratching out that one short sentence. I may be a born-again Christian and Pratchett was an atheist, but he was right that dehumanizing people is where it all goes wrong.
The rest of that rant, OTOH, is right on target. If these people ever knew the Lord, they certainly haven’t renewed that acquaintanceship anytime recently.
One more big thing I’d add: the whole dominionist thing, where they want to make everyone abide by their rules. Jesus said – quite a few times across the four Gospels – that whoever would be first of all must be last of all and servant of all. They aren’t interested in any of that, needless to say.
eversor
@SpaceUnit:
I deal with them daily. No real Christian, no real Republican, no real Conservative, no true Scotsman, no true Libertarian. They are all Good Germans at the end of the day ignoring what their pet identity MY PRECIOUS actually creates on a day to day basis. In the end they are agressive and protective enablers, and should be treated as such.
lowtechcyclist
@eversor:
Doesn’t matter how bad the consequences are of spilling those secrets, they aren’t as bad as losing our democracy entirely. Which is what would happen with a GQP trifecta.
SpaceUnit
@eversor:
My point is that if you take Trump out of the equation you’ve still got a party that is anti-choice, denies climate change, wants assault rifles in the hands of every lunatic, wants to privatize Social Security, stone gay people in the village square, ban books, etc., etc., etc.
Someone who believes in all that but is willing to point out to his fellow monsters that Trump might not be so great for long-term electoral success is no saint. Sorry, no halo for you.
ETA: Also this bozo is lying when he claims that the Republican Party has no agenda. It does. See above. It’s an abomination.
West of the Rockies
@Elizabelle:
Would you settle for a hemorrhagic stroke that leaves him drooling and shitting himself for 15 years? I’d be okay with that fate for Trump.
dm
@J R in WV: I’ve long concluded that sex scandals and Evangelicals go together because many people turn to Evangelical churches because they recognize their own weakness (and not all of them succeed in finding the help they’re looking for and still manage to stray).
It’s like all a vicious circle: the red states have social problems because conservatism doesn’t provide solutions, and they’re conservative because they feel surrounded by social breakdown.
eversor
@SpaceUnit:
Well yeah. It was the good churchy people that did that to conservatism, the Republican party, created the Tea Party, and put Trump in power. But we aren’t willing to deal with that issue and confront it. It’s off limits. As such we are all fucking about and not fixing it. And if we are not going to address the cross in the room then we need to fix the national security stuff now and just wait till the younger non Christian generations take over and let them clean up the mess we refused to.
Sanjeevs
https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-voting-donald-trump-georgia-presidential-32a8e0d49541ea7ec6ca3a03dd0029ae
Chip Daniels
Allahpundit’s departure is yet another in a long series of data points for the purging of the Republican party of any who aren’t sufficiently loyal to the fascist cause.
The tiny rump of David French-style Republicans will be like the tiny shreds of the old aristocracy in Germany where they get pushed to the side and those who can’t be co-opted will be exiled or broken.
Damien
@lowtechcyclist: They dehumanize themselves by their actions; I grant a certain amount of dignity and humanity to everyone from birth, but depending on what you do after that you can drain that account pretty quick.
If you dislike that, I urge you to go talk about it with the brainless, child-raping bullshit artists who you would have us respect.
Steeplejack
I clicked over and read Allahpundit’s whole piece, and I think that Anne Laurie’s tiny ellipsis in her “partisan media” snippet makes him sound more reasonable than he is. Ellipsis filled in:
No exposition of why “the differences between those two programs would be evident to a reasonably intelligent fourth-grader,” but I drilled down and found that his argument is basically “what Mitt Romney said,” viz.:
Allahpundit’s post is an expanded riff on that, hitting all of the expected right-wing talking points.
Except for his apparent distaste for Trump, I’m not seeing anything that is much different from standard, albeit slightly elevated (i.e., not spittle-flecked), right-wing talking points.
I didn’t see anything that said exactly why he is leaving Hot Air, unless it’s just blog fatigue.
RSA
Allahpundit:
Those 36,591 hours amount to 8.8 hours every day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, for 16 years. Writing conservative screeds. Wow. I have regrets in life, but not 16 full-time years worth of them.
Starfish
@Baud: Yeah. I can’t imagine posting on a blog that has a name derived from that one. Can you?
Steeplejack
@Roger Moore:
I don’t think Yair Rosenberg is Allahpundit.
different-church-lady
@Steeplejack:
Yes, in one case you took the government’s money and then later they said you didn’t have to pay it back. And in the other case you took the government’s money and then later… they said… uh… you didn’t have to pay it back…
cliosfanboy
@Starfish:
sounds like a pack of jackals or hyenas or some such
Baud
@Steeplejack:
This, of course, is a lie. The mockery wasn’t of people who accepted PPP but who accepted forgiveness of PPP.
eversor
@Damien:
They ignore all the caring for the poor. But the patriarchy, the sexual issues, the gender roles, they are 100% right on that. And that’s the issue, until the entire thing is stigmatized and driven into the ground our issues cannot be fixed.
Baud
@Starfish:
Inconceivable.
different-church-lady
@Baud:
…and then mocked others for offering forgiveness or accepting forgiveness.
Honus
@J R in WV: you forgot that Jesus explicitly told Peter to put away his sword (equivalent of a sidearm) and not defend him in Garden of Gethsemane when he was arrested (thus rejecting the second amendment) and also when directly asked, that people should pay their taxes (render unto Ceasar).
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Exactly. They could have left well enough alone.
different-church-lady
@Baud: And it wasn’t even outright mockery — it was flat statements of fact.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
For them, the fact that people stood up to them is what cuts deep.
Starfish
@eversor: I need to tell you about the wokest game ever.
Steeplejack
Interesting that Michelle Malkin’s name came up as a founder of Hot Air. Earlier this week I saw a mention of Matt Drudge, and I thought, “Wow, he has really slipped off the radar”—mine, at least. Seems like it has been years since he was a hot, much-quoted personality. That got me thinking about a similar personality, a woman who used to be much quoted and much mocked who also dropped out of sight (mine, at least). Could not think of her name to save my life. Eventually I came up with “Michelle something,” and just today I got on the Google and reminded myself that it was Michelle Malkin. She “joined Newsmax TV” in May 2020, but her Wikipedia entry doesn’t seem to have been updated lately. It does note that she has been closely associated with white supremacist Nick Fuentes. I guess she’s still working the grift, but maybe she’s not a thought leader anymore? 🤔
Honus
@Steeplejack: last I remember she was posting videos in that cheerleader suit in her back yard.
Kropacetic
She stopped crossing my radar when I stopped watching Bill Maher and his war on youth.
Steeplejack
@Honus:
That was way back. It was one of the things she got repeatedly mocked for.
cain
@lowtechcyclist:
When they decided that they needed to incorporate capitalism into their faith they corrupted it. Probably during the red scare.
eversor
@Starfish:
LOL I’ve seen that joke before! I’m currently chewing through Rings of Power which seems like The Lady G, the story and it’s amazing. Though it’s started up an odd conversation with the SO. She only saw all the movies, never read the books. So I’ve had moments where it’s not so much pointing out pendant errors but “the character isn’t like that”.
Case in point. In the books Aragorn is an actual MORTAL THREAT to Sauron because he his powers of reading minds, healing, could weild the ring, can bring all races together through love and charisma, and is happy about things and openly embraces his fate. In the movies he’s emo and whiny about it all and has a slight healing power.
The bonus with Bezos pet project is that it’s not covered so I can’t get pissy over things and just say “I don’t know”.
I have lent the SO the old books my mom got. Which are older than me. They aren’t in the best of the condition. But they are the sort of worn old book that I think is fun for this. Some things just work that way.
I also got her to finally leave the church fully. Most of her family is as well so humans can change for the better! It was Roe that took it. Without revealing things that shouldn’t someone needed one for a very good reason years ago and they had to jump through hoops and they were in denial that it could happen again even though they were told “we should get rid of it” every Sunday for years after.
RaflW
It would scandalize you to know how many of your heroes sound like you in public and like me in private. Audience capture has brought most of conservative media to ruin by making it predictable and shrill.
God I hate that crap. If these people are being fake for the clicks, why protect them? They’re trash and don’t deserve your preserving their anonymity, A-pundit. So, basically, fuck you.
But thanks for quitting publicly. That’s at least something
eta: His sidebar about loan forgiveness is also just claptrap.
Jackie
Former Republican, Steve Schmidt, takes on McCarthy, following McCarthy’s demand for AG Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray appear before Republicans on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees to submit to interrogation about the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
““When Kevin McCarthy’s last Speakership was falling apart with whiffs of scandal and the smoke of seemy and steamy recriminations rising from the Republican Conference guess who he called to help sort through the cluster of his life?” continued Schmidt. “It was dark out when the old elevator creaked open. The Brown Palace was an unlikely place for a political meeting with a California politician. I knocked on the door. The man who opened it looked sad. He was wearing boxers and a t shirt. It was Kevin McCarthy. His Speakership was going up in smoke. He wanted to know what to do.”
Schmidt teased that he would be revealing more embarrassing information about McCarthy in due course: “Stay tuned for an all time great political story about the man who betrayed America for Donald Trump.”
https://www.rawstory.com/kevin-mccarthy-2658125624/
RaflW
@eversor: Wow, I’m enjoying that.
Kevin asks in the piece: Is there something profoundly wrong with this organization, its animating spirit, and its people?
I say: Yes.
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack:
Isn’t Michelle Malkin still married to James Carville?
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid: No. That’s Mary Matalin. Another Republican; was a close aide to Dick Cheney, if memory serves.
And they’re still married.
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
I hope that’s snark! Carville’s wife is Mary Matalin.
eversor
@RaflW:
I think the knives came out post the “pictures of documents” stuff. I don’t like them, and they are way to late, but I’ll take it.
SpaceUnit
This thread’s sorta running on fumes but I’d also like to point out that it wasn’t actually ‘hot dogs’ that this douchebag up top was so very reluctantly selling at Hot Air but rather sedition, corruption, fascism, white supremacy, voter suppression, and a policy of putting migrant children in cages. What a prick.
Like we’re supposed to give him a medal and standing ovation for finally getting mowed down by the clue train.
ETA: Okay, maybe the standing ovation. Or a golf clap.
catclub
@Chip Daniels:
The only thing unclear to me is if the fascist cause requires Trump, so if they lose with Trump running… AGAIN, it will possibly improve the GOP, or if they don’t even need Trump any more to let their fascist freak flag out.
hells littlest angel
Hard to imagine two people more different than Dorothy Parker and Dorothy Thompson.
HumboldtBlue
This asshole worked for Malkin and had no issue spewing right-wing bullshit, hate, intolerance and just general dipshittery for 20 years. Fuck off already.
And I have certainly taught Firefox’s spell check a lot of new words, it now spell checks “fuck.”
Scout211
Serena lost in three sets. 😢
What an amazing career.
satby
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer
That quote is from his book The Temper of Our Time (1967), which I barely remember. But Hoffer nailed the fascist cult of personality developing in his seminal work, The True Believer. It’s a dated book now, but I still recommend it often. Hoffer grew to be a conservative curmudgeon as he got old; I didn’t like his later work. But he nailed what attracted people to charlatans like TFG, Sanders, Orban, and movements like fascists, theocrats, communists, etc.
HumboldtBlue
@Honus:
Sweet mother of well-deserved mockery, that provided hours of fun at TBogg’s joint.
RaflW
@Amir Khalid: Hah!
The only man more reptilian looking than Rick Scott is married to Mary Matalin. I remember (vaguely) some execrable point-counterpoint type crap featuring those two people you’d never, ever want to be at a dinner party with, on early 90s TV. Blech.
Amir Khalid
@RaflW:
I sit corrected.
El Cruzado
@J R in WV:
The New Testament is, however, silent on the subject of blow.
El Cruzado
@cain: Oh it’s much older than that, think of what kind of True Christian would justify chattel slavery.