FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

 Let this wash that piece of shit job out of your mind.
•   Another week, another wingnut blubbering he's been deplatformed. No, I'm not talking about Milo Yabbadabbado, Alex Jones, Laura Loomer and the rest of those clowns kicked off Facebook -- I mean former Federal Reserve Board nominee Stephen Moore, who takes to the Wall Street Journal to cry "the left and the media instantly launched a relentless campaign against me. Last week a reporter who has covered the Fed for 30 years told me he’d never seen anything like it." And that reporter's name was Trump's Friend Jim. Moore says he was prepared to defend his belief that "economic growth does not cause inflation," a libertarian article of faith like trickle-down, but now he'll never get the chance because the big bad media "called [me] an adulterer, a misogynist, a tax cheat, a deadbeat dad, antigay and mentally unfit."

Well, Stevie baby, truth is an absolute defense:

Court records in Virginia obtained by the Guardian show Moore, 59, was reprimanded by a judge in November 2012 for failing to pay Allison Moore more than $300,000 in spousal support, child support and money owed under their divorce settlement. 

Moore continued failing to pay, according to the court filings, prompting the judge to order the sale of his house to satisfy the debt in 2013. But this process was halted by his ex-wife after Moore paid her about two-thirds of what he owed, the filings say... 

The 2010 divorce filing from Moore’s wife said he had destroyed their marriage through adultery, after creating two accounts on the dating website Match.com and beginning an affair with a woman early in 2010. 

Moore is said to have discussed the affair “openly and tastelessly” with his then wife, and to have said at one point: “I have two women, and what’s really bad is when they fight over you.” He also left evidence of the relationship around the home, the filing said... 

The Guardian revealed this week that Moore owes the US government $75,000 according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Moore disputes the government’s claim and blames confusion over tax deductions relating to his child support and alimony payments...

....which he didn't pay. As for anti-LGBT remarks, Moore's only had a few of those ("This is a state where the legislature recently approved a measure to give 'equal rights' to transvestites"); what he really hates is women, and the idea they have equal rights with men. He's also big on the ascendant David French conservative theory that women should be paid less so men can do better ("If men aren’t the breadwinners, will women regard them as economically expendable?").

The punch line is classic conservative victimology: After snarling about the "gutter" press unfairly reporting on a public figure nominated to a powerful government position, the mud-spattered Moore bravely draws himself up and proclaims:

I realize now that I should have known better. Someone as outspoken as I am, and with a paper trail two miles long, is bound to be a target in today’s political environment. I should have warned the president about skeletons in my closet.

"In hindsight I should have warned Trump that I was a scumbag" is just intrinscially funny, but it gets better:

Still, some good has come of all this. Because of all this attention, unwelcome as it was, my mantra that growth doesn’t cause inflation seems to be taking hold.

If my downfall yet allows the economy to be destroyed, I'll think the sacrifice well worth it, like Billy Mitchell! I must say, I don't know him well enough to say whether he believes this bullshit, but if he doesn't he has my admiration and I can't imagine why Trump cut him loose.

•   Maybe it's just me but I seem to be seeing a lot of tub-thumping for capitalism these days -- like we can't just take it for granted that it's good anymore, the folks who usually spend their time telling us that abortion is murder and immigrants are scum have to be enlisted to cheerlead. At National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru looks at dire poll results for our Poor Get Poorer and So Do The Middle-Class economy and smells hope:

When Americans answer polls, they express less and less confidence in free-market capitalism — even as they express more and more satisfaction about economic conditions. 

Perhaps people are evaluating these questions against different time horizons. They may, that is, think that the economy is performing well at the moment but has become less capable of delivering broad-based prosperity over the course of a generation. If today’s conditions persist long enough, then, the reputation of capitalism may recover.

To put it another way: the saps are catching on, but they don't know how bad it is, so we can bamboozle them back -- Ponnuru's idea is to tell them to appreciate their "non-wage benefits" like their health plans (for those who have them, that is, which under Trump is seven million less than it used to be and going down; and of course the plans are getting shittier), and that "a common method of adjusting for inflation... overdoes it," so everything isn't getting too expensive like you think, you're deluded by socialism! Ponnuru's solution for that: "reform of our monetary regime" (get Stephen Moore in there!) and deregulation. Can I get an Amen!

And at the Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan tells us not to worry, the real Republicans who've been subjugating themselves to Donald Trump will soon rise again, just you wait, and this time "the federal government will not become smaller or less expensive in our lifetimes" -- but that money will not be spent to give you moochers health care or guaranteed incomes, no sir, but to create make-work projects for "the lost boys of the working and middle classes." Can't you just imagine President Pence bringing back the WPA, only with more moral scolding? (Of course "lost boys" will wind up in camps with refugees, to die by neglect or be diddled by pastors and priests.) Also "resolving the mental-health crisis" i.e. putting crazy people in nuthouses where we don't have to look at them. But above all we must have faith in "the system that yielded all our wealth and allowed us to be generous with the world and with ourselves -- free-market capitalism. Only the GOP can do this, because Republicans genuinely love economic freedom." That's a refreshing change of message that's bound to lead to invigorating changes in American life, huh?

If we can't elect Warren or Sanders I expect the Buttigieg/J.D. Vance ticket to lose 45 states and Trump to declare capitalism the state religion and "I got mine, don't worry about yours" the motto on our coinage.

PARAGRAPH OF THE WEEK.

It's from National Review's David French, NR's house testosterone junkie whose prose always purples up when he's talkin' man-talk. The title of his latest emission is pretty good -- "Understanding the Inescapable Reality of Masculinity" -- though the story is the same as usual: A man, Oscar Stewart, did something mainly (chased the latest synagogue shooter! Didn't catch him, but M for Maneffort!), which is offered as evidence that boys are "more aggressive than girls, and more violent than girls, and they take greater risks than girls," and that's good because we need boys to do that because girls, well you know, sugar and spice.

(French actually mentions that at the synagogue "a courageous woman named Lori Kaye lost her life shielding the rabbi from the incoming bullets" and never for a second acknowledges that this fact blows his whole stupid thesis.)

But the nut graf, and it is nuts, is thing of beauty. It comes after French is forced to admit that most men aren't cowpunchers and roadhouse bouncers and opportunities to butch up don't come easy in today's modern, sissy world. Attend:

But what used to happen more naturally must now happen more intentionally. Men need to cultivate physical strength even if physical strength isn’t necessary to their daily lives. They should identify as protectors even when immediate threats aren’t evident. Did Oscar Stewart believe he was in immediate danger when he went to his synagogue last Friday? And our culture and our people need to stop mocking and belittling men when they pursue stereotypically “manly” hobbies and activities. Male friendships are vital, and male friendships flow organically from male pursuits.

"Cultivate physical strength" -- you mean like Jack LaLanne? I hate to tell French but there's this thing called health clubs and it's sweeping the country. Maybe he thinks men should do less cardio and more weight training? [Checks cover of magazine -- this is supposed to be about conservatism, right?]

"Stop mocking and belittling men when they pursue stereotypically 'manly' hobbies and activities" is good too, though I wonder what activities he's talking about -- drum circles? Model airplane building? Jack-off clubs? Well, that would explain "flow organically from male pursuits."

UPDATE. Commenter Andrew Johnston makes a great point: "If all of this is 'natural' to men, then why do you need to teach it?" Maybe someday we'll get a David French book explaining how liberals made all the boys girly and conservatives are trying to bring 'em back to butchitude with crossfit, cigars, and Fetal Pain bills.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Charme pour les jours.
•   We have a new entry for the Children of Zhdanov files, those depressing attempts by conservative pencil-pushers to colonize the arts by just slapping a PROPERTY OF THE RIGHT label on any book, movie, or video game that titillates them. It's at National Review, which has published many prime examples of the form -- from John J. Miller's notorious "50 greatest conservative rock songs" to Jonah Goldberg's "there’s a profound conservatism to all great fiction." Suprisingly, this new one's not from Kyle Smith, their full-timer on this beat, but from Kevin D. Williamson, who has so many other ways to annoy you'd think he'd leave this to the pros.

The great works of art that appeal to the conservative sensibility rarely if ever are constructed as self-consciously conservative stories — propagandistic literature lends itself more readily to progressive causes, in any case.

I'm torn here between "please explain" and "no, wait, please don't."

What Coriolanus tells us about populism and mass politics is not true because it is conservative but conservative because it is true.

Coriolanus thinks he's more Roman than Rome and turns traitor, which may make you think of Donald Trump until you consider that his mommy eventually makes him be loyal instead, which he does knowing his new Volscian buddies will kill him for it. The play does exhibit a lot of contempt for democracy, which may be what Williamson is getting at, or maybe it's just a brain chemistry issue.

The relationship between the beautiful and the true helps to explain how it is that so many actual Communists in Hollywood’s golden age produced works that were moving, true, often patriotic, often speaking to religious faith, and in many cases profoundly conservative. They weren’t out to make something right-wing, but something great.

Ha ha, last laugh on you Dalton Trumbo, by being good at your job you were actually conservative all along, PSYCH.

I doubt very much that either Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead...

The few punters still reading relax. Oboy fun stuff, I bet that's rightwing too!

...is the product of an overwhelmingly conservative group of storytellers. (From what I can learn of the politics of the writers, that does not seem to be the case.) But both shows are obliged by the nature of their dramatic structures to consider the fundamental questions of politics, and both invite deeply conservative interpretations.

Deeply indeedly! Williamson tells us the zombie comic book show is explained by Murray Rothbard and "Mancur Olson’s idea of the state as a 'stationary bandit,'" and in the end democracy doesn't work. (A theme emerges!) The tits-and-lizards show, meanwhile, shows the "liberal" leader to be "incompetent" and the "power-mad megalomaniac" to be a great one, thus making "an implicit case for things like federalism and the separation of powers." Also tits, also lizards. Thus the fans are reassured: Everything they like -- tits, lizards, zombies, choc-o-muts ice c'eams -- is conservative.

•   BTW I released the bats, so to speak, on Thursday's edition of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, my mildly popular newsletter, so even non-subscribers can read it. I already told you this but I'm taking a cue from Ted Bates and hitting the USP (Subscribe! Cheap!™) hard and often. My fortune's assured!


•  Let's have a dash of Dreher, eh?

I know some conservatives who are closed-minded, bigoted, you name it — but I don’t know any conservatives who would refuse to be friends with someone because they are liberal. They must exist, but in general, the disposition to cast out the impure from one’s circle of friendship is something I have seen much more commonly among progressives. Let me be clear: I’m not talking about holding extreme views; that is common on both sides. I’m talking about the way one interacts with those on the other side. It has seemed to me that in general, people on the Left get a lot more wound up about politicizing social interaction, and treating people who hold opposing views as morally tainted, than people on the Right do...

This is a personal view, admittedly. It’s something I’ve noticed over the years.

Oh, I bet he has. It just might be everyone knows Dreher is a twerp, but conservatives tolerate him because he might be good for a few votes or to help usher in a theocracy, while liberals have no such motivation to put up with his nonsense.

A guess: because left-wing politics has become obsessed with questions of power and status, and that breeds a natural sense of personal insecurity. Leftists have forgotten that one can be wrong without being evil incarnate. And, when you perseverate over whether or not you feel “safe” in the presence of something or someone challenging, you cannot help but generate a neurotic politics.

It's hilarious that Dreher keeps going to that snowflakes-in-their-safespace well when his whole Benedict Option racket is that the homos and he-shes are persecuting him with their deviant sex and the godly must join him in WiFi monasteries to escape them.

A NOVEL THEORY.

Trump's interesting idea of appealing his not-yet-commenced impeachment to the Supreme Court inspired a little play at my newsletter, which I am unlocking for the general public, in which the President seeks the advice of a prominent TV attorney.

SHE'S STILL GOT IT!

Haven't looked in on White Working Class Whisperer Salena Zito for a while, let's scan her recent titles: "Beto O'Rourke: Late-term abortions are 'about women making their own decisions about their own body,'" "Can any 2020 Democrats speak Yinzer?" -- welp, sounds like the grift hasn't changed much. Let's look at her latest, entitled:

After Mueller, nobody has changed their views on Trump

Well, his poll numbers have dropped some, but not so much, so this is an arguable proposition at least. Let's see what she has to say:

If you voted for him, you are still thrilled and optimistic about the future. I outlined in the book I co-authored with Brad Todd, The Great Revolt, that election was never quite about Trump. Many of his voters saw with eyes wide open the man’s flaws and were voting heavily on concern for their communities and not necessary for themselves. 

Many who did not vote for Trump loathe him with the intensity of a white-hot rod poker prodding at their souls. Their hair is still on fire, and nothing in the world can extinguish it until he is out of the White House, preferably in handcuffs.

So if you voted for Trump you're not only still happy but also still have your "eyes wide open" and are the kind of Yinzer who'd vote for a flawed (i.e. scumbag) candidate because you put the needs of your community above your own (sounds like she's talking about all the JustTheTipTrump people); whereas if you didn't vote for Trump your hair is on fire and a white hot poker is prodding at your soul, which is appropriate because you're damned. Then she goes on about journalists, who are even more depraved:

Reporters marvel at [Trump] voters’ unwillingness to give up on a struggling town to move to a larger city or region, never understanding that these voters often happily trade a higher paying salary or a career with bonuses in another city to stay in a community where they have deep roots.

You city slickers may have soap and toothpaste, but my meth dealer and me went to kindergarten together! In case you were wondering what this tirade against the effete ways of people who live in big tall buildin's has to do with Mueller, Zito explains:

Which brings us back to this: Nothing has changed since Election Day 2016, because everything had changed for the C-suite influencers that control our culture, politics, entertainment, big tech, and news consumption. They chose to ignore the signs — or, in their arrogance, just missed what was in plain sight for decades. 

The fusion of conservatives and populists who make up the Trump coalition that placed Trump in the White House will continue long after whatever date the president leaves office. And despite the efforts of the press, and despite Trump’s own actions, the Trump coalition is unlikely to change their minds, because the only alternative is an elite that paints them as a villainous segment of our society.

In other words, us happy Trumpkins would vote for him if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, or sold America out to the Russians, because you sissies think yer sumpin' better'n us! I marvel there are enough people who would identify with this stuff who can also read it, but I suppose between her colleagues in the propaganda industry and hate-readers such as myself, she manages to make her quota. Once again Trump is putting Americans back to work!

PERSECUTION ENVY.

The Federalist:

Sri Lanka Attacks Highlight Growing Worldwide Persecution Of Christians

Author Kenny Xu leans hard on a Pew Research Center report -- but does not link directly to it, preferring for some reason the British Church Times, which screams "Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world, says Pew report," though even the figures it chooses to pick from Pew aren't as cut and dried as that:

The Centre’s report on religious harassment in 2016 found that Christians were harassed in 144 countries, up from 128 the year before, while Muslims were harassed in 142 countries, up from 125 in 2015.

So it looks like Jesus and Allah are neck-and-neck! (The Pew report is headlined "Global Uptick in Government Restrictions on Religion in 2016," which is not nearly as good Republican ragebait.) After yelling about Muslims a while ("Few groups have suffered as Christian minorities have due to the rise of Islamist political parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and ISIS in Libya"), Xu makes the bold leap:

While many European journalists rightly blame mass migration from majority-Muslim countries for these religious persecution issues, migration is not the only factor here. Just as significant is Western Europe’s culture of enforced secularism, a world where religious speech is policed and religious symbols (such as burqas) are not allowed in French public schools or German business settings.

Hundreds murdered in Sri Lanka, dress codes in school -- same diff! Also at The Federalist, David Harsanyi:

Islamic Terrorism Remains The World’s Greatest Threat To Peace

After sputtering over "Islamists" -- a usage I hadn't heard much since the glory days of the Iraq War, but which seems to be coming back -- Harsanyi, too, rages about secularists:

Yet the American left continues to downplay the danger, first by arguing that Islam has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism, then by lumping every white-skinned person who commits a terrorist act into one imaginary coherent political movement to contrast against it.

Actually, that "imaginary coherent political movement" of white supremacists is America's #1 terror menace, far outstripping Islamic terrorism, and it's spreading around the world. But Harsanyi has an explanation for that: Islamic terror only looks weak because our Middle East wars have been so successful!

It’s true that Americans have been spared much Islamic terror since 2002—a year that, curiously, nearly every graph media uses to measure domestic terrorism starts—but only because we’ve spent billions of dollars each year and immense resources, both in lives and treasure, keeping it out of the country and fighting it abroad.

Perhaps sensing that even the morons and yahoos who constitute most of his readership won't buy this, Harsanyi gets back to a trendier attack on godless libs:

Another reason the majority of Americans might not comprehend Islamic radicalism’s reach is the skewed intensity of the media coverage. Political correctness and a chilling fear of being labeled “Islamophobic” makes it difficult to honestly report on terrorism around the world.

If it weren't for liberals you good people would be shitting your pants in fear of Mohammed at the 7-11 or the pediatric clinic, just like you were in the great Nine-Elevening!  Yet now, despite conservative urging, you still haven't killed Ilhan Omar. This isn't the country Harsanyi once knew.

These guys are catching up with Rod Dreher, who is every bit as nuts as you'd imagine:

A liberal friend of mine was lamenting recently that the left has gotten so good at policing its own thoughts, and never letting itself notice things that contradict its narrative, that it is often being shocked by events in the real world. When things like the Sri Lanka attacks happen, the first thing that many American and British journalists think is, “Oh dear, this is going to cause a spike in Islamophobia.” They cannot imagine sympathizing with Christians. They really can’t. Yes, these dead Sri Lankans may be Catholics living on the other side of the world, and sure, they may have roots in their country going back to the 16th century (or earlier), but deep down, when many journalists imagine these people, they see them wearing MAGA hats, and carrying around invisible knapsacks full of privilege.

If only Dreher would actually fuck off to a Benedict Option survivalist compound where he could tell the kids, "Yes, Rachel Maddow and Kamala Harris used to throw rocks at us Christians and put us in concentration Bible camps!"

Meanwhile at National Review we get more of the same ("Islam remains the fount of the most virulent and violent attacks on Christians worldwide"), and Eli Lake at Bloomberg telling us "White Nationalism Is a Terrorist Threat, but Not Like Radical Islam," because "white nationalists have no territory they control, as Islamic State did until recently. Nor is there evidence of a state supporting white nationalist groups..." LOL, who wants to tell him about America?

American conservatives in the depths of their Trump phase are, like their fearless leader babbling about the unfairness of his dropping Twitter numbers, addicted to victimhood, and so it was only natural that they'd treat the Sri Lanka bombing as an excuse to talk about how persecuted they are. Sure, no one's mass-murdering them -- over here, that seems to only happen to schoolkids and black people and victims of gun fetishists -- but liberals are insufficiently respectful of them, and try to make them bake wedding cakes for homosexuals, which is just as bad. One struggles to imagine them confronted by Jesus as they flee their martyrdom, and declaring, "that's it -- I'll go back to my six-figure job and put up with my kids not going to church and swears on the TV! It'll be rough, but Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!"

UPDATE. Relevant: "Steve King, censured by his colleagues for racist remarks, compares himself to Jesus... 'And when I had to step down to the floor of the House of Representatives and look up at those 400-and-some accusers — you know, we’ve just passed through Easter and Christ’s Passion — and I have a better insight into what He went through for us, partly because of that experience,' he said."

IMPEACH OR GET OFF THE POT.

As far as I can tell, the argument in favor of impeachment is that Trump told some of his goons to commit crimes for him, and the argument against is that most of the goons were either too smart or too dumb to commit those crimes for him.

Speaking of the latter argument (and "too dumb" in general), Andrew Sullivan:

As for Putin’s deep enmeshment with Trump, I found the following anecdote from the report rather apposite: “As soon as news broke that Trump had been elected President, Russian government officials and prominent Russian businessmen began trying to make inroads into the new Administration. They appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect.” More: “Putin spoke of the difficulty faced by the Russian government in getting in touch with the incoming Trump Administration. According to Aven, Putin indicated that he did not know with whom formally to speak and generally did not know the people around the President-Elect.” I’m afraid this makes speculation that Trump has been a Soviet and Russian asset for decades or those who still insist on a conspiracy … well, not exactly in touch with reality.

The con man got into the White House, and in the chaos Putin couldn't find someone willing to take his "Congratulations on our successful theft of the election!" call -- to Sullivan, this means Trump's in the clear.

That Sullivan proceeds to an incoherent "He's innocent but let's impeach him because he's bad" argument  is typical of him -- his cunning has ever been to grasp that no one would call him on his bullshit; just as that cunning served him well in his career as Pete Buttigieg avant la lettre, it will serve him now because no one will force him to retreat from his facially bold decision by actually impeaching Trump.

Everyone's making speeches about it but to my mind it's just this: Trump is a scumbag whose band of Republican grifters are destroying the country. I understand and to some extent endorse the point that Trump's policy is just Republican policy on steroids, but those steroids are really making it worse, especially since, Trump being who he is, he isn't using them as a professional athlete using non-metaphorical steroids would to improve his performance, but merely to swell himself up and exacerbate his own 'roid rage.  

So we just have to get him out of there and at this point I'm no longer worried about political repercussions -- because what would those be? That if we acted like Republicans, Republicans will get mad? We might lose some votes in Fritters, Alabama? Fuck that. You want votes in the South, give us more Stacey Abrams and less George Wallace.

If the majority of elected Democrats who are acting like dogs confronted with an intriguing but frightening smell -- trying to get their noses as far forward and their tails as far back as possible --  can't understand that, then maybe they'll understand this: Soon enough, even their traditional grift -- roiling and shaking down the base with spooky Trump stories and doing fuck-all about it, then repeating the process -- doesn't work if nobody believes it, and at the moment, trust me, nobody believes it. AOC boycotting Pelosi's incumbency-protection racket is the thin end of the wedge.

Just pretending to fight back isn't going to work. And if you can't get the Senate to go along, so what?  It didn't do George W. Bush any harm. C'mon, earn your fucking paychecks.

I SHOUTED OUT, WHO BURNED DOWN NOTRE DAME/WHEN AFTER ALL IT WAS YOU HEATHENS' LACK OF SHAME!

The fire at Notre Dame in Paris is terrible and it's touching to read the tributes and outpourings of sorrow it has occasioned.  Of course there have been some absurd reactions too -- and some that go way beyond that:

Like James Poulos above, I cannot see this as anything other than a sign. The only church in all of Western civilization more important than Notre Dame de Paris is St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The consuming fire is likely to have been started from a construction accident. I hope that is the case; if this was terrorism, then France is in for unimaginable spasms of violence. Nevertheless, if this was an accident, it still symbolizes what we in the West have allowed to happen to our religious and cultural patrimony. What happened in Paris today has been happening across our civilization. 

It happens whenever we fail to live out our baptism, and fail to baptize our children. It happens by omission, by indifference, and it happens by commission, from spite. It happens in classrooms, in newsrooms, in shopping malls, in poisoned seminaries and defiled sacristies, and everywhere the truths that Notre Dame de Paris embodied are ridiculed, flayed, and destroyed in the hearts and minds of modern men. The fire that destroyed Paris’s iconic cathedral made manifest what we in the West have been doing to ourselves for over 200 years.

This may be the nuttiest thing Rod Dreher has ever written, and that, my friends, is saying something. At one point he compares the fire, as yet not proven to be anything but an accident, to 9/11. (He also keeps saying he hopes it's not terrorism, which, ha, we've all caught your act, guy.) Also:

For you in the West who are not religious, I hope you will reflect on what this cathedral meant in artistic, architectural, and cultural terms, and that you will think hard about what we are losing as we collectively repudiate our patrimony.

Me, I'm thinking about what we're losing when we collectively repudiate basic fire safety. It's like the inside of Dreher's head is a bad editorial cartoon where the spark that set the blaze is labeled "secular humanism." And I'm waiting for Peggy Noonan to tell us she saw "the face of the Evil One" rising in the smoke. Who knows, maybe even Trump will get with it and say something like, "Many people are saying that the devil actually set this fire, like it was Halloween. I don't know if they're right or not. Personally I think it was whatshisname, the guy in Venezuela we're supposed to go to war with."

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Of course John's my favorite Beatle,
but George is close behind.
•  I'm unlocking another edition of my newsletter Roy Edroso Breaks It Down (Subscribe! Cheap!), this one a transcipt of Stephen Miller's unheralded appearance before the House Judiciary Committee's White Nationalism hearing. Part of the inspiration was Candace Owens' appearance, which as Stephen A. Crockett Jr. reports was sort of a parody of the conservative attitude toward white nationalism (which is by far the biggest terror threat in the U.S. now) -- let's just get a black lady up there to say that it doesn't exist and you're the Real Racist™! If they can get away with this, I see no reason why Miller can't get away with his own Jew-channeling-Goebbels innovation.

•  One good thing we may be able to salvage from this administration, if we survive it, is permanent damage to the whole stupid idea that evangelicals have anything serious or beneficial to add to the national debate. Remember when Michael Gerson, George W. Bush's evangel whisperer, was the model for such people -- temporizing, pencil-necked, only gently pushing the authority of Our Lord & Savior for conservatism (and then only for the goody-goody parts)? Well, now it's the age of the Savage Messiah, baby, with goons like Franklin Graham excusing Trump's sins and getting Republicans to promote their popcorn propaganda for them in hearings. (I'm not going to see Unplanned, but look forward to the sequel Unplanned 3-D, in which the actors thrust bloody, dismembered fetus parts at the audience. Move over Paul Morrissey!)

I'm sure some Jesus freak has defended Trump's cage-and-boot immigration policy before, but Matthew Schmitz's offering at the godly First Things, "IMMIGRATION IDEALISM: A CASE FOR CHRISTIAN REALISM," strains itself to make it look like the Lord's will. Schmitz starts out lamenting how naive he was as a young man, and how he thought the manly men he worked with who "complained about 'illegals' taking American jobs" were bigots when really they were just expressing common-sense Christianity in earthier terms. Later Schmitz learned that, by applauding hard-working immigrants, "elites" like Barack Obama and Lin-Manuel Miranda "portray working-class Americans as violent, hateful, and incompetent. They revel in their suffering." Gotta choose who to feel sorry for: The whites or the browns. Guess which side Jesus is on? Thus people who want the kids caged and booted are The Real Christians.

Also the liberal elites are like the guys who didn't want to fight Hitler: "Sooner or later, even the most idealistic calls to welcome migrants must contend with hard reality," warns Schmitz. "In the run-up to World War II, men inside and outside the Church invoked the gospel to justify appeasement and pacifism..." We had to fight Hitler's SS, and now we must fight the army of cleaning ladies and day laborers who similarly threaten our country!

The whole thing's nuts, but this may be the keeper:

While advocating realistic and Christian migration policies, the Church must not forget that the most important migration is that of souls into heaven. In Exsul Familia Nazarethana, Pope Pius XII speaks of the need to “provide all possible spiritual care for pilgrims, aliens, exiles and migrants of every kind.” He praises the Church’s long history of care for migrants, including the Catholic colonizers of the New World. (Pius’s view is not easily reconciled with liberal pieties.) According to the Pew Forum, 19 percent of the foreign-born, Hispanic adults living in the United States have given up their Catholic faith—half before they arrived, half after. These are souls lost at sea, spiritual migrants stopped at the border between earth and heaven.

Apparently by letting immigrants into our fallen nation, soft-hearted liberals are causing them to lose their faith, thus condemning them to an eternity in Hell. Who's mean to immigrants now? So when Trump's immigration control people kick over water bottles so immigrants may die of thirst in the desert, they're really just sending them quicker to heaven!

We must never forget what monsters these people are.

THE UGLIEST AMERICAN.

This is in some ways the Trumpiest thing that ever was:

During a guided tour of Mount Vernon last April with French president Emmanuel Macron, Trump learned that Washington was one of the major real-estate speculators of his era. So, he couldn’t understand why America’s first president didn’t name his historic Virginia compound or any of the other property he acquired after himself. 

“If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said, according to three sources briefed on the exchange. "You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you"... 

If Trump was impressed with Washington’s real estate instincts, he was less taken by Mount Vernon itself, which the first president personally expanded from a modest one-and-a-half story home into an 11,000 square foot mansion. The rooms, Trump said, were too small, the staircases too narrow, and he even spotted some unevenness in the floorboards, according to four sources briefed on his comments. He could have built the place better, he said, and for less money.

This put me immediately in mind of an anecdote about Booth Tarkington's and Harry Leon Wilson's play, The Man From Home, in Louis Scheaffer's first Eugene O'Neill biography Son and Playwright:

In [young O'Neill's] view the good things were not the home-grown products that played to packed houses but the serious importations that pleased only the few. What audience tastes of the day were like can be gathered from something Booth Tarkington once said about The Man from Home, a smash hit of the 1908-1909 season he had coauthored. A story of American tourists abroad, it was intended to satirize those who ran down Europe’s historic splendors in favor of the sights back home. “So when we built up the Hoosier in our play,” Tarkington recalled, “we gave him a lot of this kind of jingo patter. We thought our audiences would be amused with us and at him, and yet like him as we did. Instead, they cheered all his boastings…. They burst with loud patriotic applause when he said, ‘I wouldn’t trade our State Insane Asylum for the worst ruined ruin in Europe.’ The popular success of the play might be called accidental.”

It's hard to know whether Trump is genuinely this stupid, or whether he's merely playing the monied rube here for the benefit of his idiot fans. In either case his act as seen at Mount Vernon is more or less the same as he's been doing for years: As a self-help huckster, snake-oil salesman, game show host, presidential candidate, and president, Trump's success is based on putting over the notion that the smart people are putting one over on you, but he will put you wise -- he'll teach you the secrets the smart people won't share, sell you the "quality" items the smart people hoard for themselves, elevate with an apprenticeship some humble young Horatio Alger who'd never get a break from the smart people; and finally, when given the ultimate prize, he will lock up the Queen of the Smart People, drain the swamp and fix America.

With the Mount Vernon tour Trump is letting everyone around him know that the things smart people like, or rather are pretending to like in order to bamboozle the common people -- historical artifacts, indeed history itself, and the homey values of the Founding Fathers -- are actually stupid; this supposed "attraction" is just a dump (as Trump called the White House when he got there) and this Washington schmuck didn't have the savvy and pizzazz that Trump brings to the Big Show. Why waste your time at some rickety old house when you could go to Trump Tower? And if some loser bitches that Trump's leadership betrays the values of people like George Washington, well, who was Washington anyway except some soldier who, though admirable because he didn't get captured, didn't know half of what Trump knows about building a fortune and making a name for oneself? Because the only real values are Trump's values, and anything else is a trap to steal your money.

Mencken called it, but he didn't know the half of how it would end up.

HOW BULLSHIT WORKS, PART INFINITY-MILLION.

Fox News:

Sounds like quite a groundswell! Exactly how many "calls" were there?

“The people campaigning against the Amazon campus are financially illiterate,” said Tracy Maitland, president and chief investment officer of Advent Capital Management during a panel discussion the Black Economic Agenda, according to the New York Post.

He later told the newspaper that he blames the 29-year-old Democratic Socialist for spreading misinformation and helping to kill the agreement with Amazon that would have benefited people in her home state.

“This was a disgrace. I partially blame AOC for the loss of Amazon. She doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. That’s scary. We have to make sure she’s better educated or vote her out of office,” he said...

So literally one rich guy in the story -- and no one else in the story -- says he and his fellow rich guys might vote AOC out of office ("Vote Hedley Throckmorton III, get to pee in a bottle on an Amazon shop floor and this free tote bag!").

This bullshit story is covered by other wingnut websites to their hatewank readers, who mutter "even her own people" as they grab the Kleenex. And Lord how the money rolls in!

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

End it someday what's that sound
•   This is the 25th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide. On Twitter people are talking about where they were when they found out. I certainly remember; I was getting into a van to do some road dates with a band. Someone said they couldn't understand why he did it; I thought I did understand, and was even more of a drunken asshole on the trip than usual. A few years later I quit the limelight, as it were, and performed only as a humble bass player until I knew I had lost the calling and laid down the tools for good. Part of me thought and still thinks I did so because I was weak, but part of me -- the part that won -- thinks I did it to save myself, and Cobain's suicide was part of the fact pattern that convinced me.

With the benefit of a quarter-century's perspective I realize that everyone's damage is different, and one data point for that is I haven't blown my brains out -- not dispositive, but I'm willing to take it as a sign that either my problems weren't as bad as his or my resources were better, or both. But in 1995 I was vibrating sympathetically with Cobain's music, and the finale made sense to me, not because it rejected life but because dredging up those painful feelings and amplifying them to that scale seemed like very dangerous work -- like sculpting an avalanche. It isn't how it has to be; a lot of artists have plumbed those feelings without even getting dirt under their nails. But some guys can't do it any other way.

Anyway it seems pop music doesn't seem to have any place for that sort of work anymore, and maybe we're better off, just as maybe we're better off with the tiny speakers digital tech has made possible instead of the large, cumbersome, and chest-rattling subwoofers of the past. We're here and he's not, that's for sure. Still, I miss the comfort in being sad.

•   Oh, here's another newsletter edition opened to the general public (Susbcribe It's Cheap™), about how conservative anti-LGBTQ efforts are still happening very much though on the downlow as far as the media's concerned. One of their tools, as usual, is reverse victimhood -- it's actually the minorities who are oppressing them, and they have to exclude them from certain civil rights in order to protect themselves. Today in the Wall Street Journal:

We Were Smeared by the SPLC
Our work for religious liberty got us branded a ‘hate group.’ Such lies have real consequences 

...[The Southern Poverty Law Center] falsely maligns ideological opponents in an effort to crush them rather than debate their ideas honestly. I know, because in 2016 the SPLC branded my organization, the religious-liberty nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, a “hate group.”

Hang on, some of you are thinking -- Alliance Defending Freedom? The group that in its early form, the Alliance Defense Fund, field an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas for guess which side on the grounds that "same-sex sodomy" is "clearly" a "distinct public health problem"? The group that wants to bring back conversion therapy where it's been made illegal? Whose executive director praised an Indian court for ruling to "protect society at large rather than give in to a vocal minority of homosexual advocates"? SPLC has these fuckers dead to rights, but op-ed author and ADF SVP Kristen Waggoner cries she's been "smeared as a bigot" by them merely because she is moved to "disagree with its far-left worldview." She ends, "Let’s aspire to be a country characterized by tolerance, freedom of conscience and love of neighbor," which must be some sort of inside joke. Remember: These guys have to disguise what they're doing because if normal people knew they would laugh them out of existence.

PRESIDENT NICE YOUNG MAN.

Well, Mayor Pete Boot Edge Edge just got the kiss of death: A glowing review from David Brooks.

In a recent Iowa poll he surged to third place. His campaign just announced that it’s raised an impressive $7 million since January. And I can’t tell you how many Democrats in places as diverse as Nebraska, Indiana, New York and Washington have come up to me over the last few weeks raving about the guy. I met a superfan in Frederick, Md., who says that every few hours she calls the campaign to give another $10.

Sorry but this makes me think: How does Brooks meet these Democrats, or anyone? When he dumped his wife he quickly married his research assistant, so he doesn't seem like a guy who gets around.

This is the biggest star-is-born moment since Lady Gaga started singing “Shallow.”

What'd I tell you? Don't start climbing the walls yet, though, because Brooks is about to tell us what's so dreamy about Buttigieg:

The Trump erahas been all about dissolving moral norms and waging vicious attacks. This has been an era of culture war, class warfare and identity politics. It’s been an era in which call-out culture, reality TV melodrama and tribal grandstanding have overshadowed policymaking and the challenges of actually governing.

I bet you've already seen the bothsides card peeking out of Brooks' jacket pocket:

The Buttigieg surge suggests that there are a lot of Democrats who want to say goodbye to all that. They don’t want to fight fire and divisiveness with more fire and divisiveness. They don’t want to fight white identity politics with another kind of identity politics.

They are sick of the moral melodrama altogether. They just want a person who is more about governing than virtue-signaling, more about friendliness and basic decency than media circus and rhetorical war.

Joe Biden feelz ladies up, and Amy Klobuchar hits people, so in the absence of Michael Bloomberg or a Care Bear stuffed with vouchers, that leaves all the Monsters of Identity Politics, Virtues That Are Not in Bill Bennett's Book, and Socialized Medicine, who are unacceptable, and Mayor Pete.

Buttigieg’s secret is that he transcends many of the tensions that run through our society in a way that makes people on all sides feel comfortable.

And of course there's one group that's most important to make comfortable and that's David Brooks and milky boomers like him.

First, he is young and represents the rising generation, but he is also an older person’s idea of what a young person should be.

Mrrowr hot.

He’d be the first millennial president, but Buttigieg doesn’t fit any of the stereotypes that have been affixed to America’s young people.

He doesn't talk with a smart mouth!

Young people are supposed to be woke social justice warriors who are disgusted by their elders. Buttigieg is the model young man who made his way impressing his elders — Harvard, Rhodes scholar, McKinsey, the Navy.

Cut of his jib etc.

Young hipsters are supposed to flock to coastal places like Brooklyn and Portland; after college, Buttigieg returned to Indiana.

He's like J.D. Vance except not yet an obvious fraud.

...Second, he is gay and personifies the progress made by the L.G.B.T.Q. movement, but he doesn't do so in a way that feels threatening or transgressive to social conservatives. He has conservative family values; it’s just that his spouse is a husband, not a wife. He speaks comfortably about his faith and says that when he goes to church he prefers a conservative liturgy to anything experimental.

He's the kind of gay person you'd like if you didn't hate gay people!

Finally, he’s a progressive on policy issues, but he doesn’t sound like an angry revolutionary. Buttigieg’s policy positions are not all that different from the more identifiable leftist candidates. But he eschews grand ideological conflict.

In other words, Brooks is sure that, as one of those geezers Mayor Pete looks up to, he can talk him out of the leftist stuff, it's not like anyone would notice. Well, let Brooks have his fun before he inevitably informs us more in sorrow than in anger that he has to support Trump because Democratic Nominee Fill In The Blank thinks he's racist.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Been on an early Waylon kick lately; here's one I got off my mama's old radio.
• I'm unlocking yet another issue of the newsletter (Subscribe! Cheap!™) that's just for funsies, albeit the grim modern political kind, in which the White House gets a couple of special dinner guests. Enjoy!

• I get after Rod Dreher a lot, but he's such a perfect amalgam of nearly every terrible conservative trait that he's sort of irresistible. Take this one in which he riffs on a Michigan Live story, "Teen who traded tennis for video games says more pressure playing virtual sports." The kid, Ben Stoeber, is interested in robotics and says he was drawn to tennis "because of the social aspect of it" and expresses no other feeling for it, so I guess it makes sense he'd switch and who cares, but Brother Rod howls "Decline and fall... So this kid left his body, and now lives inside his head. What a tragedy this is!" and goes on about how "doing work with your body (or playing games with your body)" is imporant because "When we remove ourselves from the physical world and retreat into our heads — as these young people are doing — we habituate ourselves to a false narrative about who we are, and what we are. We also become weaker, more subject to authoritarian rule."

That seems weird coming from a guy who doesn't look like he's done much heavy lifting himself, and is so exquisitely sensitive that he can't clean up after his dog without puking. Maybe he figured other readers would make this connection, too, and so rambles about how when he was growing up his old man was always trying to push him to do sports, but young Rod wasn't into it:

I honestly can’t say to what extent my resisting his attempts to get me into the world beyond my head was about a character flaw within me, or it was about him pushing too hard for me to do something that went against my nature. Had my dad not been so pushy about it, or if he had tried more gently to introduce me into nature, or if he had ever shown interest in the books and ideas that captivated me as a child, maybe I would have been different.

This reminds me so much of one of Albert Brooks' narration bits in Real Life: "I’m an entertainer but, quite frankly, if I’d studied harder -- or been graded more fairly -- I would have been a doctor or a scientist."

Anyway, just because Rod Dreher can't snap an emery board doesn't mean anyone else can get away with ignoring the physical world. (Plus, he reveals, his own son has taken up bicycling -- see, Dad, maybe if you weren't such a hothead we'd be a sports dynasty now!) "Please, Ben Stoeber, pick your tennis racket back up!" Dreher cries. "You don’t have to quit playing video games, but make them secondary to your life. Watch Wall-E and think about the choice you’re making..."

At no point does Dreher seem aware that Stoeber's leisure-activity choice may be reasonable and in any case need not be made with any consideration for the False Narrative of Modern Man; nor that his own lack of athleticism is something he might, after years of adulthood, take responsibility for himself instead of laying it on his now-dead father.

FROM THEIR METH LABS TO YOUR LAPTOP.

I've unlocked the most recent edition of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down (like the fellas hanging out at the Rexall say, Subscribe, It's Cheap! ™), in part so non-subscribers can see what they're missing, but also so you can read a little about the latest wingnut conspiracy theory: That Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, their beat-off noire, was not actually elected to Congress but merely "elected" to "Congress" if you know what they mean and why should you.

It's ridic, and a valid argument against paying it any mind is that, the two million views received by a YouTube video pushing the theory notwithstanding, it has drawn little mainstream conservative attention. After all, YouTube is the province of barking madmen -- they may get millions of views but no respect from ordinary Republicans, right?  To which I would say, okay, then how about this from the slightly better known Laura Ingraham of Fox News:

A guest on The Laura Ingraham Podcast has claimed that transgender people are trying to use social engineering to create a new species, with the host speculating whether this species would be “part human, part animal"... 

Nathanson told Ingraham that trans and non-binary movements have sprung up because “feminists challenge the notion of gender” and this has evolved into the development of feminist ideology. 

In response, Ingraham said: "Their goal ultimately is the destruction or elimination of the traditional family, though, is it not? That's what we really want to get at here. That's really what's going on..."

Nathanson agreed with Ingraham, adding: “I think that the trans people have taken it one step further because by abandoning gender altogether, not simply re-writing it, they're basically trying to use social engineering to create a new species..."

Ingraham asks: "And the new species will be looking like what? Will be part human part animal? I mean, will be human mostly…" 

Nathanson said, "I think human and part machine," to which Ingraham replies "part machine, hmm."

Who knows, maybe at that point Ingraham was thinking, "Whoa, I agree liberals and trans people are doing The Island of Dr. Moreau for real, but that machine bit is crazy!"

As my entire oeuvre should have taught you, conservative crazy may start at the bottom of the media food chain, but it's never meant to stay there -- because alternative media outlets have always been the skunkworks where they test propaganda for potency before chucking it at civilians. So while liberals in their wilderness are bringing back Early Progressive, New Deal, and Great Society ideas, conservatives don't bother, and devote themselves to slurs and psychodrama. Look how hard they're pushing "SetUpGate" as a way to justify vengeance against people who think Trump worked with the Russians to fix the election; clearly the hope is this will scare everyone out of demanding a fuller accounting of the Mueller report. That strategy, judging from the polls, isn't working -- but maybe next week they'll tell us Adam Schiff is a vampire or George Soros was photographed literally pulling the strings from the House ceiling but Hillary killed the photographer and burned the picture, or some such shit. Why not? The racket has worked a long time and is always worth another shot. As the panic over Trump's latest Obamacare eruption shows, it's not like they have anything else.

BEYOND MUELLER.

So, the investigator’s report was sent to a longtime Republican flunky, who says “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” and that he has no plans to release the full report which might tell us what that means. The president says this in fact does exonerate him, and his followers agree.

Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see what's going on. But a lot of people are not thus equipped, so I’m not surprised conservatives are playing it this way. And since these guys are always on offense, I'm not surprised that they’re trying to turn it around by demanding investigations of their own (or endlessly-extended Two Minute Hates of “The Media,” which they’ll probably settle for because it's easier to get away with). As I reported at the Village Voice, this was their MO when Mueller announced his first indictments, and there is no reason for them to change it now.

Witness Michael Goodwin at the New York Post, with "How to end our national nightmare — probe Hillary Clinton again." It's front-loaded with wish-fulfillment, telling readers "it is tempting to breathe a sigh of relief and assume that our long national nightmare is over" -- as if Mr. & Mrs. America have been straining under the yoke of Mueller coverage -- then spooling out a fantasy in which "this is an enormous vindication for Trump," whose "supporters were understandably in a celebratory mood, with some saying on Twitter that it felt like 2016 election night all over again," while for Democrats "too, Friday night was like a repeat of Trump’s election victory." (This is meant to stir memories of crying Democrats, which is MAGA Viagra.) Not only that, the Dems "ruined their own credibility, and their continuing efforts to destroy him by innuendo and investigation" -- that is, asking to actually see the report -- "can only add to their disgrace."

Then, for Trumpkins who have yet to nut, Goodwin spins tales of a Day of Wrath counter-investigation of James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, "the reprehensible John Brennan," James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and yes, Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, and Barack Obama ("what did President Barack Obama and his administration do, and why did they do it?").

I'm not sure whether the idea of a vengeance mission led by Lindsey Graham will actually fire anyone's imagination, but it will keep the scared kittens of the press too pinned back to ask relevant questions.

These events can be dispiriting to noobs, as I can tell from all the bothered liberal posts. But to those of us who've seen it many times before it's just a nuisance and maybe even, in historical perspective, a fleeting one. No one's going to change their mind based on this, because everyone knows who and what Trump is and who and what Republicans are, which will only become more obvious in the days to come. In fact, the one good thing about the information pile-up of our times is that no one lacks the data to see through these scams -- it's mainly a question of willingness to look. It wasn't always that way. The run-up to the Iraq War and the Clarence Thomas hearings, respectively, each led to a general manufactured consensus that foreign wars of liberation were back, baby, and that once Senators decided a woman was a lying slut that was an end to it. Those messages have sustained some damage in the intervening years; it hasn't ended jingoism or institutional sexism, quite, but the trend is in the right direction. Hell, even Young Republicans aren't as hypnotized as they once were. So press on regardless.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Jazz ain't dead, it don't even smell funny.
• A snippet from a recent Roy Edroso Breaks It Down newsletter (TO WHICH YOU SHOULD SUBSCRIBE, he hollered with one hand to the side of his mouth like a newsboy in a '30s Warner Brothers picture, IT'S CHEEEEAP ™):

For his recent defense of the Electoral College [David French] might be excused, because it’s mostly no better or worse than all the other shitty rightwing defenses shoved, hastily and scarce half made-up into this breathing world by conservatives after Elizabeth Warren called for the EC to be abolished. (David Harsanyi’s “Democrats Want To Kill The Electoral College Because They Fear The Constitution” at The Federalist is my favorite; Jamelle Bouie effectively smacked down all this nonsense on Twitter.)
French does go the extra mile, though, with this: 

And let’s not pretend that a national popular vote elevates every citizen’s vote in a way that the Electoral College does not. Your vote counts in each state, and the fact that your state is overwhelmingly red or blue is no more or less demoralizing than the popular-vote idea that your single vote is thrown into a pool of 130 million others.

So the Republican voting in D.C. (where Clinton won with 90.9% of the vote) presumably feels himself more connected to the result than he would if his vote had a chance of contributing to a winning margin. I don’t think even French believes that.

I bring this up because the aforementioned wave of wingnut Electoral College defenses by Very Serious Commentators, all full of Founder Worship and rEpUbLiC nOt A dEmOcRaCy yak, has been followed (as if so ordained by Morning Memo!) by some dumbed-down (well, more dumbed-down) versions tailored to the Trumpenproletariat in bottom-feeder media such as the Washington Examiner, where David M. Drucker writes under the interesting headline "Republicans resigned to Trump losing 2020 popular vote but confident about Electoral College":

Some Republicans say the problem is Trump's populist brand of partisan grievance. It's an attitude tailor-made for the Electoral College in the current era of regionally Balkanized politics, but anathema to attracting a broad, national coalition that can win the most votes, as past presidents did when seeking re-election amid a booming economy.

"Trump's populist brand of partisan grievance" is "tailor-made for the Electoral College"? I wonder if James Madison had that in mind.

Others argue that neither Trump, nor possibly any Republican, could win the popular vote when most big states are overwhelmingly liberal.

“California, Illinois, and New York, make it very, very difficult for anybody on our side to ever again to win the popular vote,” said David Carney, a Republican strategist in New Hampshire.

Since it's rather giving the game away to say "Most people don't want our candidate to be President," they're arguing that most people is the wrong people -- libruls whut live in fancy states where they have highfalutin' sundries like soap and toothpaste. (Drucker is so grateful for the Trump campaign's help in filling his column that he ends with some bullshit about how the Trumpkins expect to lose the popular vote again but win the Electoral College even bigger in 2020 -- “We look to maintain and expand the Trump map" -- mainly, it would seem, to impress even more crushingly on Americans that the dead hand of the Founders -- manipulated as a cat's-paw by the modern GOP -- doesn't give a shit what they think.)

For a doubly-dumbed-down version see Hannity on Fox, transliterated here:

"You think all those red states would stick around and be in the United States if they kept losing to New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois?” Hannity asked. “I tend to think not.”

The final tantrum is always secession with these people. This time I say let them go, and we can establish generous refugee programs for the non-assholes who will flee the New Confederacy.

HOW BULLSHIT WORKS, PART 5,200,843.

When Rod Dreher ostentatiously shows concern for his fellow man, you know there's a catch:

Readers, I have to go out for a few hours on a sudden errand. When I get back, I would like to hear from you who are in the flood zones of Nebraska and Iowa. It’s amazing how little coverage your tragedy is receiving. If I didn’t follow the Twitter accounts of Sen. Ben Sasse and Jake Meador, I would barely know a thing about it. I know the same thing happened in 2016 when we had the devastating Louisiana floods.

Let's see what The New York Times, which is Liberal Media Central and must be suppressing this story out of irrational hatred for the Common People, has been doing about it in the past three days:

March 20, "U.S. Farmers Face Devastation Following Midwest Floods [Reuters]"; "An Iowa Town Fought and Failed to Save a Levee. Then Came the Flood"; "The Latest: Minnesota to Help Nebraska Flood Fight [AP]"; "Missouri River Towns Face Deluge as Floods Move Downstream [Reuters]"; "Flooded Iowa Communities Surviving With Trucked-In Water [AP]."

March 19, "Rising Waters: See How Quickly the Midwest Flooded"; "Like ‘House Arrest’: Flooded Roads and Swamped Bridges Strand Nebraskans"; "Pets, Livestock Among Victims of Midwest Flooding [Reuters]"; "Missouri River Flooding Catches Small Nebraska Town Off Guard [Reuters]"; "Midwest Floodwaters Tear Through or Spill Over Many Levees [AP]"; "‘It’s Like an Island’: Scenes From the Midwest Floods [multimedia]"; "The Latest: Pence Views Raging River, Visits Shelter"; "Floodwaters Threaten Millions in Crop and Livestock Losses."

March 18, "Why Is There Flooding in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin?" "‘It’s Probably Over for Us’: Record Flooding Pummels Midwest When Farmers Can Least Afford It"; "Flooded U.S. Air Force Base Underscores Climate Risk to Security: Experts [Reuters]"; "'Angels of the Sky' Offer Flights Into Flooded Nebraska City [AP]"; "Scenes from Record Flooding in Nebraska [multimedia]"; "Homes Flood as Missouri River Overtops, Breaches Levees"; "Nebraska Nuclear Plant Still at Full Power as Floodwaters Recede [Reuters]"; "Three Dead, One Missing in Devastating Floods Across U.S. Midwest."

I may have missed a few. Dreher seems to have missed considerably more than a few. In comments (not in his main post), he breezily notes,

To be fair to the media, some readers say they’ve seen a lot of coverage. I think that this is an example of how silo’d we tend to be, even if we don’t mean to be. Sometimes a reader or two will accuse me of ignoring a particular news event because I haven’t posted on it — and I haven’t even heard of it!

Tee hee! Meanwhile a number of Dreher's commuters snarl things like "Why isn’t this covered more, Rod? This affects only the benighted people in flyover country..." and "The headlines are the latest nothingburger from the Mueller probe and Beto eating dirt." Elsewhere on Twitter, a bunch of people who seem unable to use Google News act like there's a media blackout on the floods. "Is it me or would this be getting a lot more attention if this were closer to New York or LA?" uueries pollster Patrick Ruffini. Others chime in: "This is catastrophic and mainstream media is pretty much ignoring this." "If a disaster happens on the coast, it’s full scale media coverage. But a disaster in the Midwest .....crickets. It’s ok, we don’t need u elites anyway." "Where is all the media’s coverage about the devastating floods in Nebraska?!?!" Ad infinitum.

I keep telling and telling and telling you guys: There is no flakier snowflake than a wingnut, and their propagandists feed them on grievance stories like the Great Media Blackout of Your Tragedy and how the big bad city slickers don't care because a steady diet of bullshit is what keeps them voting Republican.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Players only.
•  I'm seeing a lot of people saying The New Zealand Muslim Slaughterer didn't mean those things he said -- at least the ones that embarrass local wingnuts. Like when he wrote these words:

The person that has influenced me above all was Candace Owens. Each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights and her own views helped push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness. Though I will have to disavow some of her beliefs, the extreme actions she calls for are too much, even for my tastes.

Seems, in terms of basic English, clear enough to me -- but according to various Internet Lawyers he was just trolling, "shitposting," being "extremely online," or even trying to get Owens in trouble --  at least that seems to be Tichael Macey's take:

It's like the white power sign: It's a signal to your fellow Nazis until you get in trouble, and then it's just "OK" God you people see Nazis everywhere!

This must also be why the shooter mentioned Trump and Anders Brevik, too -- in fact maybe he's really a liberal, talking religious war and murdering 49 Muslims just to make the Right look bad.

•  Meanwhile Trump has said this out loud:

You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad. But the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress...

Maybe he's shittrolling, like the Christchurch shooter! Actually gloomy as I often am, I doubt that the army and the cops, or even "Trump's Bikers," would rally to his side if he were lawfully removed from office. It's possible he's trying to demoralize opponents, though I expect this will just go in the huge pile of things he does that pisses them off. Most likely he's trying to make his rump of supporters feel strong and supported. His 2016 campaign summoned them out of the hollers and klaverns, and given the polls they may be feeling pretty stranded right now -- but as long as The Leader is threatening to murder liberals, they're getting what they came for, which has nothing to do with a better country and everything to do with inchoate rage, minorities everywhere, and grandchildren who never visit.

HE'S JUST SAYING WHAT WE, THE BIGOTS, ARE REALLY THINKING!

I'm unlocking another Roy Edroso Breaks It Down newsletter issue -- this one about the mishegas around Michael Jackson. As you may imagine I'm not entirely convinced that people who have suddenly realized MJ was a child molester are acting in good faith. (By the way, I swear that you're missing a lot of other first-class material if you're not a subscriber -- go here and get on board.)

Speaking of people who have a strange reaction to explosive revelations, I'm not shocked that conservatives are uniformly defending Tucker Carlson's racist and rapist comments. Typical is this guy (formerly a famous Latin-pseud crackpot) at MAGA cult site American Greatness:

Let’s be completely clear here. Nobody—least of all the leftwing mobs attacking Tucker Carlson right now—cares what he said on the radio a decade ago. Except to the extent that his words can be wrapped around his neck like a noose. 

All the feigned outrage is exactly that: feigned. David Brock and his henchmen, along with their instantly mobilized Twitter mob, are not outraged. Not in the least. They’re giddy! And why wouldn’t they be? They’ve been looking for a way to get “Tucker Carlson Tonight” canceled since the show debuted. The search intensified as its popularity rose and its message caught fire. 

The imperative to kill the show reached a fever pitch after Carlson’s now-legendary January 2 monologue, which is the most searing indictment against a failed ruling class since Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

Three sputter-filled grafs (and about a dozen thereafter) and no mention of what Carlson actually said; you'd think he had defended motherhood and the flag rather than child rape and white supremacy.

But frankly the unearthed Carlson is just a more-upfront version of the Carlson we've known all along -- the Carlson who told Lauren Duca "stick to the thigh-high boots" and dog-whistles racists with alarming regularity. And more-upfront Carlson excites them for a reason. Someone on Twitter lamented that the right's solidarity with Carlson showed how devoted to "tribalism" people have become. But I say these guys aren't defending Carlson because he's of their tribe -- even some conservatives, after all, peeled off the Roy Moore bandwagon in the final days. No, they defend Carlson because they agree with what he said. Not to put too fine a point on it, they're white supremacists and misogynists, and only wish they could say such things themselves and get away with it. Well, as the Trumpification of the Right progresses, I'm sure they'll get their wish.

UPDATE. As usual, making everything worse, National Review's David French:

Here’s the way it works. If you’re a conservative or a Republican who attains any kind of prominence at all, then the hunt is on. Media Matters has its rolling list of allegedly bad or silly things I’ve said and written, for example. And the more prominent you are, the more diligent the hunt.

Being accurately quoted is persecution! Or, in the words of A. Ridiculous Pseudonym at RedState, "Maoist totalitarianism."

If only Lonesome Rhodes from A Face in the Crowd had tumbled to this racket! After embarrassing himself at the end of the movie, he could have attacked those liberals who were persecuting him by describing what he said.