FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Boy, that must have been some party.

I noticed a bunch of liberals objecting on Twitter to this John F. Harris/Politico story, “We Are In a New Civil War … About What Exactly?” Sample:

If this is a 21st century version of 19th century disunion, shouldn’t it be more obvious what the war, at bottom, is all about?...

Only in recent years have we seen foundation-shaking political conflict — both sides believing the other would turn the United States into something unrecognizable — with no obvious and easily summarized root cause. What is the fundamental question that hangs in the balance between the people who hate Trump and what he stands for and the people who love Trump and hate those who hate him? This is less an ideological conflict than a psychological one.

Now, this is Politico so I guess one has to be sensitive to its bothsidesing agenda (“the Trump phenomenon defies explanation,” Harris says -- ha, yeah, if your first acquaintance with the GOP was Romney 2012!) But I take his point to this extent: that all the yap about civil war -- and despite all claims to the contrary, including Harris’, as I have written before “civil war” really is overwhelmingly a rightwing thing -- it’s just ridiculous. 

And I’m not calling it ridiculous because I don’t think these guys wouldn’t do it if they could -- on the contrary, as polling and experience show, conservatives are now extremely comfortable with violence against liberals. I call it ridiculous because they have no actual complaint even remotely worth having a civil war over. Here’s the top of an email I got from one of the many rightwing mailing lists to which I subscribe:

Now, I ask you: What normal American would read something like that without wondering: What the fuck is this guy talking about, America is a "dystopian, tyrannical state"? 

It’s like when Rod Dreher goes on about “soft totalitarianism” and constantly invokes non-soft totalitarianism when talking about it (e.g., “There is no Stalin of the Social Justice Warriors, but that in no way means they are not dangerous”), but when someone (someone who’s not a mark, I mean) takes him to mean what he seems to mean, he weasels, “do I say that the libs are ‘just like’ the Bolsheviks? No, not at all,” and then explains that the liberalism “seeks domination and conformity not by imposing pain and terror on people, but rather by manipulating their access to status and comfort.” Which sounds like a pretty weak kind of “totalitarianism” in the first place, and when explicated it  turns out to mean a bunch of just-so stories about how everyone’s too scared to say trans women are men because they might lose their jobs -- which is 99 44/100% Pure Bullshit -- or that a racist getting kicked off a social media platform for flouting its terms of service is the Coming of the Camps.

The next time one of these nuts tells you about the intolerable tyranny under which Americans live, ask him what he means, specifically. Watch his hands, though. 

Want a Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie? This week, along with the January 6 anniversary one I mentioned yesterday, there’s also Amy Wax’s talk radio audition. That leaves three very fine issues you could have read with a subscription, and more where that came from. Sign up and treat yourself! 

BUT THERE'S NO POINT IN PLAYING THE BLAME GAME.

In honor of the day -- I understand January 6 is a holiday in Lauren Boebert’s district! -- I have unlocked a Roy Edroso Breaks It Down issue on the crypto-insurrectionist bullshit you’re likely to come across on the anniversary of the attempted coup. 

While some old-time Republicans like Karl Rove have apparently decided they have nothing to lose by truthfully saying the MAGA mob “violently attempted to overturn the election,” those still on the payroll are trying to blow it off. At the Washington Examiner, Byron York scoffs at “Jan. 6 week”:

…the House Democrats who created the [January 6] committee want to use it to get Trump -- either by ensuring that he is legally prohibited from running for president in 2024 or, failing that, by damaging him so much politically that he will lose if he does manage to run.

This is rather like saying, “Having failed to convince the American people that Hitler poses a threat to America, FDR’s Democrats have resorted to war on Germany.” York also suggests that Trump was actually trying to reverse the attack he launched throughout the afternoon by tweeting messages like “No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order” etc., because “at the time perhaps Trump's main mode of communication.” 

Cut to QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley looking at his phone mid-pillage, then holding up a hand: “Hang on, guys!” he cries. “Trump says WE are the Party of Law & Order!” Everyone stops smashing down doors, shitting on the floor, and hunting Nancy Pelosi; they rub their chins and murmur, “never thought of it that way before. Could we have misunderstood him when he told us to march on the Capitol and ‘fight like hell’?” 

Yeah, you know it’s bullshit. Thereafter York offers legal counsel for the insurrectionist Trump (“Dereliction of duty is not a crime”) and does his best to signal to the goons and mouth-breathers in his readership that he, too, considers the investigation of the attack on Congress a mere political stunt:

You can count on [Democratic lawyer Marc] Elias to follow through. After all, his party reaped enormous political benefits from the dossier caper, and he is always looking for new ways, legitimate or not, to roil the system in favor of Democrats.

This is a little slicker than your buddies on Facebook yelling about false flags, but the intention is the same: to make it look like the attempted overthrow of your government was nothing so serious as to require consequences.

UPDATE. York has more January 6 bullshit today. The gist is that the coup wasn't a big deal because it was unsuccessful. It then devolves to a new mutant strain of bullshit: 

It is still not entirely clear why so many House Republicans chose to support the challenges, given that all the states had certified their results...

Some Republicans felt they stood on a precedent already established by Democrats. After all, some House Democrats objected to the certification of Electoral College results in the last three presidential elections won by Republicans...

York does not mention that those scattered and speedily voted-down Democratic objections did not come after a concerted attempt by supporters of the Democratic candidate to nullify the election and murder elected officials.

GOD TOLD ME TO.

Hey, 2022 sucks so far! I see that federal judge Reed O’Connor -- the nutcake who tried to overturn Obamacare and then blocked its protection of trans patients’ rights -- has ruled the Navy can’t visit “any adverse action” on SEALs who have refused their ordered COVID vaccinations “for a variety of reasons based upon their Christian faith.” 

For those of you wondering why Jesus wouldn’t want you to be vaccinated, the decision lists the various grounds for the plaintiffs’ objections: “(1) opposition to abortion and the use of aborted fetal cell lines in development of the vaccine; (2) belief that modifying one’s body is an af[f]ront to the Creator; (3) direct, divine instruction not to receive the vaccine; and (4) opposition to injecting trace amounts of animal cells into one’s body.”

Speaking as a non-nut, they all seem more or less loony to me -- the “aborted fetal cell” bit, for example, is a very clumsy daisy-chain, since no such cells are in the vaccines but the research that led to them partly involved fetal cells derived from abortions from 40 or 50 years ago. (I wonder how they’d respond if someone tried to exempt themselves from COVID vaccine on the grounds they partly derived from Henrietta Lacks’ genetic materials? Maybe that’ll be conservatives' next big play for the African-American vote!)

But I especially like #3, which seems like a really convenient get-out-of-obeying-orders card. Don’t like the duty? “I have received direct, divine instruction not to peel potatoes in the service of Mammon.” 

The people celebrating this, you will not be surprised to learn, hate that gay and trans people are allowed to serve, but approve servicemembers blowing off orders to receive just one in a series of mandated vaccinations because that specific vaccine has become a rightwing hate object.  It’s really a drag, constantly having to accommodate a relatively small but politically powerful pro-COVID party in this country.  

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot?

For this final week of 2021, I have only one freebie to offer from my premium newsletter Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, but it’s a good one: A New York Times Cletus Safari on Let’s Go Brandon Guy. Since I wrote it I see the LGB guy, the unfortunately named Jared Schmeck, has floated running for office, which absolutely tracks, as does his making the announcement that he will “pray about [running and] see what God has for me” on the radio show of “Christian broadcaster Todd Starnes”; there’s nothing more Modern Christian than building a public career off saying a disguised swear to the President. 

(You could be getting this kind of material on a daily basis -- 5x a week! Just like a newspaper! -- with a subscription. It’s super-cheap -- $7/mo., $70/yr. -- and from now through Monday I’ll make it even cheaper for you with this 10% off deal if you sign up via https://edroso.substack.com/newyear. If you want to sample the material first, here’s a good guide.)

OK, that’s enough hard sell! I certainly don’t want to turn into something like Matt Walsh, who’s pushing his own creepy trans-hate children’s book (!) Johnny the Walrus by calling it his “literary treasure,” “magnum opus,” “masterpiece” etc. (and, a quick Google search reveals, by promoting bulk sales to wingnut orgs and pulling the old boo-hoo-they-cancelcultured me bit). Lord knows the rightwing grift is easy and profitable, as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Tabbi have apparently learned, but I’m drawing near enough to St. Peter’s Gate that I have to think about how I’ll explain myself and I don’t want something like that among my ledger entries. 

End-of-year is a quiet time even in wingnuttery, but spare a thought for the pushers of this story at once-proud National Review:

EXCLUSIVE: AOC Spotted in Miami Beach as NYC Reports Record Covid Cases

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was spotted dining in Miami Beach, Fla., on Thursday, according to a tip received by National Review, on the same day that her native New York City reported a record number of Covid-19 cases.

This is also being pushed by trolls with a hashtag. The punchline is that while AOC’s presence in Florida is verified, that of its Governor Ron DeSantis is not -- as COVID infections spike in the Sunshine State, he hasn’t been heard from for more than a week, and his press shop is circulating old photos of him and claiming they're from yesterday. I keep saying it, but it keeps proving true: With conservatives, every accusation is a confession. 

With that I bid you a Happy New Year. I hope however you celebrate it doesn’t make you sick (though a hangover is acceptable). I’ve been changing up my holiday songs but I’m sticking another year with the Loudon Wainwright III one up top, because I love it even with the smooth jazz arrangement and because it so speaks to our place and time:

Last year was a fiasco

A real disaster, so full of sorrow

This year will be a great year

I just can’t wait, dear, until tomorrow

Keep a few fingers twined in the kite-strings of hope, friends; in the cold and dark keep the embers alive. See you next year. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Tidings of comfort and joy.

O Holy Night, y’all! Why not celebrate the birth of whatshisname with some of my political bitching? Here’s today’s un-paywalled Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, about the connection between yet another shitty Peggy Noonan column and the general degeneracy of our politics. (Paid subscriptions make great last-minute gifts, hint hint.)

Or maybe you’ve had enough of politics. I must admit the first thing I thought of when Biden did a pleasant Christmas call with some guy’s kids and the guy went “Let’s Go Brandon” was: It’s been a long slide to this from Eartha Kitt spoiling Lady Bird Johnson‘s party by honestly answering her question about “juvenile delinquency”:

"Boys I know across the nation feel it doesn't pay to be a good guy," Kitt said. "They figure with a record they don't have to go off to Vietnam. You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They will take pot and they will get high. They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.” 

Kitt continued: "Mrs. Johnson, you are a mother too, although you have had daughters and not sons. I am a mother and I know the feeling of having a baby come out of my guts. I have a baby and then you send him off to war. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot. And, Mrs. Johnson, in case you don't understand the lingo that's marijuana."

I understand LGB guy didn’t have the time for anything like that, and that’s too bad, but I’m sure if he had any specific policy he felt strongly about advancing, he could have found a quick way to do that rather than just saying a childishly disguised fuck you. But I’m guessing Let’s Go Brandon is about as advanced as his thinking gets. 

Anyway the brain trusters like Hair and Makeup Stephen Miller have already gone from “LOL Biden doesn’t know he got burned” to “Biden will send death squads to assassinate this brave patriot” so I guess Chuck Todd’ll be talking about it on Sunday. Meanwhile enjoy your friends, family, and the Feast of Sol Invictus. Io Saturnalia! 

IS EVERYONE IN THIS TOWN ON DRUGS?

I'm seeing a depressing number of people -- probably the same people who keep telling us that unregenerate (but anti-Trump) Republican monsters like Max Boot are our allies now -- giving Tubby credit for "pushing back" on the anti-vaccine rap Candace Owens was dishing out:

During an interview with right-wing provocateur Candace Owens this week, former President Donald Trump actually pushed back on anti-vaccine talking points and encouraged viewers to get their shots. (Yes, you read that correctly.) After Trump boasted of his efforts in facilitating the COVID-19 vaccination, an obsequious Owens replied, “Yet more people have died under COVID this year, by the way, under Joe Biden than under you and more people took the vaccine this year. So people are questioning how—” but the ex-president interrupted her to firmly declare: “Oh no, the vaccines work, but... the ones who get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine. But it’s still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you’re protected... Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get it, it’s a very minor form. People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.” 

What the Daily Beast doesn't tell you, and what you only see much further down in other accounts, is that Trump reiterated that he's against vaccine mandates -- which are tied up in the courts and now headed to SCOTUS. He also bitched about masks! 

In other words, Trump is still against the closest thing to a magic bullet we've got -- like, we didn't eradicate polio with a do-your-own-thing policy, we made it mandatory for kids to take before they could go to school. 

What he's clearly not doing is trying to get his people to vaccinate. You think the kind of hardcore MAGA people who watch Candace Owens videos are going to be swayed by this? We've seen the rubes booing him when he pimps vaccines. They're not going to take it on his say-so. They'll just double up on the horse paste.  

But when employers mandate the vaccine, the numbers show, people take it. That's what works. And Trump is against it. 

In other words, Trump only approved the vaccines because they happened while he was president, and he wants to world to know that if anything causes the pandemic to diminish -- whether it's the new pills or the clearance of the mandates or anything else -- it's to his credit; and if it rages on (and without a serious "big government" intervention, it will), it's not his fault. 

When I see centrist types giving him attaboys I have to wonder whether they're simple-minded. I mean, Trump and Owens are con artists. Haven't they been paying attention?

"AND ANOTHER THING, WHAT'S THIS 'DAY OF INFAMY' FAKE NEWS?"

The whole desk-working world is wandering away from its chores as Christmas approaches. But I, the steadfast tin Substack author, remain at my desk, spinning yards and sometimes prophecies for Roy Edroso Breaks It Down -- here's one released to the general public, an advance transcript of Trump's January 6 address. 

That's right, Tubby's planning a "news conference" to commemorate his goons' attempted murder of Congress on his behalf. Now that's what I call nerve! The apparent idea is counter-programming against what promises to be a solemn observance on Capitol Hill, so I assume there'll be a cash bar and maybe some lounge acts. 

(BTW a subscription to REBID makes a wonderful last-minute gift.)

THE NEXT BARI WEISS.

At this point I'm posting these things like a castaway writing on the walls of his cave in case people discover it after he dies:

The push to ban books in Texas schools spreads to public libraries

When the Llano County Library shuts down for thre-e days this week, starting Tuesday, it won’t be for the holidays.

Instead, a group of six librarians in this small Central Texas county will be conducting a “thorough review” of every children’s book in the library, at the behest of the Llano County Commissioners Court. Their mission will be to make sure all of the reading material for younger readers includes subjects that are age-appropriate. A new “young adults plus” section will be added to separate books written for an older teen audience from those geared toward younger readers.

This isn't a school library, by the way -- it's a public library. I'm trying to imagine local busybodies muscling in on the North End branch of the Bridgeport Public Library when I was growing up and forbidding young me to read Esquire magazine or the works of H. Rap Brown and Philip Roth. It makes me feel sorry for the kids in this stupid Bumfuck town, but mostly it makes me damn mad.

Oh, here's the hot part:

[Amy] Garvel, who describes herself as a conservative and has a 9-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter, said she’s been very careful about what content they consume.

“My goal is really to protect the children in our community in general, not just my own children,” said Garvel, 43. “I’m hoping that [the library] sees that we’re not trying to censor books that we’re trying to protect our children. I mean, the library was one of the last places that we could feel safe.”

You miserable fool, "censor" is EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE DOING. LOOK IT UP IN A DICTIONARY. FORCING LIBRARIES TO WITHDRAW BOOKS FROM CIRCULATION IS LITERAL CENSORSHIP.

I bet Amy Garvel is dead set against "cancel culture" and perhaps even bitches about it while she's rummaging the stacks of the Llano County Library for books to ban.

SATURDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

As a teenager I had three Emerson Lake & Palmer records.

•   Well, why not Saturday, huh? Just because it's always been Friday 'Round-The-Horn doesn't mean it always must be. Dream of a better world! In this case I have just been too busy, and not even entirely with holiday stuff -- the Day Job encroaches, as does other stupid shit. 

All the more reason for you to subscribe to Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, my high-volume and -quality content newsletter, and make it more profitable and possible for me to just dish out bon mots on the regular! REBID delivers five days a week, just like an actually periodical, and though it's on Substack there is no pissing and moaning about how kids picking their own pronouns is why in a couple of years we'll all be speaking Chinese. (You can even give gift subscriptions, perfect for you last-minute shoppers.)

Anyway, Here's this week's free issue, in which celebrity murderer Kyle Rittenhouse again visits the Mar-a-Lago White House in Exile, where Tubby takes precautions to avoid a repeat of the prior incidents. I note with interest that Rittenhouse is getting the full rightwing public relations workup, with so much Fox News coverage that the network is bragging on a "Tucker Carlson Originals" program that "captures never before seen footage" of Rittenhouse, which I assume includes the baby-faced killer walking on the beach with a dog, autographing rifle stocks for adoring fans, and visiting the grave of Charlton Heston. 

Also Rittenhouse is a featured attraction at the next Turning Point wingnut convention, which has the rabble excited and some of the Conservatives With Good Taste delivering hilarious demurrers: Here's Baseball Crank/Dan McLaughlin feebly trying to say why cheering a kid wholly famous for shooting two protestors dead in the street from a prominent conservative platform is a bad idea. He compares Rittenhouse favorably to Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, whom he calls a "propaganda-addled zealot," and Greta Thunberg (who McLaughlin, knowing his audience, does not bother to slur). Rittenhouse, on the other hand, he calls "properly acquitted," adding "one can even argue that his motives in being in Kenosha were noble." Apparently hoping that he has bought the readers' good will by showing his preference for a rightwing vigilante over leftwing activists who haven't killed anybody, McLaughlin mourns that Li'l Kyle "has an uphill battle getting a job or into a college right now" and asks his readers to let him "go quietly back to the business of growing up." 

Comments are, expectedly, a stitch, with many respondents telling Baseball Head to get stuffed and rooting for Rittenhouse to sue The Media. Still, I'd enjoy the spectacle more if we could be walled off from these people; as it is, it's like watching the inmates grow increasingly agitated in Marat/Sade before storming the audience. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Kinda goofy. I love it.

•  Got two Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies for you: First, the true account of how the child-murder-enabling Crumbleys got nabbed; second, an account of the revival of the DLC, with some of America’s most famous middle-of-the-road Democrats trying to figure exactly how to sell out black people and thus win back Trump voters. ([Stage whisper:] It’s satire!) 

That DLC one was inspired by an article in The Atlantic that starts “Maybe Bill Clinton got a few things right after all” and just gets worse, with Ronald Brownstein lamenting that, unlike in the late lamented days of Welfare Reform and Mass Incarceration, today “dissenters from the party’s progressive consensus are mostly shouting from the bleachers" instead of at cabinet meetings. 

Yes, these guys think Joe Biden is running some kind of rad-lib pogrom; while Brownstein admits Biden “has not embraced all of the vanguard liberal positions that critics such as [Daniel] Shor and [Ruy] Teixeira consider damaging… neither has he publicly confronted and separated himself from the most leftist elements of his party —the way Clinton most famously did during the 1992 campaign when he accused the hip-hop artist Sister Souljah of promoting ‘hatred’ against white people.” Sister Souljah! God, they so badly want Biden to go “What’s the deal with this 1619 project? You know, black people can be racists too. [stage whisper] Hey, Cletus, you see that stimulus payment? I gave you the colored’s share, just remember where you got it!”

•  If you’re puzzled by the clothes dryer reference in the DLC bit, it’s a recurring topic among prominent “centrists” like Yglesias and Barro, who seem to think the Whirlpool Front Loader represents the greatness of America and Europeans, being socialists, can only dry their clothes by blowing on them because they gave all their dryer money to immigrants. Fresh from her skein of Operation Rescue tweets, Megan McArdle recently made it worse by suggesting many other people shared this peculiar fantasy:

She’s really on a roll, dig this one:

I have to admit even I didn’t expect her to go on Twitter and brag that she has a maid! I guess it fits the general theme that if you aren’t doing six-figure-income shit you aren’t a serious person. Maybe next week she’ll share a video of two bums fighting over her leftovers from Rose’s Luxury. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Jah Wobble has a remix/redo of this out now, but I say
you can't go wrong with the classics.

•   The ride down the post-Roe sluice is getting faster. Peggy Noonan has a even-more-than-usually dishonest column about it, with an "aw look at the cute little fetus pics" section and a pretense of sympathy for both sides ("the idealism of many on both sides who were actually trying to make life more just") which is going to seem very quaint when all the baby-killers are marched off to jail and the recalcitrant mothers are penned in birthing barns. I was struck by this passage:

But the court is a political body, because it is a human body that inevitably reflects reigning political currents. Roe too reflected them: Justices wanted a thing to happen in the name of justice for women and found a way to do so by spying previously unseen “penumbras, formed by emanations” (a clause from an earlier case) from the law.

It can be argued that it would increase our faith in our institutions to see that serious objections that lasted half a century, and would have lasted longer, were finally heard.

As is usual with conservatives, Noonan treats "penumbras" as a joke -- can you imagine such a thing in a legal decision! But you know what "earlier case" Noonan is very deliberately not telling you it's from? Griswold v Connecticut, which established a right to privacy and thus to birth control -- which you, I, and they know is their next target. 

If you don't believe it, take it from the bullshit artist formerly known as Jane Galt:

McArdle's twitter feed is currently indistinguishable from that of your average clinic protestor with a thesaurus, and in the Washington Post today she does her bit for the cause by arguing that no one will give a shit when Roe is overturned except silly liberal knowledge workers:

But it’s also possible that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe, and throws the issue back to the states, the subsequent legislative wrangling will reveal that the answers to those questions rest less on gender than values — or lifestyle. Are you a college-educated professional who must time pregnancies exquisitely to optimize a career, or are you a low-wage hourly worker for whom other considerations matter more?

Tee hee "exquisitely," these people I've posited are so effete! And it stands to reason (or Reason, I should say) that your average "low-wage hourly worker" will be delighted to take weeks of unpaid leave (months, if they have a public-facing low-wage job and the boss doesn't like the look) to have a kid they may not want but who cares what they think, it owns the libs, who are effete. I can't wait 'til they're overturning Obergefell and McArdle asks, "How much does it bother low-wage hourly workers whether Adam and Steve are married or civilly-united? Unless the lwhw in question is gay but lol what are the odds?"

NO RIGHT BUT THE RIGHT TO LIFE.

I’ve unlocked another newsletter issue -- yes, I know, so generous! (But remember, the vast majority of my brilliant posts are paywalled so the smart play is to subscribe at the current outrageously low rates.) 

The topic is the imminent overturn of Roe, either in so many words or as a winked-at matter of fact with states empowered to establish whatever impossible limits on abortion they think are clever. As has been noted elsewhere, this will inevitably lead to a cascade of assaults on other recently-acknowledged rights based on the right to privacy, which conservatives used to honor as “the right to be left alone” but now openly mock because it protects women, gays, and other out-groups.  (They've always been shit, but the transformation of the conservative movement by evangelicals cannot be overestimated.)

We can already see the rightwing spin in action, most notably from Sam Alito, who compared overturning Roe to overturning Plessy v Ferguson, as if abandoning precedent to remove the rights of millions of people* were the same thing as abandoning it to grant them. (*I mean actual people, not zygotes and fetuses.) The retail version was promulgated today by Henry Olsen at the Washington Post, who explained how the public, which polls show decidedly does not want Roe overturned,  can be brought to heel:

The good news for the pro-life movement is that public opinion can change relatively quickly. In 1996, only 27 percent of Americans favored same-sex marriage. That share increased to roughly 60 percent by 2015 when the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage to be a constitutional right and sits at 70 percent today. Only 4 percent of Americans favored interracial marriage in 1958; today, 94 percent do.

If we can get them to accept expanded rights, surely we can get them to accept reduced rights! Stands to reason, right? 

Speaking of Reason, the rest of the libertarian bigbrains (including Jane Galt!) seem very hot to ban abortion, in case you wondering whether they were still full of shit.

BUG CHASERS.

I’m unlocking a Roy Edroso Breaks It Down issue on two temporary injunctions issued by Trump-appointed judges to keep Biden from requiring COVID vaccinations for health care workers -- you know, doctors, nurses, radiologists, medical assistants; the people who take care of you when you’re sick and immunologically challenged. Both the suits to which the judges responded and the injunctions themselves are peppered with the kind of wingnut whinges one hears from QAnon quacks and reads on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I feel as if the rightbloggers and talk-radio crackpots I’ve been covering for decades have advanced to the highest rungs of powers, and are ruling as one could have expected -- in the words of Bernard Shaw, like badly-brought-up children given torpedoes to play at earthquakes with. 

Meanwhile their comrades in Congress are, according to Politico, threatening to shut down the government to prevent Biden from making anyone get vaccinated:

“There is leverage immediately in the Senate, and we think that House Republicans ought to be backing up any number of Senate Republicans … to use all procedural tools to deny the continuing resolution passage Friday night — unless they restrict use of those funds for vaccine mandates,” Rep. CHIP ROY (R-Texas), a Freedom Caucus member, told Playbook.

Getting as many people as they can sick with COVID and blaming Democrats for it is a key part of current Republican strategy. But they can multi-task, and are also working on spreading the CRT scare (and banning books wherever they get a toe-hold) and psyching up their goons for fascist street action. Their current drive to overturn Roe v Wade (and Griswold and who knows what else) is just a taste of what they intend to do with whatever power they accrue. In short, they are literally nothing but a malignant force in our lives as well as our politics, and must be stopped. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

An old favorite.

•   Good news if you’ve been on the fence about subscribing to Roy Edroso Breaks It Down: I’m holding a Black Friday sale! Go to https://edroso.substack.com/AFFILIATE10 by tomorrow and get monthly or yearly subscription at 15% off!  That means your annual sub price goes from the already absurd $70 to, ludicrously, less than $60, and the monthly from $7 to $6. It’s almost criminal negligence not to subscribe at these fantasyland rates.

Here’s a little taste up front: A free-to-the-general-public item on a weird Matt Taibbi Thanksgiving column, in which he complains not everyone loves the holiday the way he does -- that is, as a boo-yah in-your-face sack dance over wokesters. He’s not ignorant of the genocidal backstory, he just doesn’t care, or rather makes a strenuous pretense of not caring because it Owns The Libs. 

•   At least Taibbi’s approach reveals something interesting about conservatives who basically concede liberal points but want to make them not matter. Most of these guys are far too lazy to go beyond “Happy Thanksgiving to everybody but you Biden rad libs.”  This Washington Examiner Thanksgiving thumbsucker runs the “House Divided” play:

There is no civil war today as there was when Lincoln first set a national day of thanks, and thank goodness for that. But the nation is clearly divided to an extent perhaps not seen since then.   

An insurrectionist rump trying to delegitimize the government because they no longer control it isn’t exactly a House Divided scenario -- it's more of House Stormed by Shitheels scenario -- but maybe that’s just me. (Republicans love the civil-war theme because, as I’ve said elsewhere, they yearn for a rerun of Civil War I in which their side finally wins, and also because it makes them look more powerful than they are because they’re the ones making the war faces.)

If that part of the WashEx essay hasn’t broken your bullshit meter, get the gaffer’s tape ready for the very next line:

Woke police have so captured higher education and corporate America that most people are now scared to speak their minds in the classroom and at work.

People have been “scared to speak their minds in the classroom and at work” for decades, if by “scared to speak their minds” you mean aware that if they started dishing out slurs and insulting their colleagues and fellow students they’d suffer consequences. And as their silence when the “free speech” issue is school boards banning books shows, their own personal right to call Sue from Accounting a tranny is all that term means to them. 

•   Hey look, a new COVID variant is on its way! Let me take this opportunity to remind you that back in early days of COVID vaccinations, conservatives were yelling that people who still wore masks in public -- whom they presumed to be liberals, because public health measures are liberalism now -- were actually making COVID worse by discouraging vaccination, because masklessness was a benefit of vaccination and, since Americans could not be expected to do anything that doesn't result in immediate gratification, they wouldn't get the shot unless it meant they could rip off the "face diaper" and dive head-first into a ballpit of virus, and masked-and-vaccinated people were making them feel like they couldn't. I will also remind you there have been little revivals of this rightwing anti-mask thing ever since, including recently, after the spread of booster shots, as shown by this Noah Millman column at The Week ("the pressure for continued restrictions is itself an expression of lack of confidence in vaccines... It thereby contributes to the anti-vaccine sentiment that is the primary cause of America's continuing high death toll from COVID"). Millman compares attempts by the fascist CDC to get us to observe these measures to the unheeded commands of decaying despotic regimes, and suggests that requiring masks in schools helped elect Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. If a new COVID wave, enabled by the recalcitrance of red states to masks and vaccination, sweeps the country, I predict neither Millman nor any of his fellow yahoos will reconsider, and will instead blame it on the 6.2% inflation rate. 

•   Tell you what, here’s another freebie for REBID non-subscribers who remember the good old days of Liberal Fascism: The inevitable next step for Jonah Goldberg, whom we may expect to try and cash in on his post-Fox-News cred. Lots of low humor! 

JONAH GOLDBERG: SECOND TIME AS FARTS.

I guess it’s time to remind people about the Doughy Pantload, aka the Flatulator. From an otherwise estimable Greg Sargent column about Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg quitting whatever it was they were getting paid for by Fox News over Tucker Carlson’s pro-insurrection TV special:

Some liberals have scoffed that Hayes and Goldberg are unreliable allies who should have recognized Fox’s toxicity long ago and have taken other unforgivable positions over the years. But liberals should want the existence of a center-right that is fundamentally for the baseline of respecting democratic outcomes and institutions, for reasons I’ve outlined elsewhere, even if we disagree with them about everything else.

In the story linked from his “for reasons I’ve outlined elsewhere," Sargent acknowledges that people like Hayes and Goldberg aren’t exactly democracy’s best friends, but they are more likely to defend it in a pinch than are the true Trumpkins:

On CNN, [Trump apostate Miles] Taylor said: “The one place we are united with Democrats right now is in defending our democracy.” Unfortunately, when it comes to center-right voices willing to say this, right now we don’t have the option of being particularly choosy.

But we only have their say-so on that -- what’s the proof they’ll “defend democracy”? Taylor was revealed to be the author of the hilarious 2018 “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” op-ed in the New York Times, in which he claimed to be one of “many Trump appointees [who] have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.” But what’d he actually do, besides wait until just before the 2020 election to out himself? 

Taylor's anonymous op-ed suggests he and his buddies just tried to keep the mentally unstable Trump from fucking up Republican policy too much. Even the many “oh yeah, Trump was nuts but I couldn’t tell you at the time because I needed it for my upcoming book” reports out there don’t show Taylor or anyone like him stopping Trump from declaring martial law or anything. (I will add that I take the stories about Pence resisting Trump because of James Madison, rather than because he was ascared he’d get in trouble, with a megagrain of salt.) 

As I wrote when the op-ed came out:

…it's taken me more than a year to acknowledge that Max Boot, for example, is sincere about opposing [Trump]. Boot remains a war-mongering monster, of course, but he's not pretending to be anything else -- he even admits that he can't approve of Trump's saber-rattling, not because Boot has turned pacifist, but because he thinks Trump lacks the belly (figuratively speaking) to follow through with the civilizational slaughter Boot's approval would require.

So when Boot says he's hoping the Democrats take over to teach Republicans a lesson, I believe he means it, because he's not trying to snow me about why he wants it. Thus, if he and his comrades of convenience get rid of Trump and eventually install President Mattis, I won't be stuck with my thumb up my ass blubbering "B-b-b-but I thought we was pals" as America blows up half the Middle East and Boot orgasms voluptuously.

More likely Taylor et alia were just looking for a more comfortable niche in the rightwing universe with some staying power for after Trump sharts himself to death. Taylor is currently working something called the Renew America Movement, pitched by -- red alert! -- the Niskanen Center. These guys are less likely to save democracy than to save their own asses.

Now Sargent and others think Hayes and Goldberg are part of some post-Resistance. Hayes ran the Weekly Standard, the wingnut mag that went anti-Trump, thus driving away its rich rightwing funders -- at which, LOL, on many levels, not least because Megan McArdle thought the demise of this sinecure meant there was a “civil war shattering the [conservative] movement,” notwithstanding “some of the movement’s stalwarts did turn into Trump boosters, if only half-hearted ones.” Har de har har. Pick up a copy of National Review sometime and tell me how anti-Trump they are. 

As to Goldberg: Since his emergence as his mom’s backup in the Lewinsky affair, he’s been a public nuisance -- my alicublog archives return hundreds of entries on his awfulness, despite my getting bored with him over the past couple of years. The most recent phase of Goldberg’s failsonry is his quasi-demi-hemi-anti-Trumpism, by which he heretofore hoped to straddle Trumpworld and NeverTrumpworld -- here, for example, he sputters that he’s not technically a “Never Trump” conservative, but more of a “Trump skeptic.” Whatever you call his aposta-half-assy, he has mainly expressed it by sneaking snide remarks in between pats of the Former Guy’s back:

Goldberg actually lists several columns where he's been "criticizing Trump." Let's take one at random -- "The False Prophecy of the Presidential Pivot” -- and look at the lede:

It was just last week that Donald Trump had the finest moment of his short presidency — his address to a joint session of Congress. Even many of his harshest critics praised his speech or reluctantly conceded that it was “presidential.”

Really lets him have it, huh? Actually Goldberg does get to criticizing eventually, but it's mainly criticism of Trump's intemperate Tweeting…

The great irony here is, Goldberg’s intellectual cred is largely based on his book Liberal Fascism -- a book about, unsurprisingly, how liberalism is fascism. (Goldberg, sneaky little shit that he is, claimed the book wasn’t about that when hawking it in the prestige media, and mostly got away with it, though not with Jon Stewart.) Now Goldberg finds himself chased out of the top tier of conservatism by the actual fascists in his own movement. Don’t worry about him, though -- he still has his phony-baloney job at The Dispatch as well as his Asness Chair (snerk) at AEI. And eventually you’re see him again in some place of unaccountable prominence, admitting that while the Proud Boys sometimes go too far, they’re a welcome change from the protestors they’ve put in the hospital. FarrRRt. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Saw One Hour With You a few weeks back.
I knew old Chevalier was charming, but young Chevalier is a whole 'nother story.

I lived in New York during the Bernie Goetz thing, so I certainly wasn’t expecting any better from the Rittenhouse jury. (The Goetz jurors at least hung an illegal weapons possession charge on him -- which the judge in this case preempted -- and Goetz didn’t kill anyone.) 

Judge Schroeder’s bizarre behavior couldn’t have helped, but let’s face it; most of the sort of people who would make it onto a jury like this are predisposed to support vigilante “justice” if they dislike the victims and the shooter is white anyway. 

That Schroeder felt it necessary to encourage that decision, even with the world watching, is disgusting, but until ordinary people treat such encouragement as a reason for suspicion rather than an excuse, we’re going to keep having this problem whenever there’s a protest to which nuts with guns are not only admitted but invited -- and in other areas where, until recently, we were less accustomed to expect violence, such as at school board debates. 

The goons themselves are still a minority. Somehow the non-goons who enable them have to be convinced that indulging their violence is bad for them as well as for the rest of us. The goons’ efforts to insulate them from this knowledge has been pretty successful, but we must count on what’s left of the enablers’ common sense to kick in. It’s been known to happen! But it better happen sooner rather than later. 

Anyway, from the newsletter: We all know what the babyface killer’s next step will be.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Only recently heard this one. Billy Stewart's always cool,but dig the two-chord structure! Heavy.

•  Marc Thiessen, Washington Post:

By now, most Americans have heard of critical race theory. But many do not know just how radical or pernicious CRT is — because, as a new study from the American Enterprise Institute shows, the media does not explain its key tenets in its coverage. So I asked one of our nation’s preeminent historians, Princeton University professor Allen C. Guelzo, to explain CRT and why it is so dangerous.

Critical race theory, Guelzo says, is a subset of critical theory that began with Immanuel Kant in the 1790s.

The fuck? 

It was a response to — and rejection of — the principles of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason on which the American republic was founded. Kant believed that “reason was inadequate to give shape to our lives” and so he set about “developing a theory of being critical of reason,” Guelzo says.

I don’t know which of these worthies dropped the ball here but describing The Critique of Pure Reason and The Critique of Practical Reason as “Being critical of reason” is like describing Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations as “questioning the wealth of nations.” 

But the critique of reason ended up justifying “ways of appealing to some very unreasonable things as explanations — things like race, nationality, class,” he says. Critical theory thus helped spawn totalitarian ideologies in the 20th century such as Marxism and Nazism…

I’m not an expert but have you ever known anyone who was not putting it on as a pedantic display who said they got into Marx via Kant? (As for Nazism, maybe he’s thinking of Fichte.) The Critiques are about time and space and categories and thing-in-itself and whatnot. It ain’t Points of Rebellion. 

The rest of the column by the Post’s second-worst columnist is the usual CRT Panic bullshit (yes, Thiessen invokes MLK). My guess is that he threaded in the highbrow stuff to appeal to rightwing cranks who learned about the Frankfurt School from Glenn Beck and will yell about it like the guy in the diner in The Birds going "It's the end of the world!" Why not? In the coalition of crackpots -- the anti-vaxx members of which are now bathing in Borax in an attempt to neutralize the effects of their mandated COVID shots -- there’s plenty of space for pseuds who think blaming liberalism on foreign philosophers makes it sound extra sinister.

•  Roy Edroso Breaks It Down Freebies today! There’s the course descriptions for Bari Weissamatta U., and a partial transcript of a Rittenhousean trial of another of another freedom fighter. 

"WHAT, ME WEIMAR?" WATCH.

Members of the Spotsylvania County (Va.) School Board cut right to the chase in its 6-0 vote to remove “sexually explicit” books from school libraries:

Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned.

“I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

The book-burning brief is open and in flux; the Fahrenheit 451 squad means to expand it to include books found “objectionable” for other reasons:

The criteria for pulling books from circulation this week is “sexually explicit,” but the board plans to refine how material is determined to be “objectionable” for a further review of library holdings…

“There are some bad, evil-related material that we have to be careful of and look at,” he said, without elaborating.

Thanks to Charlie Pierce for the heads-up (“'evil-related material' sounds a bit general,” he notes). Oh, and if you’re not feeling the Spirit of ’33 yet, get a load of this:

Firing teachers, book-banning (latest high-profile victim: August Wilson) followed by calls for book-burning, intimidation by masked paramilitary -- if you don’t see what the “CRT” bullshit is really about, you’re just trying not to see it. 

CRYBABY COLLEGE IS IN SESSION!

Today’s newsletter item, released to the gen pop cuz I’m such a sweetheart, is a partial course listing from Bari Weissamatta U, otherwise known as the University of Austin, the cancelculture crybabies’ new, unaccredited college. The project is hilarious on many levels, many of which have been covered in the deluge of Twitter mockery its announcement unleashed. (And that mockery has been followed, as night follows day, by second-wave sea lions doing their bit to promote the grift by castigating the mockers for being mean.  If you dunk on me, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!) 

I think something that’s being missed, though, is that for people who claim to revere “the academy” and “veritas” and all that, they’re doing an immense disservice to education, even by the standards they profess. There are, as I have been saying for years, dozens if not hundreds of accredited conservative-friendly colleges out there: Bob Jones, Liberty, Hillsdale, et alia. Yet the people who are always bitching about liberal bias at the major schools never talk about funding these existing schools that share their vision, or sending their prominent intellectuals (like the ones on the "board of advisors'' of Austin U!) to teach at them. So those schools stay stuck in the lower tiers, granting degraded degrees to kids whose parents don’t care so long as they don’t get the wrong kind of education IYKWIM, while wingnuts fantasize about the defunding and takeover of the Ivies. 

Now Bari and the guys have actually gotten some marquee names and tech funders to back their play -- but rather than give Goucher, Ave Maria et alia the benefit, they’re playing pattycake on the internet. I expect their students will be, not budding Ben Shapiros willing to forego a proper degree for the sake of the cause (Shapiro went to Harvard, he’s no dummy), but mostly racist retirees who want to stick it to the libs by taking Phrenology from Andrew Sullivan. What a waste!  

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

La Merm created the role but for some reason backup Elaine Stritchdid the honors in this telecast scene with Russell Nype. Irving Berlin's songs are stupid as hell but ain't they fun? 

• Very busy today, I mean even busier than usual -- will see if I can't add a few notes here later. Meantime, the freebies from Roy Edroso Breaks It Down: First, my version of the grim Virginia prognosis; and, as a treat, a funsie in which YOU THE READER are asked to describe a memorable moviegoing experience.  Have at it!