4708

I remember when Lord Jesus preached we should be willing to bust heads, right? ⚔

4709

Sometimes, I honestly wonder whether modern bibles simply redact inconveniences such as The Sermon on the Mount.

4710

Brother, your confusion can be cleared up with the proper exegesis. When he calls us the salt of the earth, the earth signifying all that is material and socialist, he’s telling us nothing is more important than librul tears.

4711

giphy

4712
4713

Urge to aggressively post that to Facebook rising…

4714

As always, the people that need to watch it, won’t watch it, and likely already have your timeline blocked.

4715

Probably not, simply because I haven’t used it for years.

My last post was, no joke, about SOPA.

4716

Things are a mess, says man who created the mess as he ran as fast as he could for the door.

Sucks to be you, kids. Get out your mops. I’ll be out fishing.

4717
4718

Perhaps the collapse of modern conservatism came out most clearly in Kavanaugh’s own testimony—its self-pity, its hysteria, its conjuring up of conspiracies, its vindictiveness. He and his family had no doubt suffered agonies. But if we expect steely resolve from a police officer confronting a knife-wielding assailant, or disciplined courage from a firefighter rushing into a burning house, we should expect stoic self-control and calm from a conservative judge, even if his heart is being eaten out. No one watching those proceedings could imagine that a Democrat standing before this judge’s bench in the future would get a fair hearing. This was not the conservative temperament on display. It was, rather, personalized grievance politics.

It is impossible at this moment to envisage the Republican Party coming back. Like a brontosaurus with some brain-eating disorder, it might lumber forward in the direction dictated by its past, favoring deregulation of businesses here and standing up to a rising China there, but there will be no higher mental functioning at work. And so it will plod into a future in which it is detested in a general way by women, African Americans, recent immigrants, and the educated young as well as progressives pure and simple. It might stumble into a political tar pit and cease to exist or it might survive as a curious, decaying relic of more savage times and more primitive instincts, lashing out and crushing things but incapable of much else.

4719

I have to admit, brain-damaged dinosaur does accurately describe a lot of people I know who voted for Trump…

4720

You only have to know a little bit about Eliot Cohen to know that his brand of ‘proper’ conservatism is no better than what we’re getting from the Trumpistas, and in some ways even worse.

4721

Maybe, but the dinosaur analogy was funny.

4722

And he makes a damn good point about Kavanaugh. Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony speaks loud and clear to the bias he will bring to the bench. As he tells it, persecuted by lying Democrats, his good name and Conservative credentials are being dragged through the mud thanks to this wild liberal conspiracy. That was exactly the wrong tact to take, as now, how the hell can anyone think this judge will sit the bench fairly and impartially, using constitutional law, precedent and fairness to settle the most important cases in the country? Honestly, his testimony shouldn’t just be the thing that bars him from the SCOTUS, but it should get him tossed from his federal bench appointment as well, as how can we expect this guy to give anyone he feels is the least bit left-leaning a fair shake especially if he loses out on SCOTUS and has to return to his old job?

4723

In terms of pure economic policy, true. But not in terms of democratic principles, civilized norms, and facing reality. The problem with the current GOP is partly their policy, which is 179 degrees from my preferences, but more so to me, their willingness to support party over country, to break any and all rules based on pure expediency, and worst of all to me, to ignore facts and live in an imaginary political world, with serious consequences for real life.

I don’t agree with conservative philosophy, even in it’s most genteel Burkean form, but what’s wrong with the GOP now goes way beyond having a philosophy I disagree with. So when people like Cohen make statements critical of the GOP, I’m willing to accept that, without in any way overlooking the very bad policy preferences someone like Cohen has.

There is, in my mind, a meaningful difference between people I disagree with, even vehemently disagree with, versus people who are in my view acting or arguing in bad faith, and actively undermining democracy.

I feel like if we participate in politics in good faith, we can have serious policy disagreements and still do OK as a country. But if the country continues along the Trump/Limbaugh/Breitbart path, we are all screwed.

4724

Cohen is the founder of the PNAC, the man who urged the invasion of Iraq and Iran in the wake of 9/11 and indirectly killed a million people. The whole point of the PNAC was that conservatives ought to abandon conservative foreign policy in favor of a radical aggressive militarism bent on remaking the world into one better for America to rule. That he sells himself now as an advocate of ‘soft’ power and ‘conservative’ values is the sort of irony we’re stuck with now instead of, well, genuine moral principles. So no, I’m not really interested in his fable about how American conservativism was ‘good’ back in his day but there are just No True Conservatives anymore.

4725

Some problems can only be solved with violence.

4726

What the hell did we ever do to you to deserve this?

4727

A-10 strike. Can we call in an A-10 strike? Just one gun run. That’s the solution.