5019
5020

You would think that having cancer might humble a man.

5021

Rush Limbaugh can’t really have cancer, he is the cancer.

5022

It’s probably better to say that the cancer had Limbaugh.

5023

Now I feel bad for the cancer. Be strong. We’ll beat that Limbaugh!

5024

Limbaugh’s idiotic comment is yet another illustration that these are in no way serious men. They are more internet trolls. They should never again be given power.

5025

That would be so much more fun if it said McEnany has voted by mail 11 times in 10 elections.

5026

nevertheless, he persisted

5027

Rather that dismiss it as Trump being Trump, the GOP seems to be going all in on censorship and government control of private industry.

5028

McCardle hasn’t got the memo that conservatism only means pwn teh libs now…

If conservatives actually want a smaller, less-intrusive government, then they cannot talk only about liberty and rights; they also have to talk about duty and obligations.

Conservatism has always understood that duty without liberty is slavery, but liberty without duty is a Hobbesian war of all-against-all; indeed, this has been one of its major arguments against the steady relaxation of sexual mores and familial obligations. But this principle applies equally well to government, because people will always demand safety, predictability and security, and if the private sector isn’t providing them, they will turn to the state.

Conservative Fantasy Land, I’d call it.

5029

A just universe would use idk ions and magnetospheres and shit to create a perfect tunnel between the Sun and Rush Limbaugh’s throat so that he could experience the many joys of prolonged exposure to radiation in his fucking face.

Chiefly among those joys is slowly starving to death because it hurts too fucking much to swallow anything and everything including goddamned purified water, and besides it all tastes like tongue-fucking rusty pipes anyway.

I’m out of compassion for the evil motherfuckers who have twisted the American experiment, flawed and built on some really fucked up shit as it is, and assaulted the very concepts of truth and justice that we fall down so often striving for but god damnit it’s better to strive and fail than to just wallow in the filth and the shit and the torture and oppression and sheer motherfucking human misery that seems to be the default goddamned situation of the planet.

Yeah. Those evil motherfuckers? There isn’t a fate visited upon any person in history too good for any of them. Immiserating thousands – millions – billions of people so you can protect your privilege and comfort? That’s literal fucking evil.

Fuck them. They get nothing.

5030

It’s not fantasy land

Conservatism has always understood that duty without liberty is slavery, but liberty without duty is a Hobbesian war of all-against-all;

This is what they want. This isn’t some new betrayal, it’s baked into the pie. Fetishizing gun culture, macho culture, zombie apocalypses, Jesus apocalypses, bunkers and guns as the always solution ect. They’re yearning for that Hobbesian state of nature.

Or at least, this is what the peasant commoners want that they’ve been feeding decades of Clinton and Obama and Democrat and Liberal apocalypses to, the death of Christianity and manliness and whiteness and America and the free market and why can’t I do whatever I want and isn’t the government this opaque, invisible, impotent yet utterly irresistible force pulling all my strings in some existential, mythological way, like the Devil?

They raised generations since Vietnam on a diet that liberals are traitors, that society is corrupt, that all non-Republican opinions are by definition ill informed, invalid, treasonous, devilish, monstrous, stupid, and an existential threat. Are they really surprised that they’re not wearing masks? Did they think the American public were like them, hanging up their political hats like James Carville and Mary Matalin, who think it’s all just a big game, that we can put the game down and walk away, eat dinner together, laugh about the good times, then pick it up again in the morning and have another round of Kabuki theatre where nothing is real and everything is permitted?

Are they really that different from Trump for whom everything is just about ratings and likes and how many people are on the radio / TV / internet watching them? Is politics just a game of Jenga where your side pulls a thread and my side pulls a thread and the peasants run here and there rabble rousing and pitchfork waving and we get our Humanities funding and you get to keep your infrastructure funding and i’m willing to sacrifice minority rights if you’re willing to sacrifice some property rights?

When you tell the peasants their political opponents are their literal godless commie enemies that want to destroy you, and then they believe you and take the logical assumption that everything their commie political opponents believe is axiomatically wrong, are you really so surprised that suddenly you find yourself afraid because your “base” is going to get you killed, one way or the other?

5031

Rarely have I rooted for cancer. He is a boil on the ass of the world, though.

5032

You know, I think Susan Collins may be genuinely concerned this time:

5033

He’s still just a symptom however, as was Palin.

IMHO, I also see the growth of the Bernie faction as a symptom on the Left (Tea Party on Right). Both feel disempowered in the current oligopoly where tax cuts and bailouts continuously pile power and money on the top 1% and the powers that be see that manipulating that disempowerment is easiest by blaming the other side for all the adverse impacts of the oligopoly, especially the Right and the demonification of immigrants, liberals, democrats, etc.

As to Bernie - the complaints about HRC and the Democratic nomination process (emails, super delegates, etc.) are also symptoms of this disempowerment.

I’d place a strong weight as well on the K-Street project in the 90’s, and Clinton’s response of moving the Dems more to the corporate cash side economically.

5034

The collapse of the unions, globalization and offshoring of manufacturing i think really scared the hell - and still scares the hell - out of liberal politicos. It doesn’t do any good to support a union for an industry that no longer exists. It doesn’t do any good to stand against the rich guy on behalf of the common man if the rich guys have all the keys, all the money, all the finance, and all the jobs. They seem to have come to the conclusion that supporting Wall Street was, at least on a base level, the best thing they could do. Essentially they accepted the logic of lower taxes and free trade for everyone because they saw little way of preserving those jobs in the face of a globalized economy.

Honestly after 20 years of neoliberal economics the best they’ve come up with is UBI, a child’s idea that could be written on a napkin and which is effectively just a subsidy paid by the common proles to the offshored multinationals that effectively pay no national taxes anyway. The problem with Marxist Socialism is that its bad economics. By not having anywhere else to go and having seen the proof in the pudding, neo-liberals more or less accepted all the ideas conservatives fought for against them for decades.

And then the conservatives shifted further right and declared all regulation, taxes, and the state to be their true opponents, leaving the neoliberal to be holding the line they were holding themselves 50 years before.

5035

These are not comparable. Last I checked, the Bernie crowd isn’t anxious to actually kill people, systematic mass murder to any not white people to keep fear votes. Don’t compare the Bernie left to the I’ll murder anyone GOP.

5036

Right we only want to murder the ultrawealthy.

5037

Exactly, I just want to imprison right-wingers. Big difference.

Really, it’s a fate worse than death for them; they have to spend the rest of their lives as drains on the welfare state!

5038

…because taxing their wealth at 2% is just like killing them.