P.M. Carpenter

Another hit on Trump, which only strengthens him

Donald Trump had slipped a bit in the polls, from around 25 percent to about 18 percent. The "rape" story should get his numbers back up.

It plays directly into his strategic appeal: the mean media are out to get him, with assists from "status quo" opponents.

I don't know how one kills this thing called Trump, but I do know this isn't it. Attack him and he thrives; expose him and he forcefully attacks; ignore him, and he has the GOP universe to himself.

His is a kind of Borg ballet.

 

A Trump post whose point has nothing to do with Trump

Writing for National Memo, David Cay Johnston displays his annoying habit of asking good questions of Donald Trump:

I have covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years — including breaking the story that in 1990, when he claimed to be worth $3 billion but could not pay interest on loans coming due, his bankers put his net worth at minus $295 million. And so I have closely watched what Trump does and what government documents reveal about his conduct.

Reporters, competing Republican candidates, and voters would learn a lot about Trump if they asked for complete answers to these 21 questions.

Johnston goes on to ask them, among which is:

You sent your top lieutenant, lawyer Harvey I. Freeman, to negotiate with Ken Shapiro, the "investment banker" for Nicky Scarfo, the especially vicious killer who was Atlantic City’s mob boss, according to federal prosecutors and the New Jersey State Commission on Investigation.

Since you emphasize your negotiating skills, why didn’t you negotiate yourself?

Questions like that annoy me. While it's true that whatever doesn't kill Trump only makes him stronger, it's also eerily true that enough questions could, in the aggregate, do him in. We should be supportive of Mr. Trump, not inquisitive.

At any rate, Johnston's Scarfo question reminded me to warn you: Beware of AMC's "The Making of the Mob." Two or three weeks ago I tuned in and heard that Al Capone was sent to Alcatraz, "where he would spend the rest of his life." In fact, Capone was released from Alcatraz in 1939. The syphilitic ghoul died in 1946, at home, in Florida.

I loathe sloppy history. Precisely how many counterfactual insults "Making of the Mob" producers have inflicted on their audience, I don't know. But I'm guessing it's more than one. Beware.

 

I pity Bruce Bartlett & Friends. I really do.

Bruce Bartlett, writing for Politico Magazine:

As a moderate Republican who voted for Obama, I should be Donald Trump’s natural enemy. Instead, I’m rooting for him….

Trump’s nomination would give what’s left of the sane wing of the GOP a chance to reassert control in the wake of his inevitable defeat, because it would prove beyond doubt that the existing conservative coalition cannot win the presidency.

I endorse Bartlett's championing of Trump. The sane wing's only hope of party recontrol is indeed a "historic thrashing" of the "yahoo" crowd, as Bartlett puts it. Yet that hope, while more suitable to moderates than extreme despair, I suppose, is a tragically faint one. The Republican Party's primordial muck is too deep; that sucking sound we hear is the pseudoconservative swamp ruthlessly engorging the party body and soul.

As I see it, the cardinal flaw in Bartlett's analysis — an error I myself have committed for approximately a decade now — resides in his proposition that a Trump- or Trump-like implosion would "prove beyond doubt" that yahooism is a loser. But prove to whom? The yahoos? Nothing of any sanity has ever proved anything "beyond doubt" to that crowd. That's what makes them yahoos. Instill them with reason and logic and some rudimentary human intelligence and, presto, one un-yahoos them. That, however, is an act reserved only for divine intervention, and miracles have been somewhat short of late.

Prove, perhaps, to Bartlett & Co. that the "existing conservative coalition" can't retake the presidency? The moderate Bartletts — the sane crowd — already know that. Prove to non-Republicans and anti-Republicans that the coalition is doomed? They, of course, are of less influence on the GOP than GOP moderates are. Prove electoral catastrophe, maybe, to the right-wing noise machine? — prove it to the Fox Newsers and Limbaughs and Savages? Their profits rely on attack, not defense; hence those profits are far more secure with a Democrat in the White House. Better to cheer on a sure, yahoo-exciting loser than be stuck with defending another President Bush.

Another flaw in Bartlett's analysis is almost equally rude. Today's conservative coalition can't win the White House with the yahoos, but it also can't win without them. It can't win without the yahoo-infiltrated militarists, libertarians, holy rollers and racists, and it can't even win without the pure yahoos of no particular ideological bent (except that of unmitigated rage). The yahoos are an electorally indispensable element of the conservative coalition. And when one faction is indispensable, it's invulnerable. It must be pampered — see, e.g., Reince Priebus' rediscovered respect for Donald Trump.

The only way to vanquish Trump in the short run is to outTrump Trump, which is now a strategy in full bloom. The yahoos are everywhere, and their name is "Republican." There are Trumpian yahoos, there are Huckabeean yahoos, there are Cruzian yahoos and Walkerian yahoos and assorted Carsonesque, Jindalesque and Perryesque yahoos. Together they spell G-O-P.

The only way to vanquish Trumpism in the long run? Embrace it for now, as Bruce Bartlett has done. Hand it the keys to the party, which the yahoos have already done. Then, four or eight years hence, perhaps launch another party — a genuinely conservative party? Because this pseudoconservative one lies in the lethal, inextricable grip of the mucked yahoos.

 

Reince's keeper of a quote

If you should ever find yourself muttering something alongs the lines of, "Certainly, I think our candidates should pledge not to run as a third-party candidate," then you'll know you've entered the final stage of Priebusian palsy, apoplexy, and neurasthenia.

 

Ted Cruz and the long knives

Did Ted Cruz not take any history courses at Princeton?

The Texas senator acts like, and even physically resembles, Sen. Joe McCarthy. The man most responsible for McCarthy's political assassination? Sen. Joe McCarthy, although the Republican Brutus coalition, through a vote of censure, delivered the coup de grâce. Now, both Cruz and Sen. McConnell's gang are well on their way to emulating McCarthy's last act.

Cruz is undoubtedly the smartest idiot on earth. As a Republican senator, one can defame one's partisan opponents, one can defame half the nation, one can even seek to undermine and destroy every tenet of responsible governance. In fact, as a Republican senator, all that is one's duty. But one must never repeatedly unnerve one's Republican colleagues.

That's a killer.

So it is written, but it seems as though Ted hasn't read it.  

 

Obama nails the GOP, for the GOP nails itself

The NYT:

President Obama on Monday lashed out at Republican presidential candidates for making what he called "ridiculous" claims about his policies and "outrageous attacks" that crossed the line of political decorum.

At a news conference while visiting [Ethiopia], Mr. Obama defended the international nuclear agreement he and other world leaders reached with Iran and he bristled at the assertion by former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas that the president’s policy would "take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven."

Mr. Obama said such comments demonstrated a lack of seriousness on the part of those seeking to succeed him and reflected an anything-goes political culture that rewards incendiary rhetoric over sober deliberation. Asked specifically about Mr. Huckabee’s remarks, Mr. Obama linked them to those of other Republican presidential candidates, including the businessman Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

Yes, and it's precisely the "anything-goes political culture" that has dominated our politics for years, and is anything but cautious.

Earlier this morning I heard, on CNN, deception artist S.E. Cupp dismiss Donald Trump's 18 percent in Republican polling. That statistic is anything but representative of the Republican Party, she contended. If left at that, she'd be correct. But when we add Huckabee and Cruz's polling (which will now swell) to Trump's polling, "anything-goes" popularity in the GOP rises to 30 percent.

When we then add the polling of Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Booby Jindal and Lindsey Graham — a toxic consortium of mindless jingoism, Gothic economics, and, in general and above all else, a depraved indifference to rhetorical decency — the GOP's statistical, anything-goes standing soars to 58 percent.

And Ms. Cupp, 58 percent is party-defining.

 

Here's to hoping Pat Buchanan has been unbanned from MSNBC

In the midst of doing something other than listening to NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday I looked up and saw Pat Buchanan appearing on it. Does this mean MSNBC's ban of the Happy Worrier will be lifted, has been lifted? I should hope so, for MSNBC's sake.

I find many of Buchanan's political views either unsavory or downright despicable. But so what? A lot of folks find my views objectionable, and, since I'm as fallible as Buchanan or any other human being, those folks are, perhaps with greater frequency than I'd care to admit, probably right in their findings. That, however, doesn't shut me up, nor should it. I hope to learn from objections; not to recoil in a defensive bubble of self-conceit.

In the field of political commentary and analysis, I'm pro-Buchanan. What I find appealing as well as eminently defensible about the man is that deviating from partisan hackery is a skill which not everyone is capable of mastering, but Buchanan has. When he identifies a lefty tactic that's both effective and beneficial for the left, he says so. He refuses to paint every move by the opposition as dark, sinister, and stupid. It is this objectivity, this indispensable disinterestedness that took him to the top of presidential consultancy. Cunning politicians, like Nixon, want to hear more from advisers than that the detested opposition is evil; they want to know what opposition is up to — "Just the facts, Ma'am." 

And that, more often than not, is what Buchanan once delivered to viewers of MSNBC: the good, the bad, the ugly as he saw them playing out on each side; not as right-wing partisan hacks invariably frame the political scenery — that is, only the left's bad and ugly stuff, and only the right's splendor. MSNBC blundered in banning him. Yes, Buchanan can occasionally be despicable. But he's also capable, when pure analysis calls for it, of a marvelous objectivity.

 

The limits of GOP crazy

Writing for the NY Times Magazine, Mark Leibovich riffs on John McCain's recent deprecation of Donald Trump's adoring "crazies," and asks: "Exactly who is crazy and who is not in today’s political environment?" In answering, Leibovich takes the long view of a rather short period (roughly the last 20 years):

While party leaders have criticized Trump for his "tone," he flouts this very criticism as emblematic of a political status quo. Not only is he correct about that, it’s arguable that the political status quo is itself a big bag of calcified crazy. The same "tone" — cautious and hyperdeferential — has dominated politics for a long time and yet our politics haven’t improved. Politicians are so fond of invoking that clichéd definition of insanity [same acts, different expectations] … And yet those same politicians keep coming back year after year, repeating the same old talking points and following the same unspoken rules.

In one way, Leibovich is profoundly correct no matter the time frame, since democracy is an enduring circus in which victory is often born of fringe-mobilization. Today there are in fact more Burkean conservatives out there than tri-corned paranoids, but in presidential elections the GOP can't risk alienating the latter, who could be the necessary margin of electoral success. Hence the GOP has come to ruinously self-define through the enemy within: protesting, poster-toting, "Don't Tread On Me"-chanting bullies. This shoves many authentic conservatives to either non-participating despair or into the welcoming arms of the Democratic Party, which guarantees its margin of victory. For now at least, the party can afford to keep at arm's length — as Hillary has done with some delicacy — any loud, rude, coalition-upsetting, NetRoots-like factions. (Bernie Sanders has more overtly done what Hillary Clinton is subtly doing, and his overtness is killing him.)

Leibovich is, on the other hand, misguided, I think, in asserting that "caution and hyperdeference" have "dominated politics for a long time." Here, Leibovich is arguing that the crazies are nothing new; we've always had the Birchers, the Know-Nothings, the Illuminati-hunters, in general, Hofstadter's whole paranoid crowd. That part of his argument is incontestable. Yet to concurrently argue that caution and hyperdeference, rather than crazy and hyperbullying, have dominated our politics and continue to dominate them in the 21st century is to dismiss an unhinged, barbarous reality.

In catering to the crazies, one of our two major parties is on its way out. It will either be shrouded and sung over or reemerge unrecognizable. Anarchy, nihilism and America-loathing are, happily, self-limiting political programs. And because these have dominated the GOP of late and therefore our politics — really, is there any question about that? — one can only with insurmountable difficulty argue that today's "political status quo" looks and sounds very much like yesterday's — unless one goes way, way back. Which is to say, the GOP's ravings are reminiscent of the Democratic Party's antebellum insanity. Those ravings reflect the unmistakable continuum of a regional, Southern white party, whatever its name.

Demagoguery is also nothing new, although Republicans' party-wide demagoguery is. (And, as noted, in its hyperdeference to the crazy, demagoguery is killing the GOP.) Also dominantly new, in relative chronological terms, are the GOP's denial of science, its far more pronounced anti-intellectualism, its rabid and once-unthinkable assaults on sitting Democratic presidents, and its determination to destroy all progress, notwithstanding the inevitability of it.

That, I'd submit, Mr. Leibovich, is the uncalcified crazy status quo. And its political days are numbered in years — perhaps 10, at the outside.

 

Update to NetRoots-Sanders update

I once dated a feminist activist, who later went on to complete a doctorate in women's studies. She was everything one might expect in an activist: articulate, intelligent, well educated, fiercely ideological. She had read all the right books and she gave no ground in debate. She was a Gloria Steinem, only prettier (and yes I know that's sexist).

I'll never forget one of our many walks, this one on a beautiful autumn evening, in her white, upper-middle-class neighborhood. She had again been telling me of women's struggles and of the assorted fresh strategies that might someday overcome. I listened patiently and as sympathetically as your average insensitive male brute could. I hoped to add something, maybe something of some value, for I sensed something was missing. I wished to be supportive. So out it came. "Your strategy seems rather isolated," I observed. "What if feminists were to make common cause with other oppressed groups — perhaps join African Americans in their civil-rights activism?"

You would have thought I had suggested, in contemporary terms, that Bernie Sanders join the Tea Party movement. She was dumbfounded; aghast, almost beyond words. "Oh no. No, no. We can't do that. Blacks," she responded, "haven't experienced nearly the oppression that women have experienced. One cannot make common cause with anyone but the similarly oppressed — and no one in America has been abused and oppressed as women have."

I was stunned, near speechlessness myself. Yet I soon collected my wits — however brutishly insensitive they were — and reminded her that America had practiced genocide on its native population, leaving behind a decimated scattering of alcoholism, mass unemployment and cultural despair; that African Americans had been subjected to slavery and Jim Crow and relentless discrimination; and that many Mexican Americans, also subject to discrimination, now inhabited lands they once owned, and which we — white American men and women alike — gleefully stole. There was plenty of pain to go around.

She would have none of it. I wasn't a woman. I couldn't possibly know the pain of womanhood, nor could any privileged white man or privileged black man or privileged native-American man or privileged Hispanic man. We were all clueless. We didn't "understand." Our ignorance, while somewhat amusing to her, was also tragic. Her cause, women's cause, as she saw it, was sui generis — and supreme. The woes of gender trumped the woes of race every day, and that men — whatever their color — couldn't see this was merely all too typical of our blind privilege.

I should have expected her response. How I didn't see it coming I'm not sure, although I was drinking quite a bit in those days. The reason I should have seen it coming is captured in two words, above: she was fiercely ideological. She had not only read all the right books; she held all the right, group-approved views, which had been neatly laid out for her in a bubbled framework constructed by the contemporary feminist herd that brooked no dissent. Even the suggestion that others suffered as women suffered was inconceivable to her. Decent sort that she was, she didn't abhor me. She felt "sorry" for me, just as she felt sorrow for all my benighted brethren.

Last night, a reader tweeted a kindred sorrow - "I'm sorry you don't get what #BlackLivesMatter means & that economics is important if you're alive." Excepting my consumption of prescription narcotics, I saw it this morning stone sober. Hence I instantly gathered that #BlackLivesMatter trumps, with a hashtag of course, AllLivesMatter — male, female, young and old, prosperous and impoverished, white, black, brown and red — and that if one wishes to be accepted by The Herd and The Herd's approved views, then one will damn well chant as the herd chants.

I wish no such acceptance.

Normally I would counter that I do indeed "get" what "black lives matter" means. For insensitive as this blockheaded white-with-a-touch-of-red male brute is, I nonetheless believe that human life matters, every last one. But why bother? That's not the approved chant; a countering, thoughtful exposition of class-based socialism (which is hardly "fiercely" ideological these days) would require hundreds of rolling tweets; and emotional activism doesn't lend itself to intellectual complexity. Just query any tea partier, or, ask any of the rude protesters who shouted down Bernie Sanders.

And somewhere out there, there's a professor of women's studies who is sorry that the Tweeter & Co. doesn't "get it." Such is the "solidarity" of identity politics.

 

An update, or amendment, to my NetRoots-Sanders post

What my reaction to the NetRoots-Sanders kerfuffle omitted — my concentration was that of the critic's "bullshit" — is that racism is largely unresponsive to political action. Chanting slogans or demanding that some politician chant the approved slogans to demonstrate righteous "solidarity" never educated or fed a child — white, black, brown — and none of it never will. Nor does political chanting, sloganeering, marching, protesting and organizing directly affect America's underlying racism (except, too often, in harmful ways: see, for instance, the right's diseased reaction to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts).

Some of racism is humanly hardwired — the "Other" was once, in our more primitive Hobbesian state of nature, a real and present danger — but most of it is culturally learned. This is scarcely a revelation. What political activists eagerly overlook, however, since reality is unpleasant, is that racism, in a quite formidable way, is impervious to political action. No bigotry — whether white, black or brown — is subduable to politics. Racism is the accumulation of learned ignorance.

What Sen. Sanders understands is that politics, through mass mobilization and subsequent legislation, can properly redistribute wealth and thus, for example, see that today's poor schools are funded by a central authority at the same level that today's wealthier schools are funded. Politics, through legislation, can see that all children are free to partake of an authentically equal education offered, that all children are nourished, that all children are adequately housed and clothed, in short that children are protected from the ravishes of intolerable poverty and soul-rotting ignorance, which, as noted, is the fundamental basis of racism.

Assaulting racism from a sentimental, sloganeering angle may enrich NetRooters' self-image, but it doesn't do shit — except maybe bullshit — to racism itself. Only the hard, long, costly labor of philosophical socialism's redistributive properties can lay the foundations of enlightened and healthy minds, which, by virtue of healthful enlightenment, will reject racism.

Sen. Sanders needs no lectures on civil rights activism. As has been noted many times, he was acting for civil rights before NetRoots activists were in diapers or even on planet Earth. Yet what Sen. Sanders came to understand early in life — and I'll concede that his whiteness may well have influenced his politics — is precisely what Martin Luther King came to understand later in his life: America's race issue is, under all of it, an issue of class.

 

Michael Schmidt (and his editor) should be fired. Period.

Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald pens a withering deconstruction of the NY Times' latest scandalous Clinton story that isn't. What the story is at root is "probably the biggest snooze-fest in all of journalism": "current bureaucratic processes" about the classification of official material. The essence of Eichenwald's extended assessment is jarring:

Here are the words that were left out: Freedom of Information Act. At no point in the story does the Times mention what this memo—and the other it cited—was really all about: that the officials at the Freedom of Information office in the State Department and intelligence agencies, which were reviewing emails for release, had discovered emails that may not have been designated with the correct classification…. [F]ormer government officials [i.e., Clinton] have nothing to do with how FOIA officials deal with requests for documentation. To jump from this fact to a conclusion that, somehow, someone thinks there is a criminal case against Clinton (the original story) requires a level of recklessness that borders on, well, criminal behavior.

If you're a regular reader of this site, you know I don't much relish the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency. But I disdain journalistic unfairness — "reckless" unfairness posing as straight journalism from historically reputable organs — even more. Some never did make the hyphenated cut. Fox News has never honored its secondary appellation, so to some degree, its unfairness can be forgiven. MSNBC, reportedly, is now striving to remake itself as an actual news organization rather than a ballyhoo arm of the Democratic Party. Whether it's succeeding or not I can't say, since it lost me almost entirely long ago. In print, our major national organs are the NY Times and the Washington Post. The latter at least restricts its dreadful neoconservatism to the editorial page, and fills much of its straight reporting with banalities of the already known. Perhaps therein lies the crux of straight reporting. As for straight investigative reporting, the "liberal" Times, when it comes to the Clintons, has been a curious mix of recklessness, unfairness via implication, and disheveled writing. As Eichenwald notes in so many words, it's not so much the dots the paper connects as the dots it omits.

Observes Eichenwald: "The [inspectors general] memo itself is very clear: 'The Department should ensure that no classified documents are publically [sic] released.'" That passage would make any genuine investigative reporter yawn and move on. Scoop Schmidt? He detonated; and, since quoting the passage would only extinguish his flames of fury, he merely discarded it.

Hence we're led to ask: Is Schmidt's a simple case of unfairness, of recklessness, of journalistic incompetence? While his story was all these, the answer is more complicated. For underlying the Schmidt story is Schmidt himself. Again, Eichenwald:

That the Times story is false in almost every particular … will only lead to accusations that people trying to set the record straight are pro-Hillary. I am not pro-Hillary. I am, however, pro-journalism. And this display of incompetence or malice cannot stand without correction….

Democracy is not a game. It is not a means of getting our names on the front page or setting the world abuzz about our latest scoop. It is about providing information so that an electorate can make decisions based on reality. It is about being fair and being accurate. This despicable Times story was neither.

I'm unable to testify to Schmidt's "malice," as Eichenwald is, yet circumstantial evidence points unmistakably to a striving for fame and an unbridled ego — which Schmidt's editor should have reined in, since the ego failed to grab onto substance. I have no problem with massive journalistic egos; they must, however, responsibly live up to their reputation.

Schmidt has achieved his goal of getting his name on the front page and setting the world abuzz. Accordingly, he appeared by phone on "Hardball" last night to make the mysteriously clarifying observation that Hillary Clinton is being investigated for receiving classified emails on a personal account (emails which may have been misclassified at the point of origination). Chris Matthews was as befuddled as I was. Although he finally gave up in logical frustration sooner than I would have, I sympathized with his plight. What Schmidt was huckstering made no sense.

There's no question that Schmidt has every right to huckster it — but not in the name of the New York Times, "the paper of record."

 

Trump earns RNC's "respect"

I just realized that I have mentioned Donald Trump only twice today, which is intolerable. Trump-glut must be sustained. Therefore …

Responding to [a "Morning Joe"] question about a report from The Hill that he could seek an independent bid if the Republican National Committee treats him poorly during the primary season, Trump said the RNC is currently treating him "with tremendous respect."

… which is precisely what earned the RNC the party-destroying stigma of Trumpism to begin with. And so it goes with the Republican Party's circle of life, or, rather, tunnel-vision death.

***

Update: Per a reader's request, I give you the Trumpian "Belly Flop," by Barry Blitt.

That proudly adds to the Trump-glut, which, as noted, was coming up short here today. I have now typed "Trump" twice more — that observation makes three — so I'm feeling much better now. We are fulfilled.

 

Speaking of embarrassments …

The NYT's Michael Schmidt (pictured) strikes me as one helluva loose journalistic cannon — and if I were Matt Apuzzo, I'd steer clear of him. I suspect Schmidt's days at the Times are numbered. Politico:

The New York Times made small but significant changes to an exclusive report [co-written by Schmidt and Apuzzo] about a potential criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton's State Department email account late Thursday night, but provided no notification of or explanation for of the changes. 

The paper initially reported that two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation "into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state."

That clause, which cast Clinton as the target of the potential criminal probe, was later changed: the inspectors general now were asking for an inquiry "into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state."

My only quibble with Politico's Dylan Byers is that the changes made were huge and significant. There's an immense difference between the potential opening of a criminal investigation "into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton" did this or that and the opening of a mere investigation into something expressed in the passive voice.

I have listened to Schmidt discuss his blockbuster journalism several times on "Hardball," and his comments usually come down, upon questioning, to shifting and indeed shifty combinations of innuendo and "Well, that I don't know."   

I also wonder if Schmidt has, well, I don't know, maybe a NYT editor?

 

On Bernie Sanders, progressivism embarrasses itself

Would you like to know why I don't join movements? Why, as a democratic socialist, I don't join fellow left wingers in their idealistic hoopla? Why I find today's loosely organized "progressivism" a rather dismal epithet instead of an admirable word? I'll tell you why. Strike that. I'll let one Joe Dinkin, writing for The Nation magazine, tell you why, after taking Sen. Bernie Sanders to task for "failing" to blow smoke up the incorrigibly idealistic asses attending NetRoots Nation's annual emotional breakdown:

Here’s one stab at a better response [Sanders] could have given: "We need a democratic revolution, and you are part of it. I admire your courage in speaking up. I learned of the troubling death of a black woman in police custody, and, yes, I will say her name: Sandra Bland. I will say her name because black lives matter. I admit I don’t have all the answers. But your fight is my fight. For dignity and equality for all. I need you to fight with me and help me learn. Together we can change both politics and culture and ensure that black lives matter."

I suspect a lot of people would have been blown away.

Those in attendance might well have been blown away. And that's the problem.

What Dinkin offers — need I even point this out?; to you, probably not — is but a left-wing version of right-wing bullshit. What he writes says nothing — the bullshitter, in this case Dinkin, "does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose." That, from Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit. Dinkin would have Sanders suit his purpose, which is to demonstrate an unerring, crowd-pleasing sentimentality that, one realizes upon reading and rereading it, says nothing. It contains no actual political program; it is empty triumphalism; it is unpromising demagoguery; it is superficial sloganeering; and it is pathetic.

It also demands that a socialist materialist elevate race over class, which would utterly undo Sen. Sanders' entire, lifelong ideological approach. Dinkin doesn't demand much, does he.

Progressivism, NetRoots-style, needs to grow up. It is bloated with naive, self-pleasing, self-celebratory, conformity-demanding rhetoric, and it has nothing to offer others but face-palming.

 

The sick language of the Louisiana shooting

When one concedes the battle of language, one is already losing the war. President Obama in his interview with the BBC:

The issue of guns, that is an area where if you ask me where has been the one area where I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense, gun-safety laws.

"Mayci Breaux, 21, died at the scene, and Jillian Johnson, 33, died later at a nearby [Lafayette, Louisiana] hospital," reports CNN. The shooter "was a guy that was a drifter ... that just happened to be in this theater and took two beautiful lives," said state policeman Michael Edmonson.

"We were like, wow, this is crazy," said a theatre patron. "Coming to a movie on a Thursday night, we never expected that we would see a crime scene and a gunman (in our) theater."

The issue at stake isn't that the United States is negligent of "gun safety," but that the gunman was in control of a gun.

Gov. Jindal's solution? "We can pray. We can hug these families. We can shower them with love, thoughts and prayers." After, that is, their loved ones are dead —and the same goes for tomorrow. What an unmitigated, diseased, uncaring ass.