Re: Deneuve
 

When you guys reply to him, I’ve wondered why do you do it? I’m not talking about hitting him about being in the group that made Trump President, that is fun. But why do you engage with him on this type topic. It’s stupid.

Re: Deneuve
 

I guess one way to put it is that I'm not really seeing the interesting conversation that you see coming out of this, and your continue to converse about it has so far not changed that. So far your efforts are self-refuting. It's the start of a new year and I want to be optimistic, so I am hopeful that you will find a way to turn this one around.

Re: Deneuve
 

Also, why not get everyone a helicopter. That would be cool.

Re: Deneuve
 

I've been doing required CLEs on substance abuse, which required that I sit at the computer but let me cruise the interwebs so long as I clicked on the periodic pop-up window to prove I was watching. Also, it's the start of a new year and I want to be optimistic, so I am hopeful that he will find a way to turn this one around.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Pauly Shore makes a pretty good Stephen Miller:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9udOgvVwcE

Re: Deneuve
 

Wait a minute. Aren't you the person who primarily engaged him on this topic?

Speaking of hitting him about being in the group that made Trump president, remember how Sebastian always used to complain about how we were an echo chamber who over-simplified Trump's campaign by calling all of his supporters racist xenophobes (even though we constantly had to remind him that the only person who was actually saying that was him)? Well, I think I am going to amend my prior position. Between his treatment of Mexicans and other Central and South Americans and his call to prevent immigrations from people from shit-hole countries like Haiti and all of the countries in Africa (although I have no confidence that Trump understands that Africa is a continent, not a country), it seems pretty indisputable that Trump himself is an unapologetic racist xenophobe. So, if you helped an unapologetic racist xenophobe become president, knowing that he would use his presidency to promote his racist xenophobic agenda, how can you argue that you yourself are not a racist xenophobe? Can you just say that you are not a racist xenophobe, but that you don't mind having a president who is, so long as he has some other great ideas like . . . whatever the fuck his other great ideas supposedly are? I don't buy it. So there, Sebastian, I finally said it. All of Trump's supporters are racist xenophobes.

As for Deneuve, I am no more impressed by apologists of child rape when they are beautiful actresses than when they are hillbilly senatorial candidates.

Re: Deneuve
 

Imagine being at an amusement park and seeing a ride that was boring and you couldn't get much out of, say The Tiki tiki tiki room at Disney? And people you respect keep going on the ride, again and again, and you want to say, you seem smart Ty/GGG/T, why are you doing this, but instead you think: maybe I am missing out? maybe it's fun? So then I do try. You cannot understand this?

Re: Deneuve
 

Oddly, I think I do understand now. And now, you're all like, what the fuck dudes? The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room is the dumbest waste of my time since all the time I spent on those Guernica posts. I respected you guys, and while you may not have explicitly told me to go to the Tiki Tiki Tiki Room, you openly made it seem like it was a good and important thing to do, and I would not have gone there but for your implicit endorsement. I would add up the time you spent thinking about, writing, and proofreading (jk!) your debate with Sebastian, give me an inflated hourly rate, and I will serve a demand letter on your behalf.

Re: Deneuve
 

Why doesn't Trump just own his racism? Why does he feel a need to hide it?

Re: Deneuve
 

When you say that you don't think we should allow people from shithole countries (all the countries where black people live) into the U.S, and instead suggest that we should let more people in from Norway (where no black people live), I'm not sure it is accurate to say that you are "hiding" your racism. It's like hiding an elephant behind a dandelion. You can point to the dandelion all you want, but everybody sees the elephant.

Re: Deneuve
 

My cynical and not terribly informed take, being a heathen with no faith, is that it's comes from a pretty straight forward means of establishing control over a mass of people. People, being animals, have an evolutionarily-driven desire to fuck. It may be one of the only truly universal (yes, I see you asexual community, bear with me) human impulses, at least that's not part of the "keep you alive" processes. What better way to convince the maximum number of people that they are bad than to demonize their natural impulses. See, you are a sinner and you need the teaching of my faith.

It's a short step from you're a sinner because of your desire to that other person is an even worse sinner, or worse, is a temptress leading you astray.

So, yeah, a big scheme of control to get butts in seats is my sophisticated theory that also craps on all of your faiths. Because I'm a nice guy.

Re: Deneuve
 

He was going to make things better for white working class "victims" of trade and immigration...

Re: Deneuve
 

I think it goes back to the J Smooth thing about the fight over whether someone is a racist overwhelms the actual racist thing that he or she said/did. For most people, being labeled a racist is one of the worst things one could be tagged with. So they fight the hypo with every ounce of their being, dragging out their black "friends," saying like they always hire latinx because they're hard workers, or mentioning that the Vietnamese (he's Korean, but really he's just from Jersey) guy on the train always laughs at his jokes. And then they start parsing, like they did this morning, saying well, even if I did say horribly offensive and racist thing, it really wasn't racist.

I'd love someone to really drag out that particular argument, because I'm pretty sure that he thinks West Virginia and North Dakota are shitholes too, and most of the rural towns that voted for him all across the country.

Re: Deneuve
 

Right. My question is, why even try pointing to the dandelion? Why not just own the elephant?

I think that's try for most people, but most people don't thrive so much on asserting their own dominance as he does. For Trump, I really don't think that being labeled a racist is one of the worst things he could be tagged with, far from it. There are things (germs, losing, etc.) that viscerally bother him. I don't think being called a racist is one of them. And he delights in disregarding elite opinion on some many other topics.

Re: Deneuve
 

Just an observation, you are posting more and more typos. Is everything okay? We are worried.

Re: Deneuve
 

I've been drinking less. Perhaps that's the problem.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

What kills me about Trump is the damage he is doing to a core conservative message. Some of the countries may be s***holes. But the implication that the people there are anything other than victims of corrupt regimes (and in some cases those corrupt regimes are aided by the US at the expense of their people) and are thus s***hole people runs counter to the principle of the equality of human dignity, and is also counter to the principle of the limitlessness of human potential. You can make a conservative case for merit based immigration, but the whole point of it is that you then look at the individuals for who they are, not where they come from.

I might have been amused by the fact that the MAGA cult members spent yesterday defending the comment, when they were supposed to run the fake news route, but the debasement of core conservative principles makes me sad.

Re: Deneuve
 

I'm only drinking on Friday/Saturday nights for the entire month of January and it's the worst decision ever made. EVER. Even worse than that one time I agreed to meet Thurgreed for coffee.

Re: Deneuve
 

Because elephants are fat and he is self conscious about his body after all the golf photos?

Re: Deneuve
 

Dissent. You can drink your ass off in February and your January abstinence will be a hazy memory. But you can NEVER undo that coffee date.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I think commitment to the equality of human dignity and the limitlessness of human potential is excellent, and more power to people who believe in those things, but they're going to need to find a new brand for it, because "conservative" is now being used by a lot of people who don't share those commitments and are pretty committed to other things instead.

Re: Deneuve
 

I only know Thurgreed from basketball. He wants to take EVERY SHOT, literally! I can't imagine have espresso with him, or being in a bar.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I know.

Conservatism was always the subset of the Republican party with which I most identified. When Trump came along the #NeverTrumpers were generally the ideological conservatives, and we all stopped identifying as Republican. Now the label of conservatism is soiled as well, generally by people who don't even understand the difference. There are now some references to affiliation with "traditional ideological conservatism" to distinguish it from Trumpism, but the label issue hasn't been resolved. I hate that Trump has now painted conservatives with the exact same brush of identity politics I have always abhorred on the left.

Re: Deneuve
 

He called me fat.

Re: Deneuve
 

That will haunt you well after you have forgotten that you even embarked upon your ill-advised January partial-teatotalling experiment.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I have a lot of respect for thoughtful conservatives who have opposed Trump out of their principles. I guess many of us have been surprised by how many people who call themselves conservatives were happy to abandon the aforementioned thoughtful conservatives and go along with Trump. Almost two years ago, I thought Trump would win the Republican nomination and then lose in the general election because he would lose a significant number of Republicans who couldn't stomach him. The number just wasn't that significant, which is to say that the thoughtful people like you were a very distinct minority. Mitt Romney got 47% of the vote running against Obama, and Trump got 46.5% of the vote running against Clinton.

I guess what I am trying to say is that Trump hasn't painted, he has revealed. Not about you, but about most conservatives.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Hey Sebby, Andrew Sullivan's take on #metoo seems like your cup of tea, if you haven't seen it yet. My take is that his introspection results in his sticking his head up his own ass in a tendentious misreading of people Moira Donegan and others, but ymmv.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Isn't he the core conservative message? I mean, I have trouble telling his views apart from those of, say, Newt Gingrich. And Newt Gingrich does too.

He is clearly what Fox News' rapey hosts were thinking of over the last twenty years during their wet dreams.

Damn girl, you got a Che poster somewhere?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You're correct.

But he's wrong on this: The backlash will not be public. It will take place in the HR department, in the hiring committees. It won't be right, and it won't be fair, but a campaign that convicts and sentence sthe gum thief with the same zeal it does the embezzler also isn't fair.

For every action there's a reaction? This is, generally, why people look to the French Revolution as wonderful thing, but Robespierre as an imbecile more worthy of the National Razor than the nobles preceding him.

This is what, as Sullivan aptly notes, caused a standing ovation when Welch said what needed to be said to McCarthy.

This is, of course, a reaction to Trump.

And Trump has taken a thing (many things) too far. But the reaction of serious people to him should not be something similarly overheated. The reaction should be, "This man is a fool, a sexist, and a predator. But he is also an aberration. We can and will have a post-Trump tomorrow. We will survive. 2018 will show you." And it will.

None of this is to say I don't wholeheartedly support #metoo. Men suck. Fragile, ego-driven, have to be the smartest in the room all the time... A lot of men, and particularly male lawyers, are fucking tools. I'd much rather hang out with women. They're more interesting. But despite our capacity for endless douchebaggery, even the seemingly worst of us wish women no ill. In many cases, we're just oblivious.

Movements of any kind are always a sordid mess. They can't be channeled to logic or rational circumspection. Particularly now, they must be co-opted by bullshit artists, as we saw at the Golden Globes, or expanded beyond reason. Collective catharsis is an overindulged, and highly over-rated - indeed frustratingly anti-climactic - state.

I mean, you all do realize, that's how we're all placated now. Collective exhibition, public exhortation... This is what we're given instead of actual change. This is how the revolution is televised, and sold to us, on Facebook.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Trump's anathema to Buckley in this simple regard: Buckley listened. He had people on his show, he had friends, who were serious liberals. I think he grasped that conservatism, like liberalism, or progressivism, is an incomplete ideology.

Which ideology isn't? Is there a complete one? Would you want this country run exclusively by conservatives? Liberals? Progressives? Libertarians? Each is a doomsday scenario.

But Buckley's pushing up daisies. He won't be on after the evening news, talking policy with Galbraith.

And the days of Reagan and O'Neill doing deals? Do you think we'll ever see that again... in this WWE tournament of nihilists?

American conservatism coughed up any credibility it had when it got in bed with Jerry Falwell, and conceded the environment. A conservative conserves resources. And no matter how much he thinks the liberals are taking over, he doesn't get in bed with the Religious Fantasists (yes, I know, that’s redundant).

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Ideological conservatives have always been a small minority in the Republican coalition. I remember writing a post for Not Bob way back in the primaries that went into detail regarding the various constituencies: The Chamber of Commerce types, the taxed-enough-already folks, the 2A single issue people, the Tea Party guys, etc. Ideological conservatives are a small group, and the main influence is that conservative academics end up at the think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, which do what they can to sway policy. Trumpism has not been kind to conservatives. Many shed the NeverTrump label and resolved to call Trump on his balls and strikes, as Trump skeptics: Gorsuch good (and I am a particular fan of TX Supreme Court Judge Don Willett who just went on the 5th Circuit, though I am sad he no longer mocks Trump on twitter). Tax reform, typical Republican, but not terrible. Obamacare repeal, a debacle. Everything else, pretty much batshit crazy.

It has impacted peoples livelihoods. You don't get the paid speaking engagements for the Trumpinistas or the Resistance crowds. You are maligned by both sides as a closet Democrat or a MAGA member.

Fundamentally, conservative principles don't change. You believe them or you don't. I think that former conservatives going MAGA is a reflection of their lack of character, not of changing conservatism, but they have without a doubt damaged the conservative label. Trump is an idiot and is utterly unaware of the reasoning or thinking behind some of his "policy". Sometimes conservatives will attempt to explain what lies behind Trump's lack of understanding, but I am not sure that does anyone any favors.

And regarding the vote count, Romney was up against Obama. I think you underestimate the portion of the Trump vote that was merely "Not Hillary". Almost everyone I know voted grudgingly for Trump. And you can see from the polling results that his "base" is actually pretty small.

Those polling results are included in this piece from Jonah Goldberg, who is possibly the most principled conservative I know:

http://www.nationalreview.com/g-file...utm_term=GFile

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Remember, I knew Buckley. Though Buckley was not a friend of mine.

He was an insufferable prig full of deep prejudices and bigotries. But you do make a good point - he was a prig with which one could debate (not talk, there had to be rules of the game - in a conversation he had too much disdain to listen). And that is lacking today.

We will get it again when the Republican party is thoroughly reformed. They are the problem. But I don't see that happening for a while.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Haven't the Trumpsters taken over most of the think-tanks now? I mean, the Heritage folks I know have gone thoroughly Trump at this point.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

So you basically don't think Republicans are serious? Huh.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/u...&nlid=32208895

When I first heard of this law I realized my grandmother must have been here without papers. Italians were "those people" not that long ago.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I could introduce you to some Boston Brahmins sometime who still consider Italians "those people". Irish, too.

Since Sebby's looking to rehabilitate Buckley, that man may be the only Catholic around who viewed both Irish and Italians as generally "those people" and notably below him. You'll note the liberals Buckley condescended to debate were rarely minorities or ethnics and always had gone to the best schools. The closest he came to hanging out with an actual ethnic was probably Allard Lowenstein, who was always very good at crossing the aisle and learned how to pass among the bigots at all the best schools.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I stopped reading after he started like this:

Yes, the most important thing to discuss on that topic is not what the President says (or the fact that he said it as he was blowing up a bipartisan deal to save DACA, which is to say that he said "shithole" in the process of holding hostage lots of people who have lived in this country their whole lives, for demands which are shifting and unclear -- making it increasingly apparent that he is screwing those people not as the means to some other goal, even a goal as tawdry as re-election, but as an end in itself) -- no, the most important thing for Goldberg is "the competition be most offended." I find no principle there at all, just a cheap rejection of other people's principles. And an obsequiousness, a commitment to anti-anti-Trumpism not because of the principles involved but despite them. It's a little reminder that the thing that really binds conservatives together is not any principle, it's opposition to the left. Goldberg could have principles if only they weren't so tedious.

eta: It's symptomatic that everyone is focused on Trump's calling other countries "shitholes," and not on the fact that only days after he held a photo op to say he would sign whatever Congress brought him, he rejected a bipartisan deal to fix DACA. A principled conservative might find a way to have a problem with that, if not for the fact (as above) that conservatives are bound together by opposition to the left, and so bipartisan deals are categorically suspect.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Alexandra Petri ftw: Ladies, let’s be reasonable about #MeToo or nothing will ever be sexy again.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

But, but, but... the liberals!!!

Yeah, same old shit.

I've come to deeply appreciate the handful of conservatives who have sincerely been offended by Trump and who seem to be embracing and engaging with their new-found liberal friends. I'm thinking Jennifer Rubin and Bill Kristol. These are not just never-Trumpers, they are anti-Fox, and seem to hold to some notion of honesty and truth and seem to have some perspective beyond the tribalism of the lib-haters. When you look at conservatives who, two years ago, looked reasonable, there are an awful lot of them, from Abby Huntsman to Lindsay Graham, who have easily embraced Trumpism, and what they all have in common is that they are Foxified. They just don't give a shit about the truth.

The recognition that Fox and Trump are fundamentally the same is key to salvaging conservatism from the absurdity it has become. A never-Trumper still watching Fox is still a ridiculous person.