Well, sure they're Nazis, but on the other hand. . .

You know, after the right gathered to march with Nazi flags and Klan paraphernalia and one of their pieces of shit murdered a woman with his car, I thought at least that should be the end of the "both sides" conventional wisdom in the corporate media.

This was published the very next day in the New York God Damn Times!

What Trump Got Wrong on Charlottesville

By ERICK-WOODS ERICKSONAUG. 13, 2017

As a conservative, I see both the social justice warrior alt-left and the white supremacist alt-right as two sides of the same coin.

 

Okay, set aside for the moment the question of how Erick Erickson keeps getting work at once-respectable outlets. (First CNN, not the NYT!~?!?!?) Forget that he should have been drummed out of the profession when he first referred to a Supreme Court Justice as  "goat-fucking child molester."

Forget all that. But one day after this:



And this:

 

he actually has the gall to compare the Nazis, Klansmen, and assorted hatemongers of the "alt-right" to people who push for "social justice?" Two sides of the same coin? Well, they do say that love and hate are two sides of the same -- no. No, forget I said that.

Both would punish others for wrongthink. Both see the other side not as opponents, but as evil that can justifiably be silenced.

Okay, so both sides see the other as an evil that can be justifiably silenced? Okay, sure. But one side's opponents are LITERALLY FUCKING NAZIS AND KLANSMEN. It seems quite a different thing to say "I would like to silence this person because he preaches hatred, violence and fear." and "I would like to silence this person because I don't think minorities should have the same position in society as us white men."
One side sees the other as an enemy because they literally are actual Nazis and Klansmen who advocate violence and hatred and bigotry. The other side sees thir opponents as enemies because they have dark skin. Or an accent. Or female body parts. Or are anything other than cis/het. These two do not compare. At all. And fuck you for saying they do, Erickson.


Also, what one side sees as "wrongthink" is racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, etc.
What the other side sees as "wrongthink" is a belief in human equality.

Now, to be fair - not that Erickson has done anything to deserve fairness - in the bulk of this column, he does actually make the correct point:

But white supremacists, not social justice warriors, were the ones marching with citronella-filled tiki torches in Charlottesville, Va. this weekend.

That is why it is perplexing that President Trump condemned the “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides — on many sides.”

Right. Except that it's not perplexing at all. 



And it would be one thing if it was just Erickson. He's always been a scumbag, so what else is new? But the "both sides" beast refuses to die. And it spreads it's tentacles of dishonesty into some surprising places.
This is an op-ed written by New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, published in something called the Yeshiva World which, I have to assume, is a Jewish publication.

Op-Ed: Lessons From Charlottesville: The Alt-Right vs. The Alt-Left

August 15, 2017 8:15 am(By NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind)

Five hundred demonstrators chanting about the Jews, many carrying Swastika flags. Five hundred. That’s a scary number when you think of how many people didn’t show up but support the hateful rhetoric and deeply bigoted sentiments being spewed. Five hundred.. . .

. . . The problem is the hatred at both ends of the spectrum: Swastikas and racial slurs and horrible, murderous hatred from the Alt-Right; economic pogroms like BDS and verbal attacks on women marching with Stars of David from the Alt-Left. The hatred and danger from both sides is evident, and Jews, as historically precedent, are caught in between.

Let's see. . . there is one group that strongly disapproves of Israel's policies regarding the Palestinians. And there is another group that likes to refer to Jewish people as "oven-ready." (That's not a joke, I've seen that phrase many times on Twitter.) So, gosh, it must be tough to decide which of those two groups to be more concerned with!

And, not being Jewish, I feel like it's not my place to say this to someone who probably is, but the word "pogrom?" In reference to a boycott? Seems wildly inappropriate.


On the plus side, Teen Vogue continues to do the Lord's work here on Earth.

How "Nice White People" Benefit from Charlottesville and White Supremacy

Stop furrowing your brow over “the partisan divide,” and loudly declare your position in this fight against hatred.

. . . As president, Trump has a responsibility to lead this country with moral authority, and equating a racist mob with the counterprotesters who stood up to resist them constitutes a passive sanctioning of weaponized bigotry. Just ask the KKK and neo-Nazis, who respectively said that the demonstration was intended to help “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump” and praised his lack of outright condemnation as “really, really good.” Anything other than a vocal denouncement of the horror of Charlottesville undeniably fuels the forces that fueled it. . . .

 

untitled

White nationalist Richard Spencer 

taunts counter-protesters:

‘We could have killed them with our bare hands’

**Ron Howard voice** "They could not have killed them with their bare hands."

This is on you, conservatives.

'Unite The Right' Racists Force A State Of Emergency In Virginia

So now that someone a white person  has actually been killed by the "alt-right," suddenly a few conservatives are coming out from under their rocks to clutch their pearls and condemn hatred and bigotry and really, they're just so shocked that such a thing could possibly take place in this day and age.

The views fueling the spectacle in Charlottesville are repugnant. Let it only serve to unite Americans against this kind of vile bigotry.

— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) August 12, 2017

Nothing patriotic about #Nazis,the #KKK or #WhiteSupremacists It's the direct opposite of what #America seeks to be. #Charlotesville

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 12, 2017

Gingrich: Trump Should've Spoken 'More Aggressively' Against Hate

Ted Cruz Condemns Charlottesville Terror: 'The Nazis, the KKK and White Supremacists are Repulsive and Evil'

Which all sounds great, but let's not let anyone portray these folks as any kind of "heroes" or  advocates of "tolerance" or not completely complicit in this shit.

How many conservatives spoke out when Pat Buchannan screamed "lock and load" and "take back your country!" at the 1992 Republican convention. We all knew what he meant. How many conservatives said anything against him? I assume there were a few, because "sane Republican" was not yet an oxymoron, but I certainly can't remember any outcry.

Did any of these Republicans object when FOX News and talk radio became more and more blatantly racist, railing against every perceived slight against white privilege from affirmative action to "ebonics" to Barack Obama being elected President?
Did any conservatives object when John McCain elevated Sarah Palin, with her intentionally divisive rhetoric and dumbed-down know-nothingness intp a position of inordinate influence? With her talk of "real Americans" in the small towns of the heartland and questions about the patriotism of Presdient Obama?
Did any on the right speak up against the rise of Glen Beck and the normalizing of insane conspiracy theorists?  Have any spoken out against the mainstreaming of Alex Jones, for God's sake?
Did any Republican condemn the racist "birther" movement? Or object to one of it's leaders running for their party's nomination? I don't recall any. What I do recall is the "Tea Party," the birthers, the loons and Ted Fucking Nugent being embraced whole-heartedly by the G.O.P. Hell, they even allowed some of their members to form a "Tea Party Caucus" and give an alternative response to the State of the Union. No one in the party leadership ever said, "no, you can't be seen addressing one of these gatherings of lunatics.


No one in the party ever said "no, you can't invite a man who has threatened the life of the President to be your honored guest at the State of the Union Address.

And no one ever said "it's fine to support the Second Amendment, but let's not pander to the worst, most violent, paranoid segments of society. Maybe just get your picture taken duck hunting or something?

   

So,  now they want to take tot eh Twitter to boldly stand against the monster they built? While taking no responsibility at all for building it? Like Doctor Frankenstein saying "there's an undead monster terrorizing the village? Where could that have come from?" No one's buying it. (Except the media probably will).

They aren't even trying to disguise it anymore

Submitted without comment:

Republicans limiting early voting in Marion County, letting it bloom in suburbs
Fatima Hussein, fatima.hussein@indystar.com

From 2008 to 2016, GOP officials expanded early voting stations in Republican dominated Hamilton County, IndyStar's analysis found, and decreased them in the state's biggest Democratic hotbed, Marion County. 

From 2008 to 2016, GOP officials expanded early voting stations in Republican dominated Hamilton County, IndyStar's analysis found, and decreased them in the state's biggest Democratic hotbed, Marion County. 

David Brooks is the worst! Again.

Lord of the Memes

David Brooks AUG. 7, 2008

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Oh, we're off to a great start with this one, I assume this is meant to be some sort of a play on words, maybe a reference to Lord of the Rings, or Lord of the Flies or maybe the Lord of the Dance?

Either way, it didn't land. So on with the column!

Dear Dr. Kierkegaard,

All my life I’ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual, sprinkling quotations from Kafka, Epictetus and Derrida into my conversations, impressing dates and making my friends feel mentally inferior. But over the last few years, it’s stopped working. People just look at me blankly. My artificially inflated self-esteem is on the wane. What happened?

Existential in Exeter

Wait, what? Brooks is writing a fake advice column now? In the guise of Soren Kierkegaard? And he's calling the fake guy he made up a pseudo-intellectual? Is that what's going on here?

Dear Existential,

It pains me to see so many people being pseudo-intellectual in the wrong way. It desecrates the memory of the great poseurs of the past. And it is all the more frustrating because your error is so simple and yet so fundamental.

You have failed to keep pace with the current code of intellectual one-upsmanship. You have failed to appreciate that over the past few years, there has been a tectonic shift in the basis of good taste.

Honest to God, who is more of a pseudo-intellectual than David Goddamm Brooks? It's only due to the existence of William Kristol that Brooks isn't the stupidest pundit in the mainstream,.

You must remember that there have been three epochs of intellectual affectation. The first, lasting from approximately 1400 to 1965, was the great age of snobbery. Cultural artifacts existed in a hierarchy, with opera and fine art at the top, and stripping at the bottom. The social climbing pseud merely had to familiarize himself with the forms at the top of the hierarchy and febrile acolytes would perch at his feet.

Just like how any simpleton can apparently get a column at the New York Times, toss in a few $5 thesaurus words and be taken seriously as some kind of expert on world affairs.

Also, stripping was NEVER at the bottom of the cultural hierarchy. It goes Opera, non-musical theatre, stripping, musical theater, punditry.

In 1960, for example, he merely had to follow the code of high modernism. He would master some impenetrably difficult work of art from T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound and then brood contemplatively at parties about Lionel Trilling’s misinterpretation of it. A successful date might consist of going to a reading of “The Waste Land,” contemplating the hollowness of the human condition and then going home to drink Russian vodka and suck on the gas pipe.

Ahahahah! Because intellectuals are always depressed substance abusers! Ahahahaha, it's funny because it's a gross stereotype!

This code died sometime in the late 1960s and was replaced by the code of the Higher Eclectica. The old hierarchy of the arts was dismissed as hopelessly reactionary. Instead, any cultural artifact produced by a member of a colonially oppressed out-group was deemed artistically and intellectually superior.
During this period, status rewards went to the ostentatious cultural omnivores — those who could publicly savor an infinite range of historically hegemonized cultural products. It was necessary to have a record collection that contained “a little bit of everything” (except heavy metal): bluegrass, rap, world music, salsa and Gregorian chant. 

Oh my God, having well-rounded musical tastes? What a bunch of dicks, right?
Also, "world music," that's not a thing. It's a derisive term used to refer to any style of music that does not come from the US or Britain, as if West African High-Life belongs in the same category as Eastern European Klezmer or Brazilian Samba. As if Ali Farka Toure' has anything in common with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or Jaoa Gilberto. It's just that kind of dismissive colonialist attitude that lumps the entire non-English-speaking world into one grouping as the "other." Am I being too pseudo-intellectual for you, David? Oh, God - I am! I'm making myself nauseous re-reading that last paragraph. Ugh!

It was useful to decorate one’s living room with African or Thai religious totems — any religion so long as it was one you could not conceivably believe in.

Right, cause you couldn't possibly believe in something like Buddhism or Islam. Those are just silly old belief systems for the primitive cultures. right? Which, I guess, is why it's okay to decorate one's living room in "cultural appropriation chic."

But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone. On that date, media displaced culture. As commenters on The American Scene blog have pointed out, the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement and as the marker of social status.

So. . . the medium became the message? What a radical transformation that definitely didn't occur at all before 2007.

 

Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it.

Also, get off my lawn you darn kids!

Seriously, David Brooks has made the discovery, in 2017, that people use smartphones to store and transmit information.
And what "global thought leader" is being defined by his "social bookmarking site" or his e-mail provider?  Is that why people take buffoons like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham seriously? Because they're using the correct e-mail or social media platform? And would Bernie Sanders' platform have gotten more traction had he used a Samsung Galaxy 6 instead of whatever he uses to send Tweets, a rotary phone I'm guessing?

Mabel? Get me Instagram! Klondike Five. . .

Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel

How?

How could Kindle possibly change the world? 

Does anyone even think that? 

Does Amazon even think that? 

I've never heard anyone claim that Kindle has changed anything beyond maybe their reading habits. The World?

This transition has produced some new status rules. In the first place, prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser. Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever. 

WHAT? "Buzz," by it's very nature, is fleeting. People get excited about a thing, then everyone knows about the thing so the thing isn't special anymore and then there is buzz about a different thing and the initial thing is forgotten. Or, to put it more succinctly:

Maximum status goes to the Gladwellian heroes who occupy the convergence points of the Internet infosystem — Web sites like Pitchfork for music, Gizmodo for gadgets, Bookforum for ideas, etc.

Okay, so people go to Pitchfork to learn about new music. In my day, we went to NME or Spin or BAM or a thousand other print magazines. How is this any different? Other than saving a trip to the newsstand. It's not like people go to Pitchfork, read up on the latest hip bands and then don't go and listen to the new hip bands. No one has ever had a conversation that went "hey, have you heard the new song from the Insufferably Twee?"  "Nah, I read about them on Pitchfork, that's really all I want. I don't care about hearing the actual musicians play actual; music."

And you can repeat that same paragraph just substituting Bookforum and the New York Review of Books for Pitchfork and New Music Express.

These tastemakers surf the obscure niches of the culture market bringing back fashion-forward nuggets of coolness for their throngs of grateful disciples.

And this is a totally new phenomenon. There have never been critics before. No one has ever had a television show, for instance, telling people which movies are good and which are bad, possibly with a thumbs up/thumbs down type of system?

Second, in order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.

THIS IS NOT A NEW THING!
Back in the 1980s, there was no greater thrill than knowing about a band your friends hadn't heard of. One time, my friend and I were record shopping, he asked the cool record store guy if they had "Treebound Story." The record store guy had never heard of them. It was my friend's greatest moment of triumph. 

When you first come across some obscure cultural artifact — an unknown indie band, organic skate sneakers or wireless headphones from Finland — you will want to erupt with ecstatic enthusiasm. This will highlight the importance of your cultural discovery, the fineness of your discerning taste, and your early adopter insiderness for having found it before anyone else.

I don't know how else to say this, Brooks: It Has Ever Been Thus!

If you can do this, becoming not only an early adopter, but an early discarder, you will realize greater status rewards than you ever imagined. Remember, cultural epochs come and go, but one-upsmanship is forever.

That's it? That's the whole column? I still have no idea what point Brooks is even trying to make.  And he gets paid for this. 
What a racket!