Some good stuff came out of the events of this week, stuff that nobody here need comment on. Posting new content only to direct people someplace else represents a losing gambit. If people should read something else, why do they need you? You become little more than a Burger King just off the highway: people are going to keep going to a destination, but maybe you can draw a few off the road and to your profit before sending them right back on their way.Still, this (guest?) piece from TalkingPointsMemo was impressive enough that it really should be singled out and others should be encouraged to read it:
An open letter to conservativesThose opening grafs aren't promising, considering the awkward formatting, double spaces and basic errors, but it's well worth reading. Its thesis echoes things published here: that a political ideology based on scaring the shit out of people is fundamentally empty. "You should be afraid of ragheads, spics, fags and any form of taxation because that just means our communist black president stealing from you to give to lazy blacks and ACORN in exchange for votes" isn't even a worldview.
The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now. You've lost me and you've lost most of America. Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.
First, the invitation: Come back to us.
Now the advice. You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.
When you rely on inducing panic, on an irrational level of fear, you acknowledge that you proffer only the irrational to those you need to coerce into unthinking. It's the obverse of selling bad burgers via a pop star with big tits and a wet t-shirt. You're selling something you don't believe in to get people not to purchase it. All you have is "not that."
What the piece has to offer, which is not reflected in the above quoted text, is a merciless litany of effective links and citations. TalkingPointsMemo's contributor makes his point less to create a flawless essay on current conservatism but rather to establish a narrative framework on which he can hang a devastating series of links. It isn't just an argument: it's a stockpile of ammunition for 50 different arguments you might find yourself in. This easily excuses the wonky formatting: anybody might put a bunch of double-spaces in something if they happened to be linking a hundred articles to the text. Code is a bear.
If for nothing else, read it to find out how evil skull-head, Ron Paul acolyte, McCarthyite, daughter-pimper and black-man-dapping Michelle Bachmann managed to rack up $250,000 in federal farm subsidies while demonizing socialism. Say what you will about the WASPily aloof Cato Institute libertarians, but at least they're consistent in admitting that socialism is effective, efficient and necessary for something. They may believe that something is only dropping JDAMs on people and driving tanks, but they're honest about it. Bachmann presents the perfect avatar of modern conservatism: desperately concerned about every aspect of the constitution short of reading it (in that link's case, not even Article fucking 1) and histrionically paranoid about socialism unless and until it directly benefits her financially or politically.
