Man, how far have some of these guys fallen. I remember reading Jonah's newsletters at NRO and really enjoying them until Orange Man gave him the mind virus and he just ended up writing the same anti-Trump article over and over again. Like seriously Jonah, we got it, you think Trump's an oafish moron who was destroying the party. Fine. But He wrote a book literally called "Liberal Fascism", and now he's on the same stage yucking it up with the guys that were the subject of that critique as if they were right all along. Man do I feel bad for anyone that spent money on that - if only they had known what the future would bring. Here we are now, in the present, and the Bad Orange Man isn't president anymore and all these people act like he still is or the party is beyond salvaging. DeSantis could become president and enact all the the conservative agendas these guys could have only dreamed of in the '00s and they would still be like "the cursed phantom of Trump lives on!" I used to think they were cool. Such a waste, these guys.
I have Liberal Fascism on my bookshelf still. I have never ridden the Trump Train to MAGA-ville, I stop by there in my car occasionally, but man oh man does Trump break brains. I held out hope for a while that Jonah et. al. would be able to say, "Wow, Trump sure drove me crazy and it really impacted my thinking for awhile. Here's a mea culpa of what I've gotten wrong, have I mentioned how awesome DeSantis is?" Alas.
I really liked Williamson and still do - sometimes.
I was actually hopeful that his appointment to the Atlantic might help bridge some ideological gaps - he's no uber-conservative - but truly, there was no way it could last.
I followed Jonah on twitter for a long while. I unfollowed him, he was tedious. Out of 25 consecutive tweets 7 were about his dogs, 10 were about Trump and 8 were miscellaneous items. That was before I got banned on twitter. :/
The Atlantic conference was all about how to provide disinformation and erode democracy, and they would have gotten away with it until those dang kids showed up and ruined everything.
Biden just sounds like every angry old man yelling over nothing. He finally got to be President and he dimly realizes through the senility it isn't going so well - for any of us.
Trump somehow broke 80% of the liberals and 20% of the conservatives and I'm not sure they are ever going to recover. I'm so old I can remember Nixon had the same effect on people, although not near as many people. Every president is a mixed bag, awful in at least one way and not so bad in at least one other, although Joe has less than three more years to get one thing tolerable. He may be the first to range from awful to unbelievably awful.
I've also only walked out of one movie. "Born on the 4th of July". I was at Fort Bragg in the 82nd Airborne at the time. Not sure what I was expecting, something somewhat patriotic? - but what I saw made me (and my wife, also a veteran) so mad we walked out. Have you noticed you don't see that rerun - like at all.
A couple of days ago, Jim made a passing reference to "The Good Place" as a "woke" comedy. This did not sit right with me, and I think I have figured out why.
(Warning: minor spoilers ahead)
The premise of the show is that each act of your life is assigned a point value, either positive or negative. After death, these are added up, and those with a positive balance will go to The Good Place; those with a negative balance, The Bad Place. Simple enough. Unfortunately, the system includes externalities: eating square-tube pasta, for instance, is a neutral or even positive act; but if the restaurant buys its olive oil from a company, whose delivery-truck driver once wrote a mean tweet about Taylor Lorenz, then part of the culpability for that heinous act falls upon you. Perhaps in our tribal past it was possible to assess the worth of everyone you interacted with and thus avoid such conundrums, but in our modern interconnected world, every exchange, somewhere down the line, benefits an evil-doer, to the point where no one had earned a spot in The Good Place in nearly 400 years.
This can be read as a satire of cancel culture. So you laughed at that comedian, eh? Well, did you know that 14 years ago that comedian gave a performance at a school which, back in the ‘40s, didn’t allow black students to attend prom? That makes the school evil in perpetuity, the comedian evil by association, and you evil for supporting him. Thus shall you be cast into The Bad Place, where you will be forced to watch a repeating loop of Taylor Lorenz videos for all eternity – though whether as punishment or as re-education remains unclear.
Your response to Jonah Goldberg was worth the whole column.
Man, how far have some of these guys fallen. I remember reading Jonah's newsletters at NRO and really enjoying them until Orange Man gave him the mind virus and he just ended up writing the same anti-Trump article over and over again. Like seriously Jonah, we got it, you think Trump's an oafish moron who was destroying the party. Fine. But He wrote a book literally called "Liberal Fascism", and now he's on the same stage yucking it up with the guys that were the subject of that critique as if they were right all along. Man do I feel bad for anyone that spent money on that - if only they had known what the future would bring. Here we are now, in the present, and the Bad Orange Man isn't president anymore and all these people act like he still is or the party is beyond salvaging. DeSantis could become president and enact all the the conservative agendas these guys could have only dreamed of in the '00s and they would still be like "the cursed phantom of Trump lives on!" I used to think they were cool. Such a waste, these guys.
I loved Goldberg's dog stories. He used to seem like a real boy back then.
I have Liberal Fascism on my bookshelf still. I have never ridden the Trump Train to MAGA-ville, I stop by there in my car occasionally, but man oh man does Trump break brains. I held out hope for a while that Jonah et. al. would be able to say, "Wow, Trump sure drove me crazy and it really impacted my thinking for awhile. Here's a mea culpa of what I've gotten wrong, have I mentioned how awesome DeSantis is?" Alas.
It’s amazing how many ostensible conservatives Trump broke. Goldberg, Kristol, even Kevin D. Williamson.
I fear for Williamson. He seems to parallel David French.
I really liked Williamson and still do - sometimes.
I was actually hopeful that his appointment to the Atlantic might help bridge some ideological gaps - he's no uber-conservative - but truly, there was no way it could last.
I followed Jonah on twitter for a long while. I unfollowed him, he was tedious. Out of 25 consecutive tweets 7 were about his dogs, 10 were about Trump and 8 were miscellaneous items. That was before I got banned on twitter. :/
The Atlantic conference was all about how to provide disinformation and erode democracy, and they would have gotten away with it until those dang kids showed up and ruined everything.
Biden just sounds like every angry old man yelling over nothing. He finally got to be President and he dimly realizes through the senility it isn't going so well - for any of us.
Trump somehow broke 80% of the liberals and 20% of the conservatives and I'm not sure they are ever going to recover. I'm so old I can remember Nixon had the same effect on people, although not near as many people. Every president is a mixed bag, awful in at least one way and not so bad in at least one other, although Joe has less than three more years to get one thing tolerable. He may be the first to range from awful to unbelievably awful.
"Trump somehow broke 80% of the liberals and 20% of the conservatives..."
So, Pareto Optimal - eh?
I've also only walked out of one movie. "Born on the 4th of July". I was at Fort Bragg in the 82nd Airborne at the time. Not sure what I was expecting, something somewhat patriotic? - but what I saw made me (and my wife, also a veteran) so mad we walked out. Have you noticed you don't see that rerun - like at all.
"The funny part is that they claimed to be against it!"
Dude. Right out of the chute, a kill shot.
Walked out of Event Horizon. Didn't realize it was horror.
A couple of days ago, Jim made a passing reference to "The Good Place" as a "woke" comedy. This did not sit right with me, and I think I have figured out why.
(Warning: minor spoilers ahead)
The premise of the show is that each act of your life is assigned a point value, either positive or negative. After death, these are added up, and those with a positive balance will go to The Good Place; those with a negative balance, The Bad Place. Simple enough. Unfortunately, the system includes externalities: eating square-tube pasta, for instance, is a neutral or even positive act; but if the restaurant buys its olive oil from a company, whose delivery-truck driver once wrote a mean tweet about Taylor Lorenz, then part of the culpability for that heinous act falls upon you. Perhaps in our tribal past it was possible to assess the worth of everyone you interacted with and thus avoid such conundrums, but in our modern interconnected world, every exchange, somewhere down the line, benefits an evil-doer, to the point where no one had earned a spot in The Good Place in nearly 400 years.
This can be read as a satire of cancel culture. So you laughed at that comedian, eh? Well, did you know that 14 years ago that comedian gave a performance at a school which, back in the ‘40s, didn’t allow black students to attend prom? That makes the school evil in perpetuity, the comedian evil by association, and you evil for supporting him. Thus shall you be cast into The Bad Place, where you will be forced to watch a repeating loop of Taylor Lorenz videos for all eternity – though whether as punishment or as re-education remains unclear.