Civility and Its Discontents

By Isaiah Thomas
For the Editorial Board of The Massachusetts Spy

In the wake of the recent unpleasantness about shoehorning a drunken perjuring sex criminal onto the Supreme Court, those who committed the bag job are desperately trying to change the subject from their own misdeeds.  Their chosen vehicle is lamenting the supposed lack of “civility” on the part of those, including many survivors of sexual assault, who dared to oppose the evil deed in a way that hurt the feelings of, well, drunken perjuring sex criminals and their enablers.

The category-four hurricane of fake outrage has whirled around the usual sources of wind and hot air, but let's take former George W. Bush coatholder and mouthpiece Michael Gerson's latest effort as a fair example of the genre.

After first graciously demonstrating his scrupulous regard for fairness by admitting that the Bigot-in-Chief's torrent of lies and abuse is perhaps less than Socratic in its respect for the power of ideas and argument, he then proceeds to ape his old buddy David “Complete National Disgrace” Brooks's fair and balanced denunciation of both sides.

As examples of Democratic assaults on civility, he cites Senators walking out of rigged Committee hearings, demonstrators banging on the locked bronze doors of a building that in fact belongs to them, and what really chills the gonads of every entitled white conservative, people, especially female people, daring to confront their elected representatives and demanding to be listened to.  I mean, who do these gals think they are, anyway?

According to Gerson, these alleged delicts constitute “surrender[ing] to the irrational, to practic[ing] harassment and humiliation, and . . . turn[ing] to verbal and physical violence.”

Do they though?  When a candidate for President invites his mob to physically assault protesters, that sounds like surrendering to the irrational.  When women who are appalled that the credible testimony of a sexual assault victim is being ignored or mocked by reactionary white men in pursuit of a partisan political agenda, is it really irrational to confront those men and demand that they take your concerns seriously?  To the Republican “civility” police, such demands are no different from running over protesters on the streets of Charlottesville.

And wtf is verbal violence anyway?  That's one of those oxymorons that the fake outrage squad tries to slip by us.  Is it telling Orrin Hatch something he doesn't want to hear?  Is it calling a United States Senator “Pocahontas” because her mother told her she was part Cherokee?  Is it a boozy mob moll shlurring out “lock her up” on her pisspoor TV show?

There are two distinct objections to Democrats forcefully confronting their political adversaries, neither of which upon cursory inspection holds water.

First is the argument that somehow it is immoral for Democrats to respond to Republican invective in kind, on the theory that, unlike torture, lynching, and screaming at women trying to get reproductive health care, it degrades civil discourse.  Anyone who has observed the flaming clown car of the U Bum campaign and Presidency has to doubt how that is even possible.  How could civil discourse go lower than mocking a reporter's physical disability or the parents of a young man who gave his life for his country?

Of course every day the Groper-in-Chief digs the hole deeper, whether by mocking and smearing a survivor of sexual assault or inviting a raging schizo to rant in the Oval Office in an extra-special episode of “The Grifter's Apprentice.”  There's nothing that Democrats could say that could ever approach the daily descent of Republican political discourse into new depths.

The second objection is that if Democrats speak up, it will work against them, either because it degrades civil discourse (see above) or will somehow turn off those who might be inclined to support Democrats.  If anyone can find these mythical beings who were thinking about voting Democratic until they heard women demanding that Jeff Flake listen to them or saw them demonstrating on the Supreme Court plaza, which last we looked was public property, please have them call our dedicated tip line, 1-800-BULLSHIT.

Oddly enough, those who tell the Democrats that such speech will work against them don't provide that advice to Republican white reactionaries, who have been pounding out verbal outrages since the New Deal.  They've won elections they had no business winning advocating policies directly contrary to the interests of any Republican voter making less than $250K per year. When you ask these marks why, the answer you get is that they like what they hear.

If you're a Democrat and you want to motivate your base to turn out, why not tell them what they want to hear: that you understand their anger over the hijacking of their country and their uteruses and you will take action in response?

A related practical argument is that forceful Democratic responses only fuel the fire of reactionary screamers.  Keep your voices down, we are told, and starve the right-wing fake outrage machine.

Does anybody believe this?  Fox News has to feed its three prime-time geek shows and its four-hour AM Three Stooges revival every day.  They'll always find or create something.  They spent months raving about some guy standing in front of a polling station in Philadelphia for an hour and by the time they were done their loyal viewers thought we were in the midst of the worst slave revolt since Nat Turner.

Let's face it, Cruella de Vil and Fox's two boy sopranos will find something to rave about every night no matter how well behaved the Democrats are.  We might as well inspire our own.

Remember the good old days of civility in American politics?

But the most serious objection to all the hot air about civility is that it's really not a debate about civility at all.  It's really a debate about whether we are going to normalize and tolerate hate speech and hateful acts.  The answer to white Republican reactionaries trouncing every civilized norm by putting a sex criminal on the Supreme Court isn't a disquisition about the legitimacy of the Court; it's to remind each and every yes vote each and every day how vile their conduct was.  If that means that Jeff Flake and Susan Collins have their feelings hurt, we'll worry about that as soon as Justice Creepy McBrewski steps down.

Likewise the answer to Republican enabling of the most corrupt and disloyal President in our history isn't reaching out and caring or whatever horsesh*t Complete National Disgrace Brooks is peddling; it's getting citizens angry enough to mobilize and vote.  Forcefully calling out the disgraceful Republican Congress also makes clear to even the meanest intelligence that covering up subversion and corruption is outside the bounds of democratic politics.

The more faux-intellectual of the Republican apologists, like Gerson and Complete National Disgrace, also feign sadness over the loss of some Platonic ideal of discourse that supposedly once ruled our politics, presumably some time before or after the attempted murder of Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate.

We all wish that political debate sounded like disquisitions among Socrates and his followers under olive trees of ancient Athens.  But it doesn't, and Democrats who risk demoralizing their base and legitimizing the Republican subversion of our Republic might want to remember how all that dialogue turned out for Socrates.

The Successful Rebranding of David Brooks

By A.J. Liebling
Meta-content Generator

Everyone starting out in the salt mines of modern journalism has taken to heart one piece of advice: build your own brand.  You're not the former editor of The Daily Brewer in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. or whatever; you're an edgy millennial with a discriminating taste for viral videos and Brooklyn's best tofu burgers or some such.

Even the elders are getting hip to this trick, as demonstrated by the Times's venerable Op-Ed hack, David “Both Sides” Brooks, who has chosen to rebrand himself thusly:

Bold stuff, but as his column today demonstrates, he's right on brand.

Today, Complete National Disgrace Brooks surveys the sorry spectacle of a perjuring bitterly partisan sex offender within a keg's breadth of getting a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court and draws the only conclusion possible (for him at least):  Both Sides.

Dispensing with trivia such as the dramatic, painful, and thus far unrebutted first hand testimony of Dr. Ford, he goes right to what he sees as the heart of the matter:  “What we saw in these hearings was the unvarnished tribalization of national life.”

By that he means that reaction to Dr. Ford's testimony was not based on its inherent credibility, but on the partisan inclinations of those who heard her:  Republicans regard her a crazy drunken slut; Democrats think she endured horrific sexual abuse.

Now you might think that central to any determination about which Side got it right would be an evaluation of whether she was in fact telling the truth.  If she was, then Republican support for Judge Creepy McBrewski must be based on a partisan lust to place a reliable reactionary on the Supreme Court notwithstanding sexual assault and perjury; Democratic opposition might be based on a fair evaluation of the available evidence, including Judge Creepy's alcohol-laden rant and equivocal denials about lifting weights with his fellow preppy assholes.

Wrong, says C.N.D. Brooks.  Because Democrats had mostly already opposed this raving political hack for other good and sufficient reasons, including his perjurious testimony, they have somehow forfeited their right to be persuaded by Dr. Ford's testimony.

Why is that?  Here's the short answer: it isn't.

Your prior opposition to McBrewski doesn't call into question your good-faith evaluation of credible charges and your contempt for the fraudulent “investigation” that ensued.  If her testimony was not credible, or falsified by other evidence, then your continued belief in her story (but not your opposition to C. McB.) might be suspect.

The core of the current debacle is not the partisan divide ante Dr. Ford's testimony; it's the partisan divide that followed, between Democrats who evaluated the evidence and believed her and the old white Republican men snarling at sexual assault survivors by telling them to “grow up.”

But as with most of CND Brooks's work product, there's so much more, at least in the way of intellectual dishonesty.  Desperate to focus on anything else besides the testimony of Dr. Ford, and the unheard testimony of Deborah Ramirez and Julie Sweetnick, he treats the charges as some airy exercise of epistemology (a word he learned at the fancy college he attended):

These hearings were also a devastating blow to intellectual humility. At the heart of this case is a mystery: What happened at that party 36 years ago? There is no corroborating evidence either way. So the crucial questions are: How do we sit with this uncertainty? How do we weigh the two contradictory testimonies? How do we measure these testimonies when all of cognitive science tells us that human beings are really bad at spotting falsehood? Should a person’s adult life be defined by something he did in high school?

We can take the last question first: the prisons are full of young men, disproportionately poor and minority, doing hard time for something they did in high school.  In fact, the Grifter-in-Chief achieved brief notoriety by advocating the lynching of five high school students for a crime they didn't commit.  In any event, if Judge McBrewski perjured himself before the Senate, that didn't happened 36 years ago, it happened last week.

No one is more humble that your meta-content generator, but even he knows from watching NCIS: Cleveland and Dateline that the response to a credible criminal accusation is a complete investigation.  That way, the mystery is dispelled and the average person (like the ones seated everyday on criminal juries) can make a judgement about what likely happened.  When the accused and his apologists do everything they can to frustrate that complete investigation, us humble folk may infer that further inquiry would not assist the defense.

Tired: the ol' Perfesser.
Wired: Complete National Disgrace

But enough about the facts of the case – CND wants to plunge in to the warm, soothing waters of Both Sides.  You saw Judge Creepy rant and rave about how he was going to take his revenge on the Democrats who plotted against him (including presumably Dr. Ford's therapist, who joined the plot in 2012).  No less a critic than retired Justice John Paul Stevens thought that performance disqualifying, but CND wants you to consider the Other Side.

What Other Side?  Apparently, he didn't like the way that Senator Cory Booker addressed McBrewski.  CND thought it was so political, as indeed might be expected from an elected representative in a political branch. They want to be re-elected, or even elected to a higher office and therefore will consider the likely public reaction to their remarks.  That is called “democracy. ”

That is exactly what a Supreme Court Justice is not: he (and it's all he all the time for President U Bum's nominees) is not elected.  He is not supposed to be political.  You can't equate the remarks of a Senator and a nominee to the Supreme Court.  That would like comparing CND Brooks to a serious thinker.

Indeed, none of C.N. Disgrace's column qualifies as serious thought, or thought it all.  It's poorly-executed observation, like looking out at the horizon and concluding that the Earth is flat.

Just to round out the essential lack of seriousness in CND Brooks's argument, let's look at his prescription.  Hint: it's not to stop nominating sex offenders for high office.  It's reaching out to rapists and perjurers and those who flack for them:

It’s also clear we have to set up more forums for personal encounters between different kinds of people. You detoxify disputes when you personalize them. People who don’t have regular contact with people they disagree with become intellectually dishonest quickly.

We accept CND's expertise in the field of intellectual dishonesty, but we don't recall how the Civil Rights Movement was advanced by having regular contact with Jim Clark and George Wallace.  We don't recall how the New Deal was achieved by regular contact with Herbert Hoover and J.P. Morgan.  And was victory won in World War II  by regular contact with Hitler and Hirohito?  History conclusively disproves Brooks's Kumbaya thesis.

So to his final question – What are we going to do about it? – the answer is as clear as the hatred and contempt on Judge Creepy's loutish face:  we are going to fight harder to make sure that every single person who sought to advance a perjuring sex criminal to the highest court in the land is banished from public life.

As for their flacks and apologists, let's just say that we're going to bestow on them the epithet they deserve.  And we couldn't do a better job of that than ol' Complete National Disgrace himself.

The greatest political pundit ever covers the midterms

Editors' Note:  While the Pride of Yale continues to battle heroically on behalf of all drunken sex offenders everywhere, the most distinguished political pundit still on his feet, the Spy's David Bloviator,  has had his finger on the Scotch bottle [Surely, pulse of the nation? – Ed.] as he covers his 23rd election exclusively for the Spy.


TMS: It's an honor to be with you tonight here in Whitehaven, Mississippi, where you are on the road covering the 2018 midterm elections.

DB:  I can well imagine,  Speaking of honors, would you do them and fetch me another Chivas-rocks like a good lad?  Make it a double.

TMS: Here you are.  Tell us, what was your reaction to the President's rally last night?

DB: It showed me that he retains his base of support in America's great heartland among those who feel unjustly attacked.

TMS: You mean like white rapists?

DB:  The President has a superb feel for the concerns and anxieties of average Americans.

TMS:  What about the concerns and anxieties of women who have suffered or fear sexual assault or abuse and those who care about them?

The great man himself, David Bloviator

DB:  Goddam it, man, you're not listening!  This current fooferraw over the Kavanaugh nomination just shows how tragically tribal our politics has become.

TMS:  It doesn't show a level of concern over the idea of putting a sex offender and perjurer on the Supreme Court?

DB:  That's just what one of the tribes would say.

TMS:  Also the victims and witnesses.

DB:  But, as you can see, away from the coastal elites, the President is rallying the Republicans behind his platform.

TMS:  Which is what exactly?

DB:  It's to make America great again.

TMS:  I understand the slogan, but is America really great when it gives broken-down blackout drunks a position of responsibility?

DB:  Now just wait a dang minute there friend.  One more crack like that and you'll get a faceful of ice.  If you don't want that, you better cover these cubes with another double.

TMS:  I wasn't referring to distinguished commentators like yourself, sir.

DB:  Of course not.  Now where was I?  I seem to have forgotten what I was saying.

TMS:  You were explaining how appointing loutish blackout lushes to the Supreme Court makes America great.

DB:  Indeed I was.

TMS:  Let's try something else.  It appears that the Democrats are benefiting from an outpouring of enthusiasm and financial support from their base.  Is that what you're seeing?

DB:  You do see some pouring out by Democrats in red states like Texas. You could describe their base as energized.

TMS:  How about motivated as never before?

DB:  That is also acceptable.  But the Democrats should not simply become the anti-President party.

TMS:  Why not?  Most voters can't stand him.

DB:  The Democrats must offer a positive alternative.   Otherwise they risk becoming the party of anger.  They must reach out.

TMS:  Reach out to whom?

DB:  Reach out to voters who supported the President.

TMS: How do you propose that Democrats reach out to those who voted for a man who launched his campaign with bigoted slurs against Mexicans and now cheer him on when he mocks a victim of sexual assault?

DB: They must move to the middle.  They should embrace centrist candidates like Michael Bloomberg.  As I said last weekend at a weekend conference paid for by Bloomberg in Palm Beach, we need an open bar.

TMS:  Don't you mean an open nominating process?

DB:  That too.

TMS: Why don't the Republicans have to move to the middle by for example not borrowing from our children to provide tax cuts for the rich or not gutting health insurance?

DB:  Dammit, man, you're missing the point.  Democrats must move to the middle.  Republicans don't have to move an inch.  Don't you know anything about politics?

TMS:  Aren't Democrats succeeding in many areas by embracing a progressive platform?

DB:  That may work in isolated coastal areas like Boston,  New York, or Los Angeles.  But here in Mississippi or in other states like North Dakota or Utah, voters are turned off by loud, shrill women.

TMS:  Have you ever wondered what turns off women, who represent more than half of all voters?

DB:  Why do you ask?

TMS:  Thank you Mr. Bloviator.

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Local News: 20-term incumbent state rep replaced by some girl

Editors' Note: As long-time Spy readers know, the Spy prides itself not only on its comprehensive national and international news coverage.  It's also the paper of record for Old Sludgebury, Mass. and the Sludge River Valley, a typical New England mill town still recovering from the closure of its asbestos mills in 1957.  Topping today's local headlines: a shocking upset in the recent primaries.

Local News:

20-TERM STATE REP LOSES
TO SOME FOREIGN GIRL

By Hacky Carp
Local Politics Editor

The career of 20-term incumbent state Representative Whiff “the Stiff” O'Bribe came to a shocking and unexpected end Primary Night, when he lost his re-election bid in a landslide primary loss to some girl no one ever heard of, Ania Mossadegh, M.D., Ph.D.

Rep. O'Bribe had expected to coast to victory and in fact had not bothered to leave his yacht, anchored off Hyannis, to so much as set foot in his district, which he had represented since 1978.  In a brief speech at his Election Night party at Burke's Pub, owned by his brother-in-law and longtime Old Sludgebury mayor James X. Burke, O'Bribe sounded bitter.

The long-serving rep was stunned by his upset loss
to what his supporters referred to as “some brown girl”

“I've worked my ass off for the people of Old Sludgebury, whether they were cops, firemen, parishioners at St. Pederast's, or just regular guys and this is the thanks I get?”

Sources close to Rep. O'Bribe say that he never took the primary challenge from political newcomer Mossadegh seriously, even though the the percentage of voters who identified themselves as Irish alcoholics had declined from 80% in 1980 to 14% today.

At a raucous victory rally held at her family's popular Middle Eastern restaurant on Asbestos Avenue, Dr. Mossadegh attributed her victory to hard work and perseverance.  “Where else but in America could a young Iranian girl come to America with her parents, study hard, go to college, and become a doctor and now your nominee for state representative?” Dr. Mossadegh said, flanked by her husband, her beaming parents, and her three small children.

Dr. Mossadegh, Chief of Pediatrics at Mass. General – Sludge Valley Medical Center, had apparently become well-known in the community due to her work at local health clinics and for persuading Mass. General to take over the failing local hospital and turn it into an outpost of the most admired hospital in America.

She had campaigned on local issues such as the need to repair the bridges over the Sludge River, which in a recent engineering study had been ranked “You Are Going to Die.”  She also called for investments in public schools and job training in an effort to jump-start the local economy and attract new business to the long-shuttered asbestos factories.

“I will fight for economic development for this region on Beacon Hill, and I won't be satisfied with a few no-show jobs for my relatives, ” Dr. Mossadegh had promised.

Local pundits now wonder if O'Bribe's scorched-earth campaign tactics, suggested by his campaign manager Roger Stone, may have backfired.  O'Bribe repeatedly chastised his opponent as an “alien threat to our way of life in Old Sludgebury and probably a Lesbian to boot.”

The turning point in the campaign, observers speculate, occurred during their only debate, when O'Bribe accused Dr. Mossadegh of being “just another foreign terrorist like her fellow countryman Saddam Hussein.”

Dr. Mossedegh responded that Saddam Hussein had been Iraqi, while she was of Iranian descent.

O'Bribe's response – “I don't give a f*** what kind of raghead you are.  Now get me another 'Gansett like a good girl” – was widely regarded as a tactical mistake that alienated many women voters.

The insurgent campaigned on the need to repair local infrastructure

On a deeper level, the defeat of Rep. O'Bribe represents the passing of an older style politics.  O'Bribe had emphasized constituent service, always offering to pick up a voter's dry cleaning in Boston and bring it back to town with him.  He also boasted that he had arranged over 1,600 disability pensions for his constituents over the last 40 years of the local “sore back” epidemic.

Rep. O'Bribe blamed his defeat on “a bunch of welfare-chiseling illegal immigrants who don't know the meaning of hard work.”  By contrast, O'Bribe said he had risen the old-fashioned American way: by inheriting his seat from his father, Whiff O'Bribe Sr., after the elder O'Bribe had decided to take a seven- to ten-year vacation in Allenwood, Penn.

The defeated legislator said that he intended to retire from public service on a state pension.  Taking into the consideration the extra $35,000 he earned every year as Chairman of the House Committee on Bills the Speaker Wants to Bury Forever, he expects to pocket a cool $115,000 a year for the rest of his life.  Ever gracious in defeat, O'Bribe said, “I hope the savages choke on it.”

News from Zontar: President acts to stop aggression and save lives

Editors' Note: Every so often the Spy Deep Space Desk receives a dispatch from the planet Zontar, millions of light years away in the Remulac galaxy.  Although the doings of these strange aliens are almost incomprehensible to us Earthlings, we sometimes share them with our readers to give them an idea of the vast, inexplicable variety of life in our universe, no matter how bizarre it may seem to us – [They get the setup already – Ed.]

By Wireless to The New Zork Times

President Hillary Rodhamz Clinton today increased the pressure on the bloodthirsty regime of Zyrian President Bashar Azzad by establishing a no-fly zone over Idlibz Province, where millions of refugees are threatened with attack and death at the hands of Zyrian forces backed by the immense power of their Ruzzian and Irazian allies.

President Clinton told the Washington press corps today that she would not tolerate any further loss of life in Zyria, notwithstanding the failure of previous Administrations to protect civilians in Aleppoz and Damazcus.  “I have established a no-fly zone to protect innocent civilians in Idlibz from merciless air assault and gas attacks.  Any Zyrian aircraft entering the zone will be shot down by US naval and air forces,” she said.

Secretary of Defense Jez Johnson later clarified that the no-fly zone would apply strictly only to Zyrian air forces. However, he warned that any aircraft conducting bombing operations in Idlibz was “subject to interception.”

Although the new U.S. policy raises the specter of armed conflict with Ruzzian armed forces operating in Zyria, President Clinton was said to believe that Ruzzian President Vladimirz Putin was unlikely to trigger a confrontation with U.S. military forces.  Informed sources at the National Zecurity Council speculate that Russia may choose to bombard the helpless men, women, and children of Idlibz with ground- and sea-based weaponry to avoid U.S. military action.

Sources close to National Zecurity Adviser Juliette Kayyemz have let it be known that any Ruzzian bombardment of Idlibz will be matched strike-for-strike by U.S. ship- and airborne salvos directed at Azzad Regime strongholds in Damazcus and other Zyrian cities.

Apparently alarmed by the surprisingly resolute response, Ruzzian Foreign Ministry Andrei Lavrovz, has called for immediate four-party negotiations including Turkeyz and Iraz.  President Clinton is said to be receptive to this approach as long as a cease-fire is maintained in Idlibz.

“Four-party negotiations would appear to be the best approach to defusing this crisis,” said former U.S. Secretary of State John Kezzy.  “It is inconceivable to imagine any substantive progress anywhere in the Middle Eazt unless the US is at the table.  I literally cannot imagine how meaningful talks could be held without US participation.”

President Clinton is determined to protect innocent 
Zyrians from another catastrophe, while her former 
opponent scouts locations for his proposed 
golf development

The European nations have wholeheartedly supported President Clinton's tough approach.  “In the absence of firm, resolute US leadership, the Middle Eazt would explode and the Western Alliance would collapse,” German Zancellor Angela Merkelz told US Secretary of State Wendy Zherman, who was dispatched to European capitals to build support for the US strategy.

In response, Secretary Zherman said, “I appreciate the strong support of our Allies in bringing peace and democracy in the Middle East.  We can never have a world in which our European allies lose confidence in US foreign policy.”

Reaction in the U.S. predictably broke down on partisan lines.  “This is just another effort to position President Clinton for re-election,” said Texas Senator John Zornyn, who is believed to entertain ambitions of running for President himself.  His most likely opponent for the Republican nomination, Zox TV gasbag Zon Hannity, has called the President's policy “criminal” and “insane.”

Although reports from Idlibz suggest that the population was relieved to hear of the no-fly zone, a permanent solution to the endless carnage in Zyria still seems to be a long way off and a great deal could still go wrong.

In anticipation of increasing tensions, Secretary Zherman has called on all U.S. citizens not involved in vital humanitarian work to leave Zyria at once.  The most prominent American believed to be in Zyria is the man President Clinton defeated in 2016, near-bankrupt tangerine-faced grifter Donald Z. Trump, who has yet to concede the election.

Trump is in Damazcus trying to secure a deal to build a golf course in the ruins of Aleppoz with funds from oligarchs linked to Ruzzian President Putin.  “Now that all these s***hole buildings have been knocked down, we can build the most beautiful golf course in Zyria with your money,” he told a small audience of mysterious Ruzzian bagmen and Azzad regime toadies.  “To celebrate, let's grab some pussy and get this party started!”

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