THE SPERMAL ADVENTURES OF LUTHERAN LAYMAN.

"Jonathan Graham is a husband, father, and Lutheran layman studying classics and creative writing in Charleston, South Carolina." Couldn't you just eat him up? Anyway here's his story at The Federalist:

5 Reasons To Stop Calling Dads Of Unborn Babies A ‘Father To Be’
The human in utero is fully human, and when we casually dismiss this tiny, precious human, we dismiss and disrespect so much more of the human experience.

You sort of don't need to, but you want to, right? Let's:

...The peeve began to develop very early. When I announced to my co-workers that my wife is pregnant, they were happy for us. They asked about the due date and whether we were having a boy or a girl. And they congratulated me: “You’re going to be a dad!” they said, in the future tense. 

I soon became very sensitive to this phrase. But I gave my co-workers the benefit of the doubt. “Maybe I’m just being a grammar nerd,” I thought. “Certainly this won’t be something I hear that often.”

Thinking the problem might be you, Lutheran Layman -- that was clearly a mistake!

Unfortunately, I was wrong. Everywhere I turned people were quick to label my wife and I as parents-to-be. This is not just among radical pro-abortion activists who reduce pre-born humans to cell clusters, but even on major parenting websites...

Not just baby-killers, but Parents magazine! What has happened to this country! I'll have you know the proper expression is cum-donor, Sirrah. Good day!

He's got bullet-points, as if you haven't guessed, further explaining his objection to this noxious appellation. Here's the first:

1. It Doesn’t Meet the Definition of Father
Look up the word “father.” Merriam-Webster gives a good clear definition: “A man who has begotten a child.” That is about as clear as it gets. A father is a man with a child. That means any man who has impregnated a woman is a father...

Also, "3. It Disrespects the Parents of Miscarried Babies" ("if we continue to talk about parents of pre-born children as if they are not really parents yet, we deny the legitimate grief of parents who lose their children to miscarriage"). Give Lutheran Layman credit: Despite his views, he seems to anticipate continued contact with society, however brief:

I now actually look forward to people calling me a father-to-be, even though it’s also a pet peeve. People who are pro-life often don’t know how to talk to others about their convictions. It’s not easy to bring abortion up in casual conversation. It’s a taboo subject, and expressing your pro-life beliefs can result in losing friends, or worse. One teacher in Canada even lost his job because he expressed his pro-life views. 

Either that or because no one wanted to be around him anymore.

But here, far removed from the abortion conversation, when someone calls me a “father-to-be” I can ask what exactly he mean by it. I can question her position without ever mentioning abortion. I can ask what he thinks my child is, whether he is human, and all sorts of other questions, all without getting the other person’s guard up.

But not without getting her pepper-spray out.

So now I thank God every time someone calls me a “father-to-be.”

And he better, because soon God and his breeder-wife will be the only ones willing to listen to him anymore.

I'm said it before and I'll say it again: The Federalist isn't primarily a conservative website -- it's really a Blood and Soil cult.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the crash and burn of the American Health Care Act, which obliged the brethren to explain what went wrong without speaking ill of their own deformed and unpopular policies.

Nonetheless they had a go, and some refused to acknowledge defeat at all. At the Washington Examiner (picked up from a garbage website with many popups), Brian Brinker says, "while many are quick to label this as a Trump failure, I can't help but wonder if it's instead a moment of business savvy." How's he figure? Because polls show people don't actually want what Trump and Congress are selling -- which means a Trump loss is retroactively a stroke of Trump genius. See:

Ultimately, the repeal failure fits with Trump’s business style. Throughout his career Trump relied on contractors, in this case GOP members of Congress, to perform work. Trump has always been known for being tough on these contractors...

 (that is, he regularly stiffs them)

...and that appears to be the case in the currently unfolding scenario. Further, Trump has made it clear that when it comes to deals he is pragmatic and flexible. Congressional failures likely means that Trump will be shifting gears, with blame for the current failure falling on Congress rather than Trump.

In other words, Trump screwed Congress just like he screws everybody who trusts him! There, Trump voters -- don't you feel better?

If you can stand it, you can also go see WWC Whisperer Salena Zito explain why Pennsyltucky will never forsake The Leader: "their beliefs and their intellects — which they imagine [Frank] Rich and his ilk chuckling over while sipping chardonnay — are what pushed them away from an increasingly elitist Democratic Party in the first place," blah blah. (Steve M. from NMMNB notices that Zito has gone back to calling Westmoreland County "Democrat" even though they haven't voted for a Democrat for President in 20 years.) But maybe go read my column instead, which is at least as funny.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH.

A lot of people think Trump's down, with the messed-up AHCA vote Thursday. But I'm not so sure.

First of all, this failure is the GOP's, not his. Trump's connection with the Republicans is purely opportunistic. As I've been saying all along, the deal is that Trump signs anything Ryan and his Republican death cultists send him, and in return they look away while he loots and grifts. The GOP is holding up their end -- hell, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is basically a Russian safe house, Trump's exploiting his office like a motherfucker and so are his kids, but with few exceptions the Republican Congressional majorities are like huh what do you mean sorry I can't hear you.

Will Trump hold up his end? We can't tell because lately the Republicans have been tripping on their dicks -- which makes sense, because they haven't been this hard since 2005. In a normal executive-House-Senate GOP three-way, the White House would work with the leadership to craft and smooth passage of any big bill, the way Obama, Pelosi and Reid did with the ACA. Does anyone here think it's worked that way with Ryan and Trump? Given the barely coherent palaver Trump dispenses to the general public, I doubt he even speaks English when he talks to Ryan -- he probably just goes "rhubarb, rhubarb," like an old-fashioned stage crowd, and maybe masturbates. And Ryan, ever the apple-cheeked suck-up, probably nods politely and goes back to the committee rooms, where them Freedom Caucus boys are screaming AH WANNA 'MENDMENT MAKE BITCHES CARRY MAH SEED! and WHA I GOTTA PAY FOR IN-SURANCE I HAIN'T NEVER GONE BE SICK! No wonder the bill had to be delayed.

Be not deceived; if these monkeys can be brought into anything resembling regular order, they'll find a way to push something through the House. It may not have every horror that's been floated but it will still be pretty bad. And I wouldn't count on The World's Greatest Deliberative Body making it appreciably better -- for the Senate is where McCain takes the grandstand but McConnell takes the bandstand, and he keeps his baton by picking tunes the boys like to play. Now try and imagine Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and Tom Cotton letting anything that isn't stuffed with dominionist lunacy come to a vote. What they add might be worse than what comes out of the House.

Then, assuming the stuff about the Senate Parliamentarian being fixed is bullshit (and since Mike Lee and Deroy Murdock are pushing it I assume it is), it becomes a question of whether the Republicans want to go berserker and pass extra-budgetary reforms with 51 votes. Again, these boys hate Black President's Big Law with a passion, they're not honorable or especially bright, and things could get out of hand. So don't relax -- as some wiseguy on Twitter said, this lull could just be the false relief that comes after the horror movie villain looks like he's dead the first time.

But notice I haven't mentioned Trump for a few grafs. Recently his usual alpha bellows on the subject suggest that he's willing to wash his hands of the thing -- which works great for him, since the rubes who voted for him are just as likely to blame the Republican pencil-necks for his failure as they've been willing to blame the Democratic pencil-necks (andblackpeopleandMexicans) for their own. It's like every terrible thing he's revealed to have done -- it just bonds them tighter to him. They're locked into the political version of a shame spiral -- except Trump feels no shame. Speaking of spirals, Trump's already fucking up Obamacare, so he can just wait for it to collapse and rule over the ruins.

Thus we remain, nearly alone among nations rich enough to have it, without universal health care. It's not so much an indictment of Trump, Congress, or even our politics as it is of our national character at the moment. America's like all those normal-seeming guys you read about in newspaper crime stories who take their savings and hire a hit man to kill their wife or boss or father-in-law. They think if they can just get this one insane, immoral thing done, everything will work out great. But they can't do it themselves so they need to hire this insane, immoral guy. And things always go wrong because the hit man winds up blackmailing them or trying to kill them or kidnapping a member of their family. These guys always seem to assume, against all evidence and experience, that for some reason the hit man won't turn on them. That's us now. We're a nation of Jerry Lundegaards.

SNAPPY ANSWERS TO WHINY WINGNUTS.

Tom Knighton at PJ Media:

Remember when liberals would take issue with a business refusing service to a customer because the action conflicted with the owner's personal beliefs? How dare a Christian refuse to take part in a gay marriage ceremony! 

Of course, it's all good when it's a bar in the West Village refusing to do business with someone wearing a Donald Trump "Make America Great Again" hat:  

Inserted here is an excerpt from a New York Post story about Hat Guy, one Greg Piatek, allegedly getting thrown out of the bar after a few rounds ("The ‘flustered’ bartender got them a second round but allegedly ‘slammed the drinks down'"). It includes a picture of Piatek; his lawyer claims this was "his client's 'saddest hour,'" but looking at the guy I'm guessing it's not even in the top ten.

This should be an interesting test for the Left. 

If you believe that no one should be allowed to refuse a customer because of the management's beliefs, then it's time to put up or shut up. If a Christian baker can't pass on a wedding cake for a gay marriage, then this bar can't refuse to serve someone because of a hat indicating support for a presidential candidate. Who won, by the way...

We don't need a Constitutional expert to solve this one. The guy in the hat wasn't being thrown out for his race, creed, religious beliefs, or even sexual preference. He was being thrown out because the bartender decided he was an asshole.

And one of the primary tenets of Common Law is: If the bartender thinks you're an asshole, you hit the bricks.

One of the other primary tenets, borne out by the story: The bartender is always right.

UPDATE. I see the Post story was written by the same stunt reporter who went around New York wearing a MAGA hat and pretty much begged to be shit on. I guess they're working on a little genre to inflame the sensibilities of red-state rubes: "Them gawdamn New Yorkers is prejudice agin' us! Wonder why thet Me-la-ni-a Trump wants ta live there so bad. I bet she'd be a lot more comfortable-like here in Skunk Holler. Might could go up there an' git her, have her stay with Cousin Clem, he been needin' a female to clean up and whatnot."

I PITY THE POOR PATRIARCH.

I don't have to tell you people who The Real Victims^TM  are in any given situation -- they're always (counterintuitive as it may seem!) on the side with the most power.

Owen Strachan of The Federalist starts out telling us the alt-right is very bad ("childish and vicious... ethnocentrism, outright racism, misogyny... we should offer condemnation in no uncertain terms"), but quickly (by the third graf -- I feel like Carol Kane washing Randy Quaid's cock in The Last Detail, that's how quick!) gets here:

I do wonder, however, if the media has missed at least one true thing regarding the “alt-right.” The movement (if we can call it that) may often prove inchoate and even inarticulate, but behind the memes and coded language, there seems to be a massed sentiment. It is this: men feel left behind.

Poor behind-left men! Strachan gets to the inevitable next stage quickly, too -- the one where you learn that these lost Nazi-boys, who "did nothing to choose their biological manliness, but are instructed to attend sensitivity training by virtue of it," are cruelly oppressed by feminazi society, who won't indulge their "glory hunger" (?). And so the alt-right boys, for all their vicious bigotry, aren't really bad after all -- they're depraved on account of they're deprived of their rightful good jobs and sucked dicks!

It is easy, and right, to identify where aspects of the alt-right are plainly misogynistic. But tying an entire people group to its worst excesses allows for the full-scale dismissal of a diverse array of concerns and experiences. This has happened with Donald Trump’s voters, for example; according to many journalists, they’re all either racist or angry about the loss of the halcyon days. The media executes the same lazy move with the angry young men of the alt-right: they’re idiotic little boys. We have nothing to hear from them, nothing to learn, nothing to consider.

Listen to the neo-Nazis -- they have something to say, too! How can you be so arrogant as to turn away when they give you the Hitler salute, or deface your synagogue? We have much to learn from them!

It figures that he wedged Trump in there. I predict "this is why I'm fluffing the alt-right" will be the new "this is why Trump won."

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Trump budget, the controversy over Meals on Wheels funding, and how conservatives have spun it into a media rather than a budget story. It's frustrating to see goodhearted liberals like Kevin Drum bending over backwards to be not only fair but also generous to conservatives, saying basically that Mick Mulvaney couldn't have meant the bad thing he seemed to say because "if you were writing a satire designed to show that Republicans were all heartless bastards, you still wouldn't invent something like that" -- as if we haven't been living in an immersive environmental satire of conservative governance for months. (That conservatives never return the favor is too obvious and expected to be mentioned.)

JIMMY BRESLIN, 1930-2017.

Another notable passing. If you're the sort of person who reads alicublog you probably know what a terrific, fluent writer Jimmy Breslin was, and about his various journalistic coups such as interviewing the Kennedy gravedigger and the cops who brought John Lennon to the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital. All I have to add is in addition to being a writer-writer, he was a newsman from the days when the difference between a reporter and a columnist barely existed, and did the job like it was important, at all hours and sometimes under extreme duress, as when he returned from being beaten and robbed at the Crown Heights riots to file a story. If journalism seems like a drag and a whore now, it certainly isn't any of his doing. He was the real thing.

Also, years ago I wrote a little something about hearing him read from one of his books and asking him a question. Here's a bit of it:

There was something I had long wanted to ask Breslin: How do you get cops to talk to you? I never have any luck with them. 

Breslin squinted. "Ask 'em what's doin'. Why wouldn't they want to talk to you? A nice white fella from Long Island. What'dya say to them?" 

"Um, 'I'd like to ask you a few questions.'" 

Breslin looked disgusted. "Don't come on like a district attorney! That'll make 'em nervous. It makes me nervous. Who d'ya write for?" 

"Alicubi." 

Breslin inclined his head. "You against cops?" 

"No."

He shrugged. "'What's doin'?'"

Brush with greatness, that. And still good advice.

CHUCK BERRY, 1926-2017.

Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice. 

I remember when I was a dumbass college kid and he had that stupid hit, "My Ding-a-Ling," and I was confused by that into thinking he was just some old duffer who'd had a few hits and was resurfacing to grab one more -- like Ricky Nelson with "Garden Party."

Well, I shouldn't have slept on Ricky, and I damn sure should have known better about Chuck. It took me playing music myself to realize that the thing called rock 'n' roll pretty much came directly from him. Sure, in the historical traces there were the blues masters when they got wild and there was Ike Turner's "Rocket '88," but that was the primordial ooze, something that just bubbled up; no one knew how to make a regular business out of it, so it wasn't rock 'n' roll. (One way or another, rock 'n' roll is an assembly line. That's why it started dying when the factories started closing down.)

That leaves us with Little Richard and Chuck Berry and mmmmaybe Bo Diddley. These three were serious in their manufacture, but while Bo had the bottom end and Richard could wail, Chuck Berry took the insistence of the one and the exuberance of the other, distilled and bottled them together, and sent it down the line still fizzing like Coca-Cola. He'd have been really rich if he were white, but as it was his sound made a lot of money.

Those records -- "Maybellene," "Johnny B. Goode," "Memphis," "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," et alia -- have everything; it makes sense that NASA sent "Johnny B. Goode" into space because, with the possible exception of "The Battle Hymn of The Republic," that's the song you could best reconstruct America from. It has the spirit, the swagger, and even patriotism, because who's Johnny B. Goode really but the rock 'n' roll John Henry? Even better, there's no admission anything will make him ever lay down his hammer -- which makes the song double American.

(It's not a serious song, but come on -- America can be grim or mean, but whoever thought it was serious? I love Lou Reed, but he was a New Yorker and thus at least half European; Chuck Berry was from St. Louis and would never have lived in a Lower East Side cold-water flat if he had a choice.)

You can't leave out his guitar, which was more many of us the blueprint: hammer-ons, double-stops, and syncopation; leave the noodley leads to wankers. It's like the blues got amnesia and a handjob -- fun, fun, fun (and for white people, money, money, money).

For me, the signature is "School Days." I could listen to it all day. It's basically about work and getting off work -- except the work is schoolwork so it isn't that serious; it's about getting by, finding a seat, playing off the teacher -- school and work, that is, as seen by an enlightened soul who doesn't care if some asshole thinks he's shiftless because he's something good in his guitar case. And the moment when school lets out -- ah, that's a benediction that anyone who wants shut of the teacher or the boss or the spouse or the world longs and loves to hear: "Close up your books, get out of your seat/Down the halls and into the street." It's crypts breaking open and souls flying to heaven, but better, because it's undraped of the maudlin religious panoply, and you can really believe it, because it happens every working day. If for nothing else we should remember him for that; in fact, maybe inventing rock 'n' roll isn't even the superior achievement.

SELF, MEET PARODY.

You may have heard that The Leader likes his steak overpriced, overcooked, and with ketchup, and that new-breed wingnuts are showing their allegiance to Trump by praising this as a real man's way to eat steak. Matt Bors did a funny strip about this at The Nib; in one panel a guy in a MAGA hat gnaws charred ketchup steaks and tells a bemused liberal:

We are owning libs so hard with our steak eating. Hashtag #welldone. Are you crying? Do you need a safe space?

Today Matthew Continetti decided to play this character at National Review, in a column called "Freedom Is Eating Steak Well Done with Ketchup." He claims "the press has fixated on the steak and its accompaniment," and defends the President's choice of meat-ruination from "snobbish and self-congratulatory" food critics thus:

“Trump eats $50 steak with ketchup, foodies aghast,” reports SFGate.com. It is hard to read stories like these without coming to the conclusion that so much of our elite’s abhorrence of Trump is a matter of aesthetics, of his not fitting in, of his stubborn devotion to practices and ideas deemed retrograde by opinion leaders but that still appeal to, oh, about half the country. As I read these stories I want nothing more than to run to the nearest steakhouse, order the filet well done, and dunk the bites in a raft of condiments, from ketchup to Tabasco to relish to mustard. Why not? It’s still a free country. Just so long as you can find a way out of the bubble.

Later in a friend's tweet, Continetti showed his devotion to the cause:

Are you crying? Do you need a safe space?

Someone tell them the really patriotic thing to eat is rat poison.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

The kids are alright.
• Though Salena Zito is alicublog's favorite White Working Class Whisperer, we don't sleep on J.D. Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy guy who, though he went to Yale and became a rich investment capital executive and a National Review writer, still feels for his kinfolk back in Skunk Holler (actually, according to his official bio he "grew up in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, Ohio, and the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky" -- a WWC twofer!) and really understands why they went for Trump (which, of course, is very different from supporting Trump himself, though he never gets around to saying what the difference is). The other day Vance told his many rustic fans (at least those who read the New York Times) that he was "moving home" with the noble goal of "founding an organization to combat Ohio’s opioid epidemic." Thus he will do his bit to reverse the "brain drain" that Charles Murray worries about, and bring jobs and purpose to Rust Belt Middletown and --

Hang on -- you say he's not moving to Middletown? He's moving to Columbus? Or, as the hipsterrific ads call it, Cbus?

Columbus Monthly explains:

Though Cincinnati is closer to his hometown, Vance chose Columbus for its more convenient airport, central location and availability of promising job opportunities for his wife, Usha, a lawyer and fellow Yale Law School graduate. Speaking before an event hosted for him at Miranova by Columbus power couple Larry and Donna James, Vance, an Ohio State graduate, said he and his wife plan to move to German Village with their two dogs, Pippin and Casper.

Somehow I doubt Pippin and Casper are coonhounds.


• Back in 2009, The Editors of National Review blasted the DNC for referring to obstreperous attendees of Obamacare Town Brawls as a "mob," and Democratic officials for avoiding such events:

The DNC’s ad, “Enough of the Mob,” abominates those Americans who show up to address their congressmen and to exercise their constitutional rights to speak freely, to assemble, and to petition their government for redress of grievances. You know, that old pre-hope-and-change, hopelessly retro, pre-messianic democratic stuff...

The most mockery-inviting aspect of all this is that Obamacare-supporting Democrats are now ducking constituent meetings back in their home districts, afraid to face questions from the people they are paid to represent. Given the Obama team’s contempt for these people, and its utterly dismissive attitude toward their concerns, is it any wonder “the mob” doesn’t want Obama in charge of their health care? Obamacare will constitute an injury to Americans’ well-being — and the president now adds insult to it.

Today, with the disastrous Trumpcare bill being muscled through Congress, and Republicans ducking their own Town Brawls, The Editors haven't got the nerve, so they've hauled in some poor lady from Acculturated, rightwingdom's single-A farm team. Her headline:

Stop Trolling Politicians at Town-Hall Meetings

There follow several grafs from a History of Town Halls term paper, then:

This is the new political coliseum, and while there aren’t lions, chariots, and sparring with swords, there is the aura of the melee rather than deliberative debate...

The best town halls will always be places to gather and debate, sometimes heatedly. But if this crucial democratic tradition is to survive our fractured age, we should embrace civility during town-hall meetings, and save the angry trolling for Twitter.

NR performs its duh diligence, the Acculturated lady gets a top-drawer writing credit, and no normal people ever see the column. Everybody wins!

FART FOR FART'S SAKE.

Longtime readers will understand that my real beef with Jonah Goldberg is not so much ideological as aesthetic. I mock him not mainly because his ideas are terrible (though they are -- I propose the Liberal Fascism monument show Goldberg tumbling bucket-footed down Spongebob's Stairs of Learning as he tries to draw a Hitler mustache on FDR) but because he writes shit like this:

But let us be fair: Deks, as these are called in the biz, are sometimes composed by editors rather than authors and, though I can't imagine Goldberg's ego would abide an editor, it's possible they convinced him to let an intern write his deks, and that intern, perhaps tired of doing hourly Cheetos runs and getting nothing in return from Goldberg but bon mots like "Wanna big tip? Then rub it!" decided to fuck with him. So let us examine Goldberg's lede:

Dystopia is in the air these days. George Orwell’s 1984 is selling like hotcakes — if hotcakes still sold well in this low-carb world.

Come back! I know that gag makes Erma Bombeck look like Noel Coward, but let's give the man a chance.

Is the president to blame?

I think historians, no doubt working from their subterranean monasteries, bunkered from the radioactive wasteland above, will note that dystopianism, apocalypticism, and other forms of existential paranoia actually predate the Trump presidency.

Okay, I think he got the crap poeticism out of his system; I promise if he does Latinate alliteration we'll skip down.

It’s a fever that passes from one subset of the population to another and occasionally blows up into a full-scale pandemic. We all carry the infection in us, sometimes slow-simmering, sometimes in remission, and sometimes in extremis.

[vomits] OK, let's skip down.

...Apathy is the practical opposite of fear.

Uh --

Given that tyranny, going by the historical and evolutionary record, is the natural state of humankind, the greatest bulwark against it is a highly cultivated, deeply informed but nonetheless instinctive fear.

Whuh?

Edmund Burke never actually uttered the most famous quote attributed to him — “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” — though that is a useful summation of his views. And it’s certainly true. 

 Guh --

Apathy is the grease that makes slippery slopes so treacherous.

The old saw still cuts: This is the stupidest thing ever written until Goldberg writes something else.

RACIST WITH AN EXPLANATION: STEVE KING EDITION.

Iowa's Steve King has gotten so obnoxiously and overtly racist -- defending his "we can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies" tweet by raving about "our stock," predicting race war, and recommending The Camp of the Saints -- that even conservatives have started to inch away from him.

Wait, did I say "inch"? I mean millimeter. I mean micromillimeter. Because in today's conservative movement no one's really racist, at least not in the upper tier -- they're merely Racist With an Explantion.

At The Federalist, David Harsanyi tut-tuts King's "confused and contradictory statements." I don't see any evidence King is confused about nor inconsistent in his racism at all, but Harsanyi detects a cleavage: While King's wrong to talk about "culture as blood," says Harsanyi, he's right about the "clash of cultures" with Islam. Harsanyi, you see, is also down with holy war against the Musselmen (see here, there, and everywhere).

But the real villains in this affair -- the ones Harsanyi devotes most of his column to criticizing -- are liberals:

So King deserves the condemnation he’s been getting for making the immigration debate about people rather than their ideas. Yet most coverage of congressman’s statement also seems to take offense at his defense of “Western civilization.” Once it was merely in poor form to claim our system was better. Now, evidently, it’s racist.

He offers as his sole, shoddy proof a tweet by Rep. Judy Chu that does not in any apparent way denounce Western Civ but says this: "Steve King is wrong: Civilization is threatened by racism & xenophobia that divide us & encourage violence. I condemn hate & welcome all." To you this may seem admirable if anodyne, but Harsanyi doesn't go for Chu's hint that hatred of The Other might be uncool:

Fact is, the modern Left debates immigration using the very same ethnocentric and racial ideas as King, but for entirely different reasons.

Harsanyi loved when Gillespie told Tibbs "Man, you're just like the rest of us, ain't ya?" in In The Heat of the Night, and still thinks it's a winner.

While one side adopts it for exclusionary purposes, the other uses it as a cudgel of relativism.

The cudgel of relativism double-slaps you with one-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand action!

These days, there is precious little difference between ideas and identity on the Left. So we are asked to treat Islam as a racial or ethnic designation rather than a philosophical/religious/ideological one.

See, The Left made Muslims into a race just so they could beat up innocent guys like Steve King! Wait, what were we talking about again?

At National Review Jonathan S. Tobin says what's "dangerous" about King's palaver is that it "undermines American exceptionalism." No, really. The lede is killer:

What is at stake in the long-running battle over illegal immigration? The answer from the overwhelming majority of Americans who worry about it is “the defense of the rule of law.”

I wonder what poll he got that from. Pollster: "Why do you oppose illegal immigration? Pick one. A., It --" Lutiebelle C. Festus: "GODDAMN MESSICANS! I mean, defense of the rule of law!"

Tobin goes on about how it's okay for Geert Wilders to worry about "about how a national identity rooted in a homogeneous ethnic and religious culture can accommodate newcomers" and "whether those who don’t share a common ethnicity and who practice a different faith will transform the nation into a place that isn’t Dutch" -- maybe it sounds racist, but he's in Europe, which is crawling with those "no-go zones" you read about on Breitbart. But here in America, says Tobin, we don't have that problem, even though "The Left is attempting to portray as xenophobic President Trump’s temporary travel ban from six countries that are terrorist hotbeds" -- boy, that The Left is always trying to make us look racist just because we keep trying to keep Muslims out!

 Tobin goes further than Harsanyi, even admitting that

the shift toward a less-white America is already baked into the country’s demographic cake. If conservatives wish to continue governing in the future, they must reject talk about “other people’s babies” and promote their ideas with enough confidence that Hispanics and other minorities will eventually embrace them.

Tobin must have been thinking, "Who cares? By then I'll be dead!" But he really distinguishes himself in the closing:

Modern American conservatism was founded by the willingness of some to “stand athwart history yelling stop,” but William F. Buckley and his colleagues were not seeking to yell stop to Americans who were not white.

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha no really, he said that.

What these guys are doing is the for-real version of something they're always accusing their enemies of doing: By showing just a pretense of toleration, they're distinguishing themselves against the loud-'n'-proud racism of their comrades (e.g. "As media-spooked GOP piles on, Rep. Steve King stands by his remark") -- in other words, they're virtue signaling.

UPDATE. I have far less reason to doubt the sincerity of Nick Gillespie's anti-racism, but I had to laugh when I read him bragging on his ancestors' immigrant roots:

Mostly, they worked hard as hell and provided for their children under difficult circumstances (prejudice, economic depression, war). The first job my grandfather Nicola Guida had in the promised land of America was chiseling rock with a hammer and sledge somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania (he and his fellow workers were never told exactly where they were to make it harder to run away). He would be so tired that he would piss and shit himself as he slept at night, unable to get up to use the facilities.

Wow, sounds like a libertarian dream! Maybe that's why Gillespie endorses these conditions for today's workers -- nostalgia!

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the disastrous debut of the American Health Care Act. It would be more encouraging to see the brethren admit what a dog this thing was if I didn't know any tweak that comes down the pike will be declared the master stroke that fixes everything. Maybe in addition to stripping lottery winners of their Medicaid they'll also test beneficiaries' DNA for evidence that they've recently eaten a T-bone steak.

UPDATE. The CBO report is out and, while most human beings are horrified that it predicts 24 million people losing coverage as a result of Trumpcare, National Review's Dan McLaughlin scoffs that CBO can't be relied on, because they said with Obamacare 201 million Americans would have private insurance, while in reality only 177 million do. Never mind that, between public and private insurance, the uninsured rate dropped to new lows -- you can't expect a conservative to applaud pauper-moochers getting a break. And anyway it doesn't matter because

The projections of who will and won’t be insured don’t actually mean anything. But the projections of deficit reduction mean a lot, whether or not they are accurate – because they give the bill the procedural green light to go forward.

And that is how the game is played in Washington.

In other words: we know just as well as you do that this is bullshit, but we're going to get away with it so fuck off and die.

THE WHITE WORKING CLASS WHISPERER FLIPS THE SCRIPT.

White Working Class Whisperer Salena Zito won fame by predicting that Republicans would go for Trump, and holds it with her rare gift for finding ordinary WWC people who just naturally speak in fluent Republican Party Talking Points. In her latest column, her subjects retain their traditional, suspicious eloquence, but the Talking Points themselves have changed, as announced by the headline:

Trump’s voters have high hopes – even if they don’t expect miracles

Sounds like somebody got a memo about lowering expectations. Zito lays it out in a preamble:

MINGO JUNCTION, OHIO — Many people living in this town of used-to-be’s don’t expect their community will ever return to its glory days. 

They don’t anticipate the return to a downtown of bustling businesses patronized by a well-paid middle class working at the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel plant. They want a little fresh paint on the vacant buildings, to cover up the sorrows lining the main business district’s ironically named Commerce Street. 

And they’re not expecting magic from President Trump.

Weird. I recall Trump was very explicit about bringing back steel and coal jobs. I recall also that swing state gomers were hooting and hollering over such jobs during the campaign -- "After asserting he's 'going to fight for steel businesses that have been taken away,' [Trump] said he wants to make Pennsylvania and Ohio 'the manufacturing hub of the world again.' The comments brought cheers from supporters inside a crowded gymnasium," etc. Yet listen to Zito's specimens now:

“All we need is to invest in ourselves with some small businesses up and down the street, and we’ll be fine,” said Rich Grimm, a retired steel worker. Grimm is aspirational, pragmatic about the return of steel or coal jobs, and determined.

They don't need heavy industry -- they just need to invest in themselves, and they will, soon's as they work up the nerve to dig up Grandpappy's corpse, pry out the gold teeth, and take them to some big-city pawnshop for a grubstake in a nail salon! And a little fresh paint!

Even more than that, what Zito's WWC folk need is the GOP platform, dumbed down for credulous newspaper readers:

They’re happy with what Trump has done so far — limiting US entry from certain countries; plans for a wall along the US-Mexico border; taking the ObamaCare bull by the horns — but it’s tax and regulation reform that they all believe will truly help their community. 

“Look, we all know the steel jobs aren’t coming back to the degree they once were, nor the coal jobs,” said Grimm. “Honestly, we never expected that."

You city slickers have got the salt-of-the-earth guys all wrong -- they don't want (ugh) steel and coal jobs, they just want to get rid of immigrants, immiserate the poor, and give rich people a big, sloppy tax cut.

What happened? My guess is, with Trump "taking the ObamaCare bull by the horns" -- i.e., letting Paul Ryan fuck it up in exchange for Ryan letting him use his office for grifts -- things are going to start collapsing pretty soon, and the MAGA dream is going to look pretty stupid, so advance men and women like Zito have been sent to get the gaslights going full blast. Hell, in a few months they'll be telling us The Leader has always said coal and steel mills are an environmental menace!

UPDATE. Comments are terrific. Example: "Mingo Junction ain't exactly a backwater," says Worriedman. "...It's an hour outside of Pittsburgh. The steel plant, which closed in 2009 after 8 years of Democratic malfeasance and incompetence, will start producing steel this month. Trump works fast! Ungrateful fucks." And do check out keta's September 2017 story datelined BENDOVER, PA:

Local painter Jess Splurtz agrees. “Obama never gave us a drop,” he says. “With Trump I feel like the the hose is directed at us and we’re gettin’ it good, enough to really bask in. Sure, the jobs ain’t come back, and the health care looks to be cut off for most of us, and the mental health and opioid addiction services my family uses a lot look to be cut off completely, but you know what? There ain’t been a dark-skinned loafer seen in Bendover for over a month now, not since them ICE fellers took ‘em all away.”

THE AGE OF A-LITTLE-TOO-ON-THE-NOSE.

As you may remember from back in January, after Trump hired former Nixon home health aide and Fox nudge Monica Crowley to be a national security advisor, someone noticed she heavily plagiarized other people's work for her dissertation and for a book. If you click through those links, you'll see we're not talking about a couple lines here and there, which might be excused by innocent errors or sloth, but hundreds of misappropriated words, indicative of a casual attitude, let us say, toward the intellectual property of others.

Her publisher pulled her book, and Crowley lost her White House gig, claiming to prefer to "remain in New York to pursue other opportunities." She went quiet awhile, but now she's back. Are you expecting perhaps contrition? Even Ben Domenech pretended to be contrite -- but that was years ago, before the New Age. Now:

Monica Crowley: Plagiarism Charges Were a 'Political Hit Job'

Ain't even kidding.

...“There is a very toxic—and it’s getting increasingly toxic and poisonous—atmosphere of personal destruction in Washington and the media...It’s always sort of been there, but now it’s at a whole different level,” Crowley told Hannity. 

“In some ways, I was something of the canary in the coal mine -- the attack on me was a test,” she continued. “What happened to me, what happened to General Flynn, what’s happened to Attorney General Sessions and others is all of a piece. There is a very dangerous and very effective destabilization campaign underway against this president, his administration, and his agenda." 

Crowley warned that forces are not only trying to delegitimize Trump, they want to personally destroy him. 

"They are out for blood," she declared..."

That this utterly-refutable-I-mean-receipts-and-everything liar is conflating her situation with that of our truth-averse president is just too on the nose -- but, then, isn't everything these days? I'm beginning to think that's how we'll be identified by future historians, assuming (perhaps unfairly) that we have any.

BLAHBLAHCARE.

You smart folks have probably noticed that the GOP's American Health Care Act that's supposed to repeal and replace Obamacare neither repeals not replaces it, but keeps it dead-alive as a horrible zombie to kill as many Americans as possible.

You may have noticed, too, that having to finally show their cards after eight years of bullshitting -- the political equivalent of locking yourself in the studio for years working on your double-album masterpiece, and emerging with a boombox tape of bathtub farts -- seems to have deranged top Republicans. They're saying all kinds of crazy shit, and I mean crazier than usual, like bugfuck crazy. There's HHS Secretary Tom Price's back-asswards "Medicaid is a program that by and large has decreased the ability for folks to gain access to care." There's Jason Chaffetz's suggestion to Americans greedily lamenting the loss of their coverage that "maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest it in their own health care" (for which he delivered a classic non-apology after people got mad).  There's the steady stream of breath-cooled butter turds emerging from the mouth of Paul Ryan, etc.

Normally in situations like this the politicians say anodyne nothings and leave it up to the propagandists to embarrass themselves. Mind you, those rightbloggers who did find the courage to emerge from their spider holes, or were pushed, did bucket-foot it: take Dan MacLaughlin, who at National Review is forced to admit the bill has to be a mess because people won't like having their coverage wrenched away and their fingers have to be broken one at a time before they'll let go:

A total and immediately effective repeal with no backup plan would create losers who would be angry and sympathetic. A lot of the distortion in the intra-Republican healthcare debate – including the Rube Goldberg nature of the already-being-rewritten House plan and the demands by Senate moderates to protect people covered by Medicaid expansion - is driven not by a desire to produce the best plan for the country’s future, but rather by a desire to address the difficulty of transitioning out of the bind created by Obamacare’s entrenchment over the past four years. That’s understandable and necessary – conservatives take the world as it already is...

One imagines the American people saying, "Um, I'm right here."  (Oh, and if you want to see even worse, check out his colleague Charles Two Middle Initials Cooke arguing that what's really needed is a better communications strategy. Remember when that was supposed to be Trump's genius?)

This general derangement has, I'm afraid, a simple explanation. Everyone involved knows the bill is garbage. The Leader continues to yammer how great, so great, you'll love it, etc., but no one believes him -- except for that relatively small core of living Twitter eggs who were called deplorables back before it was decided This Is Why Trump Won so we better let them wreck the country in peace.

Because anyone else they talk to either laughs at them or tells them to get fucked, the GOP have to focus on these guys. So that's who they talk to. And to them they talk the political equivalent of baby talk -- angry, vicious baby talk. That's what Price and Chaffetz and Ryan and all of them (including I guess Cooke, who I doubt is dumb enough to believe that a bill with several non-financial aspects can actually be passed in "reconciliation") are doing. It doesn't have to make sense. It just has to keep Junior happy. That's why this ridiculous bill actual devotes several pages to how the government will take money back from Medicaid recipients if they win the lottery. To you it seems crazy, a non sequitur, but to the eggs, it's hell no, you ain't givin' mah money to no lottery winners, they don't need it! If they could have gotten away with a No Medicaid Fer Muslims Nor Coloreds section, believe me, they would have, so they did the closest thing they could manage.

And nothing else they do is going make any more sense than that. Hell, the final bill may be written in actual gibberish, or pictograms, or assembled from images cut out of magazines like a dream board. Reason has never been their friend, and now they've learned to embrace its opposite.

UPDATE. See the title of this thing? I rest my case.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Trump's accusations against Obama, and the unbecoming swiftness with which conservatives went along with them. I literally haven't seen any big-time rightwing guys (besides the ones like Max Boot and David Frum who have already given up on him) waving this one off; it seems everyone's either crossed or paused at the Rubicon, and those who've crossed will go for anything, no matter how nuts.

Lots of outtakes. I have to say I'm impressed with Mike Pence's nerve in demanding an apology from AP for revealing his wife's AOL screen name -- in the story where they revealed Pence botching his email worse than Hillary Clinton ever did.  Thus he managed to make the story about them rather than his own malfeasance -- which just shows that Trump's not the only grade-A shitheel at the highest levels of government. (I'm also impressed with the way Benny Johnson took the opportunity to cement himself to Pence's jock; boy, that's one guy will never miss a meal.)

Admirable too is the message discipline -- to use the polite term -- of the lower-order Trumpkins. Here's a shittweet ("[emoji] Well well well looks like Hillary knew about the wiretap [emoji] she tweeted about it one week prior to the election [emoji]") promulgating a Gateway Pundit item, "Hillary Was Tipped Off On Trump Wiretap – Tweeted About it One Week Prior to Election." If you read that item -- which is more than most people will do, and that includes the ones who will later claim it to be revealed truth -- you will find that Clinton was "tipped off" by... an article at Slate which was actually about computer analysts unconnected to Clinton who found suspicious activity on a Trump server. But it doesn't have to make sense -- it just has to have the right keywords, and smell. Throw in a few unrelated slurs ("TGP reported earlier that the first FISA request came right after AG Loretta Lynch met with Bill Clinton on the tarmac") and you'll got the political equivalent of a false memory.

That's not even counting the guys who post a headline like "Paul Ryan Confirms Obama Wiretapped Trump Illegally" and then reproduce an interview in which Ryan says the exact opposite. The lack of even rudimentary creativity is the closest thing to an actual abyss I've looked into in some time.

Kudos also to Jonathan S. Tobin for the “advice from your mortal enemies” winner of the week: “If Democrats Aren’t Careful, Russia Could Become Their Benghazi.” Pffft, thanks, pal!

RIPPED FROM TODAY'S HEADLINES.

[Scene: A garishly appointed suite in Trump Tower. TRUMP and SESSIONS enter.]

TRUMP: Jeffy, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Listen, you want champagne? Caviar? Some mints?

SESSIONS: (laughing) Now, Mistah Trump, some folks might think you were tryin' to bribe me! An' if ah am to work with you, everything must be above-boahd.

TRUMP: Spoken like an attorney -- in general! Get it? Attorney? General? You play your cards right, you never know. C'mon, have a mint.

SESSION: Ah'd really rather not.

TRUMP: (Holds out mint) Attorney? GEN-e-ral? (SESSIONS takes the mint.) Makes your breath nice. I eat 'em like candy when I'm boffing Melania. It's the little things that make a marriage.

[Sound of toilet flush. SESSIONS looks with slight alarm at TRUMP.]

TRUMP. Relax, people come and go around here.

SESSION: (nervous laughter) I hope you don't plan on runnin' the White House that-a-way!

TRUMP: Just you wait.

[SERGEY KISLYAK saunters in, dressed in a bathrobe and gold chains. He and TRUMP exchange bear hugs.]

TRUMP: Sergey! You get the fruit basket? Whoo! I smell vodka.

KISLYAK: (turning toward SESSIONS) So -- is munchkin our new friend? (grabs SESSIONS' hands) You have tiny face like babushka!

SESSIONS: Thank you, Mistah, uh --

KISLYAK: (puts finger to lips, then returns to grasping a nervous SESSIONS' hands) I have no name.

TRUMP: Yeah, he looks like the Russian Ambassador, but really he's just from housekeeping.

KISLYAK: Yes, I am like how you say the plumbers. And now we are all plumbers. Like the Nixon plumbers! But these plumbers, they don't go to jail -- hah, Meester Attorneys General? Ba ha ha ha!

SESSIONS: (yanks hands away) Pahdon me, suh! (Goes to TRUMP, whispers urgently) What in tarnation are you doin', Mistah Trump? Ah can't be meetin' with the Russians and you at the same tahm! It ain't seemly!

TRUMP: Look, you can't put the ketchup back in the bottle, Jeffy. What's done is done. Now you got two choices: You can resign from the campaign -- but you can't say why, because of the NDA, so you'll just look like a big dummy. Or you can stay and have some snacks and listen to my good friend Sergey from housekeeping talk about international policy.

SESSION: (swallows hard, sits on couch) Ah think ah will have thet drink now. Y'all have any sour mash?

TRUMP: Try the Trump Bourbon. The best bourbon or sour mash or whatever you people call it. Made from potatoes. Sergey, what'll you have?

KISLYAK: Syria! (He and TRUMP laugh.) More vodka, tovarich. And maybe prostitute.

TRUMP: (dialing room service) That's what I like to see -- everyone relaxed and having a good time. Now, Sergei -- what's it worth to our "friend" to get Alaska back?

LITTLE AMERICA.

Like the old joke punchline goes: You know it's Moses, I know it's Moses -- business is business. Since Trump mainly pulled his punches on the media (but not immgrants, he still hates them!), sprinkled in some pretty promises on infrastructure and family leave, and particularly led the audience in clapping for a military widow instead of saying he likes Navy SEALs who don't get killed, his speech has been widely counted a success by even allegedly woke media hands like Van Jones. It's not because they don't know any better. They know their audience will go for all the bullshit and they don't want to be seen as harshing the buzz with fact-checks and other boring treason. Business is business! And they want that lollipop.

The whole thing's a disgrace, but there's one part that no one else seems to have noticed that bugs me:

Then, in 2016, the earth shifted beneath our feet. The rebellion started as a quiet protest, spoken by families of all colors and creeds --- families who just wanted a fair shot for their children, and a fair hearing for their concerns.

But then the quiet voices became a loud chorus -- as thousands of citizens now spoke out together, from cities small and large, all across our country.

Finally, the chorus became an earthquake -- and the people turned out by the tens of millions, and they were all united by one very simple, but crucial demand, that America must put its own citizens first ... because only then, can we truly MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

Since we became a great nation, our official rhetoric has been (excepting certain lapses) increasingly aspirational and inclusive -- the language of mission and sacrifice, of reaching beyond oneself: "you shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold," "the world must be made safe for democracy," "rendezvous with destiny," "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend," "a thousand points of light," etc. You may have as I do mixed feelings about the sentiments, or even purely negative ones, but that's how we've been, and now we have a change. Now, even though our country is stinking rich and mighty, the language of outreach and aspiration is being replaced with "Where's mine?" Maybe it's to be expected that, after decades of our ruling class squeezing the life out of the rest of us, citizens would turn bitter and insular and less inclined to embrace the idea of a shared destiny. But the transition from the dignity of the working man to the anger of the WWC is, in my estimation, not progress.

IT STARTS WHEN YOU'RE ALWAYS AFRAID.

If you saw Trump in his Fox and Friends interview saying that Obama is sabotaging him --

"...Do you believe President Obama is behind it and if he is, is that a violation of the so-called unsaid presidents' code?" Trump was asked.

"No, I think he is behind it. I also think it is politics, that's the way it is," Trump replied.

Trump then discussed the leaks that have disrupted his first month in office.

"You never know what's exactly happening behind the scenes. You know, you're probably right or possibly right, but you never know," Trump said in the interview, a clip of which was released Monday night. "No, I think that President Obama is behind it because his people are certainly behind it. And some of the leaks possibly come from that group, which are really serious because they are very bad in terms of national security. But I also understand that is politics. In terms of him being behind things, that's politics. And it will probably continue."

-- and you were wondering, "what the fuck is wrong with this fucktard's brain?" it might help to look at the site that was till recently managed by his chief strategist, where they run stories like "SEVEN WAYS OBAMA IS TRYING TO SABOTAGE THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION," with such compelling proof points as "Let’s not forget Obama’s acts of rhetorical sabotage, such as describing Trump’s presidential campaign as a crime against American class and racial harmony, or his wife wailing that all hope was lost for America’s children." Or at another, longer-lived propaganda mill, the New York Post, Paul Sperry, explaining "How Obama is scheming to sabotage Trump’s presidency." Apparently the former President told supporters to “move forward to protect what we’ve accomplished" and Eric Holder is trying to stop "what he and Obama call GOP 'gerrymandering' of congressional districts." Why, in an enlightened modern state like Russia that'd get you thrown in jail.

Also, two government employees who served under Obama's communications advisor Ben Rhodes have quit since Trump got in, and written about why they quit in magazines. To most of you that's "no shit," but to Kristinn Taylor it's "Obama Scheme to Sabotage Trump Admin With High Profile Moles Exposed?" Her report, largely cribbed from The Weekly Standard, contains such bombshells as "Smith also reports sources said Ahmed did not actually work all her eight days at the Trump administration, that she took off several days and only worked four days." Taylor also calls on Congress to "investigate Barack Obama, Ben Rhodes and others in this unprecedented abuse of power to sabotage national security and the Trump administration."

So it may well be that Trump is paranoid, but paranoia is also part of the plan. These hobgoblin stories may only affect the most deranged, inbred, hate-crazed citizens, but you have to remember: they're his base.