There's a one-liner that has been floating around forever about Harvard University being "a hedge fund with a university attached to it for tax purposes."
It's funny/not funny in the same way (segue approaching) that pointing out that the Republican Party is a belligerently ignorant, reprogrammable and often racist mob with a party platform attached to it for tax-cutting purposes is also funny/not funny (segue achieved!)
That's it. It really is that simple, and it has been really just that simple and obvious for a really long time. Which is why this from Charles Blow earlier this week (" A Rebel, a Warrior and a Race Fiend ") reads the same whether the subject is "Donald Trump" --
...
Trump is not a proper leader for any moment or any conversation, let alone this moment and this conversation.
Trump has no desire to advance truth and reconciliation when it comes to race in this country. His venality and vulgarity seeks only to exploit white racial anxiety and hostility, in the most vulgar of terms, to maximum political gain.
With every passing day, Trump diminishes the office of the presidency and elevates a virulent strain of racial animus. Trumpism is becoming ever more synonymous with racism.
-- or the Republican Party as a whole.
Donald Trump is a petty, vindictive, racist ignoramus and pathological liar who resonates powerfully with the base of the Republican party for the simple reason that they are, in the main, petty, vindictive ignorami who have been trained by decades of conditioning via Fox News and Hate Radio to mindlessly accept as gospel any comforting bullshit that comes from the mouths of pathological Republican liars.
I don't know how many different ways we can say it.
A = C
B = C
Therefor A = B.
Trump is the Party and the Party is Trump. How much walloping-them-in-the-head-with-a-shovel does this has to be before the media will start speaking of our national political disaster in those terms?
How about this?
Moore is the Party and the Party is Moore.
And since this is obviously and empirically true, the inevitable next question is equally obvious and inexorable: Why does our Fourth Estate -- an American civic institution unique among all others in that it literally exists for no other purpose than keeping the public informed of critical facts, issues and events, especially in times of danger -- categorically refuse to accept this obviously and empirically demonstrable fact as true, and then proceed from there?
In this matter, I am as one with Brother Charlie Pierce.
I’m Out of Empathy. I’m Out of Pity. I’m Out of Patience.
Roy Moore is a lawless theocratic lunatic, and those who support him are destroying our democracy.
...
Any report about Roy Moore that doesn’t specifically refer to him as a right-wing extremist is not worth your time. No more “firebrand.” No more impotent yap about his “controversial views.” Roy Moore is an extremist or the word no longer has meaning. If, as appears likely, he gets elected to the Senate from Alabama, then a majority of Alabama voters are extremists, too. If he gets elected, then the Republican Party ever more should be referred to as an extremist party. That, of course, is if we’re being honest about what’s really going on in this country in 2017.
But of course we're not being honest about what's really going on in 2017, are we? In fact, it would be fair to say that our corporate news media now devotes a significant fraction of the enormous resources at its command to making god damn certain that we never talk about what's really going on in 2017 -- that, as I have mentioned once or twice before, the GOP is a machine built to destroy the federal government and eliminate taxes for the wealthy, and all else is mere commentary.
Which is exactly how a once-great nation ends up with a lying, racist, pig-ignorant Republican madman in the White House.
A lawless theocratic Republican lunatic well on his way to the World's Greatest Deliberative Body.
Crossposted from Driftglass
