Profiles in cowardice
"He's a Hitler lover. I guess he's an anti-Semite. He doesn't like the blacks. He doesn't like the gays. It's just incredible that anybody could embrace this guy."
Identify the speaker and win a brass figlagee. (Hint: it's from nineteen years ago.) It's a very accurate description of Patrick Buchanan, and he's back. Yes, Maryland Public Television, for reasons probably having to do with a cash infusion from Sinclair Broadcasting, has hired the Nixon-era thug to be part of a newly launched McLaughlin Group. (John McLaughlin died in 2016, but the re-animators are working to bring him back.) It won't be long before MPT shares the bounty with your local site for cooking, gardening, Celtic Woman and endless reruns of Downton Abbey, unless you stop buying their totebags and Andrea Bocelli DVDs and tell them exactly why. It's not a free-speech issue or a dearth-of-conservative-voices (hah!) issue, or even a nostalgia issue. It's a very bad man who says vile things and always has, because he really believes the wrong side won the Second World War. There may be a clown at your local tavern who says vile things, too, but we don't put him on public television. Media Matters has a short guide to Buchanan's nasty-ass career.
I won't keep you in suspense: our opening quotation comes from Donald J. Trump, who would soon adopt and enlarge on every one of Buchanan's positions, adding immigrants, Muslims, environmentalists and the media. If you miss McLaughlin, count on him to re-tweet every bit of Buchanan's oral flatulence, assuming he can find WETA on his cable box. Trump is more than usually impressed with himself today, having convinced Benjamin Netanyahu to bar Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from Israel because they support BDS but really because they are Muslim. BDS -- boycott-divestment-sanctions -- is a loose coalition demanding better treatment for Israel's captive Palestinian population through the same peaceful methods that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa (which Trump probably considers another bad thing). Israel has of course passed a law barring such "terrorists" from the country, but these are members of Congress. Does Bibi imagine he'll look stronger by running away from two women? Legislators from the country that pays his bills, part of the Democratic majority that controls the House? All his action proves is that a coward is a bully turned inside out.
The coward/bullies in Beijing are ramping up to make Hong Kong a second Tiananmen Square. The protesters haven't gone away and the police are not inflicting enough pain for the government's taste. Moreover, Xi knows that the dolt in the White House will not do anything in the name of human rights, a concept that has never put a dollar in his sweaty hands. With all their economic power and their stranglehold on the government, the rulers of China can't think of any way to solve a problem except violence and lots of it. A coward/bully has to win every pissing contest.
And has to win big. As the next "election" approaches, thousands of Russians have put their affairs in order, said goodbye to loved ones and joined pro-democracy demonstrations in Moscow and other cities. The official reaction has ranged from Trump-like verbal abuse ("homosexuals, gypsies, hooligans") to brutal, masked police to Putin's favorite solution, poison. (Alexei Navalny, described by The Wall Street Journal as "the man Vladimir Putin fears most," had an "allergic reaction" in police custody the other day. Hey, I'm allergic to polonium, too.) The lawyer Lyubov Sobol has been on a hunger strike for three weeks and nobody knows where she is, or if she is still alive. Elections are coming, and if Trump's boss doesn't get 95% of the vote he's just a bear. Maybe he can import some of those voting machines being built in China by one of Ivanka's companies.
No, I didn't make that last part up. This is not The Onion.
Identify the speaker and win a brass figlagee. (Hint: it's from nineteen years ago.) It's a very accurate description of Patrick Buchanan, and he's back. Yes, Maryland Public Television, for reasons probably having to do with a cash infusion from Sinclair Broadcasting, has hired the Nixon-era thug to be part of a newly launched McLaughlin Group. (John McLaughlin died in 2016, but the re-animators are working to bring him back.) It won't be long before MPT shares the bounty with your local site for cooking, gardening, Celtic Woman and endless reruns of Downton Abbey, unless you stop buying their totebags and Andrea Bocelli DVDs and tell them exactly why. It's not a free-speech issue or a dearth-of-conservative-voices (hah!) issue, or even a nostalgia issue. It's a very bad man who says vile things and always has, because he really believes the wrong side won the Second World War. There may be a clown at your local tavern who says vile things, too, but we don't put him on public television. Media Matters has a short guide to Buchanan's nasty-ass career.
I won't keep you in suspense: our opening quotation comes from Donald J. Trump, who would soon adopt and enlarge on every one of Buchanan's positions, adding immigrants, Muslims, environmentalists and the media. If you miss McLaughlin, count on him to re-tweet every bit of Buchanan's oral flatulence, assuming he can find WETA on his cable box. Trump is more than usually impressed with himself today, having convinced Benjamin Netanyahu to bar Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from Israel because they support BDS but really because they are Muslim. BDS -- boycott-divestment-sanctions -- is a loose coalition demanding better treatment for Israel's captive Palestinian population through the same peaceful methods that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa (which Trump probably considers another bad thing). Israel has of course passed a law barring such "terrorists" from the country, but these are members of Congress. Does Bibi imagine he'll look stronger by running away from two women? Legislators from the country that pays his bills, part of the Democratic majority that controls the House? All his action proves is that a coward is a bully turned inside out.
The coward/bullies in Beijing are ramping up to make Hong Kong a second Tiananmen Square. The protesters haven't gone away and the police are not inflicting enough pain for the government's taste. Moreover, Xi knows that the dolt in the White House will not do anything in the name of human rights, a concept that has never put a dollar in his sweaty hands. With all their economic power and their stranglehold on the government, the rulers of China can't think of any way to solve a problem except violence and lots of it. A coward/bully has to win every pissing contest.
And has to win big. As the next "election" approaches, thousands of Russians have put their affairs in order, said goodbye to loved ones and joined pro-democracy demonstrations in Moscow and other cities. The official reaction has ranged from Trump-like verbal abuse ("homosexuals, gypsies, hooligans") to brutal, masked police to Putin's favorite solution, poison. (Alexei Navalny, described by The Wall Street Journal as "the man Vladimir Putin fears most," had an "allergic reaction" in police custody the other day. Hey, I'm allergic to polonium, too.) The lawyer Lyubov Sobol has been on a hunger strike for three weeks and nobody knows where she is, or if she is still alive. Elections are coming, and if Trump's boss doesn't get 95% of the vote he's just a bear. Maybe he can import some of those voting machines being built in China by one of Ivanka's companies.
No, I didn't make that last part up. This is not The Onion.
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 11:49 AM
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