I joined the “Church” of George Carlin several years ago, his many youtube epistles ’splains it all…………..

Someone once said “Know your enemy” (Lao Tzu?) and everything we witness elevation of some lamentably stupid wingnut pundit many wonder about their constituency, even supposing that it must be more widespread than it really is.

The support of Kristol with such an award, financing of tea parties and conservative think tanks always seems to have some billionaire at its source…someone with all this money and no reasonable place for it to go except to influence the system to maintain or increase the flow through their profit spigot. This influence ensures no healthcare, threatens social security, and continues to decimate the middle class towards extinction.

So there’s an entire industry that supports these people and it has almost unlimited funds. It has the ability to blow itself up like a puffer fish and look big…ostensibly legion when it is only amply financed with a surgical precision given the controlling interests in almost all our media.

Maybe we will someday be bolstered by the strength of our own numbers. I hope so.

Thanks for the Frank quote.

I respectfully have to disagree with that. The right uses the same excuse for Rush, Hannity, Beck, all those fucks, but the fact is they really seem to be the primary source of wingnut power. They influence, shape and follow republican policy more effectively than the elected wingnuts. They are not entertainers; they are the center of the conservative movement.

With all due respect, I beg to offer a third explanation:

Bill Kristol does not really hold the positions he consistently advocates in his public personna. It’s all bullshit in the strict Harry Frankfurt definition — pro-forma untruths that are known at the time of telling to be untrue, both by the teller and by the audience. Kristol is an entertainer, pretending to be much more stupid than he is, because that’s his bread and butter: mouthing the Straight Movement Conservative Position no matter how ludicrous it makes him look to other educated persons. He’s playing to the rubes, and was (in the beginning at least) laughing all the way to the bank.

But as L. Ron Hubbard famously discovered, once you start down the road of living a lie, it’s difficult to prevent the madness you espouse from seeping back into your personality. Kristol’s prevarications have become his Body Thetans, clinging to him, shaping his worldview, distorting his perceptions, until he can no longer distinguish the boundaries between the performer and the performance.

I pity him.

I wonder who the next generation of Republican leaders will be? Helen-the-WalMart-greeter, Jeff-the-drug-dealer, or Tom-with-only-18-chromosomes?