Comet Ping-Pong Gunman: "The Intel On This Wasn't 100%"
Ya don't say?
He actually sounds like a nice guy who made the mistake of believing what he heard in the right-wing echo chamber.
We've talked about that before around these parts. American conservatives now commonly assert, repeat, and believe things which entail that anyone who cares about American democracy ought to start shooting people. The official theory of the crackpot right is that President Obama is intentionally trying to destroy the country. Behold Mr. Welch who seems to have the right sentiments, and doesn't seem to be a dummy. Anyone who genuinely believed that there was a child sex slave ring operating with impunity down t' th' local Chuck-E-Cheese would be a monster and a coward for not taking real steps to save the victims. Welch's error isn't a moral error, it's an epistemic one. And this is the sort of insanity that the GOP is not only tolerating but fostering and contributing to.
American conservatism has become unhinged.
(Which is not to say that American liberalism is all that much better. I dipped a toe back in CNN last night, only to see Kayleigh McEnany and some other bimbo yelling at each other. Liberal bimbo insisted over and over and over that TRUMP DID SAY THAT ALL MEXICANS ARE RAPISTS. It's false, it's obviously false, it's demonstrably false, anyone who is speaking publicly on the topic is either lying or ignorant if they say otherwise...yet there she was. McEnany, for her part, insisted that Trump had not contributed at all to divisiveness in American politics...on the grounds that it was already divisive before! See? Absolutely jaw-dropping. I mean, my jaw literally dropped and hung open and I turned it off after like five minutes. At least there's some small chance that what McEnany said could be true. At least it's in the realm of the not-immediately-falsifiable... It's still pretty nuts...but honestly, it struck me as a kind of distillation of contemporary liberalism, too. Up against somebody who was obviously wrong, the liberal still managed to be wronger...and more dogmatic.)
He actually sounds like a nice guy who made the mistake of believing what he heard in the right-wing echo chamber.
We've talked about that before around these parts. American conservatives now commonly assert, repeat, and believe things which entail that anyone who cares about American democracy ought to start shooting people. The official theory of the crackpot right is that President Obama is intentionally trying to destroy the country. Behold Mr. Welch who seems to have the right sentiments, and doesn't seem to be a dummy. Anyone who genuinely believed that there was a child sex slave ring operating with impunity down t' th' local Chuck-E-Cheese would be a monster and a coward for not taking real steps to save the victims. Welch's error isn't a moral error, it's an epistemic one. And this is the sort of insanity that the GOP is not only tolerating but fostering and contributing to.
American conservatism has become unhinged.
(Which is not to say that American liberalism is all that much better. I dipped a toe back in CNN last night, only to see Kayleigh McEnany and some other bimbo yelling at each other. Liberal bimbo insisted over and over and over that TRUMP DID SAY THAT ALL MEXICANS ARE RAPISTS. It's false, it's obviously false, it's demonstrably false, anyone who is speaking publicly on the topic is either lying or ignorant if they say otherwise...yet there she was. McEnany, for her part, insisted that Trump had not contributed at all to divisiveness in American politics...on the grounds that it was already divisive before! See? Absolutely jaw-dropping. I mean, my jaw literally dropped and hung open and I turned it off after like five minutes. At least there's some small chance that what McEnany said could be true. At least it's in the realm of the not-immediately-falsifiable... It's still pretty nuts...but honestly, it struck me as a kind of distillation of contemporary liberalism, too. Up against somebody who was obviously wrong, the liberal still managed to be wronger...and more dogmatic.)
posted by Winston Smith at
8:08 AM
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