I suppose it’s time for a confession: I’ve never been a Republican and never said I was. I’ve been an independent since the early ’80s and was a Democrat before that. If you’re disappointed, well, sorry. It’s not I who has changed.
Jesus H. Christ in a Kentucky Fried Chicken Bucket on a Private Plane. You don’t get to DO THIS, as Driftglass at the link explains so well.
You don’t get to dine out on being one of these people — working for the Weekly Standard of all non-ideological, independent places — for years, make your money, make your bones, and then when it is no longer convenient for you and people are starting to look at you at parties like you just ripped a ginormous fart, say you were never even THERE to begin with.
Let’s remember Kathleen Parker’s storied independence over the years, shall we? Let’s remember what she had to say about that completely bipartisan, non-divisive president, George W. Bush:
Nearly everyone who has known Bush up closer than a video clip has a different impression of him than what is more popularly accepted. The arrogant, swaggering caricature of the 43rd president was mostly a shield. Bravado of the “bring ’em on” variety was more personal jab than foreign policy statement, though one suspects that Bush enjoyed the sound of tiny feet scurrying to keyboards in search of deeper meaning.
Obviously what a president says and does is fair game for criticism. The way Bush chose to express himself was the way he would be perceived and judged. To act arrogantly is to be arrogant in the public eye. To speak awkwardly is to be awkward.
But in private, Bush was a very different man.
He was nice to her this one time! That should transcend the THOUSANDS OF ACTUAL DEAD PEOPLE who are in that state of not being alive due to the lies he told and allowed others to tell, not to mention how he let that whole city drown one time.
BYGONES!
Let’s never forget that hippies were smelly:
Reading the yes-butters, I keep free-associating to the final scene of “Sleeping With the Enemy,” after actress Julia Roberts has shot her raping, tyrannical husband. The audience titters in dread, hoping he’s dead but suspecting a final lurch from near-death to unleash a fatal blow.
Here’s the connection: While those who supported the coalition assault on Iraq really do hope Saddam is dead and cautiously celebrate the demise of his regime, the anti-war gang, we suspect, is hopeful that he will yet spring again from near-death and make us wrong after all.
[snip]
Those who supported the war policy had no special sixth sense, no claim to revelation or prescience. Rather they possessed an unambiguous moral clarity.
Unambiguous moral clarity. That’s what was important. FEELINGS.
God, public “independents” are just jerking off all damn day long. Look at me, I’m too good to join a party. Look at me, I’m too principled to fall for ideology like you sheeple. Look at me, I’m too vast in my complexity to be contained by something as silly as commitment to an issue or set of them, say, teaching people to read and curing disease. Look at me, I’m not with those hippies who want food for poor people to be a thing we can do.
Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.
Astonishing to me that she and Trump don’t get along.
A.
Athenae: I remember your great commentary about KP when she wrote about how shocked she was to discover that many of her readers were such jerks. It’s hard to measure up to that column you wrote probably 10 years ago. I really liked it and complimented you on it at the time. This was a good effort too…it’s hard to imagine a self-described Democrat working for the Weekly Standard. keep up the good work. I don’t email often, but I do read your stuff regularly.