The proximate start to this shitty blog was a thrown gauntlet on this Lawyers, Guns and Money thread.  When gauntlets are thrown I pick them the fuck up.

But more generally I have listened to a lot of bullshit and scoffed at a lot of lies while paying attention to political discourse, and the absolute most goddamn smug and condescending and facile analysis comes from “centrists” or people promoting the idea that “centrism” is a rare and precious political act.

I can put up with a lot of abuse.  I watched the entirety of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, for some reason.  (I was in a dark place).  But when you insult my intelligence in a condescending way I take it fucking personal.  And when you make paeans to a certain incoherent political ideal or analyze events in a certain idiotic manner and then have the balls to say that everyone who doesn’t agree with your shitty mistakes is either dumb or dishonest, that’s what you fucking do.

But really the worst part about centrist media figures, and the reason to start a blog which revolves around insulting profanity, is that the schtick of these shits is pervasive and influential.  Every show on NPR has at least one centrist.  PBS news programming rests exclusively on centrist assumptions of politics and issues.  The only people on cable news outlets that aren’t drowning in centrist Kool-Aid are Erik Erikson, Dana Loesch and Paul Krugman.  (Nice little club for the Red Staters).  Even goddamn Fox News, who you think would be the most wiling to just toss the whole pretense and swallow corporatism whole, has more analysts than not working within a centrist framework.  I don’t even want to think about newspaper editorial stables because I don’t want to get vomit on my computer.

Centrism is respected, it is the norm, it is the professional standard.  And part of the reason this limp bullshit became the preferred material with which to construct huge towers of media production is that it self-regulates itself.  People get their info from the news; the news tells them centrist twaddle; people begin to trust centrist twaddle; it becomes easier to promote the twaddle than combat the twaddle; the twaddle becomes more pervasive; more people see it on the news; and Simba ascends the throne in the circle of life.

One of my older relatives recently got into The Big Short and Winner Take All Politics in a big way.  Thought that this stuff was stuff everyone knew.  Didn’t know why anyone would doubt it.   And I ask him where in the emm ess emm people can go to learn the ins and out of this stuff.  And he says “Charlie Rose”.

The guy who heard this from the guy he was interviewing on a nationally syndicated and respected news show at a time of great national importance and treated it like gospel.

No.  The cycle must be broken.

Saddle up bitches, it’s gonna be fun.