"The progressives are the modern Puritans. The Massachusetts Bay Colony is alive and well on the Potomac and Twitter. They eviscerate their natural allies for not being pure enough.... The politics of purism makes people stupid. And nasty.... The progressives’ cry that they don’t care about the political consequences because they have a higher cause is just a purity racket. Their mantra is like that of Ferdinand I, the Holy Roman Emperor: 'Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.' 'Let justice be done, though the world perish.' The rest of us more imperfect beings don’t want the world to perish. And maybe justice can be done, without losing the White House, the House, chocolate, high heels, parties and fun."
From "Spare Me the Purity Racket" by Maureen Dowd (NYT).
The top-rated comment over there begins "No" and includes: "why do you care if your high heels, parties and chocolates are criticized?... Democrats shouldn't back down on anything. This just says nothing matters anymore, not the law, not morality, not norms, not decency.... Democrats must fight, fight, fight to save our country."
Dowd is fighting back after she was criticized for eating chocolate with Nancy Pelosi and saying something nice about Pelosi's shoes as if they were "decadent aristocrats reveling like Marie Antoinette."
95 comments:
They've already started condemning each other as aristos and proles!?! Someone pass the popcorn.
Capt. Harris: Be advised, we got zips in the wire, down here.
Pilot: Roger your last, Bravo Six. Can't run it any closer. We're hot to trot and packin' snake and nape, but we're bingo fuel.
Capt. Harris: For the record, it's my call. Dump everything you've got left on my POS. I say again, expend all remaining in my perimeter. It's a lovely f***ing war. Bravo Six out.
Pilot: Roger your last, Bravo Six. For the copy, it's your call. Get 'em in their holes down there. Hang tough, Bravo Six. We are coming cocked for treetops.
Dowd and NYTimes fighting for the proles.
Approved to Eliminate Kulaks.
Let them eat high heels.
"why do you care if your high heels, parties and chocolates are criticized?... Democrats shouldn't back down on anything. This just says nothing matters anymore, not the law, not morality, not norms, not decency.... Democrats must fight, fight, fight to save our country."
how should before dems order everyone to where black, because it hides the dirt?
This just says nothing matters anymore, not the law, not morality, not norms, not decency...
Nothing matters except the party
Mo Do will secretly vote for Trump in 2020 - along with most of the country.
Dowd and NYTimes fighting for the proles.
Thank God someone is.
"The Republicans were impressively craven and hypocritical. They are sticking with Trump, and no pallid reminder of his turpitude, his trellis of obstructions and his unpatriotic embrace of foreign interference in our elections, will change that."
Looks like Dowd swallowed a dictionary last night.
"I would like to stay up ’til dawn the night a Democrat wins next year because I’m so excited to see the moment when the despicable Donald Trump lumbers into a Marine helicopter and flies away for good."
Whoops looks like the dream of our winning over M. Dowd will never happen.
Rcocean
His catena of malfeasances, floccinaucinihilipilified.
"The attempt to impeach Trump is one of the rare cases in which something obviously justified is obviously stupid."
Last extract. i don't read her -usually. But this proves she's a complete Left-wing hack, assuming there was any doubt.
Mo Dowd was hot ---- 30 years ago.
Nancy Pelosi was hot -- 40 years ago.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hot -- 50 years ago.
I guess "Mother" Time is undefeated too.
Let them eat chocolates!
This is all prep work by Biden's people. The only way he can win the election is to have his own Sista Souljah moment and knock down the worst excesses on his far left. If the Democrats go into the general election on an anti-"manspreading" platform they'll lose, and they'll lose big.
I don't think Dowd or Pelosi have what it takes to win over wavering Republicans. Why is Pelosi never described as the wife of a rich banker, a banker who became immeasurably richer during her years of service? That would be the standard apposition clause if she were a Republican. Is there a single prole in America sees their struggles and hopes writ large in the visage of Nancy Pelosi and the prose of Maureen Dowd......A few kind words about Marie Antoinette. She spent a fair amount of money on jewels. Napoleon, by way of contrast, built ten thousand skows for an invasion of England. Her jewels, the ones that are still around, have appreciated in value over the years. Pelosi's hubby probably could afford a some earrings for her. Make a nice anniversary gift. Napoleon's skows, if they served any purpose at all, were used mostly as firewood and did not appreciate in value. Marie Antoinette's jewels were by far the more prudent investment.
"A trellis (treillage) is an architectural structure, usually made from an open framework or lattice of interwoven or intersecting pieces of wood, bamboo or metal that is normally made to support and display climbing plants, especially shrubs."
Well, who knew? Other than Meade. Maybe.
It's weird how impeachment is "obviously" justified, but when you get down to brass tacks they have no evidence for the "obvious".
Eh... what? Trellis is a pretty common word.
You're messing with my mind Ken. B. Now, i will have to google "catena"
Night everyone.
If the law truly doesn't matter, there's no country to fight for. If the majority of Americans believe that is the truth, they will cleave to their tribes, whatever those may be. Bloody conflict will be inevitable.
Pelosi and Cummings spotted eating dinner tonight in a 5 star restaurant in Venice, Italy.
The Democrats are basically jettisoning their former raison d'etre of income inequality in favor of social justice and identity politics. Tackling income inequality is a thorny problem. All it takes to succeed in the latter is wait for demographics to do their work.
Maureen Dowd: "The politics of purism makes people stupid. And nasty."
If anyone knows nasty, it's vicious Maureen Dowd.
“It's weird how impeachment is "obviously" justified, but when you get down to brass tacks they have no evidence for the "obvious".”
Something repeatedly affirmed in the comments to Dowd’s column. It’s an article of faith that Trump should be impeached, yet no one can articulate exactly why. It’s fascinating. They’re like Heaven’s Gate cultists. The spaceship is coming. Every non-deplorable person knows that.
What's the word for when the critique proves the premise?
Because that top rated comment does exactly that.
Kevin,
Where did that come from?
John Henry
I have no liking for MoDo and the NYT, so I'm not going to read what she wrote.
The SIC Old Ladies are sick of the snowflakes!
> "The progressives are the modern Puritans. The Massachusetts Bay Colony is alive and well on the Potomac and Twitter. They eviscerate their natural allies for not being pure enough....
All you can do is LAUGH as their ideological progeny come for Dowdy and Bidet.
Pandora... Box...
> All it takes to succeed in the latter is wait for demographics to do their work.
And help the demographics along by opening the border via decriminalization and putting out the bait with free health care.
If you didn't like the WASPs
just replace 'em with third worlders.
Congratulations to MoDo for figuring out what many Trump voters realized a few years back. It's not like Trump voters were clutching pearls because he was twice divorced.
"The progressives are the modern Puritans."
Didn't George H.W. Bush say this in 1992?
Something's gone wrong in the last sentence of the post.
Meh. I like Maureen Dowd's columns generally, because they are provocative, generally. This one was phoned-in. After saying she wasn't Marie Antoinette, she spent precious column space talking down to the "always-ready-to-be-aggrieved" Trump supporters. What she doesn't get, what she has never gotten, and what most Never Trumpers fail to get is, he was elected by lots of folks, not just the unwashed masses.
This is all reminiscent of 1789 and the rise of Robespierre.Even Peggy Noonan sees it.
We start with the moral and political catastrophe that was the French Revolution. It was more a nationwide psychotic break than a revolt—a great nation at its own throat, swept by a spirit not only of regicide but suicide. For 10 years they simply enjoyed killing each other. They could have done what England was doing—a long nonviolent revolution, a gradual diminution of the power of king and court, an establishment of the rights of the people and their legislators so that the regent ended up a lovely person on a stamp. Instead they chose blood. Scholars like to make a distinction between the Revolution and the Terror that followed, but “the Terror was merely 1789 with a higher body count.” From the Storming of the Bastille onward, “it was apparent that violence was not just an unfortunate side effect. . . . It was the Revolution’s source of collective energy. It was what made the Revolution revolutionary.”
The Bourgeoisie did not have AR 15s and the sans culottes were not the snowflakes of today.
A large portion of the Democratic base are raving lunatics, made that way by propaganda outfits like the NYT, WaPoo, and the network news. And don't think those outlets don't know what they are doing. They may end up with blood up to their elbows, as Khrushchev once said of himself.
Young people with a lot of debt don’t like to see their rich, white leaders living like royalty.
Soon Antifa will bust up the Cocktail Parties. Don’t bother calling the police. They aren’t coming.
(eaglebeak)
Memories: When Dowd complained she couldn't get a date because men fear intelligent women....
John Henry - near the end of Platoon.
Love the comment about “the law.”
There are over 12 million here illegally.
Progressives don’t give a shit about the law. They’d also be demanding the executive branch arrest and prosecute all the pot dispensaries throughout the US.
We are a nation of very selective enforcement. So people should feel free to obey or disobey the laws as they choose. Only a dim witted Judge talks about The Rule of Law anymore.
Shorter MoDo: Elites like me deserve our luxuries; why can't you dirty proles see that?
oh and down with Trump.
Does, like Pelosi, is old. But given the rapid ascension of the Pure Progressives, they will live long enough to see their own demise. No one is going to save them.
Bob Loblaw
Yes, trellis is a common word. And a simple one. It takes imagination to misuse it. But I guess that’s why Dowd gets the big bucks.
Take away chocolate and there goes the women’s vote in 2020. They’ll vote for Trump or not at all.
""Yo, proletariat: If the Democratic Party is going to be against chocolate, high heels, parties and fun, you’ve lost me. And I’ve got some bad news for you about 2020.""
Bullshit. I don't care if you are against any of those. I disagree with you but we can be friends and citizens of the same country.
"The Republicans were impressively craven and hypocritical. They are sticking with Trump, and no pallid reminder of his turpitude, his trellis of obstructions and his unpatriotic embrace of foreign interference in our elections, will change that."
If you support spying on political opponents, an end to due process and equal justice under the law as Maureen Dowd clearly is, you are my enemy. Everything in this article is a pack of lies.
Period.
These scum bags cannot be allowed to hide under a rock. Just because their antifa allies are turning on them doesn't mean we can let them off.
They are only mad at each other because they are losing.
The media remind me of the Spanish American War:
It was the first conflict in which military action was precipitated by media involvement. The war grew out of U.S. interest in a fight for revolution between the Spanish military and citizens of their Cuban colony. American newspapers fanned the flames of interest in the war by fabricating atrocities which justified intervention in a number of Spanish colonies worldwide.
The Democrats are basically jettisoning their former raison d'etre of income inequality in favor of social justice and identity politics.
@Farmer, do you think someone pointed out that without the filthy rich, folks like Reid Hoffman, George Soros, Tom Steyer, they quite literally can’t keep the lights on?
Dowd is talking like this because she knows doom is on its way. Worse, she knows that Joe Biden will never possibly get over with Americans if a mammal with a triple digit IQ and sufficient ruthlessness destroys him. He won't even get the nomination.
Peggy Noonan and Maureen Dowd have rather similar approaches to the situation because of course they do! Same class, same stupid catty irrelevance, similar ages. They know the hard left will throw them out of their tony houses to starve in winter, if not eat them first. And frankly, I'm done saying Rule of Law on behalf of my enemies. Eat away, rabid socialists. I might even help unlock the doors for you.
Big Mike said...
@Farmer, do you think someone pointed out that without the filthy rich, folks like Reid Hoffman, George Soros, Tom Steyer, they quite literally can’t keep the lights on?
7/27/19, 10:41 PM
I understood what you said, but it's not quite correct. Removing the upper crust liberal billionaires and looting them makes it more likely that the lights will stay on for real Americans. The ones who depend on fat cat welfare, which includes most everyone in Washington DC, will suffer and starve, assuming the mob doesn't torture them to death first. But as the kids say, that's not a bug, that's a feature.
Bolsheviks v Mensheviks
For whom shall we root?
"Democrats shouldn't back down on anything"
As if we need to be reminded. Yes, progs, you want power ueber alles, always.
"it was apparent that violence was not just an unfortunate side effect. . . . It was the Revolution’s source of collective energy. It was what made the Revolution revolutionary."
Noonan discovers history. Which yours truly and a few other commentators here belabor year after year.
So, question for the Althouses and Noonans and Dowds of America, at what point do prog puritanism and violence turn you off once and for all? Which side are you on?
Birkel: "Bolsheviks v Mensheviks
For whom shall we root?"
Yes!!! We must help facilitate the success of both against each other.
'Come over to the dark side, maureen we have coomies' alternately you could talk to your brother, not that we care either way.
Bolsheviks won out because they had the will, also kerensky was foolish enough to hold back kornilov, which proved to Lenin there was no such will.
Drago said...
Yes!!! We must help facilitate the success of both against each other.
7/27/19, 11:22 PM
I second the motion. Though to be honest, the misguided rabid tankies are the underdogs, and have more moral right to being our countrymen than the ZERO RIGHT possessed by the increasingly terrified traitor aristocracy in New York. Eat the super-rich, kids, it does a body good.
Dowd is proving the biblical adage- you reap that which you sow.
I guess Maureen Dowd is tired of all the winning. But I'm not. And also I've been eating chocolate all along. And bacon. Looking at flowers. Trees reflected in water. No time at all spent on pronouns and privilege- repenting. Just reading poetry and history and supporting the elected President. No idiotic-feminist-supporting, no jargon, no pretending that stupidity is virtue. I never supported Hillary, Roman Polanski Anthony Wiener, Harvey Weinstein, AOC, or filth on the streets. Bad writing is bad and I know it when I read it. Laughing at jokes. I get to put my faith in Bob Barr, not Jerry Nadler. All because I support Trump and on that side you can do all the fun things and not do all the nasties. I would support him if we were losing but I've had Election Night 2016 and now I've had Mueller Unmasking Day. More to come...
Dowd and Pelosi ARE "decadent aristocrats reveling like Marie Antoinette." Today's progressives ARE the modern puritans. Everybody loses!
Mike
Today's progressives are all for social justice, as long as that doesn't involve giving up any privileges.
Agree with Ambrose 8:43
Dowd thinks the Republicans are craven and wicked because they vigorously defend Trump. If you don't think Trump is the worst person in the world, and is not a racist, you aren't being craven and wicked for defending him. You are doing what needs to be done to save the republic from people who are, themselves, wicked. People who oppose freedom of speech, people who are, themselves, racist, since they link race to merit, people do not believe that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty.
And please spare me the crap that you aren't an elite because your father was a plumber. I don't give f*ck who your parents were, Maureen.
LOL 9:01 emcee, so logical!
Blogger Birkel said...
Bolsheviks v Mensheviks
For whom shall we root?
The Mensheviks. They weren't totalitarians. They actually believed that the peasants and workers should have a say in the New Russia.
Ahhahahahahaha .... hahahahaha. Ha.
How old is that photograph she's using?
If "they" lose Dowd, they lose the country.
Looks like a clean sweep in 2020.
The left likes to talk about how Republicans worship Trump, can see no wrong, their party uber alles. But, of course, as anyone who follows American politics knows, there are roughly as many dedicated Republicans as there are dedicated Democrats, and each always votes for their candidate. The winner doesn’t secure their own votes, they secure the middle, they get the bulk of the votes that could go either way.
Trump wasn’t put in the White House by Republican voters. He was put there by Obama voters.
"The Democrats are basically jettisoning their former raison d'etre of income inequality in favor of social justice and identity politics. Tackling income inequality is a thorny problem. All it takes to succeed in the latter is wait for demographics to do their work.”
Well, they could do something about income inequality by simply limiting immigration, and I am not sure all of these new immigrants are all that woke. Once the demographics take over, it will become a system of racial group logrolling.
“Trellis" was a clunker, why didn’t she say “eaves trough of obstruction”? That would have been poetical. "lattice" might have worked.
And you tell me.... over and over and over again, that you don’t believe, we’re on the eaves of obstruction...
Hey Maureen, let’s talk about individual liberty, shall we?
I didn’t read every comment (too many, too repetitive, too stupid), but I saw zero people taking MoDo to task for partying with Democrats because she’s a journalist. Nope, it was all, “how could you make nice with these people who won’t impeach Trump?!”
Not one person bothered with the fig leaf of journalistic neutrality.
Dowd is crushingly correct in her evaluation. Today's left have all slid into something closely resembling a secular version the Donetist heresies which arose in the early Christian church. Donetism declared that if a priest were not perfect in his life, then his consecration of the Sacramental Elements (bread and wine) was invalid.
The Church wisely countered that it was not the priest, but the Holy Spirit himself who consecrated the elements as part of the mass. Remaining on the secular side, however, I would counter that it is not the politician or bureaucrat who consecrate our American polity, but rather our Constitution and other founding documents which were conceived and promulgated specifically to protect our polity from natural human imperfection.
It’s a top bottom against the middle coalition the Democrats have set up. Funded and directed by the top of course, because the enemy of the top has always been the middle, so Dowd is naive if she doesn’t expect a little dustup from time to time.
The Democrats are only about chocolate, high heels, parties, and fun. They just want to be the ones to determine who gets those things.
Jacobins.
"'Let justice be done, though the world perish.' The rest of us more imperfect beings don’t want the world to perish."
Let them eat each other. Their fake world full of fake justice needs to perish.
The rest of us imperfect beings will let you know when the real world is in danger of perishing as the result of real justice. Don't expect to hear from us soon...
Good to care about morality.
Now from where, exactly, does their morality come?
The wind? Their passion? Sand?
Kevin,
Where did that come from?
John Henry
John Henry - near the end of Platoon.
Correct.
They tell us that they are rock ribbed empiricists and believe that we all originated from a big bang and the operation of Darwin's theory.
Then they tell us that they have a deep morality, and they don't support the weak being eaten by the strong, and they're puzzled why we don't take them very seriously.
"Democrats (sic) shouldn't back down on anything..."
And the press will report them as centrists.
But the above statement is radical.
And it's why conservatives who believe in freedom will defend the God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Being aligned with the social justice mobs proves the illegitimacy of the Democrat party. Support for Trump has nothing to do with it. As long as the progressives ignore the cancers like antifa in their party, they'll get more Trump.
"The politics of purism makes people stupid. And nasty.... The progressives’ cry that they don’t care about the political consequences because they have a higher cause is just a purity racket."
More and more liberal writing these days consists of the author noting with astonishment (and with the air of someone sure he is offering an original insight) something that all the stupid, benighted people have been pointing out for years.
Dr.K: This is all reminiscent of 1789 and the rise of Robespierre.Even Peggy Noonan sees it.
Noonan is just another sad example of what I said @7:44. If she ever says something that comes near the true or insightful, be sure that somebody much braver and smarter and more honorable than she said it better 10-20 years ago, and paid dearly for it.
Oh, right. Insufficient admiration for Georgetown cocktail parties is why Trump won.
Did you notice her column was all about me, me, ME? Finally, after many paragraphs, she switches to the third person and presents her opinions as facts and in her words, those who disagree with her are "obviously stupid." She seems unaware she is not also the target of Trumpists as well as liberals scorn. More so, in fact.
When do they call other Democrats DINOs?
There is going to be plenty of great material for Republican political ads in 2020, but history shows they won't make great use of it. It will be very easy to simply show Democrats saying exactly what they say every day. A lot of it is just crazy stupid.
"When do they call other Democrats DINOs?"
Democrats only have one label to criticize people with regardless of the issue.
Democrats must fight, fight, fight to save our country.
Careful what you wish for, leftists.
You just might get it.
"There is going to be plenty of great material for Republican political ads in 2020, but history shows they won't make great use of it. It will be very easy to simply show Democrats saying exactly what they say every day. A lot of it is just crazy stupid."
I would give Sabo a few million dollars and see what he can do.
However, the GOP would never do this, and Sabo would never take the job.
Maureen Antoinette. Has a nice ring to it. Evocative.
The moral inferiority complex of the Left strikes again. So many on the Left are so, so desperate to feel like they are good people, but unwilling to do the requisite work of sustained good works to do so, that they search out other ways. The most used way is vilifying someone or some other practice, so merely by not being them or not doing the practice they already didn't do they convince themselves they are good.
Could one of these media people, or anyone, please explain the joy of all these cocktail parties? Why is that a positive?
"The progressives are the modern Puritans." And MoDo is just realizing this?
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