Delusions of squalor

Because apparently I hate myself, I decided it would be fun to wander over to the putatively respectable right wing media, to see what they’re saying right now about l’affaire Kavanaugh.  (Those of you who really love nothing more than a ripe mango are invited to dip a toe in the Breitbart et. al. cesspools).

Here are a couple of samples.  Rich Lowry in the National Review:

The attempted political assassination of Brett Kavanaugh is bad for the country, but good for a Trumpian attitude toward American politics.

The last-minute ambush validates key assumptions of Donald Trump’s supporters that fueled his rise and buttress him in office, no matter how rocky the ride has been or will become. At least three premises have been underlined by the tawdry events of the past couple of weeks.

First, that good character is no defense. If you are John McCain, who genuinely tried to do the right thing and carefully cultivated a relationship with the media over decades, they will still call you a racist when you run against Barack Obama.

This is totally fucking delusional.  No politician in American history ever got as much undeserved good press as John McCain.  Lowry’s claim doesn’t even get in the neighborhood of “wrong” — it’s stuck in the middle of batshit cray-cray.

Moving right along:

If you are Mitt Romney, an exceptionally earnest and decent man, they will make you into a heartless and despicable vulture capitalist, also for the offense of campaigning against Obama.

Here are a couple of examples of how “exceptionally earnest and decent” Mitt Romney has always been.

Again, this is pure fantasy land, as is the characteristic right-wing delusion that the big bad Media are in the bag for whoever the Democratic candidate for president happens to be.  To make this claim after the 2016 election requires either a total disconnect from reality, or brazen a willingness to tell the most outrageous imaginable lies.

Lowry goes on to argue that it’s just great that Donald Trump is president because look how unfair the media are being to St. Kavanaugh of Perpetual Chastity, so you have to fight fire with fire.  As always with these people, everything in the piece is pure projection.

Let’s try a bit of Crunchy Frog from the sampler.  The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal:

This turns American justice and due process upside down. The core tenet of Anglo-American law is that the burden of proof always rests with the person making the accusation. An accuser can’t doom someone’s freedom or career merely by making a charge.

The accuser has to prove the allegation in a court of law or in some other venue where the accused can challenge the facts. Otherwise we have a Jacobin system of justice in which “J’accuse” becomes the standard and anyone can be ruined on a whim or a vendetta.

First, Emile Zola was not a Jacobin for roughly the same reason George Patton was not the Duke of Wellington.  Second, the men Zola accused were all in fact guilty of exactly what Zola accused them of doing. Otherwise, spot on historical analogy boys.

Third, certain people are indeed trying to block any semblance of due process from taking place before Kavanaugh is given a lifetime appointment to the country’s most important court.  Those people are called Republicans.