They're All Liars, Cheats and Thieves. Right?

"So what?" you say? "All politicians are the same..."

LOL! Ok. Okay... In some ways, for sure. And if you've depended upon the MSM (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, etc...) exclusively for your knowledge of American political happenings over the last 20 years, then I don't suppose there is much chance you know how woefully inadequate has been your source.

Driftglass provides a highly charged, but equally accurate (read: in all the essentials) look at what actually constitutes some chief differences between Republicans and Democrats these days.

From Driftglass - "The Big Lie"

-----
Rush Limbaugh “returned to radio as a talk show host at KFBK in Sacramento, California” in 1984.

That was 22 years ago.

Al Franken began firing back in the same medium as Limbaugh when he began anchoring a show on Air America, which did not even exist until 2004.

That was two years ago.

So Rush had a twenty-year head start. And in that time his imitators created an entire, integrated radio/teevee/print/cable media Universe based almost entirely on egging the pig people on to mindlessly hate Liberals and blame queers and “feminazis” for every evil on Earth, real or imagined.

For twenty years a polyglot witchbag of sociopaths, Christopaths, Neocons, drunks, demagogues and whores have gotten rich and re-elected by banding together to demonize Liberals and tell the scum of the nation over and over and over again that being the scum of the nation is a noble calling. Or, to misquote H.L Menkin, “No Fox executive ever went broke overestimating the hateful stupidity of the pig people.”

And for twenty years – while the mass purveyors of carefully calibrated hate and rage and xenophobia on the Right gathered more and more power and got more and more vulgar and vicious in their rhetoric – what did the Left try to do?

We tried to find common ground. To meet our opponents half-way.

To compromise…with people who sneered at the very idea of working together and said quite openly that compromise was “political date rape”.

While the Emperor of Weaponized Bile, Newt Gingrich, took over the House with a campaign explicitly based on calling Democrats “traitors” at every opportunity, and Limbaugh was being honored as the “Majority Maker” by those House Republicans, we on the Left were still trying to do and be all the nicey-nicey things that Alan Simpson is now all weepy and wistful for.

And it didn’t work. And while we played by Marquis of Queensbury, the orcs laughed in our faces, overran the joint, and bequeathed to us as its apotheosis the worst, most despicable, most incompetent, most Constitution-loathing Administration in American history.

Al Franken and Air America did not arise in a vacuum. The came into being as a desperate, eleventh-hour attempt to fight back against a twenty year multimedia blitz of unremitting, unrebutted Conservative lies and bigotry.

They arose because no one in the Mainstream Media had the guts to take on the GOP Propaganda Machine head-on. Instead, the MSM collaborated, because collaborating in the Big Lie was a much better, safer career move.
[Read the whole Rant. Is well worth it!]

Obviously the vast majority (if not All) of the folks who read here are under no illusions about our ability to "trust" the MSM, or the reasons our reticence to do so are endemic to the News Industry. None the less, I needed a lead-in to prop Driftglass's excellent essay and, as is so often the case, it's kinda hard to develop an appropriate introduction whilst on my company's dime.

So, like, go read it already! You'll be glad you did.

Me.. I gotta get my arse back to work!

{-;