re: #172 Charles Johnson

What bugs me is that his description stretches so much farther than anti-Semites.

I realize I’m repetitive and an armchair theorist, and thus don’t accept my word to be taken as Truth, but I think it’s important that the GOP is an alloy of belief systems all of which postulate that their intellectual opponents can be dismissed as unserious. Their version of religion, of economics, of culture and social policy: they aren’t a coherent set, but they are unified in peddling contempt of dissent, arguing in bad faith.

It’s what ties the “serious conservatives” to the various absolutist factions.

It’s the how of their thought process that makes them even scarier than they already seem, and why ultimately you can’t trust them to hold even to the things they claim are (their) unchangeable principles. The pattern is that they will presuppose their correctness and moral-ness (right and Right), and work backwards to bend the ideas (and the facts, and the world) to fit their needs. David Brooks and the Prosperity Gospel and supply-side economics drink from the same well.

Addendum: another feature of this trend is that there is nothing conservative about their conservatism. They’re wearing The Treasured Old Ways like a fucking Ed Gein skin suit.