lingering odor

ASource images: hereinfranklin.wordpress.com, rollingstone.com

“[...] But now that self-contained bullshit refinery has reached its logical end-state. It has fulfilled its critical role in building a racist, paranoid political base that is completely impervious to reason and fully-reprogrammable by demagogues like Limbaugh and Hannity and Trump and a political party leadership which is only interested in gutting government and eliminating taxes on behalf of the plutocrats who foot the bill for this abomination. Which means relentlessly pandering to that base.  Which, in turn, means pandering to the whims of Limbaugh and Hannity and Trump.
     Which, you longtime readers might remember, is an outcome which Mr. David Brooks once swore was impossible, and mocked Liberals for even suggesting such as thing as deranged:
[…] His article from February 5, 2001, in the Weekly Standard:
     ‘What on earth has gotten into the liberals and the media? Perhaps affected by some sort of post-Palm Beach stress disorder, reporters and activists on the left have depicted George W. Bush as the leader of some sort of arch-conservative jihad. They've portrayed his tax plan as dangerously radical, some of his nominees as Confederacy-loving loons, and his voucher plan as a menace to the future of public education. To put it bluntly, this is all deranged. You get the impression that the left has actually started believing its own direct-mail fund-raising letters…’’’
— driftglass
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