Trojan Horse

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for October 6th, 2010


Observations:


1) I feel like the national club of persons interested in providing a counterpoint to the Morning Joe show has left the show’s subscribers in good hands in my absence. The show appears incapable of seeing itself as a biased take on events, not in the Roger Ailes way, but in the inherent stubbornness borne of Joe Scarborough’s personality. Over time Scarborough has morphed into a second period Bill O’Rielly, the version that dug a moat around his version of events and took on all comers not by real debate but by a form of fact free semantic wrestling that timed out opponents rather than built a more resolute consensus. This type of phenomenon needs critics. Critics with the voracity to overcome dime store defense mechanisms and make those painfully constructive observations that allow resolute consensus to form with or without the self appointed protagonist.


And man have these critics come out of the woodwork. Two of note are @CallOutJoe and @The_AntiJoe. The former is a direct attack twitter feed that real time tweets on the show on a daily basis and is at this point a required resource for viewing. @The_AntiJoe has no direct correlation to the show but has come into the picture as an accidental resource of Deepak Chopra level enhancement to the aforementioned bias. Neither of these entities are Trojan Horse faculties of political action committees. These are real people like myself who seek catharsis. Cathartic relief from the volume granted to at a very important time to a single program in such a way that the bias would otherwise be a false consensus.


This Morning Joe megaphone has shouted at the top of its lungs that Clinton would be president, that health care and financial regulation would fail, that tax cuts for the rich have a dominant effect on job growth, and that we could have done without the financial interventions of late 2008 and early 2009. Not since the pre invasion propaganda of 2002 and 2003 has a source of opinion been allotted a factual, objective platform with such a large probability of false prognostication. The Morning Joe show needs critics and left to its own devices would morph into the echo chamber it seeks to evolve out of.


2) The real Trojan Horse is the collection of pirates and proxy dupes that will combine to attempt to elect Republican candidates in this and future elections. If you listen to the “Pledge”, if you look at the money going into campaigns, if you watch closely the Jim Demint snafu, you get a pretty good picture that the embittered gun-clinging, god-justifying voter is the swing voter in play here. The business owner, or the highly educated citizen is not that swing voter and was not ever in play. The business owner is not content with his single vote, or his citizen level contribution to his pro commerce political agenda. The business owner is in constant search for the right trigger mechanism to enlist by proxy the guns and god crowd, and boy does that Citizens United case help his cause. The academic is unfortunately trying to reason with the electorate, but its no news flash that the electorate is irrational because it contains a significant population of swing voters willing to vote against their own interests for either short term gain or when victimized by mirages conjured up by political artists.


Matt Taibbi has documented this reformation of the Republican party extremely well in his latest article. In it, he draws the direct time line that once it became obvious that the libertarians phenomenon grew into a movement that became known as the Tea Party, the Republicans waited for their chance to coop it and re-define their own long standing principles as the core principles of the Tea Party despite the fact that it was often an ideological 180 degree shift. We have known this about the Republican party for some time, whether it’s foreign policy or domestic politics, you’ve got about 22 seconds of loyalty and in the 23rd second it’s on to the next exploitation.


So this concoction of opportunists and meek march on to bring about reversal of change meant to empower the middle class. The meek are prepared to vote for the next great transfer of wealth, their own wealth, to a ruling financial class. It’s insane, and it’s happening, and Morning Joe is doing its part to let it happen, mainly by not covering the identifying news stories that show the process as described above as a national myopia.


And don’t get me started on the elements of a political Trojan Horse bent on social restriction and non secular enshrinement of evangelical mores. This, my friends, is a business deal. If you are a rich banker and need to make the transfer of wealth described above happen, wouldn’t you, too, make deals with the southern evangelicals to make laws banning abortion and gay marriage or military service if it enabled said wealth transfer? Nothing like a zealot to bring you South Carolina’s electorate, and it’s wealth, all for some moral illusion. That is something for nothing, which by definition should be an illegal contract for its lack of consideration.


3) The Democratic party seems to be on autopilot with a programmed descent. In the face of all sorts of attackable phantom logic by their opponents, the Dems are shrunken academics attempting to reason with an impassioned voter. They don’t bring up the obvious points about themselves, elect us and we will get the health care program moved up two years, elect us and we will end outsourcing with powerful domestic corporate tax strategy that forces growth within our borders, elect us and we won’t let the next transfer of wealth happen. Elect us, middle class, for you have no other friend.


Nope, this is the party thinking about who to put in charge, and thinking of Robert Gibbs, the guy who could not communicate any of the things above for the last 2 years. In fairness he had help, for the architect creating the bird’s nest messages that came out of the White House was David Axelrod, who several satellites have spotted crying in the rose garden every time another of his uneventful near placations fell short of the resolute message required to lead a nation in tough times. These are good guys, they did one thing really well and expected to run the table. Joe Scarborough was all too happy this morning to make this point. Running the table certainly has not happened, you’re not special, and you need Daschle and Dean immediately. The fact you demonized Dean can now be forgiven as misguided youthful exuberance when you though you were going to run the country like Mark Zuckerberg runs Facebook. You might have wanted to have some practical experience before really believing your self estimations, and now it’s time for a best and brightest moment to shore up your camp, and fend off hordes of looters hoping that 2010 is remembered as the year hypnosis on the right, and rookie missteps on the left conspired to hand them the nation, lock, stock, and barrel.


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.