Oh dear. The main reason for visiting Hot Air has for a long time been the anti Trump attitude of Allahpundit, but he has left the site and is going to write (under his real name, which it seems is a well guarded secret?) at The Despatch, which I think is a subscription only site.
In his final post he writes that he has been at Hot Air since the beginning, when it was started first by Michelle Malkin, who I hadn't thought about for a long time. I think she from mainstreamy conservative Right wing to "into the reactionary paranoid nutjob Right" didn't she? (Yes, I've checked her Wiki entry - she did.)
I don't recall what he was like in his early days, but many who read Hot Air would say he has followed the opposite - all because he cannot stand Donald Trump and condemns him and the influence on the party regularly.
Let's extract some of his last post:
What is the right’s “cause” at this point? What cause does the Republican Party presently serve? It has no meaningful policy agenda. It literally has no platform. The closest thing it has to a cause is justifying abuses of state power to own the libs and defending whatever Trump’s latest boorish or corrupt thought-fart happens to be. Imagine being a propagandist for a cause as impoverished as that. Many don’t need to imagine.
The GOP does have a cause. The cause is consolidating power. Overturn the rigged elections, purge the disloyal bureaucrats, smash the corrupt institutions that stand in the way. Give the leader a free hand. It’s plain as day to those who are willing to see where this is going, what the highest ambitions of this personality cult are. Those who support it without insisting on reform should at least stop pretending that they’re voting for anything else.
I agree with others who say that, fundamentally, the last six years have been a character test. Some conservatives became earnest converts to Trumpism, whatever that is. But too many who ditched their civic convictions did so for the most banal reasons, because there was something in it for them — profit, influence, proximity to power, the brainless tribalism required by audience capture. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer wrote. We’ve all gotten to see who the racketeers are.
I would rather fail as a writer than succeed if success means being some demagogue’s footstool. To the extent my work at Hot Air has made that clear, I’m happy with it.
Never forget, it’s not the 30 percent of Trump worshipers within the party who brought the GOP to what it is. It’s the next 50 percent, the look-what-the-libs-made-me-do zombie partisans, who could have said no but didn’t. I said no. Put it on my tombstone.
He also says this, and it's infuriating because I reckon he would know this to be true (my bold):
Lastly, to those who spent the last seven years barking insults at me in the comments for not genuflecting to Trump, I’ll give you this: You’re not phonies. You believe what you say. We have that much in common. I respect honesty and paid you the respect of being honest. It would scandalize you to know how many of your heroes sound like you in public and like me in private. Audience capture has brought most of conservative media to ruin by making it predictable and shrill.
I hear Lincoln’s words in my head as I write that: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.” Let’s hope. But let’s also be real: To a certain sort of Very Online Trumpist weirdo, having the right enemies is what politics is all about. To any who insist upon having me as one, I’m okay with it. Few badges of honor shine as brightly as the scorn of authoritarians.
Of the other writers there, Jazz Shaw is very interested in UFOs and so he's worth a look. Ed Morrisey is Catholic conservative but not pro-Trump, I think. Just doesn't attack him and MAGA as much as he should. Karen Townsend is the worst - a shrill Right winger verging on Fox News level of personal animosity towards Biden and the Left generally.
Anyway, I will be visiting it less now.
1 comment:
Audience capture has brought most of conservative media to ruin by making it predictable and shrill.
My metric is that you can barely go 5 minutes of watching Sky at night without hearing a rant against woke, the ABC, LGBTQi, climate change, and the Left. They seem to have forgotten that arguments so focused on your opposition sounds like bad losers. On the ABC equivalent programs there isn't a constant reference to the Right, the discussion generally moves directly into discussing an issue. Bias is obviously still there and disturbingly so on occasion but comparatively the ABC is far less partisan.
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