Thread by @PnictogenHorses

America's political right-wing has undergone remarkable evolution since the fraudulent installation of @RonaldReagan into the White House in 1980. there's an irony in how the 1980s and 1990s @GOP and their partisans was proud of "right-wing" as a label: Rush is Right!

(1/x)

because now nobody wants "right-wing" or "conservative" to stick to them. instead the game is to pretend that *none* of that political language means anything at all any more—in other words, you can call yourself anything and it means about the same. the @mtaibbi method.

(2/x)

heck, @Sargon_of_Akkad is an extreme right-wing *reactionary*, someone who wants to roll back the social clock to the days of chattel slavery—and he's "centrist" in the same way that @mtaibbi is "independent". they don't *want* the words to mean anything.

(3/x)

but @Sargon_of_Akkad and @mtaibbi and all the other "influencers" like them fiercely defend their "centrist" brand or their "independent" brand or their "moderate" brand or their "heterodox" brand or...whatever.

that's basic #capitalism and #marketing: "brand integrity".

(4/x)

even though corporations freely fling their own #branding into the garbage only to get a boost of #investment, the authoritarian society of capitalist leadership—all those #management and #executive types who expect their orders to be carried out—*demands* "brand loyalty".

(5/x)

the public are supposed to take the brand seriously still, even if the corporate execs themselves don't. no matter the name on the ballpark this year, you're meant to *pretend* that it matters—that it's something permanent and monumental.

that's @mtaibbi's "independence".

(6/x)

*and* @Sargon_of_Akkad's "centrism", and @SwipeWright's "heterodoxy", and @thomaschattwill's "classical liberalism" (or whatever his particular label is—I honestly can't be arsed to double-check. it doesn't matter.)

it's all flim-flam, all mere #marketing and posturing.

(7/x)

in all probably @mtaibbi and the rest of these people don't have any *coherent* ideology. it's not that they're not ideological—no, they're extremely rigid and even *repetitive* in their political thinking. but they don't have an ideology that's one cohesive thing.

(8/x)

they have a *composite* ideology—an aggregation of bits and pieces that they've collected from hither and thither, like tourists collecting postcards. @mtaibbi and @EPoe187 and the rest of these clods spent a *lot* of time meticulously polishing their...collection of bits.

(9/x)

the more intricate the collection of ideological fragments, the more "nuanced" it is. whenever @mtaibbi or @jbarro or @ezraklein blither about their "nuance", what they're really saying is that they've amassed a particularly large and intricate collection of fragments.

(10/x)

after all, it's all just names and brands to them in the end; none of it means any more than a collection of cereal boxes, to @mtaibbi &c.

what are their beliefs? whatever they say they are in a given moment. once again, basic #business culture stuff—*fake sincerity*.

(11/x)

anyone in a high-pressure corporate job, especially the elite #management and #executive types, know how to sound like they really really mean what they say no matter what nonsense they're talking—they're wanting to *overpower* everyone around them, not *persuade* them.

(12/x)

@mtaibbi's basically hoping that he can simply *bully* everyone around him into accepting that he's "independent", no matter *how* wretched his real-life entanglements are.

that's how he's dealt with his *other* problems, anyway. one can be pretty sure of that.

(13/x)

anyway, because *everyone* behaves like this in American #politics and #media—Taibbi is scarcely alone in this game of carefully assembling and gluing together a loose aggregration of political tidbits, then choosing an impressive *name* for it. "I'm a threo-Petersonian!"

(14/x)

and with this game they've all pretended for as long as possible that they couldn't *possibly* be "right-wing" or "conservative" anymore, certainly not "racist" or "bigoted" either. @mtaibbi can't be a "bigot", they're "independent"! and that's supposed to end the matter.

(15/x)

needless to say, it doesn't; there's no reason whatever why we should take these people at their word when they call themselves "independent" or "heterodox". it's honestly appalling that #journalism allowed @mtaibbi to get away with it.

~Mona Drafter