But on another level, this legislation is a superconducting super collider of culture-war conflagrations. It will throw off new and unforeseen cultural spectacles for years to come (if it is not repealed). The grinding debate over the Stupak amendment was just a foretaste. The government has surged over the breakwater and is now going to flood the nooks and crannies of American life. Americans will now fight over what tax dollars should cover and not cover. Debates over “subsidizing” this “lifestyle” or that “personal choice” will erupt. And when conservatives complain, liberals will blame them for perpetuating the culture war.
{ 46 comments }
MattF 03.23.10 at 2:17 pm
Is Goldberg aware of the fact that the SSC was never actually built? Never mind.
John Holbo 03.23.10 at 2:19 pm
No. They made it. It was completely covered with reflective death panels.
Kieran Healy 03.23.10 at 2:32 pm
Once again, I am in awe. He’s really giving Airmiles a run for his money, there. I mean, a run for the hills are alive or dead of night has fallen heroes rising tidewatergate.
dfreelon 03.23.10 at 2:33 pm
Oh, how I long for the halcyon days of pre-3/21/10 when Americans were in total agreement over how tax money should be spent.
ajay 03.23.10 at 2:42 pm
It was completely covered with reflective death panels.
Like solar panels, but powered by death.
Maurice Meilleur 03.23.10 at 2:46 pm
So wait: burning, government-sponsored subatomic culture-war particles will be outdoing grinding arguments by combining to form a tidal surge that invades our nooks and crannies? ¡No me gusta!
ed 03.23.10 at 2:51 pm
Is there a nonfiction version of the Bulwer-Lytton Contest? Because this is the winning entry. Until the next thing Jonah Goldberg writes.
Stuart 03.23.10 at 2:52 pm
Why would they need to build such a supercollider when the Obama particle has already been found?
Bill Gardner 03.23.10 at 3:02 pm
And he completely ignores the fact that the left lost the grinding debate. You truly cannot get a decent cup of espresso here, unlike Europe.
Russell Arben Fox 03.23.10 at 3:03 pm
I really don’t mind my nooks being flooded, but please, please spare my crannies.
Henry 03.23.10 at 3:07 pm
Kieran’s “in awe” post inspired a wonderful short piece in the five-footed iambic from John M. Ford.
I’d have loved to have seen what he would have done with this.
The Raven 03.23.10 at 3:28 pm
I think we have an early “croak of the day” winner, here.
Ken Houghton 03.23.10 at 3:29 pm
“The government has surged over the breakwater and is now going to flood the nooks and crannies of American life.”
Does Jonah really want to remind us about what happened to New Orleans while His President’s Guitar Gently Laughed?
DN 03.23.10 at 3:32 pm
Lest we forget. From the NYT, Nov 9, 1993:
rm 03.23.10 at 3:33 pm
This would indeed have been a job for John M. Ford. I think it’s time to see what Fafblog is up to.
All I can say is that they better not send Cranny to a death panel.
And it does make one long for the days when the clear-headed, hard-eyed, rational men who run our free-market insurance business took charge of the big decisions, like men should, and simply told us what should and should not be covered.
Henry 03.23.10 at 3:54 pm
>Does Jonah really want to remind us about what happened to New Orleans while His President’s Guitar Gently Laughed?
If I were Jonah, it would not be Katrina-GWB associations that “I would be worried about”:http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/09/05/jonah-goldberg-still-has-job-watch-part-infinity.
Delicious Pundit 03.23.10 at 4:03 pm
Wow, that sounds like a terrible level. That’s why I usually park on P2.
Maurice Meilleur 03.23.10 at 4:10 pm
DP, I missed that part about the levels. So I went and read the whole thing, and wouldn’t you know it–according to JG, on the level before the one with the flaming particles flooding the nooks and crannies, etc., exactly the same thing is happening because of this bill.
Uncle Kvetch 03.23.10 at 4:22 pm
It will throw off new and unforeseen cultural spectacles for years to come (if it is not repealed).
I’ve had the urge to throw off new spectacles on occasion, like when I’m just getting used to a new prescription and they’re giving me eyestrain. But I resist the urge, because new spectacles don’t come cheap. And I’m not talking about the fancy cultural kind, either…FSM knows what they must cost.
Steve LaBonne 03.23.10 at 4:43 pm
Well, mine are progressive, and they cost a fortune. Change never comes easy!
Uncle Kvetch 03.23.10 at 5:19 pm
Well, mine are progressive, and they cost a fortune.
Elitist.
soullite 03.23.10 at 5:53 pm
Obama is the one who decided to work fist-in-glove with the corporate world. There’s only one way that ends. Just because Jonah Goldberg is a retarted jack-ass doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole lot to be troubled about over the way Obama has conducted himself and bent over backwards to prop-up and defend corrupt business practices and their practitioners.
Obama isn’t Hitler, but I don’t think this kind of government-corporate alliance can end up anywhere but fascism.
Maurice Meilleur 03.23.10 at 6:07 pm
‘Obama isn’t Hitler yet.’
Fixed that for you.
Maurice Meilleur 03.23.10 at 6:14 pm
‘First they came to tell insurance companies they couldn’t cancel people’s policies for getting sick, but I did not speak out, for I was not an insurance company …’
tps12 03.23.10 at 6:18 pm
Has anyone foreseen my spectacles?
rea 03.23.10 at 6:25 pm
The lenses in these cultural spectacles are doubtless polished in the course of the grinding debate over the Stupak amendment.
Michael Bérubé 03.23.10 at 6:46 pm
The grinding debate over the Stupak amendment was just a foretaste. The government has surged over the breakwater and is now going to flood the nooks and crannies of American life.
First they came for the coffee, but I did not speak out, because I had not ordered coffee. Then they came for the Thomas’s English Muffins, but I did not speak out….
Truly, this thread marks the Waterloo of liberal fascism, the tipping point over which blood will be shed in a Reign of Terror that will erupt into a Hubble Telescope champagne supernova in the very halls of Congress.
Lee A. Arnold 03.23.10 at 7:22 pm
“It will throw off new and unforeseen cultural spectacles for years to come”
That is to say, he threatens that he is going to write more articles
–Yes it was all about making you communist slaves in our biggie plan! Mwah, ha ha ha! [laughs maniacally]
marcel 03.23.10 at 7:40 pm
As a man, I’ll take charge of this one: probably genitals & female breasts, absolutely prose like Goldberg’s.
Salient 03.23.10 at 7:42 pm
Obama is the one who decided to work fist-in-glove with the corporate world. There’s only one way that ends.
…Profit?
mds 03.23.10 at 7:43 pm
Yeah, that must be why Chomsky indicated that he would have held his nose and voted for it if he were in Congress, while bemoaning the fact that this was apparently the best our system could produce. Because to Chomsky, “slightly better than the status quo” means “inevitable further step towards fascism.” Hey, has soullite managed to purity troll Noam from the left, yet?
mds 03.23.10 at 7:45 pm
A wise choice. I have found that excessive coffee consumption leads irresistibly to a water loo.
Maurice Meilleur 03.23.10 at 8:08 pm
‘… that must be why Chomsky indicated that he would have held his nose and voted for it if he were in Congress …’
Pity that this argument doesn’t work if you are already convinced that Chomsky is a fascist–as, for example, Jonah Goldberg is. Remember, writing is very easy in Jonah’s universe, because words mean just what he chooses them to mean–neither more nor less. Impenetrability! Mixed metaphors!
Michael Bérubé 03.23.10 at 8:14 pm
Is it too late to primary Chomsky in 2010? Because I sense a powerful Hamsher/Soullite wave sweeping over the country.
Also, that corporate sellout Bernie Sanders has to go.
Hogan 03.23.10 at 8:20 pm
Have you ever tried to get on the ballot in the MIT linguistics department? They throw out your nominating petitions for having confused LF and inadequate transformations. Southside Cambridge politics at its most thuggish.
Michael Bérubé 03.23.10 at 8:53 pm
All right, if we can’t primary MIT professors and Vermont independents, surely we can repeal the bill in 2011 by using the little-known parliamentary procedure of “making Obama sign the repeal by telling him we just want his autograph for our kids.”
mds 03.23.10 at 10:28 pm
Ahem. “Deeming and passing making Obama sign the repeal by telling him we just want his autograph for our kids.” What kind of modern Republican strategist are you, anyway?
Phillip Hallam-Baker 03.23.10 at 10:43 pm
Ever since Sunday night I have been hearing a faint voice quietly screaming ‘turn those machines back on, turn those machines back on’.
bad Jim 03.23.10 at 11:42 pm
From the Daily Beast:
Mike Schilling 03.23.10 at 11:53 pm
the grinding debate over the Stupak amendment
Which grinds slowly, with exceeding whines.
Salient 03.24.10 at 12:22 am
And surely the choicest juiciest bit from JG’s article was
“Culture wars erupt because liberals urge expansion of the size and scope of the government, intruding into virgin territories of civil society”
I love the part where he says something false, comma, rushes headlong into rank incomprehensibility. By the time you’re done processing what ‘virgin territories of civil society’ are, that first part seems practically reasonable by comparison.
And really that comma’s where it’s at: government, intruding sums up his ethos/pathos/mythos/eros/Cheerios quite satisfactorily.
Phil 03.24.10 at 10:12 am
bad Jim – what’s interesting about that (deeply scary) poll is just how clean the Rep/Dem split seems to be.
67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist. 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president” 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did” Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama “may be the Antichrist.”
Say for the sake of argument that 50% of the people polled were Democrats, and you get the following:
Obama is, was, or may be:
a socialist: 67% R, 14% D
a Muslim: 57% R, 7% D
not born in the US: 45% R, 5% D
not unlike Hitler: 38% R, 2% D
not unlike Satan: 24% R, 4% D
That first point apart (and who the hell knows what a ‘socialist’ is in the US these days?) those are tiny, tiny numbers among Democrats for propositions apparently commanding really substantial assent among Republicans. This is either going to be a big problem for American democracy or a really big problem for the GOP – let’s hope it’s the latter.
d4winds 03.24.10 at 2:58 pm
thanks for the complete howler for the day. you’ve got the craziness done really pat–love it & keep up the good humor.
paul 03.24.10 at 3:54 pm
How dare that whippersnapper disrespect the Ronald Reagan Center for High Energy Physics?
Jamie 03.24.10 at 4:15 pm
Just because Jonah Goldberg is a retarted jack-ass doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole lot to be troubled about over the way Obama has conducted himself and bent over backwards to prop-up and defend corrupt business practices and their practitioners.
So, Obama is a contortionist martial artist, and a footstool?
I had no idea.
Arise, cast off off your cultural spectacles! For if we do not fear fear itself, the nooks and crannies of our breakwaters will be but a foretaste of delicious, buttery fascism.
Steve LaBonne 03.24.10 at 4:48 pm
You’re all making spectacles of yourselves. Maybe even cultural spectacles. Perhaps the proprietors could sell tickets to pay the ISP bills.
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