My Theory About Conspiracy Theorists Based on My Experiences With Them In Pop Culture

 

In  the 'A Critic At Large' segment of last week's New Yorker the author took a look at the most prominent podcasters who he considers, rightfully in most cases,  peddlers in conspiracy theory. His main focus was Joe Rogan, but he also mention familiar names such as Theo Vonn and Alex Jones.

I knew much of these individuals backstories before and they're discussed so regularly here that, even if I listened to any of them (I don't know how to find podcasts online much less have the time to do so) I would have nothing to contribute. What I want to talk about is how the author chose to introduce the article.

He talked about growing up as a youth and a teenager listening to AM and FM radio late at night with numerous radio personalities who engaged in discussion of conspiracy theories, most notably the idea the moon landing was a fake. He went through nearly two pages of their history and you couldn't ignore the nostalgia factor in the way he talked about them. I actually found this entire part more troubling then anything he told me about Rogan and his colleagues.

Because it seemed to be making two arguments: that listening to conspiracy theories used to be fun and harmless before people started making money and political capital on them (ruining it for all of us) and that it was perfectly harmless as long as it was kept to the fringes of our society.

The first concept is part of the larger argument of the left on everything, and I'd say it speaks to a kind of jealousy. The second is troubling considering that the kind of reasoning behind conspiracy theories involves mental illness and he seemed to be make the contradictory argument that it was fun to listen to the nuts late at night and now is ruined because the nuts are everywhere.

Now as someone who has suffered his entire life from a mental illness that until only the last twenty years managed to reach a position where it was considered not a handicap I say this to the author with all sincerity: "Go fuck yourself." The way you listened to people who were clearly mentally unwell and thought it was not only not sad or disturbing as a child but entertaining speaks to the same kind of sickness  of any other form of prejudice.

And considering that we're only now starting to have a reckoning with conspiracy theories and mental illness – and critically only after a major political party is utilizing it to shore it up for votes – the fact that you're only now considering it a mental insufficiency (which in your mind is a way to further dehumanize people who disagree with you) shows your own blindness on the subject.

Because conspiracy theories have always been capable of doing damage. It doesn't matter if the Klan was doing it to use white supremacy or in the 1920s firm up Anti-Catholic sentiment, the left-wing delusions of communism being an acceptable form of government all through the Cold War and well after or the John Birch Society and its belief of government interference when it comes to putting fluoride in the drinking water. They might now have been mainstream but that is not the same thing as harmless.  This is, as you might expect, part of the liberal bias of 'no intelligent person would believe this kind of nonsense', therefore arguing conspiracy theorist by design are idiots and unworthy of recognition.

And more to the point of my article I came of age in an era where conspiracy theories were getting out of the fringes and I didn't have to stay up late night to listen to the radio to find them. No, they were coming to a theater near me and often to my TV screen.

I'm not for the record talking about shows like The X-Files: Chris Carter himself always admitted he was less in control of the engine more than driving it. I'm talking about a lot of the major films and TV shows that were coming out during this period.

The most prominent was Oliver Stone's JFK which I've talked about at length and multiple time and is more or less based on the theorizing of an actual conspiracist L. Fletcher Prouty.  Prouty was never a reliable source at the time and Stone not only making him a technical adviser but having Donald Sutherland play a character based on him in that film is, in my opinion, the cinematic equivalent of any right-wing conspiracy radio broadcaster give voice to lies about mass shootings or 9/11.  And indeed Stone was pilloried in the press at the time. But he has never backed away from either his positions or his narrative within thirty years despite the fact that there is no more evidence for it then there was at the time.

Furthermore throughout that film and his follow-up Nixon Stone argues that there were forces in the CIA conspiring not just to have JFK killed but Bobby Kennedy as well. This is a theory, I should mention, that his son believes very strongly to this day. I wonder if Stone wants to take credit for his part in that.

Spike Lee to an extent has done so in some of his movies, usually with less direct reference. In Malcolm X, in addition to doing much to clean up the actual activists image in America, he chose to argue the conspiracy theory that the Nation of Islam combined with the FBI conspired to have Malcolm killed. He has made it clear in When The Levees Broke that the government chose to blow up the dams and flood the poor sections of New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina, a theory that has no more evidence today then it did sixteen years ago. And in Black Klansman he has a scene where a survivor of the Tulsa Massacre relates his story to a Black Power meeting arguing the race riots happened because of the screening of Birth Of A Nation which has never been confirmed. I have no doubt Lee was using it just to bolster an old argument of his that Hollywood has been part of white supremacy going back to that point and by showing films like Gone With The Wind in the prologue as a Klan recruitment drive he's not being subtle about it.

 Now I don't pretend that Birth of A Nation didn't have a role in leading to the rise in Klan recruitment nor that Gone With The Wind is one of the most troubling great films in history. But to blame both those movies for the systematic racism in America is a case of the tail wagging the dog. Ben-Hur didn't lead to rise in fundamentalist Christianity across the country and The Godfather didn't lead to the Mafia retaking over Las Vegas.  But the idea that America was on the road to racial equality and then Birth and Gone set the cause back thirty years doesn't read with how America was. But in the eyes of Lee that does seem to be a factor.

And it's worth noting The X-Files when it dealt with the biggest conspiracy theories – JFK's assassination and King's  - they saw them through very much the same mindset as Stone or Lee might. King's version argued that he was killed because he was starting to 'speak like a Maoist' on the subject of Vietnam. "And if he convinced Negroes not to fight in Vietnam, we'll lose," a young CSM says. "And then the first domino will have fallen." They determined to have King killed by a 'cracker patsy and the issue will become very black and white'.

That version of events, I should be clear, was basically a satire by the X-Files writers but I'm pretty sure there are some people who believe it as gospel.  And then there was this theory that came out in the 1990s that I heard echoed on Law & Order in 1997 and is essentially a plot point of Snowfall. That the crack cocaine epidemic was staged by the CIA in order to fund the war in El Salvador as part of the Iran Contra Affair. To be clear there's no evidence even today that this is a remotely true. But among the African-American community it’s apparently still prominent enough that John Singleton made it a plot point of his successful TV show.

If you've been paying attention to these conspiracy theories you'll notice a common thread. All of them are theories that are prominent held by elements of the left wing. They argued for the continue of the military industrial complex, white supremacy, the prison industrial complex, the false nature of the Cold War, etc., etc. None of them decades after the fact have any more credible evidence behind them then anything Trump and his colleagues have circulated over the past twenty years whether they involve Obama's birth certificate, election conspiracies and or vaccines being a lie. And their believers are just as adamant about them as the ones who listen to Rogan's podcast. And to be clear none of them took place on the fringes. They were in big budget films that grossed big at the box offices and were nominating for Oscars and even one a few. They involved TV shows that were critically acclaimed and were watched by millions.

To be clear I'm aware that because all of these movies and TV shows are works of entertainment their creators have the benefit of saying that they were fictionalizing history rather then telling a true version of events. I'd argue that's the exact same hair-splitting that has allowed the right to label Rush Limbaugh and Fox News broadcasters as entertainers rather than news for decades, but fine. Movie makers and TV shows have been dramatizing history since the medium began with far less faithfulness to details then to what makes a better story so I can excuse that at least.

The problem is that when you put into production a work of film and television that a studio puts behind it, that is shown to the masses, the overwhelming majority of the public isn't going to be able to tell that its fact from fiction unless they do the work themselves. I'm no different. When I first saw JFK when I was in my late teens I genuinely believed that Stone's telling of events was based on historical records and that he had access to information that I might not have read. I didn't know until decades later how much of Stone's work was based purely on a conspiracy theorist. I'd long discounted his version of events as well as his personal political bias but it wasn't until I did my own work I knew how far from the reservation Stone was – and that in a sense he'd gone down the rabbit hole and never came out.

How many people saw JFK over the last thirty years and went down their own rabbit holes? Considering just how prominent the conspiracy theory culture started to become even before the creation of social media and podcast I think it was a pretty sizable number.  And how many of them have gone on to become Alex Jones and Theo Vonn and Joe Rogan listeners? I'd be gob-smacked if there wasn't a significant overlap. How far do you have to go from the government killed JFK to the government is putting poison in vaccines? Don't pretend its that much of a stretch. Again if you don't believe me ask our current secretary of HHS.

What's the difference, at a fundamental level, from the kind of person who believes the CIA was behind the crack epidemic and the kind who believes the Justice Department rigged the election of 2020? For the record I think both are equally insane and that if you believe either one of them, there's something fundamentally broken with you and you probably need professional health. But I'm relatively sure that in today's society there are people who have a deep and abiding belief that the former is true despite all the evidence to the contrary and that those who believe the latter is true are what's wrong with America today and that there are people who believe just as firmly the exact inverse is the case.  Both groups would consider themselves the rational ones and the other group members of the lunatic fringe. And consequently their beliefs would justify dismissing the other outright and argue anyone who tried to argue their beliefs were false as part of the conspiracy.  Their could be factors such as race, age or education among either group but that does nothing to make members of them deluded in their own way.

Conspiracy theories have the benefit of taking the realities of the universe which are almost always dictated by random chance and arguing that there is a plan behind it, an individual or group, to give certainty in an uncertain world. I don't deny that there is some comfort in the idea; it's why they become popular in the first place. But it’s comfort based on a lie. Despite the radical differences between the conspiracies I've discussed here and the ones that are popular on the podcasts I've mention they have the same theory: you can't trust the institutions. Not experts, not the educational system, certainly not our government.  And all during the 1990s and ever since we've seen the danger that those who believe in conspiracies pose to our society. That threat isn't existential, far too often it can lead to violence and it often has.

And that may be the real reason I have the biggest problem with the handwringing in The New Yorker article about how dangerous conspiracy theorists on podcasts and traditional media are and how they're wrecking the 'liberal consensus'.  Last I checked Oliver Stone and Spike Lee are among the most liberal you can imagine and they've been hawking conspiracy theories in their movies and TV shows with no evidence long before Rogan took the airwaves.  Stone has never backed down from his theories about the Kennedy assassination thirty years after the fact.  When you say that JFK's assassination was a coup d'etat over and over for that long  you don't think that hurts our faith in democracy in its own way?

I've been fortunate that I can understand the difference between conspiracy theory as entertainment and as gospel. I've never been convinced that the number of people around the world who can do the same has ever been as small as those who are clutching their pearls over these podcasters say that it is now. I think they were always out there, mostly too afraid to say anything because they were terrified of being ridiculed by the masses.  So they held their tongues and maybe limited it to talking on a radio show late at night when they were sure none of their friends could hear them. Just because people like the author dismissed them as entertainment doesn't mean they didn't genuinely believe what they did.

So yes, the right does have much to answer for when it comes to the culture of conspiracy theory we live in today. But don't think I haven't forgotten for a moment how dirty the hands of so many good leftist thinkers are in stoking the conspiracy theory culture into the daylight and how much oxygen they were given by those liberal journals themselves when they praised them as art rather than dealt with the troubling views that were expressed.  You want Joe Rogan to do a mea culpa? Well so do the Stones and Lees of the world and I don't see that happening any time soon, either.

 

 

 

Homicide Rewatch: Control

 

Written by Les Carter & Susan Sisko ; story by Tom Fontana & Julie Martin

Directed by Jean De Segonzac

 

For the first time in perhaps the entire history of the series the denizens of Baltimore have stopped killing each other. Meldrick tells us that its been an entire week since a murder was reported. (Technically that's not true; see Inconsistencies) When Munch tells Frank to enjoy the peace and quiet Frank mutters in the most menacing way possible: "I hate peace and quiet."

At the end of The True Test Frank said he was going out on the 'first death tomorrow'. There are conditions, Gee makes it clear Bayliss will be the primary but Frank has been itching to get back on the street. Now its been a week and not a single murder has happened. Then, we get four in two minutes: Bayliss gets a triple murder on Bolton Hill, Lewis gets a call that turns out to be a drug related murder.  Both cases are essentially to plot developments that will continue to unfold this week but like Frank, let's start with his case.

Bayliss has reason to be unsettled. Frank may have passed his firearms exam but he's still stumbling over words – he doesn't want the fate of driving the car to be determined by a 'toin coss' as he puts it – and he's carrying a miniature tape recorder to recap the details of the murder as they unfold.  (Looking back on this with more thirty years of hindsight I'm now impressed that ABC's Will Trent uses the same old school methods albeit for a different disorder.) But Frank's instincts are there the moment they enter the victim's house. The mother Cathy Clifton has been stabbed 20 times; the two children each got a bullet behind the head. "Mother killed with rage; children killed with efficiency". Bayliss thinks its two different killers; Frank one killer with two different weapons and eventually they agree on that.

For much of the episode it seems like old times. Frank chafes at following Tim's lead when he's the primary. He wants to focus on Clifton's boyfriend Jimmy Sutter, who's already been arrested for assault and doesn't want to go to Annapolis to talk to the husband. Giardello pretty much has to order Frank to do it. "Teamwork, gentlemen," he says with a smile.

Our roving reporter Dawn Daniels beat the detectives to Annapolis and they broke the news to the husband about his family's murder before the detectives did. Frank and Tim are pissed at Daniels, though Frank is subtler about it. (He asks Daniels if she thought the husband might have been shaken up to learn his family was dead from a reporter.) The commander seems a little too calm in his attitude, almost as if he's just shaken enough. Bayliss thinks it’s a performance; Frank thinks it’s a wild goose chase.

The opening interrogation with Frank dealing with Sutter shows that he's starting to find his sea legs again. He handles Sutter with calm aplomb, talks about his record, argues about his temper. When Bayliss walks out of the box and starts chasing down the recorded footage of Commander Clifton being informed and its clear that he's performing a reaction for the sake of the cameras. Pembleton doesn't buy it and tells us so.

Just before the third act ends while they are interrogating Clifton Tim pulls Frank out of the box and the acrimony that's been simmering all episode seems to come to a head. We feel for the moment that Bayliss is just worried about his partner's wellbeing, and that would be completely understandable. Similarly Frank's reaction about Tim being a worry wart seems natural too. And because this is Homicide and because of how the interrogation goes we naturally assume that this is a bump in the road and we'll be back to normal starting next week. We have no idea that Fontana is lulling us into a false sense of security.

Yet the final interrogation involving Bayliss and Pembleton ranks with some of the best in the entire series. In the previous scene they've established that the heat is on far too high and Clifton is clearly nervous. By the time they get back in the box everybody takes their jackets off with Clifton being the most reluctant. Bayliss and Pembleton lay out the Clifton marriage as being stormy, Cathy being a wild woman Alex the bastion of control. It's been established that Cathy chose to have an extramarital affair with Sutter and while its not clear if that was the real reason for the end of their marriage, it’s the one Cathy gave. Cathy moved to Baltimore to be with her boyfriend and has been being paid alimony which is used to buy the house and bed that she's been having the affair in.  The husband has been living in Annapolis alone for the last six months, away from his children.

All while this is being related either Frank or Tim keep touching the dress blues that Clifton took off even though it clearly unsettles him. Finally Frank knocks a glass of water over it, the two of them start cleaning it up and tugging it back and forth and then Clifton finally reacts: "Give me the damn jacket!" Frank tells them "This is the rage you felt." It's clear that Clifton has been carrying a lot of anger at how Cathy did everything she wanted with no regard for anyone's feelings, not her children, not her boyfriends, and certainly not her ex-husband.  Its clear the Commander has done everything he could to put his life back together after his ex-wife left him emotionally bereft. When she calls and tells him she wants to reconcile, we will never know if it was made out of good faith or if it was yet another in a long line of impulsive decision she's made all her life.  What's clear is that this was the final straw and Clifton lost control and couldn't take it anymore.

When Munch and Lewis catch the murder of Reg Copeland they honestly don't expect this case to go anywhere when Lewis asks for a witness he doesn't think he'll get one. He's genuinely surprised when a corner boy actively calls him a name. Lewis knows that this is an act for the block and when he pushes him away with some feinted rage, he gets the rarest things: an answer.  Copeland was shorting the count for Junior Bunk. Then Meldrick hears the sweetest two words in the English language to him: Luther Mahoney.

Lewis pays another visit to Terri Stivers, who is not thrilled with him considering how everything ended with Vernon Troy just over a month ago. And she seems a little amazed at the idea of Junior Bunk being a gangsta. He's Luther's nephew and she never thought much of him. This is made clear in one of the funniest rousts of a suspect. When the cops come Junior peeks out the window and tries to run out the back door where Stivers hogties him. And when Junior learns he's about to be charged with felony murder he starts crying. "You have the right to remain silent," Munch says. "But I have to say a good cry can do a man a world of good." (Not his best line in this episode but still pretty good.)

The interrogation with Bunk is equal part hysterical and shows just how twisted the Mahoney family is. Junior makes it clear that he'll rat on Luther but he has to remain 'monogamous'. (You see in the Mahoney family if you only see one partner you're in an anonymous relationship.) Junior says he told Luther that they were short money and he didn't know who was responsible. He seems stunned they know Mahoney's his uncle. Mahoney is upset about being shorted of $300 in heroin and demands a name. Junior genuinely doesn't know because of the amount he's moving and just picks Copeland out of a hat. And then we get the punchline: He calls a hit man to come down and pays him $5000 in heroin to commit a murder because he was shorted out of $300 in heroin. "Luther's big on principle," Junior tells us. (This is the kind of ruthlessness we will come to think more of Marlo Stanfield than Avon Barksdale in a decade's time.)

In his previous encounters Luther Mahoney has been smug and smarmy, almost always vested in denial. We know the case is more solid than the last two but Mahoney's no less smug. He knows the witness against him and as the cuffs are put on him he seems even more arrogant. "You can lock me up today, but you know me detective. By tonight I'll be buying you a drink."

The scene with Luther in lockup is the first time the veneer of the community organizer he shows the world is completely down and we see the cold-blooded drug dealer. The moment he walks in the cell everybody clears a path so he can sit on a bunk alone. Someone in the cell he knows tells him everything he needs to know about Junior and that he needs to get a message to him. "Not a problem."

We have no idea yet how Luther demonstrates the ability to get a double star bag in the room service at the protective custody hotel. It's not really stunning Russom is on Luther's payroll but this is the first time we wonder about Luther's reach. Does he have cops on his payroll? Does he have someone in the States Attorney's office? (The following season we'll get positive answers to those questions but the viewer doesn't know it yet. ) But that's irrelevant: Junior himself must have some awareness of it and of his uncle's capacity. When he recants in Danvers's office under penalty of perjury it doesn't shock us because we know Junior Bunk has a yellow streak down his back

I think the moment Luther seals his fate in the eyes of Lewis at least is when he shows up at the Waterfront with Bunk in tow, mocking the establishment as quaint and insisting that he buy a drink for the house.  To this point Mahoney has never blatantly rubbed his nose in the face of the Baltimore PD.  It's bad enough that the way he got to Junior seems to illustrate a near superhuman level of power; for him to essentially say he is bulletproof in front of the officer's who arrested him that day is the kind of thing that just a few years earlier he very likely would have met the same end as any of the dealers he's laid out, with no questions asked.  Johnson is superb in this scene: you can tell its taking every measure of restraint not to take out his service piece and shoot Luther down like a dog but he mostly keeps it inside and lays out the line Luther's crossed entirely in metaphor.  Even then Luther either doesn't know or doesn't care how far he's gone: he still mocks being scared before he walks out the door with his posse.

But tellingly the last bit of official police business has to due not with Luther but with Frank. Pembleton has prided himself on being almighty and infallible his entire career in the box. But for his first case back we see him in a place we've never seen him: going to the killer trying to get answers. He confides in all but catatonic Clifton that Bayliss figured it out right away but Frank was blocked. He couldn't get over the idea of a father killing his own children. Once again he goes back to the murders and reminds us just how much rage was expressed in stabbing her. But he shot both his sons behind the ear. "Why?" he asks, using the question he plagued Bayliss for always needing. "Was it mercy? Were you merciful?"

And then Clifton stirs. "Was I?" he asks dully. "Did I show them mercy?" And Frank clearly can't get out of there fast enough. He shakes his head and walks out.

And let's not forget the reminder of the criminal investigation. Kellerman has been spending the last few weeks waiting for the other shoe to drop and at the end of the episode he gets "just what he always wanted". A subpoena to appear before a grand jury. Critically the only detective around is Munch, the only member of the squad who hasn't officially weighed in on the charges facing Mike.

His reaction is not helpful. "So what? Worst case scenario, you'll take the Fifth." He has no idea of the personal agony Kellerman is going on because he knows he may very well have to do just that in a few weeks' time, and that if he does just that, it may end up costing him his job. It's clear that this finally gets to Kellerman and he walks out of the squad without another word.

But Cox has been there for it and she ends up going to the marina and finding Kellerman's boat. She realizes that Mike doesn't want to be alone that night and the episode's final shot ends with her climbing aboard. In hindsight it's hard to imagine a more perfect metaphor for what's going to follow between Mike and Juliana. Mike thinks Juliana is offering him a lifeboat. Juliana doesn't know she's getting on a sinking ship.

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

Inconsistencies: According to the story, there hasn't been a murder between the end of last week's episode and the start of this one. But when we scroll down Bayliss's name on the board as the Clifton families name is written down we see three more names. Considering that the last recorded case was 197 we see case numbers 199,200 and 204.

Also it appears the murder of Amy Introcaso (which we saw discussing in ME, Myself and I) has officially been written under Bayliss' name on the board.

Brodie is On The Move! The episode begins with Kellerman kicking Brodie out of his boat because Brodie has spent too much time trying to cheer Mike up. No matter what Brodie does he just seems to piss off everybody.  He tries to hit up Giardello but the lieutenant would even hear him out. "The day I ever get that lonely I'll get myself a dog." As if to rub his nose in it he then tells Brodie he can't sleep in the squad room anymore because he's stinking up the joint. At this point he becomes so desperate he calls Russert in Paris to ask if she would be willing to sublet her home ("Did Munch put you up to this?" she asks before hanging up). By the way that is Isabella Hoffman doing a voice cameo on the show.

'Detective Munch: Upon observing Reggie Copeland: "From the track marks on his arms, the large caliber wounds, the proximity to a heroin market, I'd say it was a heated dispute about the symbolism of red and blue in 18^th Century French Romantic poetry." Of course then Scheiner has to rain on everyone's parade: "Either that or a drug murder." (I mean, come on. If there was a murder like that it would be right of Munch's alley.)

Hey, Isn't That…Mekhi Phifer had made his film debut in Clockers in the role of Strike in 1995. He was still mostly known for small roles in music videos including the Braxton's and En Vogue at the time of this film. He would play Tyrell in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and play Trey Howard in the John Singleton version of Shaft. He had played Odin James in the reimagined version of Othello O in 2001.

But it was in 2002 that he was officially put on the map. First it was when he played Future in 8 Mile and then as Dr. Greg Pratt in ER a role that would become one of the more critical characters in the shows second half. From that point on he never left the limelight. In 2009 he played Ben Reynolds in the Tim Roth drama Lie to Me for two seasons and would play Rex in Torchwood. He would play Max in the Divergent series and has been a constant figure in many critically acclaimed TV shows during the 2020s from Harold Brooks in Netflix's Love Victor to Markus in Apple TV's Truth Be Told. He can currently be seen as Arthur Ellis, an ex-con who has a knowledge of Morgan's family's past on High Potential.

Get The DVD?  As Munch and Lewis go to Philadelphia to track down Franklin Chubb, the shooter of Reggie Copeland, there's a recording of James Brown' iconic Night Train as we watch the process come together. But if I'm honest the track they got in its place is clearly another Motown track and it kind of works better then the original one. It's not enough of a difference to make this sequence any less effective.

 

 

Suggestions For A Post-Trump America Congress 2026 Edition Entering Their Fifth Election Cycle It's Time to Assess What The Justice Democrats Are And What They Are Not

 

Author's Notes: Those of you who've read my previous blogs on politics know that I live in New York and have a closer look at certain members of the so-called Justice Democrats. I have in previous articles expressed my own strong negative opinions of them.

I will do my best in this article to remain as impartial as possible and try to let the facts speak for themselves. If I let any personal bias in I apologize.

As we enter the 2026 midterms the Justice Democrats, which counts among its members AOC, Ilhan Ohmar and the rest of 'The Squad' is putting forth its biggest slate of candidates since their initial run in 2018. According to their website they are endorses eleven newcomers and one former representative.

In theory this represents an immense step forward for the movement, certainly compared to the last cycle when two members of their caucus Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush were defeated in Democratic primaries even before the general election. But in another sense there's an argument that the movement that the Squad represents has officially peaked and that it may very well be all downhill from here.

2026 marks the fifth election cycle that the Justice Democrats have officially run candidates. And since we are now nearly a full decade since the movement was launched I believe enough time has passed to clear headedly illustrate what they have accomplished – and far more often, their limitations. So here are some basic facts that a historian or a political scholar can impartially realize.

Fact: The Justice Democrats are not a political movement in the commonly accepted use of the term.

In the history of Congress 'movements' have broad definitions but they usually involve an influx of new members of both Houses of Congress, governor's races and state houses. They involve either new political parties or in many cases fall under the wave of a President. Some of the most successful include the launch of the Republican Party at the eve of the Civil War, the Populist movement of the 1880s and 1890s, the Progressive era at the start of the 20^th century and the influx of New Deal Democrats starting with FDR's landslide election in 1932. There have also been successful Congressional movements such as the so-called Class of 1974 in which 87 people who ran for Congress for the first time were elected, the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 and most recently the Tea Party movement of 2010.

Based on pure statistics the Justice Democrats are a failure as a movement. The original founders of it Kyle Kulinski and Cenk Uygur classified as such after the 2018 midterms. As I've said before and will say again they put forth a slate of 78 candidates for governor, Lieutenant Governor, Senate and Congress in that year and only four candidates who ran under that banner – Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Taib, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez – won that year.  They have never even tried to run a field anywhere near that big in the 2020s and they've only tried to run for offices in Congress. They haven't endorsed a candidate for Governor or Lieutenant governor since their inaugural run; the last time they tried to run a candidate for Senate was Betsy Sweet in Maine and she only got 22 percent of the vote in a Democratic primary.

Many of the people who endorse their agenda had already been incumbents in safely Democratic districts for years, most notably Ro Khanna. All of the Justice Democrats to this point have been in some of the bluest districts in the country; even in this most recent run, none of them are running in red or even swing districts. After five cycles the Justice Democrats seem at least somewhat aware of their limitations.

And its telling that nearly eight years of serving in Congress there has been no sign of a 'Squad Effect' in the Justice Democrats or any other part of state or local politics. Considering that AOC and her ilk are the most visible representatives in terms of social media and actual media one would have expected that there might have been a sign of women of color or indeed progressives of any sort being more than willing to sign up to run for elected office around the country. Yet halfway through the decade they were only able to come up with eleven new candidates to run this time out. And as you'll see we're already seeing the limitations.

 

Fact: The Justice Democrats are increasingly having to use the same candidates to run for elected office over and over.

I don't want to pick on Cori Bush, I've done that a lot, but she represents by far the best case.

In 2018 she ran for the Missouri 1^st district and was trounced in the primary only get 36. 9 percent of the vote. In 2020 she managed to narrowly win the primary for that district and immediately became both a new member of the squad and one of the biggest anchors. This is what I wrote about her two years ago:

In November 2021 Bush, along with Bowman,  was one of six House Democrats to break with their party and vote against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act because it was not accompanied by the Build Back Better Act. As I mentioned before the main reason for this argument was because Biden had committed the cardinal sin of ‘compromising’ with Joe Manchin. Progressives as we know are the only people who think half a loaf is worse than nothing which is the only logic followed by which Bell and Bowman voted against the bill.

Yet even that paled to what by then had become a glaring hypocrisy in regard to Bush’s own background. For her career as an activist Bush had been one of the biggest advocates for the ‘defund the police’ movement. But by August of her first year in Congress she was already spending tens of thousands of dollars on personal security for herself. When she was challenged by this on August 5^th, her reaction was simple – and mind-boggling: “I get to be here to do the work, so suck it up – and defunding the police has to happen.”  By 2021 calls to defund the police had become unpopular and some cities who shifted funding away from law enforcement reversed course. Bush stuck with her position, despite the challenges to public safety in her district and a federal investigation into the money she was spending on private security – that her husband was providing.

All of this just led to the perfect storm that began after October 7^th. Like Bowman, the Jewish community locally had viewed her with skepticism along with her associations with people with anti-Semitic views. But rather than engage with Jewish community leaders, Bush ignored them, meeting with them only once after four years in office. Numerous organizations made requests for her time  and Bush’s response was glib “my trick to dealing with groups with whom (I) disagree is to simply ignore their calls.” Even after Bell emerged as a challenger against her, Bush continued to double down on her rhetoric, equating the Middle East to her own actions as an activist.

Political talent, as a Missouri columnist wrote in the aftermath of Bush’s defeat last night is rooted in dexterity: “to appeal to a wide variety of constituencies without significant internal contradictions…Candidates with dexterity are not only able to expand their base, but in some cases can neutralize or even convert key individuals and groups who once constituted significant obstacles…It doesn’t mean you lack convictions…it means you have the ability to frame those convictions in different settings, to emphasize certain issues in certain venues; to adopt a demeanor suitable for the group, yet without seeming like a chameleon.”

Bush spent much of the days leading up to the campaign insisted that her opponent was trying to buy her seat, insisting that if voters were still in line when the polls were closed to stay in line. Bowman was one of those who made fundraising calls for her referring to her as a ‘powerful truth teller’.

There were no signs in Bush’s ‘concession speech’ that she was humbled by her loss. “One thing I don’t do is go away,” she said…

Why is this relevant? Bush is running to reclaim her old seat yet again. But this time her opponent has her entire previous tenure in Congress to use as opposition research against her before she even gets started.

But this has been a pattern of the Justice Democrats since the start.  They can't find a lot of people who are willing to run based on the platform that is so far left most people can't stand on it, much less get elected on it or survive against the restrictions of campaign finance laws that their opponents, Democrats or Republicans are more than willing to break. And not enough people are willing to do the definition of insanity: keep doing the exact same thing and believe it will work.

Kara Eastman tried twice in Nebraska in 2018 and 2020 and after losing both times surrendered. Marie Newman managed to win her primary for the Illinois 3^rd but after she got flattened when she was running for reelection left the scene. Jessica Cisneros got beaten in the Texas 28^th in 2020, made it to the runoff in 2022 but lost as well. She hasn't been back since. This is not a vote of confidence when it comes to getting candidates to run for office.

And that's brings us to another problem:

 

Fact: The only districts the Justice Democrats have a chance in are the most progressive in the country..

The expansion this time around involves more of the same: two new candidates in deep blue California districts, two more candidates in Illinois, another candidate in Michigan, New York and one more in Texas. They know their platform is a non-starter in Idaho or Alaska and it's not even that popular in Florida or New Jersey.

At this juncture the Justice Democrats are going back to the fallback position that every political group tries at some point: that's it time for a new generation of candidates. This has been going on since democracies were started across the globe and in some cases it will be a success. But we all know it works just as well for conservatives and Republicans as it does for progressives and Democrats.

This is a sell every candidate for office tries and it doesn't always work. We saw it tried this past Tuesday in the North Carolina primary in the fourth district. Nida Allam tried to run against Valerie Foushee this past week on an anti-Ice platform, was endorsed by Bernie Sandrs, gun control activists and the working families party. She lost by a small margin though she didn't concede until Wednesday.

This wasn't the first time Allam challenged Foushee, She'd done so in 2022 and lost by nearly ten points to her. That time she didn't have the Justice Democrats on her side; this time she had the entire left-wing establishment – and it still wasn't enough for her to win.

Frederick Haynes III took the Justice Democrats endorsement when he ran in the Texas primary but this was already a safe seat. Jasmine Crockett had vacated it when she decided to run in the Democratic Senate primary that was held this past year. Hayness is 66 years old, hardly the best model for the kind of generational shift the Justice Democrats want to argue for and its likely they might not be able to find someone who could fit that niche on short notice.

Crockett, I should be clear, was never a Justice Democrat. She took money from SuperPACs that were aligned with cryptocurrency industry, such as one led by the now convicted Sam Bankman-Fried. She was just as loud and vehement as any of them and if anything was less liked by her colleagues than some of the members of the Squad. When she ran for ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government reform, she placed last in the Democratic vote. She was part of the Congressional Progressive caucus (of which every one of the Squad is a member of) but not the Justice Democrats.

I mention Crockett because she represents the other side of the progressive coin: those who are willing to use immense and often dark money to win elections and advance their agenda. It worked as well for her running for the nomination for the Senate in Texas as it has done for every Justice Democrat who tried to run for Senate: she might have gotten a bigger share of the vote than Paula Jean Swearengin did in either of her runs for the Senate in West Virginia but it still ended in the same place: defeat and the end (at least for now) of her political life.

How the Justice Democrats will do with the remainder of their challengers this year remains to be seen. They are still playing by their own set of rules and they are angry when the rest of the country doesn't follow them. And that brings me to their biggest problem:

 

Fact: The Democratic Party, in its efforts to retake the House, has more or less been rejecting their platform when it comes to vetting new Congressional candidates.

In an article in The New York Times last months we learned that Ken Martin and the DNC were engaging in what is the biggest attempt to widen the national party's base in America since the successful 50 state strategy of Howard Dean in 2006 and 2008. Unlike the Justice Democrats they are making attempts to win not just swing districts but also districts that are fairly red. They are aware they probably won't win all of them but the goal is to force the RNC to spend money in districts that the GOP has long considered safe.

They have been making efforts to recruit Democrats across the country, not just in traditional safe spaces but also in red states like Montana and Tennessee. And as part of the vetting strategy for each candidate they are making sure there is no record in their social media of the kind of activist statements that are the bread and butter of the Justice Democrats such as 'EAT THE RICH' and 'DEFUND THE POLICE'.

We've also seen the national party attempt to recruit more or less Blue Dog democrats to win in states they haven't tried in a while, such as Mary Peltola's challenge of Dan Sullivan in Alaska, Alex Vindman challenging Ashley Moody in Florida and getting Sherrod Brown to try and win the seat that was formerly held by JD Vance in Ohio. How many of these races will be successful is an open question but considering that they are all trying to run for national office in red states  - where the progressive ideology has no roots as of yet  - would also seem to indicate that they are more interesting in winning than they are ideological purity that the Justice Democrats have been focused on to their detriment.

Combined with Martin's decision to push out David Hogg as one of the vice chairs of the DNC after he refused to say he would not primary incumbent Democrats this would appear to indicate the Democrat's flirtation with progressive candidates as their drawing card, which became their selling point after the 2018 midterms, has become less important then taking back power. Considering that this has always been at odds with the left-wing, who has made it clear they prefer losing in a noble cause then winning and compromising, this can only be seen as a step in the right direction both for the party and perhaps the country in a post-Trump era.

Now if you believe thoroughly in the activist cause of the left – and I'm fully aware there are enough true believers on this site who think that AOC and Bernie are too conservative for their tastes – this will only disappoint and enrage you. If, however, like me you actually want to realize some of their policies into existence and you think the Squad and their followers have been given more than enough time to succeed at their all-or-nothing approach, this can only come as a relief.

At the end of this election cycle the Justice Democrats will have been given a full decade to realize their agenda. Considering their own founders drew the conclusion they failed eight years ago, I'd say that we're well past them coming to terms with it. I've spent far too much time with the dreamers of the left. Its time to get back to the pragmatism of reality.

 

 

Why Do So Many People Worship Celebrity Idols Or: What I Wish I'd Said to A Writer on This Site

 

 

Sometime in the last month I read an article by someone who claimed they'd been betrayed by a boy band singer they'd worshiped growing up. He was a member of the Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, The Old New Kids on the Block – I didn't follow teen music growing up and for all intents and purposes its irrelevant. Because I've read some version of this exact article so many times on this site alone I've lost count.  All that matters is that this author felt betrayed when he learned to his horror, sometime in the few weeks, months, whatever, that this former teen idol was the one thing this site can not allow to exist: a Trump supporter.

I have a stock reaction to these kinds of articles that some of my readers are aware of particularly recently that I tried to share but this particularly open-minded induvial naturally chose to be a grown-up and block me. What I'd like to do is a write a more personal article about things I wish I'd said to him – not because he would have listened but because I think they are things that maybe some people on this site might be willing to here.

First of all, how did this author know this artist  - for the sake of clarity I'll refer to him as Kevin – had only recently become a Trump supporter? For all this man knows he's been a Republican his entire life. Perhaps he was an endorser of the War on Terror, the Patriot Act and the Surge. Maybe he believed Obama was born in Kenya and got in on the ground floor of the Tea Party. Maybe he donated residuals from his album to Mitt Romney's campaigns for President as early as 2008.  This author would have no way of knowing this  because its only within the last decade that we've insisted on every detail of our lives being posted on social media.

This is excusable: he himself said he was fourteen when he first heard Kevin sing as part of Backstreets Boys on The Block and its not like that any teenager during the 2000s would have cared what a person's politics were or had a way of tracking it down on Myspace. It becomes less excusable when he grew older but its excusable to read your values into people you admire whether they're true or not.

I myself made a blanket assumption that I should have known better by now: that this individual might be open to rational debate if I tried to reason with him. So I left the kind of extended comment I'm known for doing. It wasn't one of my more inflammatory ones: I just said that I didn't think celebrities owed their audiences anything other than performances, that virtue signaling cost nothing and that basically every time a celebrity says anything they cause independents to vote Republicans. I knew going in I was likely to receive pushback and be called names but I did this with my eyes open.

At first this individual was passive-aggressive saying he hadn't even bothered to read my comment because it was too long and by the way he didn't care what I thought. Then I did respond with sarcasm and expected that I would block him not long after. He actually did me the pleasure but not before giving the final word:

If I'm going to invest money into hearing a celebrity's music, I think they should share my values.

I must applaud him for actually saying the quiet part out loud. I've written similar articles in the last month about why I think celebrities are unqualified to talk about anything but acting and while many people supported me quite a few chose to burn me in virtual effigy, calling me all the horrible names they do when they engage in the kind of reasoned debate when they are called on it. My only surprise was that I was being attacked in what wasn't one of my more political articles even in regard to Hollywood.

But now here are some of the things I wish I'd said to this individual and indeed the far too many people online and off who genuinely seem to think this is a given.

First this just goes to prove the transactional nature that the young and left-wing people tend to think about basically anything in today's society. The institution, the system or the celebrity owes them everything and they owe nothing in return. This turns JFK's famous statement on its head: Ask not what you can do for your country, demand your country do everything for you.

The second point, related to the original statement is a rhetorical question: is it now a requirement for any figure, political, performer or online celebrity to have the values of the public be a prerequisite before they give their approval? Because I've seen the vetting process online and based on this site alone, no one could meet this group's standards because the Overton Window keeps moving leftward and even if an individual should pass every single test the mob could arbitrarily decide to reject them whenever they feel like it.

Third and this is the point of the article: why do so many people online take the word of any public figure at face value, particularly those in Hollywood or the performing industry? They don't give that benefit of the doubt to figures in Silicon Valley, corporate billionaires and they never trust politicians? The assumption is that if they say anything that is liberal or progressive it is purely lip service and of course if they show conservative values that is the true measure of who they really are.

But no one seems to consider the other side of it: why do so many people believe that if a celebrity posts support of a progressive statement in a hashtag or wears a button on a red carpet or shouts it out at an awards show that is the true measure of what they believe?

Actors, singers and to an extent athletes are performers which by its definition means that there's a degree of fiction in their public persona. (I'll stick with TV because that's what I mostly write about here.) Michael C. Hall isn't a serial killer; Jon Hamm isn't an ad exec in 1960s New York and Bryan Cranston isn't a chemistry teacher who cooks meth to provide for his family. They're actors first and foremost.  So if Mark Ruffalo speaks out in favor of defunding ICE or against corporate interests, why should I or anyone accept that is a true expression of his feelings?

All elected officials are performers to an extent. I've been watching representatives senators and candidates for local and higher office in campaign ads ever since I was eight years old.  And I'm pretty sure that by the time I was twelve I knew better than to take what a campaign ad said about their positions at face value, particularly when they said their opponents was bent on destroying America if elected. This, for the record, is a bipartisan affair: Republicans have been saying Democrats will do that if they are elected and Democrats have been saying the same about Republicans long before Trump started running for office.  I stopped taking what they said at face values long before I even reached by teenage years.

So if Bryan Cranston or Rosie O'Donnell or any of a hundred other celebrities say that they are loyal to the progressive cause and that they believe in working class values I have no more reason to take them seriously then I would if I saw Ted Cruz or Andrew Cuomo if they talked about the middle class? If anything I'd trust celebrities far less because they are much richer then me and almost certainly don't know nearly as much about politics as anyone whose been in public life for twenty years?

Because as I've said over and over and over (and will keep saying) if an actor or a singer were to shout Defund Ice or Free Palestine at the Emmys it costs them nothing to do so. They are hundreds of miles from the scenes of conflict surrounded by an enclave of people who share their values. If Bad Bunny were to say F--- Ice in Minneapolis where ICE actually was, he would get a very different reaction then when he says it at the Grammys or at the Super Bowl.  He knows that. Everybody in the room knows that. They're making the assumption – a very shaky one – that everyone watching them on TV does not know that.  Given the reactions of some of the people online, these stars may be correct in that thinking.

And let's not forget that celebrities are far more skilled in public relations and optics then someone whose been a DC insider for thirty years. I don't think for a second any statement they make in front of a camera has not been rehearsed in front of their agents half a dozen times before it comes out with the right amount of angst and sanctimony on a red carpet or film festival. Part of the gift of being an actor is being able to fake anything, even sincerity.  These people are performers and they know better how to rehearse and perform that as well as the ability to appear that they are spontaneous. I believe when an actor is shocked to win an Oscar or an Emmy after weeks of being told someone else is going to win it; when they make any statement that is political I'm certain that they've had a whole variation that they've been rehearsing for days, if not weeks.

If Billie Eilish had at the Grammies said: "Legalize heroin' or "stop the poaching of rhinos in Africa" I would have believed she was being honest about her support for those issues. Mainly because they are not applause lines and would no doubt cause everybody in New York to go dead silent and wonder "What is she talking about?"  By contrast when she said, "No one is illegal on stolen land." I have absolutely no doubt she rehearsed variations on that line countless times in the days leading up to the Grammies. It would have been a disappointment if she hadn't commented on it among her brethren.

Shouting out a cause or wearing a button costs a celebrity nothing. We all know that in the past decade that to take a position that is not political is considered even more of a betrayal to the liberal cause then if you were a conservative.  There's a contingent online that believes that it is more important to appear like you are in favor of all the right things rather than do anything to help them become a reality.  They really think that the causes of freedom are realized by protesting or wearing buttons or with a hashtag. I've found out that if you tell them that its actually harder then that they get very angry.

A celebrity's job has always been to entertain us, to help provide escape from the frequently dark and horrible reality around us.  Regardless of their political affiliation they have far less power to change the world that those in social media truly believe. Most of the people who think otherwise are immature, if not physically then emotionally. Celebrities are mostly adults. They should know better by now and they should certainly act that way.

Hollywood & Politics, Part 6:How The Clinton Presidency and The 2000 Election Were Reframed By Hollywood and California Retroactively to Fit Their Left-Wing Narrative

 

Last year  in an interview Jay Leno pointed out how today's comedians, particularly in late night, have essentially become political activists more determined on setting an agenda he was almost universally vilified by every comedian going back thirty years. In typical left-wing agenda they chose to attack Leno by arguing about all the political jokes he made and in particularly how much he had skewered Monica Lewinsky during Clinton's second term and beyond.

The first has nothing to do Leno's point but I'd like to focus on the second because it is another extraordinary example of Hollywood and the left rewriting history. Because as someone who lived through the 1990s I remember how every single comedian, from Letterman to Chris Rock to Conan O'Brien to The Daily Show to Saturday Night Live chose to cover the Lewinsky affair. And to a man and a woman, black or white, they were all on the side of Clinton. This was a position they only chose to back away from, critically, when the MeToo movement was becoming prevalent in the aftermath of the Trump's first election to the Presidency. Only more than two decades after the fact did they choose to admit that they had behaved poorly and offer a retroactive condemnation of Clinton, and even then they did so in a passive aggressive way.

(And for the record if Lewinsky chooses to reframe herself as the victim now I remember she spent much of that period steering into the skid. She chose to appear as herself on SNL while impeachment proceedings were going on and she certainly looked like she was enjoying herself. I realize the power structure was changed but it is far more difficult for me to see her as a victim the way that Anita Hill and Paula Jones clearly were.)

And to be clear I think it was only because Clinton was a constant victim of attack from Republican politicians, Rush Limbaugh and the brand new Fox News that Hollywood and the left even took his side at all. Because I remember those times. Hollywood thought Bill Clinton was a fat, lecherous hillbilly from the moment they met him and the only reason they tolerated him during his two runs for the Presidency was because the Democrats had been out of power for twelve years and they made the assumption that Clinton would serve as a restoration of the liberal order.

They choose to ignore the fact that during the campaign Clinton had rejected the liberal campaigns of Mondale and Dukakis and seemed more inclined in finding a 'Third Way'. He spent much of the lead-up to the nomination attacking the left and trying to win over the center (I'll deal with that in a separate article) And even though he won the Presidency he did so only because of the Ross Perot campaign splitting the vote.

Clinton had embraced a new style of governing known as 'neoliberalism' which led to much success for governments throughout the world during that decade and the early 2000s. It has since fallen to disrepute from left-wing scholars who have chosen to argue that Clinton sold out the left when he never once promised to govern that way. Like Jimmy Carter in 1976 Clinton had realized how much the country had gone to the right and that the liberal order had died in Nixon's blowout of McGovern in 1972.

Bill Clinton spent his term governing that way and acknowledging the reality of liberalism's demise arguing for economic realities and spending much of his term in office 'triangulating the right'. This worked immensely at the time and allowed him to survive his impeachment by House Republicans in 1998 with overwhelmingly high popularity numbers.

But to the left at the time this was the ultimate betrayal and remains so to this day.  To them there is no Third Way, there's only one way and that is to govern to the left. The fact that Clinton had become the first Democrat to win reelection since FDR did nothing to change their feelings about him; in their minds liberalism was the only way to go.

One sees during the Clinton Presidency the rise of many films with fictional Democratic Presidents and politicians. The most critically acclaimed were Rob Reiner and Aaron Sorkin's The American President, Warren Beatty's Bulworth, which seems to be a protest against the reality of conservatism in both parties and Rod Lurie's The Contender, released on the eve of the 2000 election with Jeff Bridges playing a Democratic President trying to name a female Senator to the Vice Presidency (Joan Allen) who is attacked by a conservative politician planning to 'gut the bitch in the belly'.

This was seen in prominent blockbusters as well. Independence Day has a former fighter pilot now President (Bill Pullman) who personally flies a fighter plane to destroy an alien invaders but gives an inspiring speech before leading the forces into battle. 1998's Deep Impact featured Morgan Freeman playing the President (for the first of several times) who rallies the world as America facing a comet that will be an extinction level event.

All of these films were either released or greenlit before The West Wing debuted in the fall of 1999 and in hindsight I'm inclined to see them as Hollywood engaging in wish fulfillment of the kind of Presidents they really wanted to be in power aside from that fat, adulterous slob in the White House. They didn't bother with legislation or working to make great bills; they just have awe inspiring speeches and the public did whatever they did without hesitation.  Considering that there has always been a belief among the left that the President could just press a button and make the government do what it wanted I believe these simplistic versions very much seemed how the Presidency should work rather than the reality of the time.

And that would become even clearer as the 2000 election unfolded weeks after we should have had a winner.

 

In the aftermath of the 2000 election far left websites like Daily Kos and filmmakers like Michael Moore would frame the election of George W. Bush as the first example of 'proof' that the Republicans knew that they were on the verge of being wiped out by Democrats and progressive values and stole the election from the rightful choice of the masses Al Gore, by a combination of Florida Republicans and a conservative Supreme Court.

It's a good story and there are certain elements of truth in regard to Florida and the Court's involvement. The problem is that it whitewashes both the historical record and the left's role.

First as someone who lived through the 2000 election I remember that it wasn't until the Florida recount and its aftermath that the left fell in love with Al Gore. In the eleven months beforehand no one thought there was a difference between these two men. There was, and the left felt W intellectually unqualified to become President from the moment he announced his campaign.

But as is always the case this didn't translate into a love for the Democrat. The major charge against Gore was that he was stodgy and boring.  The fact that he had spent a decade in Congress, had been a Senator and served two terms as Vice President and by that metric was infinitely more qualified than W to be President didn't change the left and Hollywood's problem that they found him stiff.

More to the point Gore, being part of the Clinton administration, was also considered neoliberal himself and was part of the continuing argument that had never gone away with the left that 'there was no real difference between the two parties'. Furthermore the left yet again chose to make the same fallacious argument they'd made ever since Richard Nixon's rise to power: "no intelligent person will ever vote for Bush". That their track record on this had been proven incorrect time and against during the 20^th century shows their continuing to dismiss what appealed to the plain people. Indeed during much of the leadup to the fall campaign the only candidate who excited Hollywood and the left was Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.

How many people chose to justify their vote for Nader was bizarre considering how much he openly hoped for Bush's victory, saying that he would vote for Bush if forced and that he would feel no regret if Gore lost: "I'd rather have a provocateur than an anesthetizer in the White House. Nader would eventually get 97,421 votes in Florida, which Gore lost by only 537 votes. In a letter to environmentalists he attacked Gore for his role of being the prototype for 'the bankable, Green corporate politician." The Sierra Club president called Nader's strategy irresponsible" Multiple publications have criticized Nader for throwing the election to Bush.

This is more, I should add, then people like Nader himself has acknowledged. While his own campaign would later admit that if he had not run Al Gore would most likely have won, he has spent the last quarter of a century continuing to not only deny responsibility but to continue to advocate that there is no difference between the two parties. In the last decade he continues to write books that, while they openly denounce Trump as the enemy, just as often say there is no difference between the two parties and liken the Bush and Obama administrations as ‘laying the groundwork for Trump’s election’. He still sees himself as blameless for whatever role he played in W’s election and it is clear given the many on the far left who have emerged in his wake that they share his views openly.

Its worth remembering that after Bush v. Gore played out the general reaction of the populace was essentially indifference. The left would eventually embrace the idea of Gore being a martyr only after first 9/11 and the War on Terror, as well as the Iraq war. But none of them seemed willing to argue Gore should run against Bush in 2004, something that seemed to suit him just fine. Historically the only Presidential candidates the left ever worships are those who lose, those who accept their martyrdom in silence.

The left would begin to start to rewrite electoral history for good starting in 2008. This involved some creative arithmetic of their own. They chose to ignore the Republican revolution that began with Nixon in 1968 and continued essentially until the end of the 20^th century as not a true expression of the electorate's will. Their recounting would begin in 1992 with the election of Clinton and then argue until 2012 the Democrats had won five out of the next six elections. would argue that the 2000 election was a subversion of the will of the people and in some circles many would later argue the 2004 election had been stolen from John Kerry.

In this retelling only the Presidential election counting not the various Congressional ones during this period. They chose to ignore the Republican Revolution in 1994 that gave both houses of Congress to the Republicans until 2006 as not being the 'true' will of the masses. This would involve the 2000 election itself when the electorate basically chose to leave both houses of Congress unchanged. The Republicans lost two seats in the House while the Democrats gained four seats in the Senate, making it a 50-50 tie.  At the end of the day the electorate could not make up its mind about which party it wanted it power.

And it's not as though Al Gore won the popular vote by a landslide. He basically won by a margin of 540,000 votes out of 110 million cast for both parties. And its worth noting that the major reason Gore won the popular vote was because he carried California by 1.3 million votes. So in a sense California made Al Gore the winner in the popular vote.

And while there very likely was chicanery in Florida the fact remains that Gore lost by 537 votes out of six million cast. It's hard to imagine that even had there been a significant shift in a recount that the margin would have given Gore a landslide in Florida. And strangely most of the focus was made on the voters who chose to vote for Reform Party Candidate Pat Buchanan's vote. There was no reference to the over 97,000 votes given to Nader in Florida.

As for the subsequent Republican gains in Congress both in the midterms and Bush's reelection in 2004 the left began a pattern they maintain to this day. The will of the people was being subverted by a handful of corporate oligarchs and media tycoons. One is familiar with the usual suspects: the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine which led to first Limbaugh and then Fox News, the work of bad actors like Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney and later oligarchs such as the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch. Republican lawmakers were gerrymandering districts to subvert the will of the electorate in the House and the people in Middle America and the South were either racists or illiterate. The concept that the electorate might actually like Republicans and conservative values never entered the conversation.

This rewriting continued after Obama's election and throughout his Presidency where the Republicans were officially all brushed as racists and everyone who voted for a Republican candidate in either party equally so. The publications like Daily Kos and The Nation never made the Democrats the heroes in this story, even after Obama's election: they still considered them only slightly better than the Republicans. The crime that Clinton and Obama made was that they decided to be Presidents for all Americans, something the left has never accepted. They were increasingly convinced, as they always are, that America wants left-wing values and the only reason they vote otherwise is because they're too dumb to realize it's good for them.

The narration of America as a bastion of liberalism wasn't in keeping with California own electoral history during this period. Indeed between 1966 and 2010 it followed a pattern much like the country as a whole. It was governed by Republicans 31 years out of 44 (Jerry Brown from 1975-1982 and Grey Davis from 1999 until his recall in 2003). The state's governors have mostly followed conservative policies throughout Republicans. Brown spent as much of his gubernatorial race running for President (making efforts in both the 1976 and 1980 Democratic primary). And the overwhelming majority of propositions that are now part of gospel for the left from publicly funded elections to regulations of utilities failed when they came to a vote in landslides.

This included passage of single-payer health care. In 1994 it was put on the ballot as an Initiative and received 27 percent of the vote. The proposal has been proposed by the legislature multiple times but Schwarzenegger vetoes it twice under his administration. They have tried multiple times to get it through the legislature under Jerry Brown but it has repeatedly been put on hold because there were concern over financing.  As if this writing a new bill is still before the California legislature but it was withdrawn by January of 2022 because they didn't have to votes to pass it.

This pattern, it should be noted., has played out in several state legislatures over the past thirty years but with the sole exception of Vermont, all of them failed. Many of these were in the bluest states of the Union from Illinois to Colorado and throughout New England. Only in 2011 did Vermont manage to pass it and it would be abandoned in 2014, saying the costs and tax increases were too high to implement.

So the idea of liberal ideas being universally approved keeps running against reality especially in California.  By and large Hollywood itself chose not to spend the period throughout the 21^st century continued its trend of attacking who was in power equally and during Schwarzenegger's governorship, frequently made fun of how they themselves could not be trusted when it came to governing. The academic left in California might have been deluded but by and large Hollywood was not.

That would change in the aftermath of the 2016 election.

In the penultimate article in this series I will discuss Hollywood's attitude towards electoral politics in general during the 21^st century and how that era changed forever in the aftermath of the 2016 election.