Bart Simpson and the Congenital Inability of Conservatives to Ever Take Responsibility

Last updated on: October 16, 2019 at 12:48 am by Mark Shea

Bart Simpson and the Congenital Inability of Conservatives to Ever Take Responsibility 2019-09-17T18:03:53-07:00 Mark Shea

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A while back, I posted a piece on Fr. Matthew Schneider tweeting to protest Alt-Right Nazi Richard Spencer and getting deluged with defenses of Nazis from Good Conservative Catholics and various other white conservative Christians (and some pagans too).

One of the comments I promptly received in response to this bizarro Freak Show that is 100% the creation of the Right here in the US was this:

TBH, I’m not a fan of the liberal media either, but Spencer just seems to be a sort of far-right version of that liberal media to me.

I replied, “Fascinating how the right wing cult always manages to find a way to project everything wrong with them on their enemies. The Party of Personal Responsibility my eye.”

I think of that again as I read this piece from the Cato Institute titled, “The Right Has Its Own Version of Political Correctness. It’s Just as Stifling“.

Long ago, there was a Simpsons episode in which Bart faked a love note from a mysterious paramour to Mrs. Krabappel and promised to meet her for dinner. She went to the restaurant full of hope and nobody came. So she broke down crying. Bart, spying on her through the restaurant window, is assailed by guilt for a moment. But being Bart, he then says to himself, “I feel partially responsible for this.”

The Right almost never attempts self-examination at all. It is too busy accusing it’s culture war enemies. But on the rare occasions it does pause to reflect, as in this piece, it can never ever do it without somehow including the caveat that “Libs are, of course, way worse than us”. Never. Any time the Right makes one of its half-assed attempts to assess its massive guilt and sin for the lies, racism, sadism, and cruelty for which it now stands as the unbudging partisans of the Cult of Trump, it must reflexively add or imply that it is only a shadow of the real evil, the Libs.

Note that title. What it exists to do is salve the guilty conscience of the Right with the implied words “LIBS ARE STILL WORSE!” When the author says the Right “has its own version of political correctness” that is “just as stifling”, what is really being spoken is that Lefties are the gold standard for thought control while Righties are always to be measured against that absolute.

This is, to be blunt, utter BS in the age when the Faithful in the Cult of Trump must now believe and confess that Donald Trump’s sharpie is the final determinant of reality on pain of excommunication from the True Faith. To doubt or question or show disloyalty to the Dear Leader is the Great Sin everywhere in the Cult.

Conservatives need to stop comparing themselves to the imaginary North Korean Dictator Liberal of their fantasy life and start comparing themselves to the gospel. Because the Cult of Trump, cocooned in a fantasy world constructed of the lies of Trump, long ago became the gold standard for Freak Show totalitarian thought control and disconnection from reality. They better learn how to mea culpa without compulsively adding “NO! THEM!” and pointing obsessively at their culture war enemies or they are going to lose their minds and souls.

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