The lord clearly loves me and wants me to be happy, because she has given me Erick Erickson and Robert Stacey McCain. No links because I have no idea what kind of spam you get as a reward for joining Erick’s group.
You may remember my reaction when the “treacherous bastards” at the National Republican Senatorial Committee endorsed Charlie Crist in the Florida Senate race — 15 months before the primary!
Erick Erickson of Red State started a Facebook group to protest the NRSC’s endorsement of Crist, and Erick just sent this message to group members:
Subject: They are listening
I’ve been getting all sorts of emails begging me to shut this group down.
Instead, please consider inviting ten friends each.
The NRSC will not listen to us unless we help shut down their fundraising. You can help.
Thanks,
ErickCLICK HERE TO JOIN THE FACEBOOK GROUP.
Meanwhile, there is a new blog HQ for the grassroots anti-NRSC protest: NOT ONE RED CENT.
I cannot begin to describe how awesome this is for the Democratic party. In all sincerity, we should wish Erick and Robert Stacey success in this mission to chase every bit of heterodoxy out of the GOP. If their mission succeeds, the purist fringe will be happy. Democrats will be happy. The country will never worry about another Republican majority. As far as I can tell the only loser would be David Frum, who we will know as the miserable kid in the closet whom residents of utopia occasionally must visit lest we forget our privileged state.
However, I must announce with sadness that Erick’s unbelievably stupid purity crusade proves a favorite theorem of mine wrong, and by ‘wrong’ I don’t mean weather forecast wrong but, rather, laughably, starkly one hundred eighty degrees off base. I’m talking peak wingnut. Maybe worse.
You see, a year ago I posted some thoughts about Erick Erickson’s amusing and mostly futile efforts to carve a bottom-up niche in a top-down party. They still seem like ok posts until I closed with this.
It will only be good when when the party treats well-intentioned members trying to effect change from the inside like a squeaky wheel rather than like an unhammered nail.
Before my credibility sinks any further, I formally retract my statement and welcome any formal inquiry into whether I was drunk or high when I wrote that post.
Martin
The Erick and Robert Stacey Terminator future would be legions of cyborg Sarah Palins winking and alsoing their way through everything from city council elections to presidential primary debates.
Someone should make a short film to warn the public of this dystopian threat.
NCReggie
Come on you must have a low opinion of alcoholics and potheads to say that…
BruceFromOhio
Ursula K. LeGuin turned me off with that one, but it sure resonates today. I feel sorry for Frum, having to stand by and watch his party get infected with rabies.
OK, so you were wrong. You ‘fess up, learn the lesson. If Obama is smart, Crist will find a job somewhere in the administration, increasing the stock of seed corn.
Meanwhile, kick back and pop some more corn. This run up to 2010 is almost as interesting as the run up to 2008.
JGabriel
I considered joining the Not One Red Cent for the NRSC movement – after all, it’s a platform I can really get behind – but was prevented by the aforementioned spam concern.
Although, in the context of its usage by a certifiable wingnut, one has to wonder about the linguistic, economic, political, and philosophical ramifications of the phrase “Red Cent”. Is it a purposefully ironic conjunction of the communistic and capitalistic, both Hegelian and anti-Hegelian in its antithesis? OR is “Red” meant to evoke Red States, and “Cent” to evoke their financial poverty – ironic, given the politics they usually vote for.
Or is it just fucking stupidity?
.
Short Bus Bully
This is the key phrase. Here Erick has unwittingly taken a playbook from the Dems in imagining that grassroots ANYTHING and protests matter at all to the powers that be in his party. What he doesn’t understand is that the uppity peasant who goes to bat for the aristocracy is still just a peasant. They get a pat on the head, not a place at the table.
Someone should tell that poor plebe, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t get the analogy because just like Joe the Plumber “we’re all gonna be rich someday!”
However, until that day you’re just a serf in the fields who pulls levers every couple of years. Dig it Erick.
jon
Crist is wondering what Ambassadorship he can get from Obama also right about now…
BruceFromOhio
@JGabriel:
The latter, all the way.
Dennis-SGMM
Once they polish off the NRSC they can turn their attention to those sellouts at the RNC who didn’t immediately start referring to the Dems as the “Democrat Socialist Party.” By purging the party of these traitorous bastards Erickson, et al, will assure that the Underpants Gnomes take their rightful place in fund raising and campaigning.
Fr33d0m
Personally I think Peak Wingnut is a mathematically proven force that layers itself on top of any inter-party relationship. It is a force among forces and can be canceled out by its polar opposite. Unfortunately we rarely see and so have been unable to fully study and understand this other force.
It is important to understand the canceling force, but it is equally important to understand this polarizing effect and how it can modify other forces.
Martin
And yet, it’s been spelled out as clear as can be for him by Steele:
In other words, “it’s our party and if y’all want to vote for us, we’d appreciate it, but then get the fuck out.”
NCReggie
Ya know I’m all for our opposition bein functionally insane but there’s also the problem of 46% of the country being under the sway of these tea-tards and any slip up by our guy and the crazies get in. Kinda frightening but yet oddly intriguing the notion of government by mentally emasculated theocrats and pro business/no to socialism/wetnursing/handholding/welfare recieving (not just for shiftless minorities any more per Micheal Steele) terrorist appeasing/24 is god demagogues. Kinda like a William S. Burroughs novel on a three week meth binge.
wasabi gasp
They’re getting all sciencey with a fractal of stupidity, a mandelbratwurst, if you will.
El Cid
What is your major malfunction?
No, no, no, no, no. All the librul & Democrap bloggers need to meet in their regular secret Satan conferences and agree to pretend to be horridly, horridly outraged, so that driven by their gonadal desire to piss off da libruls they do it even more!
STOP HELPING THEM!!!
Dennis-SGMM
@wasabi gasp:
“mandelbratwurst”
Wish I’d written that.
Rick Taylor
The proposal of Peak Wingnut Theory is understandable, as it results from a failure of imagination. One asks oneself how could they possibly get any crazier than they are today, and one’s mind becomes empty; hence Peak Wingnut. Who could have foreseen a movement to send tea bags to washington as a sort of modern day recreation of the Boston tea party? I now know that wingnuts will become even more bizarre than they are today, even as I cannot imagine how.
As an alternative, I now propose a theory of a Wingnut Blackhole. As the Wingnuttia becomes more and more dense, attracting itself and repelling all impurity, it will eventually reach a point where it folds in on itself, forming a singularity from which nothing can escape, not even light. At this point it will still be there, but powerless to affect anything that matters.
A. Hidell
I have a slightly different take on Peak Wingnut. In 2008, G W Bush’s approval ratings were 28%. Peak Wingnut? No. After Palin and tire guages and fascist and dijon have we reached Peak Wingnut? Republican Party identification is down to 21%. They keep going at this rate, then by Christmas they could be in single digits.
Peak Wingnut can be one of two things. What percent of Party Identification is the worst they can be expected to drop to and still remain a viable political party? It’s kinda like limbo. How Wingnutty can they actually get without destroying completely the Republican Party.
Alternatively, you can say that eventually they will get the sense that saying wackadoodle shit all the time maybe is a bad idea. By this interpretation, Peak Wingnut is that point where they start to pull themselves back from the brink.
Of course it’s possible that there is no Peak Wingnut. They won’t take their foot off the crazy gas. They’ll drive that clown car right off the cliff, screaming all the way about Obambi’s mustard choices.
KG
Damn it, Rick Taylor beat me to it, I was going to call for a Wingnut Singularity. Actually, I think Peak Wingnut is escalating at an exponential level, but at some point, it will not be able to sustain its own momentum and will drop off. We’ve just been wrong, so far, on what that point it.
JenJen
@KG: Wingnut Singularity! I love it!!
I see Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage isn’t wishing Jon Huntsman well, either.
Will the last member of the GOP please turn out the lights? Thank you.
Laura W
There most certainly is. I bought a pint last night at my local Food Lion. Chock full of nutty goodness: coconut, hazelnut, nutty caramel swirl and oatmeal cookies.
Stand aside, Stephen Colbert and Willie Nelson.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
In this scenario, Erick and his slack-jawed ilk are the red matter, I presume. [/Star Trek geekery]
Radon Chong
@Laura W:
I think it’s a safe bet that the last member of the GOP will be leaving the lights on. All of them!
Andy K
I think of Frum as the designated driver who got locked in the trunk by his pals after the prom. I don’t mind stepping out of the party to see if he’s still alive, but I’m not going to demand that his buddies let him out any time soon.
JGabriel
KG:
Me, too. Basically, my thinking on it is this:
There is no such thing as Peak Wingnut in the traditional sense, because Wingnut is always conserved, where f(Wingnut) is the amount of Crazy distributed over Mainstream Conservative Republicans ™. Whenever the number of MCR’s becomes smaller, the Crazy increases (and vice versa), such that the total Wingnut is always conserved.
However, when the number of MCR’s become smaller, the Wingnut density increases, leading to a Purity Spiral which eventually results in a Wingnut Singularity.
Whether we’re witnessing such an event right now, or whether it will merely devolve into a Wingnut Pulsar (a body of flailing wingnuts spinning so fast that the strobe effect can cause epilectic seizures), is something only time may tell – depending of course upon the physical constraints of time’s dimensionality, e.g., whether or not it’s a bipolar dimension or a unipolar (half or one-way) dimension, and so on …
.
SGEW
@Laura W: Oh, that is precious. Marvelous, really.
Mike G
It will only be good when the party treats well-intentioned members trying to effect change from the inside like a squeaky wheel rather than like an unhammered nail.
To the writer of this, I have to ask — have you ever MET any Republicans?
They hate change and worship conformity and organizational authority. Unless you’re a big wheel, you’re just a serf who needs to shut up, be happy with the crumbs they throw you, hate on command and vote how you’re told.
MNPundit
Dean has been and continues to be an incredible Democrat and I’d take him over Obama any day. Dean would not be pampering the bankers.
Legalize
I believe that the mistake observers make when looking for peak-wingnut is that they measure wingnuttery against a set of numbers. Wingnuttery can not be measured by any metric by which sane people would ordinarily measure other phenomena. I believe that we have always seen and known peak-wingnut. However, because of its size we are incapable of seeing all of it at one time. We are only permitted a glimpse of wingnuttery depending on its positioning relative to reality at any given time. This positioning simply can not be predicted or measured. In fact, it is irrelevant what position wingnuttery occupies relative to reality because wingnuttery is everywhere at all times. And it always has been.
Wingers will never be more or less sane, or more or less stupid. They will always be as bat-shit insane and pig-ignorant as they always have been. The only factor to be considered is our perception of them. It’s not that they get crazier and stupider. It’s that each time they say or do anything, we perceive them as advancing teh crazy/stupid ball one step further. This is not the case; we merely witness one more tentacle of an infinitely insanely stupid entity.
Wile E. Quixote
I think we need to figure out whether or not the value of
d(wingnut)/dt
is increasing or decreasing. Damn! And here I was thinking that I’d never use calculus.
Wile E. Quixote
@tripletee (formerly tBone)
So can the rest of the Republican party eject the warp core to escape from the wingnut black hole? Or are they going to get sucked in. If so then who is the warp core? [/More Star Trek Geekery]
KG
in light of 23, I should clarify my point in 17: “drop off” is probably the wrong phrase. I’m thinking more that it would become so large that it could not sustain its own momentum and would thus collapse upon itself to create the Wingnut Singularity. JGabriel’s theory of a Purity Spiral makes a great deal of since in this regard. Also, because we’ve never really seen one of these play out in real time (historically, I suppose we could look at the fall of the Federalists or the Whigs for guidance), it probably makes sense to keep an open mind and consider changes to the Peak Wingnut Theory and the Wingnut Singularity Theorem.
JGabriel
Wile E. Quixote:
Well, if f(wingnut) is a constant, i.e. conserved quantity, than there’s no delta wingnut, no change in wingnut over time.
So, I guess you still don’t get to use calculus.
.
KG
@ 29: warp core = southern populist social conservativism.
At least, if I had my way
JGabriel
Legalize:
Sorry, Legalize, but your argument is incoherent. Just because sane people would not ordinarily measure by these metrics does not mean they cannot be measured or are unquantifiable, c.f. imaginary numbers.
If that were the only flaw, the argument would be merely wrong, but then you go on to state that:
Which, of course, is the very definition of a constant!
See? There’s no need to go all “mystical shit”. Math and physics can handle Wingnut just fine. Excepting, of course, the point of singularity – which is when everything breaks down.
.
Wile E. Quixote
@Rick Taylor
Perhaps it’s the sort of thing that Nietzsche was referring to when he wrote “battle not with wingnuts lest ye become a wingnut and if you gaze long enough into the wingnutteria, the wingnutteria gazes also into you” (translated from the German, liberally). I mean if you get to a point where sending teabags to Washington, D.C. as a modern day re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party to protest one of the largest tax cuts in history makes sense to you, even symbolically, then you’ve gone over the edge.
Legalize
But, Gabriel, are you saying that constant wingnuttery has an inherent value? I believe it does, but that the number is too large for sane people to quantify. More accurately, there is no “number”; there is merely “infinity” in terms of wingnut insanity / stupidity. It goes on forever, in space and time, in every direction. As to singularity, even if the red matter were introduced to wingnuttery, wingnuttery would STILL be too infinite for mere sane folks to quantify. This is not mysticism; this is merely a recognition that wingnuttery is too large a concept for us to see, much less quantify.
Wingnttery, is, in short, the ultimate “no win scenario.” Only there is no reset button.
Go ahead, throw me and my colleagues out of the academy!!
WereBear
So we can measure how much Wingnuttery, or we can measure how fast Wingnuttery is overtaking their rational senses, but we cannot simultaneously know its position and also its velocity.
Thus, we cannot declare a Peak Wingnut until after it has been reached.
A sort of Schrodinger’s Wingnut, if you will.
JGabriel
Legalize:
Not quite. I’m merely asserting that Wingnut can be mathematically treated and manipulated in equations like any other constant, whether or not we can precisely determine its value, and that it only becomes impossible to work with when Wingnut Density hits the point of singularity.
Hopefully, that better clarifies the nub of contention.
.
Bubblegum Tate
RE: Wingnut Singularity–I heartily endorse this event or product (or, in this case, theory)!
Joe K
Except…. doesn’t roll so easily off the fingertips. I propose Wingularity as a more-concise but equally-expressive term.
tavella
That’s where I am, and thus I’m staying away from gloating about the downward spiral. Eight years of nearly the most disastrous administration imaginable, economic collapse, and STILL 46 percent of the country voted for them.
I doubt the worst of the economic crisis is over, we are just in a breathing space between the collapse of subprime and the collapse of ARMs and CRE. There are quite possibly some ugly times coming, where their politics of hate will thrive.
Eric
and
and
and
and
and
Gentlemen, I believe the scientific disagreement over Peak Wingnut has escalated to the point where we need a bona fide scientific journal to referee the discussion. I think we owe it to future generations to try to unify the competing theories–a sort of Universal Field Theory of Peak Wingnut, if you will. Any ideas on what we should call it?
demimondian
@Rick Taylor: I like this metaphor. In a relativistic sense, the collapsar is pulling away from every part of the normal universe, falling into a splendid isolation, just like Georgia O’Keefe.
As the singularity forms, the collapsar seems to slow down. Unfortunately, the rest of us will be forced either to watch the slow motion train-wreck lasting the rest of time or to participate in it. We’ll never know which one is taking place until it’s too late to change things.
Doctor Science
Laura:
nom nom nom.
FYI, that is a toad, not a frog. Note: not necessarily found in or near water, back covered with “warts”, cats find them distasteful. Congrats on having one in your garden, they eat a lot of slugs, grubs, and other pests.
socraticslence
Taking out Arlen is one thing- booting the most popular pol in recent Florida history, that’s just crazy levels of dumb.
Faux News
My brain is hurting so much after this scientific discussion of Peak Wignut that I am desperately hoping the bald kid from the Matrix movie will pop up on my computer screen, bend a spoon with his mind, and tell me “do not try to quantify Peak Wignut. That is impossible. Instead only try to realize the thruth…there is no Peak Wingnut”. At which point I shall crumple in a heap and weep with joy.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I thought I would try plugging wingnut into the Ideal Gas Law calculation (PV=nRT) where P = absolute pressure of Purity, V = Volume of howling, n = quantity of nutters, R = Rate of purity purging and T = absolute level of Teabagging.
I ended up creating a reverse black hole; all it does is spew endless crap but there is the hope that it may one day run out of fuel and die off.
If not, we may have to ask the Patent Office to reconsider the possibility of a Perpetual Motion Machine.
JGabriel
Faux News:
Crumple and weep with joy, Faux News, for not only have I said, “There is no … Peak Wingnut”, I am also: slightly bald.
Kinda like Prufrock (line 82).
.
Doctor Science
DougL is right: what’s important about Wingnuttery is that it appears to be an *endlessly renewing resource*. And, as we all know, it comes in units known as “gasbags”. Can wingnut-powered vehicles be far behind? I think it’s only fair that they start giving back to the community — like by crawling into my gastank and staying there.
Dr Dave (a different one)
@Doug L (#46)
Though I admire the creative use of the ideal gas law, I think in order to get a Penrose-style white hole that endlessly spews matter out into the universe you have to go beyond classical physics and invoke some branch of general relativity. Unfortunately that’s out of my area of expertise, and anyway I’m still too much of a realist to believe that we can revoke the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.
Maybe you can get a grant from the people that believe in cold fusion? They are almost as divorced from reality as the lunatic fringe of the GOP.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Remember, we are talking about wingnuts, laws don’t apply to them. They create reality so we can study it.
I’d just buy weed with it and fake the results.
StealthBadger
Late, but some more ST geekery needs to be added:
I think this is a classical problem, and therefore Erik and his ilk are not ot Red Matter, they’re the Red SHIRTS.
EIGRP
I think Poe’s Law can help us put together a theory on wingnuts and wingnuttery.
Poe’s Law mathmatically is: LIM (Fundamentalism–>∞) Religion=Parody
For Peak Wingnuttery, it’s probably something like: LIM (Wingnuttery -> ∞) GOP = Parody
or
LIM (Wingnuts -> 0) Wingnuttery = ∞
And now that I look at it, via the transitive property of equality, it looks like LIM (Wingnuts -> 0) GOP = Parody.
Finally, I propose the following new word:
wingnutiae – n. – the smallest bit of information that causes a wingnut to go batshit crazy.
-Eric
Fierce Pika
I love some of the terms and definitions here. Let’s take seriously the notion of the Wingularity as a kind of black hole:
1. Within the wingularity, relativity is absolute. In terms of metaphor, this explains how people can claim to believe there is absolute truth, but things like scientific facts are constantly seen as parlayed via politics, a kind of Foucauldian act of knowledge-power creation to wield as a political cudgel.
2. As you approach the event horizon of the wingularity, speed accelerates, time stretches out, and space becomes even more warped.
3. Although the attraction of the wingularity is great, one can avoid its pull once one is out from it a certain distance. Conversely, the closer one gets the wingularity, the less likely escape becomes.
4. Red matter is that which feeds the wingularity (h/t to tripletee). As metaphor this is all the ephemera like spicy mustard that is incomprehensible as being “real” to people outside of the wingularity.
And so on. But one thing I’m thinking here is that “wingnut” is not reserved for people who just have kooky ideas. I think it’s reserved for that quality of tribalistically and instinctively iterating a position based on its being important to one’s political affiliation, regardless of whether the position has facts, logic, or even precedent to back it up. So, if all Democrats/liberals magically came out in favor of torture tomorrow, those in the wingularity would find a way to find such a position cowardly and articulate reasons not to torture.
Sheila
John Cole, could you be more perfect??
Sheila
John Cole, could you be more perfect??
grumpy realist
Hmm, that whole spicy mustard thing only having weight within the wingnuttia universe….
Aha! I present you, gentlemen, with the proof of the existence of the Higgs boson! (At least for a Higgs boson–spicy mustard coupling.)
jhh
We will know for sure that the Peak Wingnut moment is upon us when Ben & Jerry introduce an ice cream flavor called something like Sarah Wingnut or Cherry Wingnutty. Perhaps John C could orchestrate a contest for the best names and flavor suggestions and send them in to B & J.
Laura W
@jhh: That would make such a fun thread! People could offer up the name of their concoction, the ingredients, and the truly gifted among us can use photoshop to customize the pints.
I’ve still got 3 more to go before B&J’s boots me out of the ice cream lab.
Mike
This is why God made disposable hotmail accounts.