Not Great, Bob

Fighting for the Nazis is bad.

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Though his wife and RA continue to plead for him to stop, Jonah can’t be deterred from following the self-destructive path of the weekly Ruminant, especially with a legion of overly eager wedding guests on his side. Today’s episode features a predictably peculiar melange of topics, among them the hideous second GOP debate, the misguided fondness for autocrats present on parts of the right, and the validity of the Biden impeachment inquiry. Remnant devotees should stick around until the end for further details on The Skiff, an exciting new podcast feature coming to The Dispatch that’s sure to consume far too much of your life.

Show Notes:

– The Dispatch Podcast on the second GOP debate

– Philip Bump: “The Rise of ‘Chinese Communist Party’ as a Pejorative”

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  1. Avatar photo
    Dan

    I'm on the same journey re: Hunter Biden and find your comments clarifying and helpful! What was not helpful was, in the Iran discussion, deliberately omitting our role in the Shah holding on to power in extremely anti-democratic fashion.

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  2. Clark.Monson

    I love how Guy's descriptions of the Ruminants reflect his own distaste for them. "Jonah is defying his friends and family's recommendations to go unhinged!" has been the general description for roughly the last month, haha.

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  3. Jrtownson

    Regarding Pinochet, many years ago I became friends with a man from Chile. He recounted an experience with the Pinochet regime: my friend's roommate was a leader of the anti Pinochet protest movement. At one point his roommate asks my friend what his position is on Pinochet? My friend replied "oh you know me, I don't get involved with politics.." His roommate was later revealed to be an undercover Pinochet operator. The only other thing my friend relayed to me about this episode in his life was that his hair soon turned completely white from the stress.
    When evaluating this episode (and other similar episodes elsewhere) in US foreign policy, maybe we should ask the Chileans how they feel about it now?

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    1. Clark.Monson

      The answer, as someone who lived in Chile in the post-Pinochet years, is "it depends." Some people, particularly the upper middle class and upper classes, who tend to be more conservative and benefited from his economic policies, remembered him with fondness. The lower classes and university types, who are overwhelmingly more socialist and suffered the most at his hands, hated him. And a lot of people tried to avoid talking about it altogether. Granted, this was 20 years ago, before the extent of his financial corruption was known. And I get the impression from news and friends there that younger people today are overwhelmingly opposed to his legacy.

      I think Pinochet was a brute and should have spent the rest of his life in prison. His regime was deliberately cruel and brought out sadistic tendencies that are generally alien to Chileans, who are normally very amiable, generous people. I also think he legitimately did a lot of good things economically for Chile, awful though he was.

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      1. Jrtownson

        Interesting...putting aside their opinion of Pinochet: what do Chileans think of our interfering with their internal politics?

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        1. Clark.Monson

          When I lived there (and caveat, it was roughly 20 years ago, so attitudes may have changed), there was a significant anti-American streak as a result of the coup (and other actions taken both in Latin America and around the world by the US). I was living there when 9/11 happened, for example, and while most people expressed their sympathy, a significant number were overjoyed that the US finally, in their view, got what was coming to us.

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  4. Stcyrn1

    Jonah, please don’t apologize for going longer than an hour. We tune in to listen to your musings because we like it. If some people complain that you are going beyond an hour, there is no pleasing those types of people. They like to complain to complain.

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    Ben Connelly

    I was hoping you were going to talk about the positive vs. negative liberty and “liberaltarians” stuff like you foreshadowed last time. I’ll have to send an email to Guy for the AMA about it.

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  6. Randall Briggs

    Mike Gallagher. Oh that he had cared as much about authoritarianism in America as he cares about it in China. But, no! He voted twice to not impeach Donald Trump and--after speaking in defense of her--he voted to remove Liz Cheney from her leadership position in the House because she condemned Trump's actions on January 6th and had the cojones to back up her talk with her vote for impeachment. The Mike Gallaghers of the GOP should hold their manhoods cheap when they allow themselves to ponder what Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger did when the future of our constitutional government was in peril.

    Re "impeachable offenses," the U.S. Constitution does not provide an objective standard for impeachment. Impeachment is as much for political offenses as for criminal ones. What it comes down to is that the accusers must convince the defenders that what the offending official did is sufficiently bad to warrant removal from office.

    Democrats defending Clinton and Republicans defending Trump fell back on the "not an impeachable offense" argument, and they both succeeded. In all three cases, they ultimately voted to tolerate the actions that they had rhetorically condemned as "intolerable." Our civic hygiene would be better had Clinton and Trump both been removed. In the case of Joe Biden, Republicans care nothing about civic hygiene and are threatening to impeach him because the Democrats impeached Donald Trump and because they have nothing else to offer their base of armed and angry neo-fascists.

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  7. Francislyo

    Good point that the Biden impeachment inquiry presented a very poor case for impeachment. Presenting “evidence” of wrong doing that didn’t even occur while Biden was in public office (nor running), then berating the reporter who asked about this is poor optics. Makes it look like they’ve found nothing after having combed through the Biden laptop and all the other sources provided to them.

    Now that the government shutdown was averted (as the debt crisis was earlier), this would be a great time for the Republicans in charge of the House to actually govern. A normie Republican presidential candidate would likely do well running against Biden. No need to manufacture an impeachment without evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors - this would hurt, rather than help, get a normie Republican elected.

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    1. Avatar photo
      George.Skinner

      To paraphrase Clint Eastwood’s William Munny from “Unforgiven”, deserving impeachment’s got nothing to do with it. Trump got impeached twice, and now MAGA Republicans want to avenge their champion by impeaching the Democrats’ president. It’s stupid, petty, and also exactly what Trump wants.

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      1. Francislyo

        Agreed!

        I hope that normie Republicans can build on these latest losses by MAGA to reassert candidates who appeal more to average (ie: normie) voters.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Brian O'Neil

    Kudos to Joan and Steve for continuing to create members only content. Great way of thanking the Dispatch supporters. It’s really a credit to Jonah’s work ethic and character that he talked a big game and they are fulfilling those promises. The Dispatch is really carving out a formative place for itself in the pod-sphere and I’m here for it.

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  9. Charvondersaar56

    (1) Ditto - don't not do the Ruminant - getting a Goldberg take on stuff is informative and entertaining.
    (2)If the candidates had opted to answer the who-to-vote-off-the-island debate question, it could have been very telling.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Rich Dukes

    Hunter’s grift after Joe left office seems to show how monumentally stupid the payers were in assuming a former VP (see Garner, John N) has any influence to peddle in a Republican city in 2017

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