We Alt-righters must be loyal to a certain fruit-flavored person./Image: Licensed Adobe stock, margo555.
Greetings, Alt-reading lovers!
It’s been an epic week for those of us who are Trump supporters, like me, Professor Ebenezer Scourge, who also like to read. At this point I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who likes both those things, but it’s fine. Don’t pity me–we Alt-righters hate that! Besides, I’m comfortable with loneliness. That we Alt-righters love. We don’t wanna be bothered with the taxing nature of building vibrant, cohesive communities. No, it takes effort, and we’re used to just having things handed to us because we’re non-Jewish white and well-to-do. Try? Put ourselves out there? Risk rejection? Never! We’ll just stay holed up in our homes with our guns. Yes, those are our real friends. If this destroys the idea of a participatory culture progressing partially because of the shared bond of its members–oh, well! We still got to do what we wanted, and that’s more important to us on the right..
This week in Readings, I, the columnist here at Spread Your Right Wings (SYRW) dedicated to exploring the written Alt-word, want to review for you the book taking the Alt-world by Stormy Daniels. It’s the book-length rebuttal to James “Lyin'” Comey, as our dear President Trump likes to call him. A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership. And, like the Nunes memo before it, it makes debate between conservatives and liberals on all the topics they traditionally debate about unnecessary, as it puts to bed any possible disagreement on key issues of advisable political behavior. That’s how good Nunes the Numbskull is–as if I had to tell you! I know you want to rush out to buy An Orange-er Loyalty: Falsehood, Untruths, and Poor Governance,, the new book by Rep Devin Nunes (R-Ca.). And here’s why you should do so: It’s a primer on the leadership approach Nunes has championed, even invented, called The Memo-Based Way to Political Efficacy.
Related: Fill your home with stuff inspired by the biases that fill our Alt-minds.
Anything Goes!
So went the eponymous 1934 musical by Cole Porter, Anything Goes, and it could be the official soundtrack to the Nunes Way. In the case of Devilish Devin, as outlined in his book, it means that nothing–and I do mean nothing–is off limits in the pursuit of power, influence, and cultural dominion. In fact, says Nunes. The foundation of the Nunes approach to government is what methods at least publicly frowned-upon: shameless lying, misguided obsequiousness, and a total lack of boundaries or limits on behavior. This is the Trump Era, folks, and bad behavior is permitted, even rewarded. There is nothing you must shy away from, no self-abasement, no degrading of public discourse as a politician as long as it advances your goal/s. Nothing less than the dominance in American culture of the heterosexual, traditionally-gendered, Christian, white man is at stake.
The Medium Is the Message
The above sound-byte, if you will was the catchy way cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan framed the delivery of content in the era of mass media. How a message is delivered is as, if not more, important than the message itself. In Nunesment, part of the “how” is the hype, promotion, and ballyhoo that precede a message. If you endlessly say to the producers, reporters, and analyzers of the 24-hour news cycle that some information you’re about to apprise the nation of is game-changing, discussion-ending, and case-closing, When you finally make that information public that’s the framework the public will understand it within, thereby entering its minds as such–even if “there is no ‘there’ there.”
Non-Sequiturs Are a Sycophant’s Best Friend
“The main point of the memo [that Nunes penned in attempt to absolve President Donald Trump of collusion with Russia to get himself elected] is this: The public’s faith in the FISA process, and the courts’ protection of individual rights, “is necessarily dependent on the government’s production to the (FISC) court of all material and relevant facts,” including “information potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application that is known by the government.” In the Carter Page case, the memo suggests that the FISA warrant application was improper because “material and relevant” information was omitted,” wrote reporter Danny Cevallos of NBC News. “This thesis of the memo, compiled by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, (R-Ca.)., is an idealistic vision of the FISA process. It’s just not legally accurate.”
Because an eschewing of valid argument based on long-established Western rhetorical structures and strategies is the new Alt-path, Nunes establishes in Orange-er, an adherence to concepts like right-thinking, reason, facts, and figures is so 2015. These are Trumpier times.
And: How Co-dependency figures into current right-wing politics.
One example of the mode of argumentation that Nunes espouses and reviews in his book is the following.
“The memo alleges that Steele was paid by several entities, including the FBI. It also alleges that the FISA application ignored or concealed Steele’s anti-Trump financial motivations. Paid informants are a common feature of government investigations; they are hardly grounds for invalidating a warrant. Omission of an informant’s financial motive, or the even fact that he was paid, is not necessarily essential to the probable cause determination if the rest of the information is extensively corroborated,” wrote Cevallos again.
Despite the above fact, Nunes’s entire argument in his memo was that the “biased” sources in the Steele dossier invalidated said dossier.
Orange Is the New Hack
Rep. Nunes is a political hack, a nobody who attached his lips to Trump’s ass early on and refuses to let go. For whatever reason, he’s hanging on for dear life, and he’s willing to invalidate his any political career he might have had to prop up the demented, deranged, and debased behavior of the president. Whatever his reasons for doing so, he’s made an admirable go of it. Now you can follow his lead in your own life, with the purchase of his book.
I recommend you keep by your nightstand for inspirational reading first thing in the morning, before you turn in at night, and any time in between. If you do so, pretty soon, you too will be a shining star of Alt-right cajoling, arm-twisting, and sweet-talking.
Please rush out and by Rep. Nunes book. We. must show him how much we love, adore, appreciate, emulate, want to reward, and agree with what he says.. Because we’re Alt-right, and that’s how we do.
I now take my leave, in order to explore the world of hastily-written, argumentatively-substandard right-wing reading material to endorse in next week’s column. Until then, dear SYRW readers, read, read, read, and then Alt, Alt, Alt.
Also: See what really happened when Pompeo met Jong-Un.
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© 2018 Akbar Khan
