In Breaking Bad, the character Walter White explains to a major drug dealer why cheaper knockoffs of his signature Blue Sky methamphetamine are just not enough: “So… it’s grade-school tee-ball vs. the New York Yankees. Yours is just some tepid… off-brand, generic cola. What I’m making is classic Coke.”
This week, James Carville released his own uncut, undiluted classic product to a nation of rage addicts. Blue Sky rage. What set off Carville was telling. He and others were outraged that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner to discuss areas of common ground. Such dialogue “with the enemy” is unthinkable in an “age of rage,” particularly for someone like Carville who previously threatened that, once Democrats are back in power, Trump supporters would be treated the same way as Nazi collaborators after World War II.
Carville went into his signature berserker trance on his podcast appropriately called the “Politics War Room”: “These people are a pack of felons and traitors, and you do not meet with them! You do not meet with them. There’s only one thing you can do with people that you genuinely believe deep inside of every fabric of your body are a pack of thieves and a pack of traitors.”
As usual, Carville delivers the line with the intensity of a man seconds away from a self-induced stroke. The message, however, is clear. Anyone seeking a middle ground or compromise is a traitor and will be dealt with the same way as collaborators once Democrats regain power.
What is really on display is rage politics. When you feed this addiction, you have to keep your product pure to avoid the pain of rage withdrawal. Carville is asking Democrats the same question as Walter White in whether they really want some cheap knockoff when they can have the real thing. Go with the classic. Go with the rage.
Over on the social media safe space for liberals, BlueSky, Carville is being heralded as a prophet of furor. It was a perfect combination. BlueSky was created for liberals to remove themselves, particularly from X, because of conservatives returning to social media after years of censorship.
The media billed BlueSky as the future, as many predicted the rapid death of X. It did not exactly work out that way. Many liberal influencers proclaiming their abandonment of X never actually left and many others have returned. BlueSky is now little more than a progressive boutique in comparison to X. It has an estimated 43 million users as opposed to as many as 600 million for X. (Monthly active users drop to around 27 million versus more than 300 million).
Yet, the business model of BlueSky is to offer a protected zone for liberals to rave amongst themselves without the distraction of as many opposing views or voices.
It is a social platform that is premised on the same “you do not meet with them” screed of Carville.
Recently, Carville has lashed out at the far left of his party, such as Democratic Socialists, over their radical agenda. However, he and other establishment figures are primarily objecting to the fact that these radical policies will not succeed in the election and return them to power.
Carville has no problem trashing the system to secure and maintain power. He previously called for packing the Supreme Court, but notably told Democrats not to actually talk about it: “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. F—k it. Eat our dust. Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.”
Other Democratic leaders continue to try to co-opt the mob for their own uses. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer dismissed questions about the DSA platform in eliminating the presidency, the Supreme Court, and the Senate. These are small differences, according to Schumer, compared with the need to win elections: “Not everyone has the same exact view on every single issue.”
One of those small disagreements is the very existence of the institution that Schumer so desperately wants to lead.
Carville and Schumer, however, appear to agree on the key element of the political strategy in keeping the rage alive. The greatest threat to that strategy is any dialogue of Democrats with their Republican neighbors. If reason were to break out before the elections, all could be lost.
The effort reflects the fact that the rage in an age of rage eventually burns off. People look into a mirror on both sides and realize that we have become grotesque and Carvillian by yielding to the anger and hate. Once people start to talk again, it is harder to hate so completely and blindly that hate traffickers need.
So Blue Sky rage is hitting the streets. The Classic coke of hate to be injected directly into the veins of a nation of rage addicts.
After all, as Walter White asked his fellow traffickers, “Do you really wanna live in a world without Coca-Cola?”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
I encourage Professor Turley to respond to some of the 200 daily comments and move away from his own protection zone of posting in the morning and staying away for 24 hours.
JT, Why do you allow all this Russian trolls to pollute your blog?
JT, what are you doing to reduce the rage in our country? NOTHING. No, not nothing, you are adding to it by your biased stories.
Shame JT, Shame.
Carville used to be an impressive political force, especially in 1992 when he engineered Clinton’s successful path to the White House. He was so impressive that his counterpart on the vanquished H.W. Bush team decided to marry him.
But now? Hate has so corrupted his mind and soul that he has become a stupid old man.
ESTOVIR (Old Man), Trump is the guy obsessed with retribution. Trump keeps cutting off congressionally approved funds to blue states simply because they didn’t vote for him. No president has ever pulled that sh!t before!
^ Anonymous is Estovir
Corruption? Yep nothing says corruption like the President of the United States raking in $2 billion in his first 18 months in office, much of it foreign money that is a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
^ Anonymous is Estovir ^
He was so impressive that his counterpart on the vanquished H.W. Bush team decided to marry him.
I used to enjoy watching Mary Matalin and and her husband in the 1990s on C-Span. IIRC Rush Limbaugh had a close relationship with her, featuring her on occasion on his EIB network. James Carville has become an also-ran. I don’t know who listens to him given one can only run so long on the same “success” story re: Bill Clinton – who is no longer considered a significant anything.
I think these folks are high paid. Nancy Pelosi, Hillary, the DSA candidates, et al. Carville is totally unhinged, and I cant imagine he being like that 24/7. It’s a lot like Charles Schumer and his infamous threat to SCOTUS Justices. Politics has become gaudy theatre with all of the attraction of cheap perfume on a call girl. it’s the new religion of Americans complete with condemnation, no redemption, burning in hell, of course inquisitions and oracles in the legacy media. Dante Alighieri would have a feast with these scoundrels
Leftism is a totalitarian movement, at its core. James Carville is, sadly, not alone in dehumanizing conservatives, and threatening them all as soon as the Left regains power.
The Khmer Rouge was one such Leftist movement, in Cambodia, that tried to reshape society by force. In its class war, it killed as many intellectuals as possible, to the point that people were murdered because they wore glasses.
Demonize your opponent, and you never have to debate him.
Demonize your opponent, and you never have to debate him.
All the Democrats have to offer is Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”. The leftists used to mock the Roman Catholic Church for being judgmental, hierarchical, rigid and hierarchical. We have learned that they were never really against Roman Catholicism. They just wanted to wear the papal tiara and have the right to call anathema sit as they saw fit. Success!
In homage to Tim Curry…..
Trump is the poster child for totalitarianism. Tell us: what Democrat president ever tore down part of the White House without permission from Congress and historic preservation, decided to build a gilded ballroom larger than the White House, lied about the cost being paid by donors, started a war based on a lie, started an insurrection because he lost an election, filled a frivolous lawsuit against his own government after the statute of limitations expired and then “settled” the lawsuit with a slush fund to pay the insurrectionists a million dollars each, after pardoning them, and granting himself and his worthless children lifetime immunity from IRS audits and prosecution? What Democrat president ever approved government contracts with companies in which his children have financial interests or started a cryptocurrency business in which foreign investors are heavily invested?
What Democrat president ever helped himself to our Treasury to fund vanity projects, is trying to prevent voting by mail by trying to get the USPS to track voter eligibility, is trying to compile information on every voter in America, even though the Constitution says clearly that states control voting? All because his party stands to take a beating in the midterms?
Then there’s putting his picture on passports, renaming things after himself, threatening to tear down the JFK Center unless he can put his name on it, wanting a triumphal arch built in his honor, getting his picture on a $250 bill and removing the name of the first black sailor to win the Navy Cross for valor on a ship under construction already named for the sailor. These are just a few examples of the kind of totalitarianism of Donald Trump.
MAGA is NOT conservative. It is a cult of personality.
Lots of TDS here. How do you make it through the day?
Trump rules your mind because you know he is better than you.