Fascism Forever Club

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Correction: Apparently, the part about Gorsuch creating a “Fascism Forever Club” is a falsehood! Well, that’s what we get for using the Daily Mail. (In my defense, I originally rejected this story when sent to me because of the source, but then USA Today picked it up. Even thought USA Today was still citing the Mail, the truth is, the Mail is not always wrong, so I assumed USA Today journalists had some verification. Silly me.)

Gorsuch is still to the right of Scalia, but he apparently didn’t have this club.

I quickly add that the source I have that this is a falsehood is not necessarily 100% reliable, but it does look like that part of the story does not pan out.

The rest is accurate, but way less interesting now.

When was a kid, I started an organization called the Nature Conservation Club. NCC for short. It had a badge, and a membership card, was free to join, and our objective was to stop civilization from paving over all the forests. The very first member was Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie promised to join too, but never got to it. Then a few of my friends joined, my family. But then it kind of petered out and civilization went ahead and paved over a lot, not yet all, but a lot of the forests. Kids do the darnedest things.

When I went to high school, I didn’t start a club, but Moe and Larry did. They started a “Hallway Monitor” club. They recruited a few people and volunteered to patrol the hallways, keeping the other kids in line. Their offer was refused by the administration. By the way, the administration of this school, a public version of a private prep school if you can imagine that, were politically and socially all over the place, but most of them were college professors and at least two of them were men with long sideburns (during Viet Nam that was a meaningful symbol) and one of them had a picture of Chairman Mao on his office wall, for real. Anyway, Moe and Larry (not exactly their real names) were rebuffed.

Then the fire alarms started ringing. Every day, there would be a fire alarm. Or two. Somebody was pulling the fire alarms. The fire department, we were told, indicated that they would have to close the school if the alarms kept going off because too many false alarms itself constitutes a danger. Next thing you know, the Hallway Monitor Club gets recruited by the administration to guard the fire alarms.

Most of them wore brown shirts, one of them wore lederhosen.

A few weeks later, many of us, me included, found our names on the wall, on the bulletin board, in a memo. “The following students will report to the principal.” It was a long list, and included all three or four of the ruffians we had in that school (there weren’t many).

So, we all dutifully reported to the principle, and were sat down one at a time and told how it was not OK to traffic marijuana in or near the school yard, so just in case you were doing that, please stop.

And, in their hubris, the Hallway Monitor Club founders could not resist letting it be known that they had supplied the list of names with the accusation. A few days later, Moe stopped coming to school and Larry showed up in a cast. That was the end of that.

Kids do the darnedest things.

Oh wait, I’ve got another story. This one is about the “Fascism Forever Club.”

This is reported in the Daily Mail, not the best source, and repeated in USA Today, not much better. But it looks real.

According to this information, Supreme Court Nominee Neil Gorsuch …

… both created and headed the “Fascism Forever Club” at Georgetown Preparatory School, which he graduated from in 1985, The Daily Mail reports. The school is a selective all-boys Jesuit prep school, and now reportedly costs day students $30,000 annually and boarding students $50,000.

“In political circles, our tireless President Gorsuch’s ‘Fascism Forever Club’ happily jerked its knees against the increasingly ‘left-wing’ tendencies of the faculty,” a Georgetown Prep high school yearbook states, according to The Daily Mail.

Kids do the darnedest things.

I’m not going to say anything about this at this time, other than to ask the following question. Why are the disqualifying things disqualifying only to Democrats and not to Republicans? Why?

Write your answer in the box below. Thank you very much.

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25 thoughts on “Fascism Forever Club

  1. Because Citizen Trump has “made corruption okay again”.

    … But only if you belong to the conservative rethuglican gang.

  2. Repeat after me: “It’s OK if you are Republican.”

    This is nothing new. It’s been this way since at least the 1990s, when Bill Clinton, whose brilliance and hard work allowed him to overcome a background that would have consigned most in similar circumstances to a lifetime of being white trailer trash, had the audacity to become President, to the consternation of the Washington DC cocktail party crowd.

  3. Or, Eric, as MikeN and the rest of the loons on the right believe, unless it is a black man who works hard and becomes president – that is completely unacceptable and his work and memory should be tarnished at every possible turn, facts be damned.

  4. As long as you’re attacking Trump, why not go after him for disappearing the Judiciary from the White House website’s description of the government? (Restored now)

  5. For the same reason that the fake news purveyors found it more easy and profitable to target their fake news (outrage generator) to the far right rather than the left. They found that the right wing audience was far more credulous and spread the ‘news’ items more often, thus generating more ‘clicks’ and revenue, which was the whole purpose, rather than any ideological driver on the fakers part.
    Basically, the left generally cares more about reality and facts, and therefore, anytime someone in their tribe violates the rules, they tend to face the facts of that betrayal rather than pretend that it doesn’t matter, or deny that it happened. Not universally mind you, but more often, and that puts the left in a disadvantage or asymmetry in their willingness to live up to their own principles.
    In a heated argument, the person who hues to the principle of trying to settle differences with words and logic, will be more likely to be the one sucker punched and lose, even though they were taking the higher ground.

  6. Rather than looking at the Daily mail, perhaps we should look at snopes.com which rates the notion false and quotes America magazine:

    “[Gorsuch] wrote that he founded and led the “Fascism Forever Club,” though those with knowledge of the school back in the 1980s say there was no such club. The mention of it in the yearbook was a tongue-in-cheek attempt to poke fun at liberal peers who teased him about his fierce conservatism.”

    Apparently the left isn’t as good at detecting fake news as we might think. There’s a sucker born every minute and they’re not all reading Breitbart News.

  7. Its funny that those who identify themselves as left leaning are so often guilty of the same cognitive bias they like to accuse those on the right of holding.

    The issue with politics is that, unlike science, people all to often start with an assumption and proceed to assimilate any politically relevant info with their preferred narrative. If info can’t be forced into their political peghole its cast aside and ignored all together.

    When one is citing the dailymail, a tabloid magazine that borders on satire, a publication that not even its readers take seriously, the charge of intellectual dishonesty comes to mind.

    Did anyone actually check the “source” that the daily mail using to back up its claim? A yearbook statement that seems like it was a joke in response to the left leaning people he often debated with.

    Even snopes, a lefties favorite punch line is internet bickering, calls it unverified at best.

    http://www.snopes.com/neil-gorsuchs-fascism-forever-club/

  8. Kevin, I assumed everyone knew that, considering the other entries in the yearbook. How to win by a landslide, Lousy Spanish Student, etc.

  9. Hank C – I am one of those flaming liberals and I quickly pointed out the error and our host has added a correction at the top of the post.

    Contrast that with, say, any article at WUWT. The two Time magazine cover one of this past week is a prime example. Multiple comments in the post pointing out the error, the author notified by email, and no correction will likely ever be posted.

    The author, David Lloyd, just blew it off because it was just a blog post.

    I.e., you’re guilty of false equivalence.

  10. “Apparently the left isn’t as good at detecting fake news as we might think. ”

    So you’re not the left?

    Must be rightwing, eh?

    Or ONE of your assertions is incorrect.

  11. “Hank C – I am one of those flaming liberals and I quickly pointed out the error”

    But then that disproves “he left isn’t as good at detecting fake news as we might think.”. So does this:

    ” our host has added a correction at the top of the post.”

    And your statement:

    “Contrast that with, say, any article at WUWT. ”

    Rather shows what was put on the other Gorsuch thread. It wouldn’t matter what the truth was, or that there was another explanation, or a mistake, or anything.

    So when “we” point it out, we must hammer home how different the “two sides” are, if only to shame the moderates into looking into their side’s failures and the differences between them and us.

    Not to make them lefties, but to make them shove the right over to “accept reality and nuance”. You can be right wing and accept nuance. Many do, at least on topics they’re not emotionally invested in or when in a group (to fit in and not be part of the target group). And if both sides can accept reality and nuance, there’ll be a lot less polarisation.

    But if at least one side condones batshit, there’s only ever going to be an increase in polarisation until that side starts taking a stance against the crap.

    And in-group mentality will gloss over that problem, unless repetition eventually leaks through (e.g. someone on “their side” makes a terrible (to them) statement, and if there’s been a recent “look,here’s the difference” event, that change in situation may let the realisation in that there’s something wrong with their side, and it’s up to the rest of the “right thinkers of the right” to quash these fanatics who are bringing the right a bad reputation.

  12. >I am one of those flaming liberals
    Oops, I confused you with Rick merely because you were arguing against Wow in another thread. My apologies.

    From one of The Simpsons clip shows, I think the 138th episode spectacular:
    As they are going to commercial, question,”What appears on the cash register as Maggie is scanned?”
    Answer: “NRA 4ever, one of many right-wing messages placed by cartoonist Matt Groening throughout the show.”

  13. #14 Kevin O’Neill
    United States
    February 3, 2017

    Hank C – I am one of those flaming liberals

    ===
    MikeN
    February 3, 2017

    >I am one of those flaming liberals
    Oops, I confused you with Rick merely because you were arguing against Wow in another thread. My apologies.

    ===

    Hmm.

    Someone seems to be a sock wearer today…!

  14. Makes me suspicious that you are engaged in this behaviour you attribute to others, yet I haven’t noticed anyone as … similar.

  15. For example, note where the headline doesn’t match the story:
    http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/02/02/scotus-nominee-gorsuch-started-fascism-forever-club-elite-prep-school
    Apparently a facetious remark. ( And different yearbook photo, which naturally I can’t make out.)

    Meanwhile, let the normalization begin:
    http://fair.org/home/30-washington-post-articles-on-gorsuchs-nomination-not-a-single-one-opposed/

    Last night on the CBS news, they ran a clip of Pelosi naming Bannon as a racist. Scott Pelley then made a point of saying that they couldn’t find a quote of Bannon saying racist words; as if supporting, defending, and spreading racism doesn’t count so long as you fly it under the radar and don’t have the word ‘racist’ tattooed on your forehead. Apparently actions *don’t* speak louder than words.

    Trump says mean things to them and the press can’t pucker up fast enough to kiss his ass.

    Don’t even get me started on “give Trump a chance.”

  16. Can anyone think of someone who said they were racist?

    Racists don’t say that. So not saying it doesn’t mean they’re not racists.

    I can’t remember anyone saying they’re SJWs, either.

  17. “a link to a blog by a right wing fundamentalist nut. How desperate are you?”

    Extremely desperate. The weather STILL refuses to cool down and there’s even less space for them to retain their “skepticism”, and they don’t even have the government to blame for the lack of reality doing like it “should”, since it’s their government stooges in charge now.

    They’re running out of excuses and things to blame.

    So extremely desperate.

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