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This week, the men of GLoP ruminate on questions existential, political, pragmatic, and legal: John reveals his long ago brush with the law, Rob admits he’s a union man, and Jonah ponders this podcast as a 5 day a week commitment. Really!
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Published in: Culture
I am at the exact halfway point in the podcast, and I’m struck by the sheer awfulness of the Never-Trumper/Fake-Conservative mindset. These are people who, simply, permit the liberal media to define the world for them.
It’s the Biden and Clinton families that are simply one scandal after another, going back for decades; but they are treated with kid gloves by the liberal media, so the scandals are almost entirely swept under the rug.
I was struck by this recently when someone reminded me of Hillary Clinton’s adventures in commodities trading, where she turned a $1000 investment into $98,000 in the course of a single year. The odds are about a trillion to one that this was a (barely) laundered bribe. But the thing that struck me was that I had completely forgotten about the scandal, until I was reminded.
By contrast, the dedicated efforts of tens of thousands of journalists and Democratic lawyers to get something, anything on Trump have come up with little, so they’re trying to make something of an alleged act of adultery and an NDA from 2007.
But the GLoPers let the liberal media define the world for them. So for them, Donald Trump’s fake scandals are a big deal while Biden’s very real scandals are not.
What actually got me started thinking about how the GLoPers let the liberal media define the world for them was not what they said about Donald Trump, which was all too predictable. It was their treatment of Woody Allen.
The liberal media establishment went from discounting the flimsy allegations against Allen, to acting as if accusation equals proof, not because of anything particular to his case. It’s simply that in the interim the #MeToo movement established witch-hunt rules: a woman is always to be believed; a man is always guilty.
Jonah even mentions about hating using narratives for news and then use the narratives of corporate media about most issues. The Biden families ties to the CCP should be a big story but it does not move Commentary and TheDispatch as much as any Trump story.
I wish I were a psychology grad student so I could write a thesis on why some people worship DJT.
Wait, there was a previous iteration of GLoP? Who was the old cohost?
I am in total agreement with John on just the utter boredom that the current crop of “must see” tv. Last of Us dropped hard after episode 4, House of the Dragon had a few shining moments but was mostly a chore to get through, and the current season Mandalorian has not inspired me to continue. I suppose the one good thing to come out of my own entertainment ennui is that I’ve turned back to reading books. Just finished Peter Watts’ “Blindsight” and am now devouring “World War Z”.
Forgot to add, that yes, a once a week GLoP would be wonderful.
This is my main problem with John and Jonah nowadays. I get that they hate Trump and I can actually see some of the reasons for it. However, they’ve taken this hate and now deliver almost all of their fire on the right side of the political spectrum. They would rather destroy those on the right that don’t hate Trump or don’t hate him enough to not vote for him as the least of the bad choices than criticize the left for the egregious actions that they are responsible for.
A lot more fruitful, why the irrational hatred of a President who gave us conservative control of the Supreme Court for the first time in 90 years; controlled the southern border; promoted peace treaties between Israel and Arab countries.
And sweet talked Putin into not invading Ukraine for four years, even as Trump helped rearm Ukraine (after Obama sent only blankets and MRE’s). Trump’s Javelin missiles saved Ukraine, destroying the Russian tank columns rushing toward Kyiv.
John Podhoretz, gloating in a slightly contemptible way (43:34):
“He [Trump] has been skating, he has spent his life dancing on the precipice of the legal system, and like, I mean the criminal system, and every single time in his — in the course of his entire life, he has eluded capture, and it is part I think of his internal ethos that he is uncatchable. And even if the case is dismissed, even if it’s a bad case and he is acquitted, even whatever: this is the thing that he thought was never going to happen to him.
Jonah Goldberg, lost in the dank swamps of Trump Derangement Syndrome (44:17):
I thought you were going to go where the Maggie Haberman thesis, which is that he has a sort of sort of like he has a germphobia, which he has conquered a little bit, but he also has actual weird, intense, prison phobia, and this idea of like being in cuffs and all that kind of stuff. Also he thinks so visually and I think the image of him having a mug shot terrifies him.
(I must confess, I howled with laughter when the import of Jonah’s remarks sunk in: “prison phobia”, indeed!—Taras)
John Podhoretz [suddenly remembering how he felt when he was falsely arrested]: Yeah, I mean, this is a normal human reaction. This is how all normal people react. No one says ‘Fine, come arrest me’ …
P.S.: How do you identify a fake conservative? Well, it helps if they cite Maggie Haberman as an authority on the Right.
Gotta say that I have a pretty intense prison phobia myself and, if I ventured to guess, I would say that so does Jonah. In fact, I believe among us normies, prison phobia is very common and quite high on the overall phobia list.
Arguably it isn’t a phobia because it’s not all irrational.
For them, the most important thing is to be proven right all along.
I opposed Trump in 2016, but I was open minded enough to appreciate his achievements over the next four years, and joined millions of other once-disaffected Republicans and conservatives to vote for him in 2020.
But John’s and Jonah’s minds are open only to evidence confirming their existing beliefs, so they explain away all of Trump’s achievements; e.g., any Republican President would have done the same, or somebody else deserves all the credit.
Good point
And it’s quite obvious that not just any Republican would have done the same because they didn’t when they had the chance (Jerusalem Embassy) and he constantly took friendly fire for obvious low hanging fruit (deregulation)
Thank you to those who listened to this so I don’t have to. :-)
Yeah it’s annoying. Andrew Klavan thinks it is because they can’t admit they are wrong. Ben Shapiro changed his mind and doesn’t seem to suffer from TDS. I think it is more about the elite Coastal Bushido than it is about having to realize that you disagree about stuff.
After dropping down to once a month and sometimes not even that, how would they justify making it weekly?
Is The Dispatch doing so badly that Jonah feels a need to pump up his audience numbers via GLoP?
You hit on a very key point. The GLOP boys allow the MSM to define their topics and angles. Thankfully, we have alternative commentators (ex. Mollie Hemingway) who don’t allow the MSM to define the narrative or the topics.
There may be worshipers, but I have never met one. Every Trump supporter I know, loves that he loves his own country and is willing to call out the corrupt media and swanp. If that disgusts you, so be it.
And it says more about him than it says about Trump.
The same with Jim “I’m always wrong” Geraghty. He repeated the Trump koi feeding story when Abe was assassinated. Conservative media had debunked that story within the first 24 hours. I wondered if Jim has any Conservative news sources.
I should expand upon this point later.
This is JPod being tremendously wrong again.
It wasn’t “God” (who wasn’t really God, of course) that did the “show me your deepest pain” thing.
That was Sybok, Spock’s half-brother.
If we want Star Trek content, we want ACCURATE Star Trek content, which these guys rarely deliver.
And they basically did 2 a month, from 2017 through 2021. If that was a good idea, why did they stop?
Why would someone send such an important message via FedEx? Are there no telephones in the Florida Keys?
And, finally, if they could do a show like this every week, that would be fine.
But I think everyone knows they wouldn’t be able to think of enough other content and it would quickly degenerate into Trump-bashing.
Which may have been the main problem when they were trying to do just 2 a month.
A few points. First, I rarely miss a GLoP podcast; the last one I didn’t listen to was in January 2022. I would love weekly GLoP podcasts; my “go to” podcasts each week are “Hacks on Tap” on Tuesday nights, and “Ink Stained Wretches” on Friday mornings. My suggestion would be weekly GLoP’s on Mondays or Thursdays.
Second, I listen to Commentary every night. I have a hard time getting to sleep, as my mind tends to race. For better or worse, John’s voice is very relaxing to listen to, so I go to sleep listening to the Commentary Podcast every Monday through Friday night. Think of John as the Grandfather character played by Peter Falk in The Princess Bride, or as auditory comfort food. (On the weekends, I listen to the Friday edition of NR’s “The Editors” and Mona Charon’s “Beg to Differ” on Saturday and Sunday nights.)
Third, I find it comforting that the three hosts haven’t become pod persons, and have kept the candle burning for conservatism despite the nightmare that we have had since June 16, 2015. I really admire and respect all three of you. I am appalled by the terrible manners of some of the other people who have commented here, who are part of TWS (Trump Worship Syndrome).
The GLoPers garbled that up, as well.
In Shakespeare’s dialogue, Friar Laurence says to send the message, “posthaste” — so Post Haste becomes the name of the overnight mail service. Romeo is hiding out in Mantua, which is here a remote and decrepit trailer park, evidently without a landline. (Romeo + Juliet was made in 1996, so cell phones were rare.)
Similarly, “put up your swords” becomes a reference to a trademarked handgun popular in “Verona Beach” (not Miami). The local government authority is addressed as “Prince”: Capt. Prince, Chief of Police.
I accept that you’re one of those people who can see the world only in black-and-white, so Trump must be a devil if he is not an angel.
So I’m not sure if you can comprehend minds that see the world in shades of gray, for whom Trump is worse than some and better than others. Such a mind will decide to vote for or against Trump, depending on the choices available.
When the alternative was the incompetent, doddering Joe Biden, the choice was easy.
P.S.: I stopped listening to the Commentary podcast a long time ago. I couldn’t stomach the way JPod bullied his fellow panelists, all subordinates at the magazine. I’ve written elsewhere about how I canceled my subscription to the hardcopy magazine, after Christine Rosen took Trump out of context to make him sound irrational, and JPod let the falsehood stand.
Please, more Glop more often! 😩 Franny