{"id":181215,"date":"2016-08-28T20:34:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T01:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/08\/28\/i-am-so-hoping-that-matt-taibbi-is-wrong\/"},"modified":"2016-08-28T20:34:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T01:34:00","slug":"i-am-so-hoping-that-matt-taibbi-is-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/08\/28\/i-am-so-hoping-that-matt-taibbi-is-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am So Hoping That Matt Taibbi Is Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unfortunately, his analysis is pretty good, so his take that Kurt Shilling is the future of the modern conservative movement<\/a> is rather alarming.<\/p>\n

This is a guy who makes Donald Trump look measured and intelligent: <\/p>\n

Curt Schilling, cauldron-bellied baseball star turned political activist, has apparently decided to run for Senate in Massachusetts. His goal will be ousting an icon of the liberal hegemony he proudly despises.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>If you think the white-guy grievance movement will die after Donald Trump’s likely landslide defeat this November, think again. There will be plenty of filterless, self-pitying dunces to carry the torch in Trump’s place. Schilling is a leading candidate.<\/span>

<\/span>His story, maybe even more than Trump’s, is a parable on the comically comprehensive inability of some to recognize the advantages us white guys enjoy. <\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>More recently, Schilling worked at ESPN, where he was paid $2.5 million a year to be an analyst.<\/span>

<\/span>He needed the money. Soon after his playing career ended, he blew his $50 million fortune on a failed video game venture, a fiasco that cost Rhode Island taxpayers $75 million.<\/span>

<\/span>After that, he fell back into the ESPN gig, which should have been easy money. For all his other qualities, Schilling is an excellent baseball analyst (although, humorously, his ex-teammate and rival Pedro Martinez is better).<\/span>

<\/span>But Curt couldn’t keep his job. As is usually the case with people who can’t hold on to gravy-train situations, the culprit was addiction. In Schilling’s case, it wasn’t booze or pills, but line-crossing political rants. <\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Having proven incapable of running a business, being a good steward of either his own money or the taxpayers’, or holding down the world’s cushiest job, Schilling naturally decided to get into politics.<\/span>

<\/span>Don’t bet against him winning a Senate seat in my home state of Massachusetts, either. His would be a victory for the cause of ignorance and tone-deafness perhaps even exceeding Trump’s capture of the Republican nomination.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Schilling should wake up every morning and compose a five-page letter to God thanking him for the American white-guy lifestyle jackpot. Instead, he’s consumed with bitterness over the raw deal he thinks people like him have gotten.<\/span>

<\/span>In this, he’s very much like Donald Trump, who spent much of his adult life partying with models and celebrities and somehow emerged in late middle age as the most obdurate complainer in American history. <\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>This shouldn’t be too big an ask, since (as the likes of Trump and Schilling regularly prove) American white men still mostly run the world and live highly failure-resistant existences. Just take yes for an answer, enjoy the ride, and try to have the decency to not act like a victim; that’s all anyone asks.<\/span>

<\/span>But they can’t do it. The Schilling\/Trump principle is never shutting up, particularly on topics about which they are ignorant, which is pretty much all of them. This is a movement, not limited to Trump, and it’s not going to end anytime soon. God help us.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Taibbi is right, and I think that he is, this likely is an indicator of a society in precipitous decline into absurdity and obscurity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unfortunately, his analysis is pretty good, so his take that Kurt Shilling is the future of the modern conservative movement is rather alarming. This is a guy who makes Donald Trump look measured and intelligent: Curt Schilling, cauldron-bellied baseball star turned political activist, has apparently decided to run for Senate in Massachusetts. His goal will …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[967,998,1000,1002,999,978,1001],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigotry","category-congress","category-elections","category-good-writing","category-insane","category-politics","category-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}