Dialog
By Mitch Berg
(SCENE: Mitch BERG walks into a coffee shop in Linden Hills, a tony neighborhood in South Minneapolis. He orders a large light roast when, from out of frame to the left, a finger taps him on the shoulder. BERG turns around to see Avery LIBRELLE standing behind him).
LIBRELLE: Hey, Merg! You know how you are always saying you want a dialog, an informed debate, with people across the aisle?
BERG: Er, sure – I was kinda on my way to work, but…
LIBRELLE: There you go with that “Work” thing, again. You’re not even employed by a non-profit! Anyway – I brought a friend. It’s time for dialog and debate!
BERG: Well..OK, but I don’t have much time…
LIBRELLE: You can always make time for debate. Come on!
(LIBRELLE leads BERG through the small crowd of thick-rimmed-glasses-clad hipsters, all of them so focused on their mobile devices they’ve adopted a “Walking-Dead”-style shamble, and to a table in the back corner where Edwin DUCHEY, a forty-something fellow with thick-rimmed glasses and a mobile device, sits. BERG and LIBRELLE take seats, forming a triangle of people separated as widely as geometrically possible around the circular table).
LIBRELLE: Mitch, this is Ed DuChey, proprietor of the blog Minnesota Liberal Alliance Dot Blogspot Dot Com.
BERG: A pleasure. (DUCHEY glares)
LIBRELLE: Mitch is my…neighbor, and he writes Shot in the Dark.
DUCHEY: (in a nasal, adenoidal voice) Shit in the Park! (Snorts, sips his latte. LIBRELLE giggles as BERG rolls his eyes)
LIBRELLE: Anyway, Mitch says he’s always open for dialog and debate with the “other side”.
BERG: Yeah, I guess I do.
DUCHEY: I called your blog “Shit in the Park!” (Giggles to self as BERG stares, jaw barely under controlled tension and with an air of ill-concealed pity)
LIBRELLE: So let’s talk about the state of the Republican Party.
BERG: The Tea Party was a much-needed populist expression of the party’s real conservative roots. The Tea Party class of 2010 was actually the one bright spot for the GOP in the Minnesota legislature this past two years.
DUCHEY: You’re stupid.
BERG: Huh. Care to elaborate?
DUCHEY: You’re really stupid. The Teabaggers were full of hate and racism and they were stupider than you.
LIBRELLE: Interesting. OK. How about the shutdown.
BERG: My jury’s still out.
DUCHEY: Your jury is stupid and so are you.
BERG: Huh. (Looks around the room, as hipsters stagger, focused on their mobile devices, toward counter)
LIBRELLE: Good point, Ed. OK. How about the Affordable Care Act?
BERG: Jeez, read the headlines. It’s jacking up practically everyone’s rates and deductibles, the people who claim they’re saving money – the ones that aren’t busted lying in the first place – never acknowledge that there’s a huge taxpayer subsidy involved, and the people who are getting through on the exchanges are the ones with the massive pre-existing conditions, while healthy people are staying away in droves, meaning the system is going to be paying out huge and taking in nothing, which completely breaks down the idea of a “risk pool”.
DUCHEY: You’re…wait, I got a text message. (DUCHEY laboriously types a long text message into his iPhone – and gets a reply, giggles, and replies to it, before returning to the conversation) You’re a stupid teabagging wingnut.
LIBRELLE: You’re right, Mitch. Dialog and debate is fun! (Looks at BERG)
(BERG has, however, left the table and the building).
(Horde of thick-rimmed-glasses-clad hipsters shamble forward in line, hissing and hacking and making prehensile noises).
(And SCENE).
October 23rd, 2013 at 12:25 pm
Heh.
October 23rd, 2013 at 12:39 pm
You know, when your surname is “Pussey”, you really ought not make fun of other names; blog or otherwise.
And, when you have consistently -over a number of years – demonstrated yourself to be an irredeemable moron, you really have no business calling others dull. Makes me long for the days when I made people like this twerp cry. Good times. Good times.
October 23rd, 2013 at 12:54 pm
Mitch–
The Tea Party was the GOP’s descent into darkness and fearmongering. IT’S OKAY TO ADMIT IT.
October 23rd, 2013 at 1:21 pm
It’s okay to admit it.
Wrong, but OK.
October 23rd, 2013 at 1:26 pm
I think you’ll agree, Mitch, that the Koch Brothers have had a lot to do with shaping the Tea Party’s agenda. You’re not that disingenuous.
Koch Brothers = John Birch Society. I’m sure you know all about that too.
Jury still out on the Tea Party being bad for the GOP?
October 23rd, 2013 at 1:31 pm
I think you’ll agree, Mitch, that the Koch Brothers have had a lot to do with shaping the Tea Party’s agenda. You’re not that disingenuous.
So did a lot of other people. And I’ll ask: so what? The Kochs have less impact on the Tea Party than George Soros has on the left, to the point I’ve taken all reference to the Kochs as “Berg’s Seventh Law” violations.
Koch Brothers = John Birch Society. I’m sure you know all about that too.
I know it’s a chanting point the left repeats to itself. No more.
October 23rd, 2013 at 1:32 pm
I’m not a lefty. I’m GOP. Ashamed to admit it nowadays, too.
October 23rd, 2013 at 1:34 pm
No, I remember your email address.
But I reject the “Koch=Birch” claim with prejudice.
October 23rd, 2013 at 3:10 pm
Koch Brothers = John Birch Society. I’m sure you know all about that too.
That would be really damning, except that the Birchers haven’t been a factor in American life since William F. Buckley banished them to the outer darkness in the mid 1960s, and particularly since Eisenhower died in 1969.
It’s true that the Koch brothers’s father was a Bircher, but I’d wager that 85% of the people who identify themselves as Tea Party couldn’t even tell you what the JBS stood for. However, the Koch brothers make excellent Emmanuel Goldsteins, especially when Ted Cruz is out of the room.
October 23rd, 2013 at 3:25 pm
That’s cool, Mitch. You don’t usually carry your caricature leftists into the comments section. But this new “Pete” character acts precisely like Avery and Duchey in the script. It’s a neat twist. Kudos.
October 23rd, 2013 at 3:50 pm
“Makes me long for the days when I made people like this twerp cry”
Well, if you ever want to free-lance for SITD, feel perfectly free.
October 23rd, 2013 at 7:46 pm
“No enemies on the right.”
That’s pathetic… and more than a little scary. You’ve got the Kochs (you don’t have to remember the Birch Society if you believe in the same things), ALEC, Scott
Walker’s assaults on the First Amendment, and Paul Ryan’s Randian eugenics.
If you’d been paying attention to history, you should have jumped off the train by now.
And yes, I AM a conservative.
You can have your little Amen Corner back now, I won’t bother you anymore.
October 23rd, 2013 at 8:39 pm
The scene Mitch describes is not as wild as it may seem. The Krugster:
http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/sections/commentary/their-views/krugman-lousy-medicaid-arguments.html
This isn’t Michael Savage, or some crazy blogger in a trailer park. This is the Krugster, Nobel prize winner, with a twice weekly column in the most read and most influential newspaper in the United States. Jesus Christ.
October 23rd, 2013 at 8:43 pm
Anyone who who equates the Koch Bros. with the JBS is not a conservative. They are not even intelligent. What conservative principles do you adhere to, Pete? Small government? Local rule? Free market capitalism? Patriotism over internationalism?
October 23rd, 2013 at 9:21 pm
If Krugman was a Liberal with a conscience he’d praise and criticize liberal proposals on their merits, and he would encourage liberals to poach what is best from the conservative agenda. The man may be an economic genius, but he is a political hack. When he gets off his high horse and actually explains economics, he has a lot to say.
Krugman will get my respect when he critiques all policy ideas equally, no matter whose political party is promoting them.
October 23rd, 2013 at 9:37 pm
I missed the part where Scott Walker assaulted the first amendment. Unless he’s referring to disbanding the public unions. I could see how “not allowing people to gather” could be considered “assaulting the first amendment” to a LIV.
I call it “undoing the government approved conflict of interest between unions negotiating their salaries with the people the unions helped get elected, using revenues collected at gunpoint”.
If you can’t see the public sector unions for the incredible government sanctioned extortion racket they are, then either you’re not trying hard enough or I am immediately suspect that you have your hand in the cookie jar as well.,
October 24th, 2013 at 6:26 am
Pete, you’re always welcome to “bother” us – you’ve been a friend of this blog for longer than just about anyone I can remember.
But it’s not an amen corner for me, and it’s sure not for you:
(you don’t have to remember the Birch Society if you believe in the same things)
But I’ve seen nobody – not even the whackdoodle leftyblogs – show me what that means in anything but the broadest possible terms. I mean, I believe some of the same things as Birchers, and if you’re any sort of conservative so do you.
ALEC
I’ve been writing about this for over a year now, Pete. ALEC is no different than a slew of other groups on both (and no) sides of the aisle. The lefty noise machine has turned them into a chanting point – largely to cover the many operations on their side that actually are what they claim ALEC is.
, Scott Walker’s assaults on the First Amendment, and Paul Ryan’s Randian eugenics.
And with neither of these do I have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.
October 24th, 2013 at 7:51 am
“And yes, I AM a conservative”
Hey, don’t feel bad bunkey. I AM an Eagle…but I still can’t fly.
October 24th, 2013 at 8:31 am
Scott Walker’s assaults on the First Amendment
I assume this is about the tendency of the Capitol Police in Madison to arrest the Solidarity Singers, a remnant group of marginally musically inclined protestors who are fond of gathering in the State Capitol to share their moral vanity and generally be a nuisance to others who happen to be there. It’s an article of faith among Madison leftists (and “I AM a conservative” conservatives, apparently) that Walker is personally directing this activity because he’s evil or something.
Paul Ryan’s Randian eugenics.
Ryan apparently read Atlas Shrugged or something. And apparently “I AM a conservative” conservatives find Daily Kos diarists probative.
October 24th, 2013 at 8:56 am
When the Koch brothers to do something that impacts me, my family or the things we hold important, .01% as negatively as anything George Soros & his slavering ilk have done or would like to do, I’ll buy the idea of any “conservative” that worries about them.
October 24th, 2013 at 9:25 am
When someone mentions eugenics in the U.S. I always think of lefty icon St. Margaret Sanger.
October 24th, 2013 at 9:35 am
When someone mentions eugenics in the U.S. I always think of lefty icon St. Margaret Sanger.
As well you should, NW. Where eugenics are concerned, Rand was a Woman of Words, while Sanger was a Woman of Action.
October 24th, 2013 at 12:10 pm
QUOTE: ALEC
I’ve been writing about this for over a year now, Pete. ALEC is no different than a slew of other groups on both (and no) sides of the aisle. The lefty noise machine has turned them into a chanting point – largely to cover the many operations on their side that actually are what they claim ALEC is.”
Isn’t ALEC mostly just a group that facilitates swapping and comparing legislation models for efficiency and efficacy?
I mean do they ever really raise hell like Club For Growth or whatever? Just asking.
October 24th, 2013 at 12:37 pm
Thanks for remembering me, Mitch. Yes, I and SITD do go back quite a ways.
Even though my thinking has changed somewhat since my days as a fellow “conservative firebrand,” I continue to read your blog because of its literacy and fearlessness. Not because I always agree with you or your disciples.
Also, we both play the guitar and write about music.
October 24th, 2013 at 1:28 pm
Shortened to a ten page essay, and taken in the context of political and economic thought in the 1950s and 1960s, Rand makes good points. But it’s bad writing. It’s also instructive only in a negative way. Just as Das Kapital is a critique of capitalism, rather than a road-map for communism, Rand’s books are a cutting critique of socialism, but offer us little in terms of a practical guide for the libertarian utopia which is her ideal. Both Rand and Marx seemed to feel that the existing system would collapse under its own weight, and that after the fall, rather than chaos, their utopia would emerge like a Phoenix from the ashes.
A well-rounded politician should struggle through Atlas Shrugged (and Das Kapital), but I do not trust any who cite her work as an inspiration for political reform. Anyone who finds her characters heroic, rather than cartoonishly one dimensional, doesn’t have a lot of depth to their understanding of humanity.
Worshiping Rand is not unlike worshiping Marx. That’s the path Lenin started on, and that path led to Stalin, which I think was not what Marx had in mind.
October 24th, 2013 at 2:42 pm
Worshiping Rand is not unlike worshiping Marx. That’s the path Lenin started on, and that path led to Stalin, which I think was not what Marx had in mind.
The difference being, the Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist path requires walls and guns to maintain control, as the very basis of the ideology and theories of collectivism run directly counter to the instinct of self-preservation. The Randian path only requires guns to repel aggression.
October 24th, 2013 at 4:03 pm
@Emery “understanding of humanity.”
I get the sense that very educated and thoughtful libertarians don’t think much of her in this sense. In reality I don’t think she had much of a grip on herself like you would expect.
An Ayn Rand world would be a lot more just and prosperous than what we have now, though. What we have today is bad policy responding to bad policy over and over until the bond market collapses. Too much thoughtless government force and rent seeking. Waste and graft.
October 24th, 2013 at 6:14 pm
Is “conservative” a category like “woman” or “Native American” where the objective physical facts are irrelevant because the determining factor is how you feel about it?
Perhaps Pete feels that he is a conservative Black lesbian trapped in a Liberal White Man’s body, so even though he reliably contributes, argues and votes Democrat, he’s really a Republican, and a far-right one, at that.
October 25th, 2013 at 8:28 am
“Perhaps Pete feels that he is a conservative Black lesbian trapped in a Liberal White Man’s body, so even though he reliably contributes, argues and votes Democrat, he’s really a Republican, and a far-right one, at that.”
Curious;
Are you saying that “Pete” is Bizarro Eva Young?
Redeculiouse!
October 25th, 2013 at 1:08 pm
Eva Young?
Where have I heard that name. Sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.
October 25th, 2013 at 2:31 pm
Hey, Mitch, that mind bleach must really work!