Being our semi-regular weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, as you know, is what Queen would have come up with had they recorded "Bohemian Rhapsoderp."

Before getting to matters on our electric teevee machine, we should pause for a moment and congratulate Glenn Kessler, the totes-adorbs bestower of Pinocchios at The Washington Post, who handed out his yearly awards today and proved once again that newspaper "fact-checkers" are as afflicted with the deadly Both Sides virus as anyone else inside the Beltway is.

Note the perfect balance in all things—Donald Trump's insane citation of something that didn't happen with Hillary Rodham Clinton's citation of something that at least was bruited about in conservative circles, even if you believe (if I do) that DOMA arose out of Bill Clinton's desire to be president for another term; Trump's truthless charge about immigrant criminals with Chris Murphy's assertion about school shootings, which even Kessler and his crew admit does include shootings at schools. (Is Kessler seriously arguing that suicide by handgun at a school is somehow less of an argument for sensible gun laws than a mass shooting is? I admire his ability to make that measured a choice), and a lie from Rudolph Giuliani with the following, arguable statement by the president: "The Keystone pipeline is for oil that bypasses the United States." It certainly was that, but it was not solely for oil that bypasses the United States, which Kessler seems to think the president said.

But the really egregious one is that "Hands Up, Don't Shoot," the mantra of what became the Black Lives Matter movement is as big a lie as Trump and his dancing rooftop Muslims, because it was determined that Darren Wilson had a reason to kill Michael Brown in the street. I guess Kessler would have kept his Pinocchio to himself if the chant had been, "I'm black, don't shoot," or "I'm selling loosies, don't strangle me," or "I'm walking down the street, don't toss me into the back of a van and drive roughly around Baltimore until my back breaks and I die," or "I'm walking away, don't shoot me 31 times and then lie about it and cover it up." I'm not sure, but I don't think those last two track very well as chants. Of course, had Glenn Kessler been around at the time, "Remember the Maine!" would not have been a thing, and god alone knows what he'd have done with Parson Weems.

I mention all of this because Molly Ball of The Atlantic, who is a very good reporter, is getting quite a hiding this morning for something she said in the lounge of the Overlook Hotel, where my man Chuck Todd always has been the caretaker. (She took He, Trump seriously before almost anyone else did.) Perhaps, because of the holidays, Lloyd the bartender overserved everyone, but, in a discussion about the appeal of He, Trump, Ball said:

MOLLY BALL: No, if you look at who is supporting Trump though, no, in the polls, I mean, Trump is getting most of his support from Republicans who consider themselves moderates or liberals. It is not the hard right that is supporting Trump, it's not the—CHUCK TODD: Well it's a new group, it's a new group of people.MOLLY BALL: He's not ideologically conservative. Yeah, it is a new group of people, it's most largely identity-based, I think.

They can't admit it. It goes against all their conditioning, all their training. They simply cannot admit that, for going on 40 years now, the warm heart of the Republican party—namely, the conservative movement and the fundamentalist Protestant right, both of which rose to power in the late-70's—has converted that party into an identity-based cult, and now the reactor's gone super-critical and nobody can remember which buttons to push and which dials to spin. At this point, their identity is their ideology—an ideology of victimhood, and of the fantasy oppressors that people outside the cult see merely as evidence of a changing world. They look at the country's shifting demographics the way that the Heaven's Gate people looked at the Hale-Bopp comet. It's going to take something seriously awful to shake them to their senses and, frankly, I'm not sure I want to live through whatever that has to be.

But the House Cup goes to CBS, where John Dickerson now fills the chair once graced by Indus shamanic critic Bob Schieffer. Dickerson hosted longtime conservative word-'ho Frank Luntz, who'd put together a focus group of Trump voters earlier in the week during which America had died a quiet, tragic death.

LUNTZ: Because no other Republican is willing to say the things that Donald Trump says. I don't believe there would be a Trump candidacy if there wasn't an Obama presidency. And Trump's willingness to say things that we all would say go beyond the pale, that we would say is unacceptable in American politics, for these voters, is exactly what they want to hear, and no other candidate is talking that way.DICKERSON: So, it's not just that they dislike the president, but that Donald Trump is the opposite of the qualities they see in the president.

No. It's because they've become moronized by the weaponized ignorance that spews forth every day from their favorite radio hosts and their favorite TV news stars, and their crazy drunk uncle who can't stay off the Internet, and Alex Jones, and the prejudices and meanness that every human heart is heir to and to which Frank Luntz has made a career of appealing, and the awful journalistic malpractice that has allowed the ignorance to run unchecked simply because it wins elections and the country gets worse, and there's always somebody else to blame.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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