THE GRAY LADY HAS A BAD CASE OF ALZHEIMER’S THESE DAYS:

THE GRAY LADY HAS A BAD CASE OF ALZHEIMER’S THESE DAYS:

The New York Times’s Roger Cohen, an occasionally iconoclastic left-wing journalist, composed an inspired masterpiece of anti-Trump oratorical obloquy: “Wondering, If This Is America.” Cohen, an international columnist for the paper born in London, mustered his high indignation not only of President Trump (aka “Mussolini’s understudy”) but of America itself.
Cohen sold his Saturday edition article on Twitter as “Turkmenistan-on-the-Potomac: If This Is America.”

If this is America, with a cabinet of terrorized toadies genuflecting to the Great Leader, a vice president offering a compliment every 12 seconds to Mussolini’s understudy, and a White House that believes in “alternative facts,” then it is time to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.”

Flashback to Thomas Friedman, also of the New York Times, in September of 2009:

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.

As Jonah Goldberg wrote in response, “Thomas Friedman is a Liberal Fascist:”

Now, of course, there are “drawbacks” to such a system: crushing of dissidents with tanks, state control of reproduction, government control of the press and the internet. Omelets and broken eggs, as they say. More to the point, Friedman insists, these “drawbacks” pale in comparison to the system we have today here in America.
I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it’s the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn’t picky in this regard). This is the argument for an “economic dictatorship” pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It’s the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.

Similarly, I’ve been meaning to link to this NewsBusters post from this past Thursday: “Irony! [Chris] Matthews Trashes ‘Trumpkins’ Praying to ‘Sun King,’ Calls Tax Reform ‘Greatest Shorting’ Ever.”
On Friday, Noah Rothman of Commentary explored “The Death Rattle of Obama’s Reputation:”

The members of Barack Obama’s administration in exile have become conspicuously noisy of late—even more so than usual. Former CIA Director John Brennan accused Donald Trump and his administration of engaging in “outrageous,” “narcissistic” behavior typical of “vengeful autocrats” by threatening proportionate retaliation against countries that voted to condemn the United States in the United Nations, as though that were unprecedented. It is not. James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence, all but alleged that the president is a Russian “asset.” Perhaps the most acerbic and incendiary series of accusations from the former Democratic president’s foreign-policy professionals were placed in the New York Times by Obama’s national security advisor, Susan Rice. In her estimation, America has abdicated its role as a “force for good.”
It’s no coincidence that these overheated condemnations accompany abundant evidence that the Trump administration is finding its legs. As the last administration’s undeserved reputation as sober-minded foreign policy rationalists is dismantled one retrospective report at a time, its jilted members are lashing out.

Leftwing pundits such as Matthews and Friedman produced an astonishing amount of silly material worshipping Dear Leader in 2009. As his reputation becomes increasingly impossible for even his worst toadies (to borrow Cohen’s phrase regarding Mike Pence) to defend, their amnesia will likely only increase in direct proportion to their lashing out to Trump and his administration.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Remember this?

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 by Ed Driscoll

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/284241/