The Weekly Standard is dead. The conservative magazine was killed by its parent company for not being enough of a Trump mouthpiece, which is the wrong reason it should have died, but still it’s a net good for our society that the magazine has passed away.
The Weekly Standard was created to push lies and falsehoods. It came from the mind of Bill Kristol, fresh off of the anti-American “Republican Revolution” in Congress of 1994.
Not only did the magazine espouse the tired, boring, racist and classist conservatism that dominates the Republican Party, it played a major role in getting America involved in the worst foreign policy initiative of the 21st century.
Under the leadership of Kristol, and particularly Stephen F.Hayes, the magazine pushed the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he was working in concert with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
This was a complete fabrication used by the George W. Bush administration to launch America into war in Iraq.
The war based on those lies killed thousands of Americans and thousands of Iraqis, probably hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. It destabilized the Middle East and helped to generate groups like ISIS which have killed thousands of innocent people.
The Weekly Standard helped to uncork a river of blood around the world.
And it also helped to push lies, smears, and nonsense on our domestic politics.
It didn’t like Donald Trump because Trump is stupid and says the racist stuff Republicans believe out loud instead of the “quiet rooms”preferred by figures like Mitt Romney (they were fine with Mitt).
Trumpism helped to kill the Weekly Standard and Trumpism is bad but its all the same as conservatism, which is wrong for America and has killed many innocents both here and abroad.
The Weekly Standard was bad. It’s dead. And that’s good.
One of the first political bloggers in the world, Oliver Willis has operated OliverWillis.com since 2000. Contributor at Media Matters for America and The American Independent. Follow on Twitter at @owillis. Full bio.
Oliver,
Rather than cheer, we have several reasons to regret the passing of the Weekly Standard.
First, I’m always in favor of Republicans putting money into any money losing effort. No doubt that money will now go to some other effort which may not fail.
Any publication where Republicans attack other Republicans is fine with me. Those writers that used to spend their time pointing out the absurdity of Trumpville are now freed up to attack Democrats & Democratic policies.
The personal animosities engendered when one publicly disses a Trump may now be papered over. I’ll miss the Trump Tweets attacking Bill Kirstol. I’ll miss the articles where Kristol accuses Trump of ignoring everything it means to be a Republican.
No, we never much agreed with the Weekly Standard. Recently, it played a role.