AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

You must be a crypto communist as you are 'i CAN 711' part of 'yes we CAN' communists.

This was the front page of Fox News online today -



Nope, no racism whatsoever at play in the Conservative sphere these days

Cycloptichorn

I came here to post what will follow, a piece by Bob Cesca. I had no idea what bent this thread would take! The piece was originally forwarded to me by a friend, who holds a doctorate in AMerican history.


BOB CESCA, VIA THE HUFFINGTON POST, 29 SEPTEMBER 2010

Yesterday, Senator Jim DeMint, from the politically loopy state of South Carolina, announced that he intends to summarily block any Senate legislation that he finds personally objectionable, regardless of which party introduced the offending bill. This also goes for non-controversial legislation that would have normally blasted through the cooling saucer with unanimous consent.

Put another way, DeMint is exploiting an increasingly less obscure parliamentary maneuver to, in effect, shut down the United States Senate. And he's taking hostages.

It goes without saying this is inexcusable, and it serves to illustrate with striking clarity the lengths to which the Republicans will go to obstruct the Obama agenda and, more importantly, to sabotage this slow growth economic recovery.

As Rachel Maddow has tenaciously documented for many months now with her "They're Not Embarrassed" series, the congressional Republicans are incapable of feeling self-conscious about their their pandering to the tea party or their grinning photo-ops with giant stimulus checks they once violently opposed with threats of secession.



They're simply not ashamed to be the political equivalent of grade school recess spoil-sports. Hurling the kickball into the pricker bushes instead of sacking up and playing the game. No more deference to compromise -- even heated partisan debate that eventually leads to compromise. The Republicans of 2010 are all about childish breath-holding and ear-plugged "Lalalala! Can't hear you!" loud noises.

There aren't any grown-ups on that side of aisle anymore.

Conversely, while many of us on the left have excoriated the Democrats for capitulating to the Republicans on certain bits of legislation, objective distance along with continued observation of the post-Bush Republicans has offered a more positive perspective on the current majority party, specifically regarding how the Democrats behaved during the Bush years. Yes, they can be ineffectual, frustrating, disorganized and self-loathing -- too willing to repeat a Republican frame than to invent a uniquely Democratic one. But they're mostly adults.

The Democrats by and large have a record of compromise with Republicans, even though their comparative generosity hasn't been reciprocated by the Republicans. The Democrats understand that voters want to see legislative accomplishments and not idle grabassery. As the minority party, the Democrats compromised in the name of getting work done -- but, since leadership changed hands in 2007, the Republicans have filibustered twice as often. And since the inauguration, the Republicans have tried to filibuster nearly every piece of legislation that's brought to the floor for a vote. Middle class tax cuts, small business tax cuts, the healthcare reform bill, the recovery bill, military spending, unemployment benefits. All of it.

So it seems laughable on its face that otherwise smart people are going around these days and repeating this bullshit meme about how "both sides" are to blame for the insanity that's overtaken American politics.

The DeMint one-man choke hold on the entire Senate is unmatched on the Democratic side. The filibustering is unmatched. The brazen, hubristic flaunting of obvious hypocrisy is unmatched.

But still it's "both sides." Somehow. And I'm directly referencing here left-of-center writers, pundits and, disappointingly, guys like Jon Stewart, who's Rally to Restore Sanity is directed at "both sides."

It seems as though whenever Democrats control Washington, liberals shift focus from attacking conservatives and Republicans to attacking "both sides," perhaps out of some kind of hipster intellectual craving to seem fair-minded (falsely fair-minded in this case). Or maybe it's out of a desire to not appear subservient to the majority party. I don't know for sure.

Regardless of the motivations, an equivalency between "both sides" simply doesn't exist. But by being all-inclusive with criticism, the shotgun effect of the "both sides" meme taints the left with the far-right's exponentially crazier stink. A handful of trespasses on the left become inflated to and conflated with the the group-session-from-Cuckoo's-Nest meltdown happening on the right. Some legislative flailing on the Democratic side becomes incongruously magnified to the size of the all-out strangling of the U.S. Senate by the Republicans. To employ a metaphor here, I certainly hope that if I'm ticketed for rolling through some stop signs along an abandoned road, I'm not lumped in with drunken drivers who t-bone school buses filled with children. Sure, everyone breaks the law sometimes, but there are, of course, various levels of malfeasance -- levels that are deserving of different degrees of punishment and scorn.

Perhaps I'm missing something. But show me where there's equal and precise equivalencies between "both sides." Show me a TV pundit on the left with the same audience reach and capacity for wackaloon conspiracy theories as Glenn Beck. Show me a traditional media outlet on the left as massive as Fox News Channel or Clear Channel.

Sorry, "both sides" fetishists, but one viewing of her show proves that there's no comparison between Rachel Maddow's fact-based analysis and Sean Hannity's Republican talking point hootenanny.

Code Pink isn't anywhere near the size and influence of the tea party. Show me a left-wing radio personality as popular and well-financed as Rush Limbaugh, or a liberal radio personality as explicitly racist as Mike Savage.

Show me the photo ops in which Democrats proudly take credit for legislation they vocally opposed. Or show me someone at the highest level of Democratic power who still can't spell or speak coherent English -- who's nothing more than an overrated reality show grifter -- as Sarah Palin.

Show me Democratic obstructionism on the level of the Senate Republicans in the 111th Congress, or a Democratic senator who blocked every piece of legislation from coming to a vote. Show me a Democratic politician sex scandal with the same degree of flagrant hypocrisy as a Christian conservative "family values" Republican sex scandal. (It's worth noting here that the "both sides" meme can also be found among certain far-right whites who insist there's "racism on both sides" -- as though 13 percent of the population can be equally as racist as 70 percent of the population.)

Here's a real world example of the danger inherent in taking this shortsighted "both sides" view of the political spectrum. Ten years ago, the course of American history was irreversibly skewed, partly because too many liberals believed that Al Gore and George W. Bush were equally as lame. I remember it all quite clearly. Many of us thought both candidates were controlled by the same corporate benefactors. We thought they were both more or less indistinguishable on the issues. We yawned at the "lock box" droning and debate sighing from Gore, and we laughed at the verbal nincompoopery of Bush, and, at the end of the day, the glitches canceled each other out. And so, without seeing the forest for the trees, scores of us voted for Ralph Nader or stayed home altogether. Embarrassingly enough, I was one of those Nader votes. And those protest votes were enough to make the election nail-bitingly close, allowing the Supreme Court to ultimately tip the scales in favor of Bush.

It's almost overwhelming to recall how wrong we were, considering each candidate's polar opposite record over the subsequent decade. But we convinced ourselves that "both sides" were the same, when, in fact, history has proved this analysis to be resoundingly wrong. Devastatingly wrong.

While it's our duty as citizens to hold the government accountable, it's also necessary to operate within the bounds of reality when levying blame for a lack of sanity, or a lack of civility, or a lack of decent legislation. Ask yourself whether Republican obstructionism and contradictions are equally matched on the Democratic side. If the answer is "no," then decide which party ought to be appropriately spanked. Meanwhile, anyone who continues to employ the "both sides" meme, especially given the DeMint stunt, needs to seriously reevaluate their judgment criteria and wise up.

I have repeatedly written -- but, as my posts tend not to include multi-colored letters in red and blue, perhaps, they were overlooked (ooh! was that outloud?) -- that the right is childish, particularly the right wingers who form the "industrial military complex" which, like teenaged gangs, has been out of control for nearly 30 years. Glad to see someone with a national platform agrees with me.

Betcha ican has no idea who Hester Prynne is.

He can't show you because he made it up . . . or . . . perhaps, he is a Republican plant, a shrill here with a fictionalized persona who is rather like a Party plant in a communist cell . . . which we have no direct knowledge of, as they too seemed to have been the product of the right-wing imagination.

Isn't it amazing how flexible ican's morality is? The bastards at the top may not have stolen the wealth in a technical sense of the word not: they had their puppets in the WH and the Congress during the raygun, bush I and bush II years change the laws in their favor so that they could 'legally' deprive millions of workers of the product of their real labors while they drank good scotch and hired women to satisfy their needs on expense accounts.


That is the biggest lie you have told yet. I have posted the figures from the Bureau of Census at least three times. Pundits across America mention this fact -- you do know, don't you, that there is such a thing as a fact? -- daily.

As if this guy could even question the intellect of my two-year-old granddaughter! Challenging me with his GED!

That shows how political Fox News is.

This is their entertainment page and 9 out of 13 stories are about politics?

Don't they know Lindsey Lohan was going to rehab again?

But, if they scream loudly enough about Lohan and rappers, they will adequately satisfy the masses who will feel they have caught up on the 'news' and whose attention span will give out as soon as they finish reading about Lohan and rappers. The word for today is numb. Numb the masses and you will triumph.

Yes the "masses" are stupid and easily led. perhaps they need a disciplined cadre to lead them to a new paradise. We could call it the vanguard of the working class - real smart folks like you who know what's really good for everyone else. You can easily mobilize some self-styled intellectual claques to cheer you on. After you take power you can spend a while "harvesting the (weath of the) bourgeois exploiters" to provide you the means to extend your power and create a new class of better human beings ...

But that has all been tried before. It led to tyranny, mass exterminations, and drab poverty for all.

SO boring, the way you trot out Appeals to Extreme with almost every post you make, George.

Not everything that everyone Right of Center says or advocates is an unstoppable slide into Socialism, man.

Cycloptichorn

TRUTH

Leftist liberals seek to secure their right to steal wealth others earn.

Rightist liberals seek to secure their right to retain wealth they earn.

You like that phrase, don't you.

Odd that you don't count your frequent categorical characterizations and condemnations of the motivations of those with whom you disagree in the same way.

Evidently such trite phrases are sufficient to quiet the critical parts of your thinking.

USA TAXES ARE NOT AGAINST THE LAW IF THEY COMPLY WITH THE CONSTITUTION OF THE USA:

Definition of common
http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged?va=common&x=30&y=9
Definition of general
http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged?va=general&x=24&y=11
Definition of imposts
http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged?va=imposts&x=28&y=10
Definition of uniform
http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged?va=uniform&x=29&y=8

Not as much as you like to do it. I really wish I never had to say it again, regarding your posts.



Probably because those aren't Appeals to Extremes. You can disagree with my analysis - I have no beef with that - but you are accusing me of committing the wrong logical fallacy.



It's just shorthand for saying,



Every time you go into a rant about 'centrally-planned economies,' it becomes clear that you are living in some past time when such criticisms were actually seen as relevant. Nobody on the left side of the fence is advocating anything even remotely close to this. No aspect of any legislation that Obama has passed is anywhere even remotely close to this. Yet you constantly bring up the scare specter of the past anyways in order to combat present arguments and situations, in ways which are fundamentally false and have nothing to do with the situation at hand, and you do so in order to avoid having to provide actual fact and logic based criticisms. This is known as Appealing to Extremes: pretending that every suggestion and every argument made by your opponent MUST be taken to it's absolute maximum, and then attacked. That's what you are doing; that's what you just did to POM's argument. Rather than actually discuss it, you dismissed it by shouting 'Socialism! Communism!' and waving your hands in the air.

Not compelling, not even in the slightest.

Cycloptichorn

I feel precisely the same way about your repeated implications that, while the wave of political support that brought Obama to the Presidencyy was surely the act of a thoughtful electorate which saw a good and needed thing and voted for it, the subsequent and equally popular reaction against many of his actions is surely the act of a stupid (or "numb" to use POM's term) mass of prejudiced and unthinking people, responding to their basest instincts.

You are now committing a separate fallacy: creating a Straw Man. I didn't forward the position that you ascribe to me above.

In fact, I seem to remember you pulling this same routine during the election that you now accuse me of; constantly referring to Obama as 'the Sainted one' and mocking him and those who support him, as if they were indeed irrational. But now you pretend that those who oppose him - and I daresay make him out to be a devil - are perfectly rational. How do you reconcile these two positions?

Why can't you stick to the actual ******* arguments that people make? Why this need to twist their arguments into some extreme version of themselves, or something completely different? I believe it is at heart laziness on your part, the same laziness that leads you to believe that no evidence is ever necessary for your arguments; that your assertions should be taken as gold by the rest of us.

Cycloptichorn

Nonsense. You have done so many times.

Why don't you provide some proof of that, George? For I claim that I did not. Those who elected Obama did so because they thought he would best serve the country's interests. They were not enlightened or party to some sort of secret and special knowledge about the future, or right and wrong.

I would also note that there is no 'equally popular' opposition to Obama or his programs. Those who are so-called 'tea partiers' are a minority in this country, a segment of the Republican party. Obama got elected with the largest mandate in 20 years; the two are hardly comparable.

Even more so, are you claiming that you did not in fact commit the very same thing that you now accuse me of - over and over again accusing Obama supporters of irrationality, mocking him and calling him 'The One' or some such? Because that would be a total lie, and I'm more than happy to use Google to find any number of posts showing you doing exactly this. I ask you again: how do you reconcile this hypocrisy?

Cycloptichorn

Well, since, in your reply, you have given us a demonstration of the point I made, it isn't necessary to make any additional effort.