Kevin Drum notes that the defining quality of American politics and President Obama is constant and unending rage, and tries (in the usual Kevin Drum way) to pin it on both sides.
The White House, says the LA Times for the third straight day, is facing "growing fury" over L'Affaire Bergdahl. How many times have I read a headline like this over the past few years. Dozens? Hundreds?
Hard to say. But it sure seems to be the defining quality of American politics these days. We just bounce from one outrage to the next, mostly ginned up by the right, but sometimes by the left too. It's a wonder that America hasn't dropped dead of a collective heart attack yet.
Has it always been this way? Maybe. It's not as if we lacked for partisan outrages in the 50s and 60s. But I'd sure like to hear from folks who have a good memory for those years. Was the procession of outrages really as nonstop as it is today? Did we at least take a break between outrages back then? Or has nothing changed except our exposure to this stuff thanks to Twitter and 24-hour cable news?
News flash, K-Drum. "The left" isn't calling for the overthrow of the American government or backing a Second American Revolution with armed domestic terrorists encouraged to take out a few government bureaucrats with "Second Amendment remedies."
That's solely the proposition of the right, who moves to criminalize, demonize, and exterminate dissent at every turn.
It's not MSNBC openly calling for impeachment, that would be Fox News. Repeatedly, by the way.
There is no "sometimes the left" on this dangerous idiocy, Kevin. Knock it off.
The "left" is too busy being terribly, terribly disappointed that the President is not perfect. News flash: No one is. But the "right" is like a yappy little dog whose territory is anything it sees. (*ugh*) The "left" needs to remind the "right" that there are boundaries. (I need a better metaphor.)
ReplyDeleteWhile I sympathize completely with your point, D.Potter, the situation may not be so grim as it appears. That bastion of faux-radical fucktardotrie recently had an internal poll which revealed that two thirds of the voting members were in fact fine with President Obama and his policies, one third was disappointed but able to deal with it, and only 8.45% were such gibbering loons that they would vote for a rabid weasel so long as it was named Elisabeth Warren.
ReplyDeletePutting teeth into this discovery, the most vicious gang of self styled lefties recently went on a rampage and attacked some rape victims - if you can believe that bit of irony - for political wrong think that left two of their leaders Banned for Life and a significant chunk of their followers on temporary suspension.
One can only hope that the site administration learned from their mistake in giving the hysterical ninnies free rein and allowing the Greenwald toadies to bescumber the reputation of the place by using it to spread propaganda and lurid disinformation. One can also hope that other leaders on the Left remember that we are engaged in an existential struggle with the Republicans for the soul of America and that the voices of decency and reason will prevail.
People like to talk about the Nazis, but here's an interesting fact that people either don't know or choose to ignnore: The German Communist Party refused to cooperate with the Social Democrats in the Weimar era, and even after they Nazis seized power they continued to shoot Social Democrats on the grounds that they were the true enemies of the working class. None of this is new.