Running to Mommy
The right has fallen into something of a rut of late; so deliriously successful have they been with their strategy of dramatically doing and saying the most outrageous and vile things they can think of and then even more dramatically wailing, fainting, and demanding sympathy (and of course revenge) over the entirely predictable reaction, that the whole spectacle is really starting to make them look like a bunch of crybabies. Not that they care, admittedly. Having basically long ago given up winning any battle based on the facts, histrionic displays of victimhood are pretty much all they have left, and they’ve gotten them down to a science, or perhaps more accurately, an intelligent design.
As expected, the especially intelligence-challenged icons of the right, that is, former beauty queens Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean, are undoubtedly the most audacious and comical about employing this tactic, often having to invent or exaggerate these unconscionable slights for dramatic effect. Palin thus had to darkly extrapolate that her many, self-created ”enemies” wanted her to abort, and later euthanize, her oft-touted “special needs” child, which she had relentlessly used as a billboard for her dogmatic embrace of the forced birth movement, and then conflate David Letterman’s joke about her demonstrably unchaste daughter to a loudly proclaimed call for “statutory rape” of her younger daughter, who luckily enough hasn’t yet started dating redneck hockey players, as far as we know. Smooth move, Caribou Barbie; even Matt Lauer didn’t fall for that one. Prejean, in hot pursuit of an even thornier crown than her Miss California bauble, is now tearfully suing Miss California officials for “religious discrimination” as the clock on her fifteen minutes of fame inexorably winds down, finding that being merely a disposable darling of those tacky bible thumpers will never pay the bills, nor does it get her anything close to the TV time she craves. Cruelly stripped of her tiara, she’s vengefully turned tattletale, a look which is decidedly less flattering on her than a bathing suit and high heels, but what else is a girl of no discernible talent and an IQ rivaling Trig Palin’s to do? Work?
But Prejean is merely following in the footsteps of other “innocent” religious fanatics, who are constantly under attack, to their minds, merely because they feel a need to take away the rights of others, and pour their considerable money, muscle, and political clout into this Godly and worthy pursuit. The Mormons did it after their carpetbagging “victory” on Prop. 8 brought them deserved opprobrium from most normal people, the radical Zionists do it after every carpet bombing of Palestinians, and now the Catholic League’s cuckoo leader, Bob Donohue, is certain that “militant, dogmatic, fundamentalist atheism” is on a Hitlerian blitzkrieg against them, too, because somebody said something mean about the Vatican on Showtime. Well, Hail Mary, full of something, which doesn’t exactly smell like grace.
Fox News, America’s Crybabies, have always employed this technique, and through the magic of creative editing, they conveniently erase their astonishingly provocative and inciteful statements that led to the horrible name-calling and derision they’ve unfairly suffered, while they endlessly whine about and exhaustively repeat every mean word ever said about them from even the obscurest of sources, every damn night. Poor little Glenn Beck, as popular with advertisers these days as crabs in a whorehouse, even had a chart made up, which although misspelled, was surely heartfelt and timely. The poor little lunatic race-baiter just can’t get a break from the leftist barrage. (I just tossed that in in hopes of getting on the next chart…)
This cynical attempt by some of the worst people on the planet to garner the kind of sympathy of which they themselves are utterly incapable has two goals: to increase the feelings of victimhood and desire for revenge amongst their slow-witted, violently inclined followers, and to make their critics look as hateful as they are. And after eight years of Bush, who gloatingly behaved like a Nazi at least in part to get someone to call him one so he could bathe himself in righteous victimhood, it’s not at all surprising that they would, as always in unison, be stooping to such loud and transparent demagoguery for both political gain and another undeserved moment in the spotlight. It’s what they do.
The only thing they always conveniently forget to tell Mommy is who hit whom first.
Hag,
Good post, and everything you say about the right is true. Just as true as it has been about the left since WWII at least. Both sides are now whining that the other side is mean, nasty, stupid, corrupt, full of gas, and has restless leg syndrome.
The backers of the new administration have spent a half year telling everyone how bad the Republicans are and that all failings are their fault. It is only fair since the Reagan crowd did that for a year when he went into office.
The left calls Palin stupid and she may well be the stupidest politician ever to win election to a small time post. But the best and brightest still have us in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. They are attacking (covertly) Iran and seeking hash sanctions. But, Palin is stupid and Glenn says that the news people hire each other’s kids. (as if Hollywood never did such a thing) Oh well, by the midterm elections perhaps we can all talk about the failings of the current crop.
The wonderful thing about being an anarchist is that I get to see the mote in the eyes of both sides.
It isn’t as though I see no motes on my side; I do so every day. The problem is that ever since Nixon, the left is pointing out real things, and the right is pointing out fake ones.
Why of course Hag; it is the ying and yang. The Democrats (left) are all sweetness and light while the Republicans (right) are Satanic evil-mongers. (I believe one half of the above, guess which)
Well, I have watched American Politics closely since the election of Nixon (whom I fought against in the trenches) and I have seen little difference at all in the “goodness” of either side. I suppose I was not paying attention or something.
Now that the Democrats control the entire central government, it would be nice to see the actions of today’s government be the main topic of discussion. But, I can wait. Surely in a year or two we can move on to asking why Obama is outspending the entire planet on the military (not saying the other side did not do it also) or why his economic policies led to brutally high inflation. (a prediction, yes)
Well, I must do my writing for tomorrow now. See you around.
Clinton got impeached… for what?
Obama’s being called a Nazi… for what?
Nixon got away with Watergate, and Reagan and Bush for Iran/Contra; both belonged in jail. I fail to see where you’re going with your argument, except perhaps off a cliff.
The fact is, and I don’t like it much, but the Democrats are bland conciliators, while the Republicans are indeed leaning fascist, at least during my lifetime.
Bingo!!!
Clinton should have been impeached for war crimes in Europe as well as the middle east. He got off clean. The rest was a dog and pony show.
Obama’s bankster giveaway program is enough to call him a fascist, but Nazis is over the top. It is over the top in exactly the same way that it is over the top when the left calls everyone to the right of Mao a Nazis.
I am not giving you an “argument”, only observation. The observation, in other words, is: both sides call each other horrible names, perhaps well deserved, and let evil on their own side slide on by. It has been thus all my life and probably thus since the country was founded.
Speaking of Nixon, I hated that man more than I have ever hated a human being. It was the passion of youth I suppose. Looking back on the actuality of his record, what he really did, I can now not see what I was so angry about as compared to those who came before him or after him. I suppose it was that he looked mean.
The only president that I would not impeach and execute, that I had some small firsthand knowledge of, was Carter. (and he is on the border)
You’ve no doubt heard it said that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, a witticism which positively shimmers with truth, justice, and the American Way.
Only an anarchist, I think, would dismiss it as a trivial observation.
I think perhaps only an anarchist could appreciate Washington is Hollywood for ugly people to its full depth. Besides the obvious nepotism, favoritism, cronyism, and so forth; Washington is a city of illusions just as Hollywood is — maybe even more so.
Well, yes, the social dynamics are similar, but the reasons why they’re similar aren’t trivial at all, which is more or less the point of Hag’s post. After all, the dynamics of Hollywood — too many ambitious people jostling one another for status in a hierarchy which has little real significance outside its own system of reference — should be different from those in a hierarchy which can oppress or kill millions at a whim.
To simply say that both Hollywood and Washington are immoral in the same way — a plague on both their houses, so to speak — implies, correctly, that Washington has become as self-referential as Hollywood is, and just as isolated from the rest of the universe, but it offers no remedy other than an assertion of moral superiority, which is no remedy at all.
Dealing with this sclerotic state of affairs isn’t so much a moral question as a political one. To react to it with condemnation alone may be comforting, but it won’t change anything. For that you need democracy, which was, in fact, invented for precisely that purpose.
Nothing less can reconnect the mechanisms of government to the purposes which they were designed to serve. In its absence, you have no recourse other than to watch in disgust as one group of courtiers is exchanged for another, and grit your teeth at the fact that neither they nor the rest of us know exactly what decisions are being made, nor who’s making them. In the end, of course, no amount of principled indifference can protect you from the consequences of decadence on that scale.
Thanks WT. I was going to reply to Heru, but you said it all for me and far better than I would have attempted to express it.
WT, I think you underestimate the power of Hollywood and the myths that they spin. Propaganda is a powerful tool. Regardless of that, you and hag have far more faith that the monster can be controlled than I do. I do not think any group that you are able to install into control of the empire can resist the overwhelming temptation of the absolute power that it offers.
My point was that I have watch both sides spread fear and loathing to control their own “team” as well as the “uncommitted” in the middle for decades now. I can honestly say that I see little to no difference in the misery spread by the two sides when they had the levers of power.
Ask a Vietnam parent with a genetically defective child how “great” the US Democratic Party is; the folks who rained napalm and other things out of the sky in their country. I just can not see one side as “better” in the long run. (I see the Dems as better right now — but that is fading as we stay at war)
(I did not have a long time to think this one over, so it may be a tad disjointed)
Well, Heru, one fairly glaring example comes to mind; the Clinton years. For the first time, even the lower classes gained in income, although the rich were allowed to get a little too rich for my taste. As for his foreign adventures, they were at least smaller in scale and accompanied by less toxic chest thumping of administrations before and after. Whatever his flaws or hollow motives, the lives of ordinary Americans did get better; quite the opposite of the outcomes produced by Republicans.
That’s just a fact.
Well, Sarah and Carrie have their flaws, but ugliness is not among them, except underneath.
I was thinking of putting the link below (an op-ed about Cheney) into RMP’s previous post about Stars & Stripes, believing at first that it highlights (for me) how Cheney (a non-veteran) has debased the military by his actions, actually soiled its honor. But, (as a veteran) I wonder today how the nation is going to get the news it needs to make judgments about how to deal with the wars the Bush administration started (and Cheney secretly nurtured), and how to deal truthfully with the implications of the torture regime.
But Hag’s piece here works too because it speaks to the now well established industry (and political impulse) of victimhood, which I have found repellent for years.
I remember very distinctly, as I was sorting out how I felt about Vietnam, becoming aware of people, on television and off, starting to indulge in the psychobabble that now infects almost every aspect of daily social discourse. I thought I had some serious sorting out to do (and I did it); but along the way I’m picking up this or that discussion, like mosquitoes buzzing, about how the cat didn’t love me enough, or my hangnails are just too much to deal with, or my spouse isn’t listening to me, about how Dr. Phil helped another pitiful TeeVee guest; and I’m wondering where this crap will lead. This is thirty years ago.
This is not to say counseling or talking it out are bad things , nor to argue that there haven’t been advances in helping people understand their emotional lives. Some of it is surely good and necessary. But the goal is to let it go and keep growing, not to bury it, let it fester, and then explode all over everyone. Isn’t it?
Here’s Cheney, sounding to me after all these years like a whining, cardboard cutout of a CEO character, spouting chamber of commerce talking points – ever the fearless leader and playing the hero – about how everything he did was just damn right, talking to people as though they’re children, seeming now to dare the requirements of the law itself, possibly undermining it by not respecting any of the issues which have arisen since “his watch” ended – issues which simply will not go away.
Notice he is speaking aggressively by himself, rendering legal opinions himself (supported by a few surrogates, like his daughter) and perhaps not with any apparent legal advice (not visible counsel anyway). I wonder, if he had or has a lawyer, whether that person has told him to tone it down and been ignored.
This man continues to confuse the public IN HIS OWN INTEREST – law be damned. The public then, fed this confusing and deceptive stuff, conditioned to think of so many things as part of the large palette of victimism (embodied by Cheney and supported by his rhetoric) is in a position (based on polls cited in the link) where a majority seem at least indifferent to if not supportive of what Cheney has wrought.
Because they are victims, terrified little people, like the former vice president.
He is a man who never swore an oath to wear the uniform of this nation. So he never understood the structure and obligations of military service. He never put himself out. It can be argued that his official actions since 2001 so seriously damaged the reputation of the armed forces that it, ironically, will have to tell more truth than it is used to in order to save itself.
Who are the victims?
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/09/01/cheneys_dark_side___and_ours/
There are millions of victims just directly from the wars thanks to The Dick. Having spent 28 years with wonderful, selfless members of our military , who fully understand sacrificing for the good of the larger community, they are the victims that fill me with rage when I am forced to watch or listen to that selfish, crazy, mean-beyond-belief Dick.
This letter was hard for me to finish and it expresses what motivated me to get heavily involved in politics along with the future of my grandsons and everyone’s grandchildren.
Letter to the Unborn Twins of a Fallen Marine
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/08/31/letter-to-the-unborn-twins-of-a-fallen-marine/
I read that article this morning, Dirigo, and it was saddening but wholly unsurprising. With the eager complicity of the media and shows like “24,” torture has been sold to us like soap, and lots of people unfortunately bought. The victims haven’t even all been created yet; years from now, members of our military will still be being captured and tortured, justified by what Bush and Cheney have done.
From The Daily Beast …
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-01/a-problem-with-authority/?cid=hp:mainpromo3
Scott Horton …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/01/american-diplomats-advoca_n_274039.html
From Hardball via Raw Story …
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/09/02/deputy-reagan-attorney-general-calls-for-expanded-cia-probe/
Had both Cheney and Bush been on the receiving end of some intensive psychotherapy, we might have been spared much of the abuse they inflicted upon us.
Rage that is allowed to fester, without reflection or questioning… and especially in the hearts of those with supreme power… can only do harm.
Yes and no. It could have worked for them, but there are millions of other Dicks and Dubyas. The better solution than having to use psychotherapy after-the-fact, would be to raise children the opposite from the “Strict Father” shame and blame, violence enforcing method.
Psychologists as hired guns …
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7471217&page=1
That’s pretty horrifying, Dirigo. A grand a day? Our tax dollars at work, I guess.
Sheldon Whitehouse …
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202433420756&Official_torture&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1
OT 250 jobs added to Portland area:
Swiss battery maker ReVolt picks Oregon as US base
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/business/2009/09/01/D9AEMI1G0_us_revolt_technology_portland/index.html
That was on the front page of the Oregonian this morning, RMP. Imagine, Little Beirut, national headquarters for a Swiss company.