June 8, 2004
FORCING THE CONTRADICTIONS:
SPITE THE VOTE (Mark Ames, 6/08/04, NY Press)
The realization that some pro-Republican sentiment lurks inside of me was enough to make me want to stick my head in the oven. Or throw myself out the window like the possessed priest at the end of The Exorcist.What inspired this crazed outburst wasn't any love for Bush. It was an instinctual reaction to a tonal shift I've detected among the American left. They're losing that brave, cornered, hysterical tone that I've identified with, a tone that came from years of increasing marginalization combined with a sense that the whole country had gone completely insane.
For the first time in almost 30 years, the left has a chance to occupy the reality vacuum that opened up after the big barbecue in Fallujah. The left can sense that their time may have finally arrived, and they're prematurely settling into their new role as saviors of the national soul, with their former hysteria already reverting to a smug, nurturing tone. The once-vicious humor, born of desperation and hatred, is again becoming nauseatingly didactic and responsible. This is a disaster. The left seems to be buying into the high school civics teacher's idiotic lie that "you can't just be de-structive, you have to be con-structive as well." Yeah, and did you know that girls prefer shy, sensitive boys?
What's worse is that the new smug tone is being accompanied by high-profile outbursts of fake rage. Yesterday's genuine fury has been hijacked and reified by painted-up frauds like Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi, who look about as comfortable feigning rage as Rumsfeld looked when he tried to squirt a few tears before Congress over Abu Ghraib.
Some people say that the Democrats are actually getting bolder and more vicious. I don't buy it. What Gore and Pelosi and the others on their bandwagon are really trying to do is snuff out the real rage before it spreads and threatens their fake opposition. It's a classic strategy in big politics: Co-opt the opposition, suck the life out of it and dump its dried-out shell on the side of the freeway, where it can never bother you again.
The Democrats' fear of running as an openly liberal party is why George W. Bush should insist on Ralph Nader being included in any debate he participates in. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 8, 2004 4:30 PM
"the big barbecue in Fallujah"? Seriously?
Posted by: David Cohen at June 8, 2004 4:39 PMYou're just in denial. You probably can't even acknowledge that Abu Ghraib is indistinguishable from Bergen-Belsen.
Posted by: oj at June 8, 2004 4:51 PMVery funny, very bitter, and 90% fantasy. However, there are these gems:
"If there were one perfect spite president, it was Richard Nixon. He looked mean, spoke mean and stomped on the hippies who were having too many orgasms..."
"The left struggles to understand why so many non-millionaire Americans vote Republican, and yet they rarely ask themselves why so many millionaires, particularly the most beautiful and privileged millionaires in Manhattan and Los Angeles, vote for the Democrats. [...]
Rich, beautiful, coastal types are liberal precisely because their lives are so wonderful. They want to preserve their lives exactly as they are. If I were a rich movie star, I'd vote for peace and poverty relief. War and domestic insurrection are the greatest threats to their already-perfect lives—why mess with it? This rational fear of the peasantry is frequently misinterpreted as rich guilt, but that's not the case. They just want to pay off all the have-nots to keep them from storming their manors and impaling them on stakes."
And this:
"The left won't accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast that they believe they can fix "if only the people knew the Truth."
But what if the Truth is that Americans don't want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance[?]"
And so we do.
What American truly believes that smoking and being fat are good things ?
Yet, many of us smoke, and most of us are fat.
And, we don't like to vote for the candidate who tells us that s/he will have to raise taxes to pay for all of the governmental goodies we want.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at June 8, 2004 5:27 PM"The underlying major premise of humanist-leftist ideology states that people are intrinsically sympathetic. If people are defiantly mean and craven, the humanist-left structure falters. "
Sounds to me like this Leftist has stumbled unwittingly into the implications of the Christian doctrine of Original Sin.
Posted by: Patrick O'Hannigan at June 8, 2004 8:41 PMFor the first time in almost 30 years, the left has a chance to occupy the reality vacuum that opened up after the big barbecue in Fallujah.--
When did they occupy reality, much less "reality vacuum?"
Posted by: Sandy P at June 8, 2004 9:53 PMRage? Not rage. Psychosis. My evidence:
Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don't give a hoot about human beings, either can't or won't. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm. This opinion is presumably not shared by Foreman; you can gauge the breadth of his imaginative compassion from his willingness to extend it even toward George W. Bush, idiot scion of a genetically criminal family that should have been sterilized three generations ago.Posted by: Robert Schwartz at June 8, 2004 10:36 PM
I read the whole thing (Spite Vote) after I posted the comment. It is truly psychotic.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at June 9, 2004 10:51 AMSandy:
On the contrary, a reality vacuum is exactly what they need; it is only possible for the hard left to exist where there is an absence of reality.
Posted by: mike earl at June 9, 2004 2:13 PM