Friday, May 05, 2017

It's Not You I Hate, Cardassian


"I hate what I became because of you."

I usually find what Michelle Goldberg has to say admirable or at least interesting, but this is just inexcusable.

See if you can spot the exact moment at which I said out loud, "You have got to be fucking kidding me!"
How the Left Learned to Hate Like the Right

...
One hundred days into his administration, President Trump has few legislative achievements to his name. But he has forced liberals to experience the near-apocalyptic revulsion that conservatives have often felt toward Democratic presidents. In doing so, he has unwittingly created a new movement in American politics, as Democrats channel the sort of all-encompassing outrage that has long fueled grass-roots conservatism.
...

Objectively, there’s no comparison between the conservative demonization of Mr. Obama and the progressive case against Mr. Trump. People on the right saw Mr. Obama as a Kenyan-born secret Muslim with a hidden agenda to hobble American power and a health care reform plan to establish “death panels.” None of that is true.

People on the left believe that Mr. Trump has incited hatred against minorities, and boasted about grabbing women by their genitals. Democrats think that the president and his family are blatantly profiting off the presidency and that he welcomed the help of a hostile foreign power during the election. All this is grounded in fact.

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Facts aside, there is an emotional symmetry between the conservative reaction to past Democratic presidents and the liberal response to Mr. Trump. 
Bingo.

Right there.
Suddenly, left-of-center people get what it’s like to have a president who is the living negation of all they value, a president who makes them ashamed before their children and terrified for their future. 
Apparently Ms. Goldberg slept through the entire George W. Bush administration.  Which must have taken some doing since the country got pretty loud during those eight years.

So since she is apparently unfamiliar with American history before January 2009. I will try to explain to her why what she wrote it ridiculous.  And happily the explanation is actually pretty simple!

All you have to do, Michelle, is get up and look out your window.  Right now.  Go ahead.  We'll wait.

I'll bet one of the very first things you notice about what you see outside your window is that we do not, in fact, live in North Korea.

Which means that is no State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea forcing the tens of millions of bigots and imbeciles who fervently believed (and still believe) every single lie they heard about President Obama and who fervently believe all the lies President Stupid tells them every day to keep listening to the liars who have been lying to them for the last 25 years.

Seriously. Michelle.  They are absolutely free to change the channel anytime they want to.  They can click on some "news" source other than Breitbart or World Net Daily or Newsmax or InfoWars anytime they want to.  No one is putting a gun to their heads and making them watch Fox News night after night.  No one compels them go right on letting Rush Limbaugh and his dozens of imitators to take a dump in their skulls every day, year after year after year -- long after anyone who was not fundamentally fucked-in-the-head would have caught on to the scam.

And these lies they tell themselves?  These crackpot conspiracies they pass around to each other like so much circle-jerk hate-porn?  They're such goddamn stupid lies.  They're ridiculous lies.  And they blow up in their stunned, cow-dumb faces every single time.

So what do they do when the one-hundredth racist Hate Radio fairy tale they've taken as gospel is debunked for the one-hundredth time and falls apart right in front of them for the one-hundredth time?  

Well that's the worst part of all. because their reactions are inevitably so tediously, sickeningly predictable.  First, they flail, shouting anything and everything they can think of to keep the two beasts they fear most in this world -- Reality and Accountability -- at bay.  Then they run in circles shrieking "Yeah, well, Libtards are just as bad!"  (which is why Both Siderism is the worst lie of all.) And, inevitably, they end up belly-crawling right back to the same con men and demagogues who have been lying to them all along to eagerly collect their one-hundred-and-first dose reality-abolishing, Hannity-approved bullshit.

What I sincerely hope we on the Left have finally learned right down to the bone is that it is pointless to try to reason with them, because their political party is not a political party at all.  It is a cult.  And their ideology is not an ideology.  It is dissociative disorder.  


You see, I have no doubt that Republicans sincerely believe the noxious claptrap they believe every bit as passionately as Alexander Stephens sincerely believed that blacks were created by God serve the white race, or that Magda Goebbels sincerely believed that her children were better off dead than living in a world without the Nazi Party.  

I just don't care.

What I care about is finding the most efficient way of ending the threat to my country posed by this mob of brainwashed, racist imbeciles.  

11 comments:

Neo Tuxedo said...

They can click on some "news" source other than Breitbart or World Net Daily or Newsmax or InfoWars anytime they want to.

With Chambersburg's #1 wingnut letterhack, Shawn Moore*, it's Fox Noise, Limbaugh, South Park, and WingNutDaily. The only one of those that might accidentally let a fact in is the sophisticated computer simulation of crude construction-paper cut-outs, and even those facts aren't likely to have an impact on the dense wood-like substance Moore likes to pretend is his head.

(* I looked him up on some person locator and got an address, which I decided not to remember, and an age in the late 40s, which is about my age. The latter was the surprising bit: judging by his writing style, I'd have guessed he was either a 20-something dude-bro who never stops talking like he's in Call of War-Fighters team-speak, or a Menno Haven alter kokker old enough to have fond memories of his grandchildren marching off to join Marse Rob in the fight against Northern Aggression.)

Green Eagle said...

"Facts aside."

Well, there you go. Your comment could have ended right there.

Lawrence said...

The living negation of all they value. Good turn of phrase, that. But I think the story is in what one group values and whether it might be objectively called better than what the other group values. Ashamed before my child? Nope.This isn't on me. Terrified for their future. Oh, yes. And she's not wrong about the disgust. I am grateful to you who transcribe this for me, because I can't look directly at it. Each new iteration of the Republican disaster machine exceeds the last, all the way back to Nixon.

Miles O'Brien is a much more gentle and decent man than I am. He can't really be Irish.

RUKidding said...

"What I care about is finding the most efficient way of ending the threat to my country posed by this mob of brainwashed, racist imbeciles."

No kidding. I'm at a loss, however, as it just devolves ever worser (so to speak). Trump is a "logical" outcome of the ongoing devolution of the Republican party ever further amping up the Southern Strategy volume to the point where they can mainly only get votes from White Supremacist dumbfecks who are so brainwashed that they'll vote for anyone - anyone!!!!! - other than a Democrat, no matter how evil that person is, how terminally stupid, how worthless, how incompetent, how criminal. Doesn't matter. As long as they're WHITE, male is better than icky wimmin, and they spout some party line that essentially says: I HATE the LIBTARDS even MORE than you do, hoss, so vote for me.

And then commences the usual rapine and pillaging, all whilst their idiot base screams themselves hoarse in abject adulation at how wonderful their illustrious "leaders" all are... especially because they are mostly NOT blah, brown, female, gay, muslim, poor, etc. The more these conMEN rip them off to give money to the already obscenely wealthy sends these idiots into paroxisms of delight.

It is a cult. And like any cult, it's next to impossible to deprogram the cult members. Just ask Jim Jones and his followers about that. Oh wait.

Dave McCarthy said...

"What I sincerely hope we on the Left have finally learned right down to the bone is that it is pointless to try to reason with them..."

Yes indeed, because to try to reason with them is to trust them. That hasn't worked out thus far...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTF2j0OWUi8

Unknown said...

I have concluded that the mole people will never change. This is our political existence. Sure, some will defect when a love one dies because of a pre-existing condition, but the attrition will be minimal. I have never had a more dismal view of America than I do now.

dinthebeast said...

Uh, Ronald Reagan? Does that make me old? Fuck no, let's get real: Richard Milhous Nixon. They both had the added rage-inducing quality for me of being from my beloved home state. I hated Nixon when I was seven.
So no, this is not something I learned from president four-year-old, Michelle, and might I be so bold as to suggest that you update the file where you store your stereotypes of liberals. Maybe update the other one also, but as Driftglass pointed out above, the only point in that is self preservation, as the pig people are not redeemable, even at face value.

-Doug in Oakland

trgahan said...

"Suddenly, left-of-center people get what it’s like to have a president who is the living negation of all they value, a president who makes them ashamed before their children and terrified for their future."

I'll mount a feeble defense here of Ms. Goldberg, who at best wwwwaaaaayyyy over generalized the American Left, much less the population. She's right, if you're referring to one specific group of people.

From my own experience, I'd argue "left-of-center people" is code for white, middle and upper middle class urban and suburban working professionals who previously politically coasted because to date, left or right, this nation is run specifically for their security and comfort FIRST. These are the "but it's not supposed to happen here" people who thought conservatives would never go so far as to directly threaten their class and economic position.

If you re-read her article with its audience in mind, it makes a bit more sense.

jim said...

All emotional symmetries are equal, but some emotional symmetries are more equal than others: for proof see the recent tsunami of pixels bemoaning the heart-wrenching plight of the dire 2017 Bubba Dolchstoss Emo Hangover versus the placidly chirping cyber-crickets while rape becomes a preexisting condition.

Dan Kleiner said...

"facts aside"

whelp, there's your problem. millions of fucking americans for whom that is a credo.

facts fucking aside.

and that's why we're in the goddamn hole we're in.

Unknown said...

"I just don't care."

Byt Drifty, you HAVE to care. If you don't care about them, then the whole "strive for a bipartisan solution" and "a pox on both your houses" BS falls apart. You have to be exceptionally concerned about the feelings and attitudes of the far right, otherwise our political process involves TWO opponents who will fight to win.

If there isn't a Left that bends over and takes it again and again, how will the Both Siderists ever feel like the country can come together in one great KUMBAYAH movement if only the Left would cooperate with the Right?

Think of the pundits' paychecks, Drifty....