Aug 27 2010

A Progressive Liberal Meltdown

Update: I must have been channeling Charles Krauthammer this morning:

Now we know why the country has become “ungovernable,” last year’s excuse for the Democrats’ failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama’s social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.

What’s a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument.

As I said, the more they realize they are losing the political heart of the nation, the more they will lash out at that nation that rejected them – end update

Rejection hurts. We all know that. And I can understand how many of those holier-than-thou liberals, who were absolutely certain of their screwed up policies that relied on the goodness of big government would work, really did believe they were God’s gift to mankind. They were told they were the new saviour class. As Obama said, it was them we all were waiting for!

Rejection on top of grand delusions is especially painful.

Reality has a habit of bringing us all down to Earth. We may complain that we should, by this point in humanity’s evolution, be able to control the damage of hurricanes, stop oil spills with a snap of a finger, make everyone above average and rich, , or conclude (wrongly) that we know what the climate of the world has been for 1000 years with high accuracy. But the reality is we are still simple human beings. We succumb to illnesses that are not the fault of anyone – but the rules of a dynamic and brutal nature. We have, as a whole, many faults and frailties. We can be easily lulled into making mistakes (e.g., the Challenger-Columbia accidents, oil spills, voting for Democrats so international war would go away). And then there are the truly rotten apples who think bombing innocent people into oblivion is a political tool to power, or wiping out Jews will be the answer for the Aryan race, etc. Humankind is the product of nature and it is not perfection.

At best we are attempting to evolve towards higher perfection – but it is a long path and we have not arrived. We are not even close (unless you look back from whence we came).

The liberals and progressives were given a shot to show their stuff. And they did show their stuff. And the nation is preparing to throw them out and undo their stuff. We The People made a mistake, we voted on emotion and not without much thought or research as to what could be the worse case consequences (ignoring all the flowery campaign BS). It is important to note that the liberals and progressives were LEGALLY voted the reigns of power. In no small part this mistake, and its results, was one of general making and also a product of this great nation of ours.

Sadly, the progressives and liberals are the ones being rejected, and for some it is too much for them to handle. They have gone from believing in failed policies to cruelly and wrongly lashing out at the nation, because they know the rejection is coming and it will be brutal. One old time believer in big government is from DC (no surprise there) and he is pathetic in his emotional meltdown:

The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, the non-voting delegate who represented the District of Columbia from 1971 to 1991, called on African-Americans to organize a “new coalition of conscience” to rebut the rally scheduled for Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial featuring Fox News pundit Glenn Beck and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“We are going to take on the barbarism of war, the decadence of racism, and the scourge of poverty, that the Ku Klux — I meant to say the Tea Party,” Fauntroy told a news conference today at the National Press Club. “You all forgive me, but I — you have to use them interchangeably.”

Like I said, pathetic. When absolute failure becomes equated with racism, you can tell the person has lost their mind. This guy is mad because he knows the center left-right Tea Party movement helped ignite a spark of libertarian outrage which will, we can only hope, wipe out a century of foolish belief in big government. We may be on the precipice of turning this nation around, returning it to believing in its people. This frightens the many. The far left sees a nation of misfits that need direction, need to be told what to do and think, who need to give up their personal liberties (like choosing their healthcare) before they hurt themselves.

The nation disagrees of course. The rest of us see an army of wondrous potential that needs to be unleashed. Especially when the big government liberals have proven to be just as inept and greedy as any other segment of the population. America will not let companies or unions or religion run their lives – who thought we would allow inept bureaucrats to run them? Who else could think up as bad a stimulus bill as the lovers of big government???

Powerline has another example of a progressive, liberal meltdown as the reality of this election season sinks in:

That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.

So Egan thinks Republicans are dumb. But let’s take a closer look. His 46 percent is an unpublished number from a Time magazine survey that is described in a Politico article to which he links. The Pew survey found that 31 percent of Republicans purport to believe Obama is a Muslim. The difference is likely explained by the ways in which the question was framed.

But what about non-Republicans? In the Pew survey, 10 percent of Democrats and 18 percent of independents say Obama is a Muslim. Not only that, a majority of Democrats–51 percent–say either that Obama is a Muslim, or that they don’t know what his religion is. Obviously, something is going on here, and it isn’t merely that Republicans are stupid.

Unfortunately we are going to see a rise in this juvenile lashing out as we progress through this year’s elections. The far left would rather view America as evil and inept (which is not too far from their more positive view of us as incompetent) than face the fact they were wrong and are being rejected because they failed. Heck, they don’t believe in failure (or failing grades), so maybe asking them to take responsibility for their mistakes is too much to ask. They think they should be given praise for trying. Who can miss the new talking points about the mountain of results the Democrats produced, avoiding to note the rot of that mountain. The left produced a pile of failure – they were very productive and hard working in doing so. And we need to stop them before they produce any more.

The far right should be careful. America knows it is partly responsible for this mess by voting on a slogan instead of seeing all the warning signs of an inexperienced politician with a questionable grasp on matters of complex import. America knows it will have to fix this mistake legally and through the election process, because that is how this country corrects these kinds of things. It is built into the process of self governing. As humans are an imperfect product of Nature (which is beautiful and awe inspiring), the current leaders of America are a product of this great nation. A flawed product.

No one should gloat or confuse this needed course correction with support for the Democrats’ opposition. It was only two years ago the same rejection was applied to the right side of DC. What is happening now is an awakening of libertarianism – a drive for freedom from government. It is a drive to limit the power of the parties and the meddling of DC bureaucrats. This is not a ground swell for conservative government – at best it is a ground swell in line with small government conservatism.

The great liberal-progressive experiment is over. Government stimulating our economy failed under FDR and now under Obama. Socialized, government medicine is failing around the world – and thankfully we have the time to use the experience of the UK and Canada to roll back Obamacare. Keynesian economics is dead, now that we know it results in trickle down poverty that can quickly destroy that shining city on the hill. We have learned a lot in this failure – as usual. We always learn from our mistakes.

Reagan and Bush and Kennedy have been vindicated (again). Only lowering taxes can unleash broad economic growth. We cannot get this fix with the current political make up.

Now the only stimulus capable of pulling us out of this tail spin is a massive sea change in DC come November. Once this current crop of DC screw ups is out of office, there will be hope again in the nation. And with that hope will come renewed energy to build are nation back up. Something that can never take place under the cloud of liberal-progressive negativism and pessimism. This nation can easily fix itself, but to do so the views of a lot people are going to be rejected. Most will take it reasonably well, but a good number our going to have anger-driven, emotional meltdowns, as we are already seeing. It will not be pretty, but it is necessary for our families, neighbors and communities.

22 responses so far

22 Responses to “A Progressive Liberal Meltdown”

  1. owl says:

    AJ, some of that fringe is at it again. Of course I am seeing Malkin a lot more, but she seems to have tuned it down a little. Another one that can be so good and then she just has to take it one degree beyond is Laura Ingraham. She is the perfect example of what steams me, but I am forced to vote with her because there is not another way. She has that ‘sucked a lemon’ look when she talks about Bush. She is that 100% my way or else. God that woman can make me mad because she knows what is best for all Republicans. She had on a Bush speechwriter that I disagreed with most of what he said. Before it was over, all that mattered was the way I felt about her. Good grief, I hope a few of our smart elites don’t screw up what is happening now. They were the Dim helpers and maybe Obama got his blame Bush from them?

  2. AJStrata says:

    Owl,

    The fact the fringe occasionally comes returns to reality to agree with the rest of us on does not mean we agree with them on everything else. All fringe ideologues use the occasional concurrence to convince themselves of being all-knowing.