A Reason For Optimism: "The left... is going to keep letting the nasty peek through"

Ah, the Left. Arrogant, vindictive, vicious, and insulting in defeat, and arrogant, vindictive, vicious and insulting even in victory.

And emboldened: Embracing the fairy-tale politics of The West Wing, they're pretty damn sure that what America craves right now is full-on culture war from the left.

I hope Mary Katherine doesn't mind this extended quotation. If you like this, there's plenty more back at her site.

[Quoting the unhinged leftist Trex from the unhinged leftist site Firedoglake:] So after 12 years of tolerating lying, cheating and corruption, the press is prepared to lecture Democrats on how to behave with bipartisan manners.

Given Bush's record with the truth, this bipartisanship sounds like a bad idea on its face.

Yeah, not so much. TRex, Rangel, Kos, Pelosi. The left wing of the Democratic Party is going to keep letting the nasty peek through. It's not everyone in the Party, to be sure, but there is a significant chunk of the leadership and the left blogosphere for whom disdain for Southerners, Middle Americans, evangelicals, the military and pretty much anyone whose views are more conservative than theirs, is part of their philosophy. I'm not trying to be unfair, here. A lot of times they don't even know they're doing it, and often they don't realize it's a problem.

I grew up in a largely liberal town, and the condescension is palpable. Most folks don't try to hide it because it's just understood that conservatives are "less," and to treat the conservative political philosophy and its trappings with respect would be giving it much more credit than it deserves. It's not even meant to be mean-spirited most of the time. It's just the way things work.

That same attitude is written all over the Democrats' reactions to electoral losses since 2000. They haven't trusted the judgment of the people and worked to change their message to reach them. Instead they have blamed the American people for being clods and dullards who are inexplicably disinclined to vote "in their own self-interest." Remember "What's Wrong With Kansas?" and "How Can 59,054,087 People Be So Dumb?"

The Republicans are their own worst enemies. Fortunately, the Democrats are also their own worst enemies, and, if recent history is any guide, worse enemies to themselves than the Republicans are.

And while the media can cover for and spin for and embargo information damaging to the left, their powers in this regard are not without limit.

Witness 1980. Witness 1994.

Greg Gutfeld On The Left/Al Qaeda Alliance: A 15 dice fireball. You can't compare American democrats to liberals, the host asserts. "Oh yes you can," Gutfeld says.

It's simply a fact that a large number of leftists view any American defeat as a victory for the "greater moral good," which requires a humbling of American power to make us morally purer. Even if that defeat comes at the hands of the worst psychopaths since Hitler (and perhaps they even edge him out).

Add this to the Democrats' political need for defeat in this war to buoy their electoral fortunes -- at the expense of American security interests -- and you have a truly toxic tacit alliance between those who want to murder Americans and those willing allow Americans to be murdered in the interest of the "greater moral good."

The Simpsons' Veterans Day Salute: Humor is, as they say, often a vehicle for expressing one's true beliefs through a socially-acceptable pose of "only kidding."

Al Franken had a useful term for this -- "kidding on the square." You're "kidding," supposedly, but "on the square" -- you mean every damn thing you say. You might use comic overstatement to insulate yourself from the charge of really believing toxic thoughts, but the basics of it -- the gist -- you believe wholeheartedly.

Been quite a while since anyone called The Simpsons "the most conservative show on television," eh?

It's also been quite a while since it's actually been very funny. I didn't turn off the Simpsons due to politics; I turned off to it because it just became pretty dumb, repetitive, and not funny.

I don't think I've realy watched it since 1996 or so. I've caught a repeat here or there, but gun to my head, I couldn't tell you three episodes from the past ten years.

posted by Ace at 04:30 PM

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