An Unexpected New Minion for Karl Rove (My Dark Master)

Whoooaaah. This guy (or gal; not sure) -- a card carrying Clinton Democrat -- is asking if "we" (by which he means liberalish people) have been "drinking the Kool-Aid for forty years." And then begins saying all sorts of nice things about Republicans.

And then starts talking about political realignment.

What's interesting -- and new -- is that this guy isn't just looking at this from a personality perspective -- that is, support of Hillary, distaste for Obama. That sort of thing is nice and might even swing an election but has no actual long-term impact.

He's actually re-examining his entire devotion to the liberal (or non-liberal, really) project.

Think for a minute about all our nominees and the nominees we’ll be tearing apart next week. Tweety, Markos, Dowd, Cafferty, Jeralyn, Sally Quinn, Andrew Sullivan, Campbell Brown. A few others were suggested but the point is. Find me a winger in the list. Find me a Fox news commentator. Find an O’Reilly, Gibson, Novak, Kristol or Will.

Sexism, Misogyny, whatever you call it seems to be coming from the left not the right.

I had the thought that maybe they’ve been preparing to do battle with Hillary for the last few years and intentionally dropped sexism from their commentary. But I don’t really think so.

What I saw Wednesday night was a Republican party that does what successful republican business people do. They may fight change but know when to quit, accept change, embrace it then move on. Highly successful businesses, when they see game changing technology coming, buy it and embrace it while their competition gets rolled over. The Boston Globe, purchased by the NY Times, was an early big investor in the Web because they follow the theory that it’s better to be the one putting your old ways out of business than to let other people do it to you.

Etc.

I don't know how big this PUMA thing is. I always assumed it was small and temporary. I still figure it's small, but maybe not so temporary.

Is he or she dreaming this rampant sexism on the left? Not so much.

Pissed about Palin

McCain's running mate is a Christian Stepford wife in a sexy librarian costume. Women, it's time to get furious.

By Cintra Wilson

Sept. 10, 2008 | Sarah Palin may be a lady, but she ain't no woman.

I confess, it was pretty riveting when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin for the first time. Like many people, I thought, "Damn, a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a 'sexy librarian' costume -- as a vice president? That's a brilliant stroke of horrifyingly cynical pandering to the Christian right. Karl Rove must be behind it."

Palin may have been a boost of political Viagra for the limp, bloodless GOP (and according to an ABC/Washington Post poll she has created a boost in McCain's standing among white women to a 53 over Obama's 41). But ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions -- their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership.

Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she's so hot to cut is that of all American women.

...

I did not think that women being downgraded to second-class, three-holed chattel would be a pressing concern in my lifetime. I thought it was like polio, or witch burning -- an inhumane error that had already been corrected. But after eight years of Republican hegemony, and now the potential ascendance of this sheep in ewe's clothing, I am so mortally offended I feel like it is really time for women to be angry, hardcore and disgusted again. Not just with old white Christian patriarchs and their hopelessly calcified, religiously condoned misogyny, but also with the self-abnegating, submissive female Uncle Tommies whose ambitions and eagerness to please the powerful males of their tribe are so desperate that they would sell out their sovereignty over their own bodies. And yours too.

I know, it's a female writer. Honestly, though, how can this idiot ever again complain about denigrating women with sexual stereotypes again? Did she miss a singe one?

Here's Gary Kamiya, also writing in Salon:

Because to anyone who isn't a true believer, Palin comes across not as a fantasy pinup, but as a dominatrix. And the S/M demographic isn't going to put the Republicans over the top in the swing states.

For the die-hard Republicans who lusted over Palin at the convention, her whip-wielding persona was a turn-on. You could practically feel the crowd getting a collective woody as Palin bent Obama and the Democrats over, shoved a leather gag in their mouths and flogged them as un-American wimps, appeasers and losers. "Drill, baby, drill!" the chant ecstatically repeated by the GOP faithful during Rudy Giuliani's speech, acquired a distinctly Freudian subtext after Palin spoke. The more Palin drilled the Democrats, the more hotly the base yearned to drill her. (We will leave it to shrinks to determine whether the GOP hardcore has the hots for Palin because she's reaming the Democrats, or because authority-worshippers tend to have secret fantasies of being reamed themselves.)

Projection isn't just a river in Egypt. Dude, ostensibly you're writing about politics, but you can't seem to go a sentence without fantasizing about getting something stuck up your ass.

I actually only quoted this guy to bring up my favorite Gary Kamiya quote, from soon after the Fall of Baghdad. Couple of days later. Here's what he wrote -- and yeah, he really did write this:

I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings.

Some of this is merely the result of pettiness--ignoble resentment, partisan hackdom, the desire to be proved right and to prove the likes of Rumsfeld wrong, irritation with the sanitizing, myth-making American media. That part of it I feel guilty about, and disavow. But some of it is something trickier: It's a kind of moral bet-hedging, based on a pessimism not easy to discount, in which one's head and one's heart are at odds.

Many antiwar commentators have argued that once the war started, even those who oppose it must now wish for the quickest, least-bloody victory followed by the maximum possible liberation of the Iraqi people. But there is one argument against this: What if you are convinced that an easy victory will ultimately result in a larger moral negative--four more years of Bush, for example, with attendant disastrous policies, or the betrayal of the Palestinians to eternal occupation, or more imperialist meddling in the Middle East or elsewhere?

Wishing for things to go wrong is the logical corollary of the postulate that the better things go for Bush, the worse they will go for America and the rest of the world.

It is now almost four years since Gary Kamiya wrote that. The left has never condemned him for his remarks nor disavowed his hopes for an American defeat; indeed, shortly after he wrote this, dozens of letters were published by Salon praising him for his "courage" in admitting what so many secretly believed.

Ponder what sort of mind prays for the deaths of his fellow Americans in order to score a few extra points in a political season. 2300 US Soldiers dead-- Huzzah! We just picked up Ohio!

What links all this together? Simple: Hatred. And not merely hatred; we all hate from time to time. I, um, more than most.

But the left isn't embarrassed of its hate; it does not seek to hide it, or apologize for it. It views it as a sign of authenticity, and indeed as a mark of virtue. An ideology of hatred is thus justified, underneath, by the idea that hatred is itself an ideology, or close enough to one to do in a pinch.

The left doesn't really make itself terribly inviting for new recruits, does it? The right (or at least what the left would call "the right") has our share of repellent, hateful creatures too. The thing is, most of them are too stupid to write, and even if they could write, we sure the fuck wouldn't give them prime slots on tv or in magazines, nor... well, anything, really. We don't like 'em.

But those creatures in the left are... their popular columnists and sometimes even political leaders. Our twisted freaks we hide in the storm cellar (to the extent we consort with them at all); they trot them out front and center as their champions, their thinkers, their preisthood.

posted by Ace at 04:00 AM

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