Ideological Purity? Or Purity of Emotion?

In Dave in Texas' post noting that a defense of Rush Limbaugh is essentially a defense of our collective right to express our political preferences, he gets this strange rebuke from TMK.

I know you don't. That is why you will continue to vote for the "lesser evils" over and over, you will keep working for the freshly-regulated businesses that genuflect the current administration, keep politely paying all the taxes and taxes and buying overpriced goods with your ever-more devalued currency, keep collecting your entitlements "because I payed in so I earned this money," always under the delusion that you will somehow "win" by doing this.

You will basically do what it takes to stay "safe," like every coward who has ever lived.

I've been wondering about this for a year now: Is this really a fight about ideological purity or a fight about emotional purity? Because no matter how many times a conservative might tell a TMK-type "I agree with you," TMK-types can't take "Yes" for an answer.

They don't seem interested in intellectual agreement, but in emotional agreement: "You must match my precisely level of frothing outrage on each of these particular topics or else you're a 'coward.'"

Lighten up, Francis.

TMK is permitted to pursue his Fantasy League Politics as he likes. In his Fantasy League Politics, there simply is no "left" which needs to be countered, and no "center" which needs to be courted. And, actually, there's not even a "center-right" he needs to ally with.

In his Fantasy League Politics, only the harder, more frothy right exists, the same as in many Fantasy Baseball Leagues where either the AL or NL doesn't exist. So he only drafts politicians from that particular division in that particular league.

I'm really annoyed but this unending Angrier Than Thou stupidity masquerading as More Ideologically Pure Than Thou. (And the latter is kind of annoying, too, but at least that's about something.)

Just tired of it. Just tired of people who don't seem to possess any sort of emotional intelligence or restraint endlessly lecturing the rest of us on how we're killing the party by not behaving like arrogant, angry assholes 24/7.

posted by Ace at 01:58 PM

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