What spawned the new Left? Is it a wacky branch of the Me Generation?
To the lunatic Left and its camp followers, the president of the United States is a Nazi war-monger. Read their placards. Note the swastikas. See the Hitler-mustachioed cartoons depicting "W" as das Fuhrer. Modern brownshirts ransack Bush/Cheney field offices, fist fights break out in bars. Lawn signs are defaced, on both sides, targets of partisan wrath. The leader of the free world is the subject of hellish epithets and ad hominem smears. Is this the making of a Party of Hate? Let's devoutly hope not.
Hot-headed partisans accuse President George W. Bush of all manner of vile skullduggery, appealing to baser instincts. Irrational, incoherent accusations stick, even among the intelligentsia, which should know better but rarely does, as it is predisposed to the Left's line and typically, on the wrong side of history.
President Bush "willfully," says Senator Kerry, "misled Americans," his non-subtle subtext for — let's face it — a damnable liar. How the terrorists must exalt in this constant refrain. Hammering Bush for what Kerry himself believed, as did all intelligence services, is hypocrisy. Still, many on the Left naively, or disingenuously, buy into the charade.
Dick Cheney is the lefties' whipping boy, too. Dour, portly, no prettyboy, he once was CEO, and thus reviled, of the most-libeled corporation of all times, Halliburton. This dastardly Republican pair, defending our nation — successfully, i.e., absent further attack — is called reckless, incompetent, wily, prevaricating, enemy of the middle class, kids, the elderly. They aim to bring back the draft, say Dems with straight faces (one authored the "draft bill"), and to "wreck" (willfully, no doubt) Social Security. These and other partisan myths are distractions to gain votes the old-fashioned way — by sheer demagoguery. Hey, it often works, especially on the uninformed.
Red herrings and myth-making go far beyond merely manipulating facts, called spin, to mangling the integral truth. It's that well-crafted, nuanced partisan lie that, endlessly repeated, evolves into the Big Lie. Soon news media (about which, more later) enshrine the lie in clever toss-away lines. "Credibility" is thus achieved. Bias and assumption are new realities. (Winston Smith's "memory hole," in Orwell's 1984, is alive and well? Inside joke, that.)
As I write this, in pre-dawn hours, Bush is being accused on 7/24 TV of not standing guard — himself, apparently — over a huge Iraqi explosives dump. Then we discover — via a blog, likely Power Line – that's it a bogus charge. But well-timed. Seems it's a "story" repackaged by media to be Bush's October Surprise. Recall that DUI four years ago?
Guess where Bush, after swearing himself back in, was supposed to have guarded those big-boom explosives? At Saddam's would-be nuclear bomb-making facility near Baghdad, that's where. (Ironic, no?)
Such slanted "coverage" of current events must bring smiles to terrorists, brightening their caves, starting with bin Laden — if he yet breathes. (Doubtful, some say.) Enemies of "Amerika" must revel in back-biting anti-Bush rhetoric. Doing their jobs, in effect, of unveiling "The Great Satan." Anti-Bush news leads al-Jazeera's every TV newscast. Nice to have friends in the media.
Speaking of propaganda, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 still packs 'em in cinemas throughout the Middle East. How many Americans and other mere infidels have been murdered, or maimed, by the type of deceits — 50 by one count — spread by this film. Just wondering.
(Note to self: During World War II, as recent as the Korean War, candidates rallied support for the old US of A. What a turnabout! Recall that Lt. (j.g.) John Forbes Kerry in 1971, before tripping off to Paris for side talks with the enemy, slandered our GIs still in Vietnam, and those being tortured as POWs. Yep. Times, they were a-changing.)
What galls the political Left to behave so abominably? What is it, even metaphorically, about freedom and democracy for others, that sticks in liberals' craw, I wonder. Why their ill-chosen words denigrating our allies, including the New Iraq, and coalition GIs under fire? Why snide, smug putdowns of all who disagree with their view — "right-wing idealogues" and worse, if such a creature slithers across Earth. This evinces a hubris not seen since the Vietnam war. While rallying and stopping ammo trains then, and hoisting VC flags, the young Left's mantra was, "Hell No, I Won't Go."
Different tune today. New chant for the new Left. (No it's NOT. I just made it up.) This new chant would echo age-old pacifists' cries, and fuddy-duddy old anarchists, too: "No war, anywhere, at any time, for any reason!"
What spawned the new Left? Is it a wacky branch of the Me [First?] Generation? You know, boomers all grown up, asserting their self-centered "rights" to no war, not at least in their time. Let George do it?
And what stirs the Left to go bonkers over Bush? His moves to crush the enemy? Success in Afghanistan, routing the Taliban, corralling three-quarters of al Qaeda's core leadership? Next step, with maybe a little patience for taking sooo long, maybe it's taking out the Murderer in Chief bin Laden if he still lives. What's not to like here?
My own pet theory about the Left's hangup with Bush is its near fanatical cynicism about love of nation, Old Glory, the full (with "under God") Pledge, plus "old-fashioned" values, like Real Marriage. None of which exist, I suppose, in the deftly deconstructed world of determinism.
Whatever "It" is, I say the result — for us political junkies, at least — is disturbingly Hobbesian: Reason is trumped by passion. (See also, Machiavelli.) Alexander Hamilton picked up this theme in Federalist Paper #15, echoing Thomas Hobbes' realism: "Passions of man will not conform to dictates of reason or justice, without constraint," wrote Hamilton, clearly on to something.
"Passions…without constraint." Aye, that's the rub. Except for a handful of loyal opposition (Senator Joe Lieberman comes to mind), liberal Dems' lack of constraint — call it, civil discipline? - -inflicts damage on the republic. Dialogue, bipartisanship suffer, when parties — "factions" in Hamilton's pre-party words, "kindle unfriendly passions . . . and excite violent conflict."
When Senator Joe Biden calls a president Bush "braindead" [to a Delaware labor group], gets away with it, to the roar of unabashed applause, the die is cast, and the shoe fits. The Left turns ugly. Redemption will not be easy or quick.
Effects of this mad tea party of an election will be far-reaching — likely for decades, affecting all presidents, of any party. Partisan bickering will reach new levels of lunacy. Obstructionism, for its own sake, will rear up, creating stalemates.
Mad as hell, generally magnanimous "Rs" will simply "not take it any more," same as that crazed anchorman Howard in the film Network. Controlling both houses, by wide margins, may make them virtual control freaks, unless they've chilled a little after enduring all the twisted, hateful rhetoric. Time will tell, and help heal the wounds of the Left's artful demagoguery. Heck, it heals nearly everything. Doesn't it?
Good news: The sky does not fall. A mini-Second Civil War, red states v. blue, does NOT break out. Americans of all stripes still talk with one another, but not much about politics. Too dangerous. Fights break out sometimes.
Fallout of seething rhetoric — of both sides in truth — does not bode well for rational argument. Impossible to hear others' well-held views when screaming at them, your cocksure bias shutting off coherent debate. Like little kids again, it's that shrieking "my candidate's better than yours…nah nah nah."
What if Senator Kerry wins? No matter. His words, like Paul Bunyan's frozen cuss words, will return with the first spring thaw. Kerry and his surrogates' wild accusations will live again, perhaps to haunt them. (What goes around?) Regrettably, hot- headed elements of a steamed-up Right will blast the winners' distortions on nearly every issue. Elephants, it is said, do not forget.
An incensed Right points at the biased Fourth Estate as the single main instrument delivering Kerry's win. In denial, as usual, MSM pooh-poohs this fact (of life?), nearly empirical now. And they repeat, as a chorus, the lines about being "perceived as," or "regarded by some as," a shill for liberal candidates. A vast segment of the public now is on to their game. Blogging is popular. Unbiased truths (small T) are THAT important to an informed electorate. What a Great Country!
In four years, the GOP is loaded for bear. Fair play is tossed to the winds — one is tempted to say, tritely — of political expediencies. Because, well, demagoguery does work. Machiavelli was dead on. So was the dynamic duo, Hobbes and Hamilton, about partisan passions overwhelming reason.
Power is the ultimate game in politics; Republicans have it now, and will surely wield it, for better or worse. Time for avenging? Revenge for all the distortions, the animus spewed by trash-talking the Bush administration, and "his" war? Let's devoutly hope not. Our republic deserves better. A lot better.
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