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COLLECTION SAD
Matt Taibbi sticks it to his fellow leftoids:
The American left has turned into a skittish, hysterical old lady, one who defiantly insists on living in the past, is easily mesmerized by half-baked pseudo-intellectual nonsense, and quick to run from anything like real conflict or responsibility ...
No matter what it claims for a self-image, in reality it’s the saddest collection of cowering, ineffectual ninnies ever assembled under one banner on God’s green earth. And its ugly little secret is that it really doesn’t mind being in the position it’s in – politically irrelevant and permanently relegated to the sidelines, tucked into its cozy little cottage industry of polysyllabic, ivory tower criticism. When you get right down to it, the American left is basically just a noisy Upper West side cocktail party for the college-graduate class.
And we all know it. The question is, when will we finally admit it?
There’s more - lots more. For some reason this puts me in mind of those Student Grants over at Larvatus Prodeo.
(Via Rich Stadnik)
Taibbi is way, way to the left of me but I have a great deal of respect for his arguments in that piece. A tremendously insightful critique with just the right level of anger and humor. This is an instant classic, brilliant, exactly right.
Reminded me of the night in January—when we had accumulated 60” of snow in the previous 4 weeks—getting a visit from a couple of really smug canvassers lecturing me on global freakin warming.
Posted by Matt in Denver on 2007 06 17 at 12:14 AM • permalinkthis, from comments:
The conservative movement that has been ascendant over the last two decades is now characterized by nothing less than the wholesale abandonment of its own supposed beliefs in personal prudence, individual liberty, economic thrift, and small government in favor of a bloated greed-oriented corporatism, an enthusiasm for torture, a medieval rejection of empirical knowledge in favor of religious faith, and above all fealty to a Great Leader.
Is this true, Tim? O Great One, Praise Be Upon You? Is this true?
#5, JonathanH,
I can’t speak for Tim, to whom you addressed your question. speaking strictly for myself, I would say that that statement is way to close to the truth. It is one of the reasons why the Republicans lost their lead in congress this last election. They seem to be adamant about shooting themselves in the foot at every turn. Consider Trent Lott’s latest stupidity about wanting to do something about talk radio. He sounded just like John Kerry. Or Bush’s insistence on the immigration bill, and his incredible statements admonishing citizens who question it and refuse to have it rammed down their throats, talking to us as though we were silly children who are incapable of comprehension.
I think that both parties are so far out of touch with America that they don’t have a clue, and the majority of Americans are equally disgusted with both. Or perhaps I’m just projecting.
The lads and wannabe lads over at Lav Paper are more People’s Front Of Judea than anything else.
I was having a chat this morning about topics similar to that of Taibbi’s points above. For example, feminists cowardice over genital mutilation and the catsmeat reference, yet Howard is safely accused of genocide and being a dictator equal to that of Stalin.
Taibbi is right. The left snipe and fight the easiest of targets.
Matt Taibibi explains in plain language (politics aside, a well written piece) the subtext of Tim Dunlop’s item a few door’s down - that the Left are embarrassed to be associated with each other.
Credit to Taibibi for flying his flag, but the Dunlop route is to assuage his embarrassment by trying to claim that the left have nothing in common.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 06 17 at 01:10 AM • permalinkSaltydog - no need to be sorry for a comment that to me has a lot of truth. From my down under perspective, the whole immigration saga seems to me to be one of political cowardice and ineptitude in the highest degree. Please God, let America choose a President even half way worthy to lead yourselves and the rest of us in the Free World.
Cheers
RodCI’m classifying Taibbi as pretty much part of the rabble-rouser Left, and I’ve sometimes wondered about his mental stability (as surely he would wonder about mine, I suspect), but time and again he shows that he’s able to see right through the comfortably middle-class poseur leftism of many who would claim to be his ideological mates. Of course I think he’s wrong about pretty much everything concerning politics, but at least he’s got principles and isn’t living in a make-believe “evil conservatives are oppressing me!” la-la land.
Bah. Taibbi should be careful. He’ll sprain his elbow patting himself on the back.
The problem with modern liberalism is that there aren’t any liberals in it.
Once upon a time there was a fellow called Ernesto. He was a good student, and later went to medical school, where he did well and was graduated and accepted to practice as a doctor. Even later, when he’d taken up the Cause and become prominent in it, he boasted that his training and experience was what enabled him to excel at interrogations and the punishment of Class Enemies. He was betrayed to his killers by peasants who had decided that if that many of their daughters, wives, and girlfriends were Class Enemies they needed to join the other side if they were ever going to get laid again.
“Icon” is exactly right. There is no better definition of what the modern Left is all about than someone vociferously and righteously denouncing torture—while wearing a T-shirt depicting the visage of Ernesto… or, as he is better known, Ché.
Regards,
RicThis connects with the loud claims of Marr, Hamilton and whoever this week, complaining about the silencing of dissent. The whole thing sounds like it must be a joke, but in reality these guys are practically begging the powers that be to try to silence them. They desperately want to be noticed.
They must be incredibly frustrated that after 10 years of raging furiously against the government, the government still can’t be bothered oppressing them.
Good article. This sounded very familiar:
It shies away from hardcore economic issues but howls endlessly about anything that sounds like free-speech controversy, shrieking about the notorious bugbears of the post-9/11 “police state” ...
Plenty of that going on here too. My dissent is being crushed. Why? Because circulation of the newspaper you write crap for is down? (Tell it to the Venezuelan media. Or to the Russian and Lebanese journos who have been summarily terminated.)
He has nailed many of the leftist idiosyncracies and foibles, while essaying ageneticevolutionaryunintelligent design exposition of their development. It’s a pity that the climax of the article was merely rejection of the term liberal and its replacement by the equally devalued progressive. I can forgive the top and tail, since the rest of the corpus was excellent.
Take that, you papier-mache head-cases and stilted stalkers.The comment thread below the Taibbi article is pretty much a typically liberal irony-free zone, but I’ll have to give high style marks to this comment (at the end of a lament that American leftism needs to be more revolutionary, like, oh, Hugo Chavez-style):
There are few places where the Left has much power, but where such power is held by the Left, let it be used. At the moment, this is mainly on college campuses, and some Leftists are doing good work there by breaking up conservative meetings and attempting to make racist and sexist and homophobic speech and thought into crimes. Showing what a future socialist society would be like by suppressing right-wing reactionaries and wiping out thoughtcrime could go a long way towards reversing the image of the Left as drippy, sandal-wearing wimps.
I wish I could consider that an excellent piece of satire, but alas, from reading the whole post I’m pretty sure he’s serious.
Yup, they’re all about the freedom—their freedom, that is. The rest of us can file into the reeducation camps.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 06 17 at 07:56 AM • permalink#6, I have to agree with you, Salty, about the immigration thing. The hubris on both sides is breathtaking, but I don’t know why I’m surprised. Congress has always been the last refuge of scoundrels.
As for Taibbi’s take on the left: he’s right, while at the same time he’s desperately trying not to admit that finally, when all is said and done, reality will get its way and smack you right between the eyes with a cluebat. Most people take the clue. The emotionally impaired on the left fringe never will.
At the moment, this is mainly on college campuses, and some Leftists are doing good work there by breaking up conservative meetings and attempting to make racist and sexist and homophobic speech and thought into crimes.
I gotta wonder, if this isn’t satire, if the author didn’t read 1984 as a how-to manual.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2007 06 17 at 09:35 AM • permalink#18, 21
Yeah, when I first read that comment I was sure it was real until I came to the part you highlighted. It was just so freaky crazy I thought it had to be someone pulling a joke on the thread by “channeling” a lefty type. I’ve reread the entire comment several times and I admit I’m still not sure if it’s genuine. The first part is totally convincing but the second part seems just too unreal to be real. God help us if it is.
That’s double-plus ungood, Rob. Step into the Tardis, please.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 06 17 at 10:49 AM • permalinkNo child would bring home a wounded liberal and ask to keep it as a pet. More likely he would step on it, or maybe tie it to a bottle-rocket and shoot it over the railroad tracks.
Ouch.
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 06 17 at 01:12 PM • permalinkI liked the part where he pointed out that the biggest, most annoying problem about liberals is how they self-righteously point out everyone else’s flaws while offering no solutions, all to pamper their own feelings of inadequacy and prevent themselves from considering the notion that the other side might have been right all along.
I don’t know if he ever actually got around to SAYING that because it was a pretty boring piece, but that he wrote it at all was a pretty good example of it.
Then there’s that thingy about a clown using stilts “leading a half-million people at an anti-war rally. If he’d said leading 500 I might have believed it.
And the main reason the liberals can’t identify with the working class is that most of it has become middle class (compare what people just above the poverty line live like compared to what the middle class lived like in, say, 1968). The ‘working poor’ who work a minimum wage part-time’ are mostly made up of children of the middle class and those on their way up working two jobs.
There’s no way liberals or Progressives are *ever* going to be able to identify with ‘the working poor’ because that would require true empathy, a quality that I’ve found in extremely short supply among these people.
I personally found Barbara Ehrenreich’s book about being poor in America to be silly in the extreme. She was constantly amazed as poor people had full lives and could care for themselves in ways she found impossible.
The ‘noblesse oblige’ of this bunch is just sickening.
As for Republicans in Congress, etc, the problem is not conservatives or neocons or Republicans, it’s the fact that we now have a permanent political class with two very similar wings who batten on the taxes of the rest of us.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2007 06 17 at 09:19 PM • permalink
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What’s happening? Did Rove slip a reality-drug into the lefties’ Kool-Aid? Another lefty at least momentarily coming to his senses is Simon Castles.