Paranoid. Fearful of change. Pessimistic to the point of apocalyptic. Contemptuous of unorthodox ideas. Obsessed with reliving an idealized past. Obstinately determined to see the worst in everyone. Lying to make reality justify one's emotions. Unfortunately, what I am describing is not right-wing behavior - although it certainly fits them to a tee. Rather, I am describing things I see routinely right here on Daily Kos and other "progressive" blogs, thus illustrating a fact of critical importance to the success of freedom and progress: Conservatism is not just an ideology, but the underlying mentality that gave birth to it - a pathology that can afflict people and movements regardless of their specific agendas. We must be aware of the Conservative Disease, and aware of what cures it: Honesty, courageous effort, and faith in humanity.
A person afflicted with the Conservative Disease cannot achieve progress, no matter how loudly they scream - and boy will they scream at you until your ears bleed rather than reexamine one single hair on their own head. They cannot achieve progress no matter how many scapegoats they identify for their continuing failure to do so, and you can rest assured they will exhaust all possible targets of blame other than themselves. They cannot hold their own leaders accountable, because they are so utterly reckless, indiscriminate, and berserk in their criticism that their screeds blend into the white noise of the hate-based media background.
Progress is beyond the capacity of this disease because it doesn't even know the meaning of the word, let alone one's role in driving or hindering it. It doesn't know where we are, where we've been, or where we're going, so it invents history as it goes along, manufactures an image of the present to incessantly compare unfavorably with the imagined past, and a nightmarish, apocalyptic future always just a handful of Friedman Units down the road. The whacked-out reasoning and hyperbole the Conservative Disease causes otherwise rational, responsible people to spew would be comical if they weren't dead serious.
The Conservative Disease creates Orwellian thinking and unconscious reaction rather than intelligent reflection and responsible behavior. It makes outrage, paranoia, and cynicism not only ends in themselves, but the definition of legitimacy - anyone insufficient in these qualities is marked as an Outsider; as someone tainted with impurity; as One Of Them. But even then, words must be redefined to invert reality, so "cynicism" must mean people who DO care about the consequences of their actions, while "morality" means people who have no regard whatsoever for the effect of their actions on others so long as it satisfies an ideological standard.
People afflicted with this disease don't recognize that pragmatism is not optional, and don't know that it's synonymous with being reality-based: The only alternative is to become warped ideologues who lie when reality fails to vindicate all the self-gratifying melodrama - i.e., to manifest the symptoms of the Conservative Disease. So obviously CD is hostile to pragmatism, and antagonistic to any hint of reality-based thinking. To crash their hate- and fear-based fantasies with facts and reason is a cruel, callous act from their perspective, demonstrating to them just how immoral reality and its observers are.
Daily Kos became influential for one reason, and one reason only: Fundraising. We mobilized a boat load of money - it's that simple. It wasn't because we screamed the loudest, had the most doctrinaire lefties, or organized the most bongo-beating protest marches. It was because we brought in money, and that money allowed people who knew what they were doing to do it on a grand scale. People who changed things. And now that things have changed - now that things are changing for the better on a continuing basis - some folks just don't know what to do with themselves.
These folks were against Bush because his fantasies were not theirs, not because he was a mass-murdering lunatic, thief, and idiot. Now we have a President who, from the perspective of the Conservative Disease, is even more of a threat than Bush because he rejects conservatism down to its utmost foundations: Down to the very psychological roots that far too many people on the left share with the right, so he is practically an alien to them. And because he refuses to be puppeteered - refuses to be yanked this way and that in knee-jerk reaction to events - somehow his intelligence, integrity, strength, and responsibility are proof of their exact opposites.
Because when one is afflicted with the Conservative Disease, every day is Opposite Day: The peacemaker is the murderer; the revealer of secrets is the concealer; the speaker of plain facts is the obfuscator; the teller of truth is the liar. The effects of the disease are especially pernicious on the left, because the dissonance of values and inclinations drives its victims batshit: While right-wingers are usually quite content with a conservative government, the left is never, EVER happy with a liberal/progressive government - it can't be, because CD hates ideas and fears change, and feeds its hosts whatever excuses they need to be dissatisfied with progress.
If someone with Conservative Disease believes themselves to support change, then they will rationalize that they're being an asshole because not enough change is occurring; it's not happening fast enough; it's too compromised; just some excuse, but really the CD-sufferer is angry because change is happening at all. On some level, they wish Bush could be back in the White House, so that they can live in perpetual outrage without any of this painful cognitive dissonance. Dissonance that is, of course, the fault of Barack Obama - just like the weather, the defeat of your sports team, and the candy machine that ate your money.
But there is a spectrum to the disease, so most of it doesn't involve odious ideologues who are just insanely resentful of anyone who dares to make real progress. Most of it is insidious, and occurs in all human beings to some degree or other: The fear of change, the discrepancy between how we judge ourselves and other people, the laziness that finds it so much easier to just construct excuses around our emotions rather than being aware and intelligent. Pessimism is lazy - you're making excuses to fail. Cynicism is lazy - you're condemning all humanity so you will never have to risk anything or feel disappointed. Scapegoating is lazy - stop hating yourself so much you can't handle looking in the mirror.
The Conservative Disease afflicts the entire spectrum - right, middle, and left - but it causes differing behavior patterns. It makes right-wingers be even more like themselves; it makes the middle so afraid of the right that it allows them to dictate the agenda; and it makes the left too self-righteous to work with actual human beings in a political setting. The net result is, of course, that change is sabotaged, and every part of the spectrum afflicted with CD breathes a sigh of relief - even the left, though it may lie to itself and pretend to be devastated by the failure it actively promoted.
Well, I see things just a bit differently than people with the Conservative Disease. I don't talk the talk of progress while pining for bygone eras whose problems I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy - I look to the future, and have faith in humanity because I have faith in myself. That doesn't mean I won't fail; it doesn't mean this country won't fail; doesn't mean humanity won't fail - it means the possibility of failure is irrelevant, because to live at all and love anything is to know that the risks are nothing compared to the rewards.
It also means that I don't fear the challenges of the future, I relish them. So I'll be blunt: This country and humanity as a whole will flourish, because I fucking say so. Freedom will survive, because I fucking say so. Things will get better, because I fucking say so. And all of the above are true because so long as I live, I will take responsibility to make them true, and so will everyone else who believes in this country and the nobility of mankind. If you don't have faith in humanity, you won't be much use to it - your projected insecurities have no value to anyone other than you. Shit or get off the pot, you hollow, bitter, exhausted Last Man - there's a future afoot, and it is beautiful. Because I fucking say so.