Now that we're nearly into the summer election cycle, the regressive radical right has become desperate. Their president's approval numbers are still in the toilet, more and more people are saying that filthy Republican Oil War was a mistake and every single one of them seem to be about as crooked as two bags or pretzels. (Latest contestant: California's Rep. Jerry Lewis) They can't run on their record of monumental deficits--largest in history, mind you!--or their flaccid economy. Didn't the Dow/Jones Industrial Average finish this week with a four-month low? (Yes, it did.) New Orleans is STILL an eyesore and will remain so for a long, long time. They haven't got anything positive they can say about themselves...so they're inevitably going to wind up changing the subject.
What good are these vermin?!?
The spokes-liars for the radical right now have themselves a great grandmother of a problem. Despite possession of the entire government, near-total control of media output and iron message discipline, the public is
no longer being fooled by them. (Despite the misleading headline of that link--"unchanged"--you will notice that our Bushmonkey's approval rating has, in point of fact, DROPPED another two percentage points according to their own pollsters.) That's a pretty astonishing turn of events when you stop to think about it: The truth IS out there.
No, they're not going to steal quietly away into the night...not after lying, cheating and battling tooth and nail for 25 years to reach this point. It's about to get REALLY ugly now! Digging around in that well-worn tucker bag of theirs, they've come up with the last of their dirty tricks: The old reliables-- smear, slime and slander--are being pressed into service yet again, threadbare as they are, in a pitiful attempt to discredit anyone who dares to disagree with them. They've branded us "The Angry Left" and they're trying as hard as they can to insert that particular meme into the discourse. Ha!
Angry? Angry?!? I'm so far beyond angry now that it's not even a smudgy blur in my rearview mirror! Enraged comes closer...or, possibly, infuriated. Maybe blood-boiling, hopping mad. Yeah. I don't know about you, but I have had ENOUGH. These rotters are getting on my last nerve in every way imaginable. The corruption, the lies, the cutsey photo ops, the blatant flagrant thievery, the callous indifference, the lies, the incompetence, the galling lack of accountability, the contempt...did I mention the lies? These weasels could try the patience of Job.
Now, I respect Glenn Greenwald, whose link I embedded above. I respect him immensely. He has a fine, methodical way of rubbing their noses in the stink of their own hypocrisy...but, to some degree, he's missing the bigger picture. He tags them dead to rights on individual acts, but does not take into account the whole atmosphere--the gestalt--that their iniquity has brought about...and the fact that there's now no going back. It must NEVER be forgotten that it was Republicans who, as a matter of party policy, poisoned the political and cultural well. They were the ones who gave no end of succor, encouragement and--Heaven help us all!--empowerment to pathological, morally-bankrupt bottom-feeders like Donald Segretti, Chuck Colson, Lee Atwater and Karl Rove...despicable, ambulatory filth, lacking the merest scrap of integrity or decency or conscience. The GOP cannot survive without the likes of them. They use them because they HAVE NO CHOICE.
You see, in and of itself, stripped of all camouflage concealment, conservatism is an unpalatable concoction of brute nastiness and greed, demanding each man's essential isolation from his fellows. It is anti-social, anti-American, anti-human. Conservatives present this toxic worldview as if it's instinctual and natural...when it is obviously nothing of the kind: The enforced stratification of human beings into classes or castes is now--and has always been!--utterly artificial and externally imposed by the ruling elites FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT. The proof of this, of course, is that concepts like 'the common good' are hardwired into us; they come down from the days of the hunter-gatherer tribes when looking out for each other meant SURVIVAL. These "you're on your own" conservatives are violating their own instincts when they claim--as Margaret Thatcher did--that there's no such thing as society. Claptrap, pure and simple.
If you analyze it for even a moment, you can see that "The Angry Left" is a frame which says much, much more that just those three words. It implies that, by contrast, the right is not the least bit angry...and we all know what a crock THAT is. Why, their entire philosophy is entangled in rancor, intolerance and divisiveness. Their stock-in-trade is anger, their nourishment is anger, the entirety of their expression is unadulterated anger. Can anybody tell me with a straight face that Bill O'Reilly isn't angry? He's fit to be tied when he goes on the air every night...and amps himself up for the entirety of his broadcast until it's hard to believe he hasn't burst a blood vessel by the time the credits are rolling! Then there are the Hate Harpies, Malkin and Coulter. (And did you see THAT on the Today Show?!?) Those belligerent broads STAY in a state of apoplectic rage. And Rush?!? There's one junkie maggot who hasn't got a word to say that doesn't drip venom...and he's the benchmark for every vitriolic bonkjob on the AM radio dial. It's the Republicans' clear intention to keep their troglodyte base primed and seething. They've been doing it for years....and now they've got the towering, unmitigated gall to say the LEFT is angry?!?
Further, the frame suggests that the ill will arising exclusively from the left is somehow un-American and completely unjustified; we have no earthly reason to be so bent out of shape. I don't know about you, but, by now, I've come to take this waking nightmare VERY personally. Spying on ME, stealing MY tax dollars, waging a filthy Oil War in MY name, shredding MY Constitution, honking off the entire civilized world...I'm supposed to take these outrages LYING DOWN?!? Balderdash! I've got a list a mile long and every item on it has me seeing red! If you're not absolutely seething, you're just not paying attention.
Finally, there is the sly inference that this faction of angry lefties is an ungrateful and noisome minority who have no business being so thoughtless and disruptive and disrespectful to all the rest of the normal people who just want to get on with it. HERE we have the most egregious misrepresentation of them all. All the polls are perfectly straight-forward and absolutely uniform in their condemnation of this blighted administration and its endless failures. Our opinions are now MAJORITY opinions...many overwhelmingly so .. By a margin of approximately two thirds, the public is repudiating the fools on the hill and their ruinous agenda. People are fed to the teeth with the GOP's insufferable arrogance and their woeful inability to govern. Sure, it's long overdue...but better late than never.
Yeah, I'm part of The Angry Left...proud of it, too. If they don't like the fact that political discourse is now uncivil and mean-spirited, I'll be plumb delighted to remind them that it's ALL THEIR OWN FAULT. They have no one to thank but the aformentioned Segretti, Colson, Atwater and Rove.
Those vermin may have started this, but I'm thoroughly prepared to finish it...
Originally posted at Conceptual Guerilla's Strategy & Tactics Please stop by and say hello...