“The Five Stages of Grief: The Left Wing Now Gets Angry,” Rob Long writes at Ricochet, noting that the MSM has moved up a notch on the Kubler-Ross model of the Five Stages of Grief:
Now they’re turning to Stage Two: Anger. Angry at the voters, at Fox News, at Obama himself.
Next up: Bargaining. I’m not sure when that’s going to start — probably a few weeks after Labor Day. But as always, what we’re all waiting for is Stage Four: Depression.
Advertisement
Depression? Hey, the economy’s waaaay ahead of them on that one! But seriously, as Matthew Sheffield quips, “Hating your countrymen is the new patriotism:”
In short: liberals don’t hate America, they simply hate Americans, especially when they won’t go along with such obviously good things such as President Obama’s healthcare law, “economic stimulus” spending, nationalizing student loans, unilaterally disarming American nuclear weapons, or raising taxes in an anemic economy. Having fully embraced the notion that Judeo-Greco-Roman society has engaged in systematic “cultural imperialism,” the modern Left has embraced what might be termed “cultural inferiorism” as a means to atone.
One could argue that conservatives and libertarians are prone to similarly negative views about the public–particularly when it votes for politicians loathed by the Right–however, it seems to me that when such sentiments are expressed, they tend to proceed more from disappointment than the fulminations against the public one regularly sees expressed by liberals (the supposed movement “for the people”).
The reason for this rhetorical disparity is that conservatives and libertarians seem to have a much better grounding in the idea that they have a political ideology. Liberals lack this sense, believing their ideology to be literally incommensurable to other ideologies. To oppose liberalism is thus not only intellectually incorrect, it is also an affront to common decency.
This isn’t all that new a development of course — Krauthammer’s Law was coined in 2002. Ace of Spades joked about the left’s “Ike Turner school of patriotism” back in 2007 — “Those who love America show it by denigrating and beating the sh*t out of her at every opportunity.”
You can see the mindset behind that sort of punitive liberalism at work in yesterday’s HuffPo photo essay, which looks at the attendees of Glenn Beck’s rally on Saturday wearing — gasp! — T-shirts emblazoned with the American flag, the Gadsden flag, or quotes from George Washington. With the sniff of a fully upturned nose, the headline writer decries, “Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally: The Most Ridiculous Messages.”
You crazy rubes in flyover country!
But another Krauthammer column from a few years ago is also worth revisiting, “The Pressure-Cooker Theory” from August of 2004:
The loathing goes far beyond the politicians. Liberals as a body have gone quite around the twist. I count one all-star rock tour, three movies, four current theatrical productions and five best sellers (a full one-third of the New York Times list) variously devoted to ridiculing, denigrating, attacking and devaluing this president, this presidency and all who might, God knows why, support it.How to explain? With apologies to Dr. Freud, I propose the Pressure Cooker Theory of Hydraulic Release.
The hostility, resentment, envy and disdain, all superheated in Florida, were not permitted their natural discharge. Came 9/11 and a lid was forced down. How can you seek revenge for a stolen election by a nitwit usurper when all of a sudden we are at war and the people, bless them, are rallying around the flag and hailing the commander in chief? With Bush riding high in the polls, with flags flying from pickup trucks (many of the flags, according to Howard Dean, Confederate), the president was untouchable.
The Democrats fell unnaturally silent. For two long, agonizing years, they had to stifle and suppress. It was the most serious case of repression since Freud’s Anna O. went limp. The forced deference nearly killed them. And then, providentially, they were saved. The clouds parted and bad news rained down like manna: WMDs, Abu Ghraib, Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neill, Joe Wilson and, most important, continued fighting in Iraq.
Stripped of his halo, the president’s ratings went down. The spell was broken. He was finally once again human and vulnerable. With immense relief, the critics let loose.
The result has been volcanic. The subject of one prominent new novel is whether George W. Bush should be assassinated. This is all quite unhinged. Good God. What if Bush is re-elected? If they lose to him again, Democrats will need more than just consolation. They’ll need therapy.
Unfortunately, the left never received it. Instead, they went first from exploiting Hurricane Katrina for political gain, to creating the messianic cult of Obama only a couple of years afterward. Along the way trashing slightly more centrist Democrats for backing Hillary rather than Obama as racists, concurrent with Spencer Ackerman advising his fellow JournoListas to look at the GOP and randomly “take one of them–Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares–and call them racists.”
No wonder McCain and his team were terrified to bring up Rev. Wright and his pseudo-Marxist Black Liberation Theology religious worldview, in which Obama found some sort of emotional sustenance for an extended period of his life.
With all due respect, you need to scrap the model. There are not five stages. In fact, there are no stages at all with the Left in the traditional sense of a process leading to recognition or change. There is only anger.
Yes, anger that justifies whatever they find gratifying (from redistributing other peoples’ money to telling people whether they can smoke in their own homes or not).
Can’t smoke in your own home butt you can spread AIDS & be GAY about it
Agreed. With the Left there is only anger and hatred. Their long running ‘cultural inferiorism’ crusade is really quite twisted. If anything, Americans have been far too tolerant in putting up with their malice, arrogance, and perpetual adolescence.
…. With the Left there is only anger and hatred ….
Not quite.
First there is the underlying envy, the only one of the ‘Seven Deadlies’ that has no instant ‘reward’ and that guarantees its owner’s consequential anger, rage, hatred, scorn, derision and loathing — and about every other negative emotion, those imaginable and those impossible to imagine.
Agreed. For the Left it has always been all rage all the time.
The only thing different now is that the anger is now openly violent and eliminationist towards “racists” and “homophobes” (meaning pretty much everyone outside their social circles). From the brownshirt violence of SEIU to the physical assaults by Democrat Congressmen on political opponents to the twisted Bush assassination porn the Left thrived on to calls for “re-education” camps for critics of ObamaCare, the genocidal hate that has always driven the Left is finally coming to the surface.
Mwalimu Daudi,
Having once been a mwalimu in Tanzania a long time ago, I always notice your name. Also find myself agreeing with you.
Just curious about your connection to Swahili version of David and teacher.
Ray
Barack Hussein Obama should never have been elected President, he is plainly incapable of leading and incompetent at managing.
Now that he has allmost completely stopped blaming Bush for all his problems, Obama is now explaining to us the problems are just too big for anyone to handle.
What is amazing is that any adult American can still support this clown.
But as Abe Lincoln is alleged to have posited, you CAN fool some of the people all the time.
What is amazing is that any adult American can still support this clown.
I received an email, which is doing the rounds in Israel, which purportedly came from someone in the Czech Rep.
Well stated by the apparent Czech. Barry is but one of hundreds of high level politicians who don’t warrant election to dog catcher let alone to high office. Many should plainly be in prison, in fact. We’re doomed so long as the electorate maintains such a degree of civic morons and others disengaged or complacent enough to continue to allow the election of such incompetents. We were letting this happen over decades. It will take decades more to clean out the system. And the mentality must favor vigilance against jackass politicians rather than a “quick fix” election cycle or two that flushes the system. We cannot afford to grow complacent again.
Thanks regularguy. During the “good times” we grew disinterested in the workings of our government, from local, to state to national. We didn’t read up on the issues. We didn’t think about the pros and cons of the candidates and vote accordingly. We sent incompetants back to represent us again and again. Some of us–and this is the worst of all in my book–didn’t even vote. The media were our enablers in that they did not cover the issues in any serious way. Local papers that cover local and state issues died out or were bought up by the journalistic equivalent of McDonald’s–cannot tell what part of the country you are in because they are all the same. But now we see the result of our casual attitude towards politics. Baby boomers (and people in our age bracket and above have the highest incidence of voting anyway) are getting interested in politics in a serious way. They realize (at last) that the decisions these buffoons in Congress make have a very material impact on our standard of living and that of our children’s and grandchildren’s. And, maybe even our liberty is at stake too. The good thing is that non-MSM sources of news, information and commentary are becoming easily accessible. We will just turn to the MSM less and less because they have not only failed to do their job–asking important questions and informing the populace in a balanced way–they have also lied to us over and over again. Furthermore, as this article points out so correctly, they hate us. Who needs ‘em?
During the “good times” we grew disinterested in the workings of our government, from local, to state to national.
And during those good times we voted ourselves more and more benefits. One thing that has to change if we’re to get out of the debt and ruin spiral is that, if and when the economy revives, and saner fiscal and economic policies are instituted, that we don’t get all stupid again when the good times come back. That is going to be very hard to get the people to understand and agree to.
I have to agree totally with the author of these lines. Those of us who could read and analyze the data knew obama was a wrong man. But what surprised me more, Europe as well as Israel were going GA-GA-GA over him. So, the fools are not just Americans. I remember the demonstrations in England, and how they all were ecstatic. I also remember some European woman posting that if we, “Americans have such say on world’s economy, they, the world should have a say in who is elected as American president.”
The biggest problem is our young generation, over-educated with useless degrees in liberal arts, unemployed – who needs those useless people – and utterly embarrassing with “give me” attitude. So,…yeh, they are wright, we are fools.
The quote is actually from an article written in the Prager Zeitung, on April 28, 2010. I tried to find the columnist who wrote the piece but could not find it. If anyone knows to whom to attribute the article, please post it. Thank you.
What is amazing is that any adult American can still support this clown.
That’s where fostering dependency upon government comes into play, be it that government job or the benefits check.
This is why we need to purge RINO’s and get a few conservative avenging angels in Congress.
Our political opposition is funded by us. Acorn and the welfare-entitlement complex is funded by us. The Marxists in schools are funded by us. This mess has to come to a screeching halt.
Now here is a great idea. Let us bring Bush back to the White House. That would be a real change: a President who loves his country; a President who loves the American flag; a President who will not cowtow to foreing potentates; a President with a capital “P”. God! wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Unfortunately, Bush never learned how to use the veto pen, so no, it would not be wonderful. ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ and its rubber stamp on government spending and government expansion is actually part of the problem that got us into our current predicament. It’s certainly not part of the solution.
Not only that, but Bush was waaayyyyy too cozy with the Saudis. So was his dad. That was a real Trojan horse, not that I believe that the Bushes knew that at the time. To them it was probably just good for our energy needs.
You have a point, but how much attention did we ever see to Teddy Kennedy being in bed with Hugo Chavez to get reduced rates on oil shipped to Massachusetts? Every time I watch a baseball game held in Fenway Park and see that big CITGO sign (CITGO is Hugo’s oil company) I wonder how many people know they are subsidizing a terrible, terrible government when they pull up to a CITGO station…..
yes David it would be wonderfull. but then even james earl carter would be a great improvement over the thing currently defiling the oval office. and I dont even like the democratic party. haven’t liked them since they robbed the social security fund under lyndon bains johnson to fund the Vietnam war,thats the reason the social security fund is broke because the slime ball use the money for every thing else,
I frequently see on this and other blogs, the opinion that Jimmy Carter would be preferable to Barack Obama. Perhaps the Jimmy Carter of 1977 to 1981 would do a better job, but I am unconvinced that today’s Jimmy Carter would be any better than our current president.
Carter is the proof of “There’s no fool like an old fool”.
But it would be a huge improvement.
David, no it would not be wonderful. Other than being a loyal American, Bush has nothing to show for except that he set up the progression that we are now in the middle of with Obama and Co. I am a true conservative/libertarian, I was against invading Iraq and I was against most of the Bush policies. Let us not forget that he appointed that Paulson person that everybody who pays attention, knew the guy was no better than Soros for example. It is a sorry state that both Bush father and son left us with. They both have the wrong friends and associates that they seem to listen to. Unfortunately I see nobody on the horizon to lead the conservatives in 2012, but perhaps someone will pick up the mantle. Just PLEASE, no Gingrich, no Romney, no Allen, no Pawlenty, no Palin (too much talk), no phony conservatives that take their cues from the likes of Bill Krystol et al.
Driscoll is on-target.
The most interesting thing, to me, about the Legacy Media’s explosion of “punitive liberalism” is the gestalt of premises and emotional predispositions beneath it. In that regard, it resembles a psychosis rather than a terminal ailment…but I’ll be perfectly happy to read a eulogy — malogy? — at its graveside, nevertheless.
http://www.planethan.com/drupal/sites/default/files/reflectionofcapitalism.pdf
Great article which reviews Schumpeter’s thesis that the “intellectuals” will destroy capitalism.
Ludwig von Mises advanced a similarly cautionary thesis in The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality. History tells us that both these brilliant men were correct. We really do breed our own destroyers.
even to the point of publicly admitting that it’s OK to cook the books if it suits the cause of the week.
Does this suggest that the MSM are now adopting the Qur’anic principle of taquiya?
Which brings me to the fact that HonestReporting is celebrating 10 years since its launch
Dramatic Reunion Ten Years After The Photo That Started It All
“the clouds parted and bad news rained down like manna…”
No. More accurately, a carefully planned and coordinated MSM/leftist attack on Bush was launched, after an appropriate quiet time during which his vulnerability increased after the war became normal daily news and Americans began dying in battle in larger numbers.
It was not a stroke of luck for leftists to be able to bash Bush again. It was leftists BEING leftists. Stalin, Mao, Ceaucescu etc. taught them how.
They have been transparent in their opinion of me. I will be equally transparent in November. Mr Nancy Pelosi (aka Dan Maffei) will not be getting my vote. Nor will the Chuck Schumer twin currently posing as a Senator from NY.
It’s not just politics anymore, it’s personal. They have defined the boundaries, not me. I’m just playing the game, their way.
As a Brit its none of my business but I would love to see Sarah Palin as president……..because it will drive my lefty friends NUTS!
not to worry about it being “none of your business” david, since you’re posting in an american forum our first amendment extends to you, please feel free to enjoy the right to freedom of thought and speech as we do, so far. hopefully that right and others in our constitution, (for which we should thank the barons at runnymede, who forced an unwilling king to sign the great charter, an ancestor to our constitution.) will continue as obama leaves office in disgrace in january 2013.
thanks gunner,
as a resident of Lewes in East Sussex I value our shared history.By the way the first real challenge to the power of the crown was the Battle of Lewes. And Tom Paine lived and formed his revolutionary ideas here. Walking the battlefield I often think about those who died here for a freedom they never saw.
In the hills around are the concrete tracks laid by U.S and Canadian forces as they prepared for Dieppe and D.Day,a piece of history I have taught my son.
Not forgotten.
Ed – The fish rots from the head and the head is the so-called Grey Lady, the New York Times (or slimes). It did no investigative reporting into Obama and how poorly he was prepared to be President. No one really looked into his association with the terrorists, Ayres & Dohrnan, or the fact that he and Reverend “Wright” were such good buddies until they weren’t, or that he voted “Present” 150 times in the Illinois Legislature, or that he was closely associated with ACORN. Of course, with some exceptions, that was par for the course for other such media. It took a year or so of Obama’s Presidency before the electorate grasped, and then gasped as to what he was up to. Of course, the electorate is ultimately to blame for its actions because it did not do its due diligence but depended instead on the MSM to do it for them. After Dan Rather in 2004 and after the debacle that is this presidency, I would hope that the electorate has learned its lesson: Do not to depend on the MSM for information. That though is only a hope. We will see what happens this November and in November 2012. In the meantime, we must be thankful there is an internet and that journalists like yourself and others on PJM provide us with information that is trustworthy.
Ed, wonderful article. Since you mentioned Daniel Greenfield [Ace link]it seems only fair to provide a direct link. We have our work cut out for us this November and all Novembers. 40 years of ‘programming’ on and off the air has left a stench in education, federal overreach, even the armed services (Nidal Hasan)and finally, the press-light..the arm and voice of this administration.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
The author notes, critically, that liberals think “To oppose liberalism is thus not only intellectually incorrect, it is also an affront to common decency.” Liberals are wrong about that. Not because we have two parties that are both reasonable and mean to promote liberty but have different ideas of how best to do it. We do not. The reason liberals are wrong about the attitude the author criticizes is because liberals have it precisely backwards. Liberals are fundamentally anti-liberty. They organize themselves to do harm to others. For every benefit they confer on some must be derived from confiscation from others. For those of you who don’t read John Locke, this — organizing to do harm to liberty — is the greatest crime against humanity. So, liberalism is not only intellectually incorrect but also an affront to common decency. Liberals are the bad guys. That is how it is.
Liberals are not the bad guys. The ability to accumulate unlimited wealth is the problem, and people who agree to this concept are the bad guys.
Remember that Locke always implied that government would function to moderate the conflict between the unlimited accumulation of property and a more nearly equal distribution of wealth. He didn’t have and answer to the obvious problem, and took a pass on it.
Also, if you’re going to quote Locke include that he was a hypocrite. Locke spoke of freedom. Every man has the right to defend his, “Life, health, liberty or possessions.” But at the same time, in 1671 Locke was a major investor in the English slave-trade through the Royal African Company, as well as through his participation in drafting the Fundamental Constitution of the Carolinas which established a feudal aristocracy and gave a master absolute power over his slaves.
‘Thou shalt covet’ is explicitly not one the Ten Commandments, but it does seem to be an essential pillar of The Left’s philosophy and, not coincidentally, at the core of their anger and hatred.
So i guess that Bill Gates, who made bilions while creating thusands of jobs is the real problem. Why not go after the kenneys and their wealth, John Kerry (the richest man in the congress) or nancy pelosi?
Joe- I’ve no problem with wealth. It’s one of the things that makes America run. My problem is with unlimited wealth. If you can’t see the difference then I can’t help you.
For example, if you think that the Kennedys had (have) wealth anywhere near Bill Gates you are incorrect. Old man Joe Kennedy was a great business man (who would be arrested for insider trading in today’s world) I digress, but never made over 400 million. Gates has amassed wealth somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 billion. 186 times more than Kennedy. (To Gates credit he has given about 30 billion of that away).
If you think John Kerry has money anywhere near Bill Gates you would also be incorrect. Maybe 750 million on the asset side. That money is all from his wife’s ex-husband’s catsup business among other things.
Two points:
1)Don’t compare Kerry and Kennedy with the likes of Gates, Walton, and Buffet etc.
2)No one gets rich by being a politician. Rich politicians got that way through business ventures.
The political idea that there should be a limit on wealth is not dismissed by saying some holders of that idea have money.
And you and your Socialist ilk get to decide when enough is enough?
I think not.
So Nathan, do you decide for the rest of us, who can acquire what wealth? As for old Kennedy, he may not have been that wealthy, according to you, but what he accumulated was mostly by hook and crook, and not honest business dealing. You should say that too, otherwise you are dishonest.
We talk about liberty and equality in the same breath. But liberty and equality (at least equality of outcome, which is what the liberals want)are incompatible.
As a survivor of the horrible sixties; I still can vividly recall leftist professors constantly raving about how bad America was; how bad Christianity was; how bad traditional family life was (that came especially from professors who were seducing their female students);how bad the military was;how bad white people were especially white males; how bad the Republican parts was; they began the onslaught which has only become worse. Now as these crazy lefties look around while wagging their long grey pony tailed locks they can find no innocent group to victimize with their hate centered religion of rejection; now they are desparate because of the failures of all their social engineering plans; war on poverty, tax the businessses; intergration, forced busing, weak military;fatherless families and the list goes on and on. They have to face that they are the biggest group of failures in history and it must hurt.
John, you are right on the mark. Starting with Woodrow Wilson and accelerating under Roosevelt the liberal programs,SS-Medicare-school busing-the great society-welfare-DEA-EPA, have ALL failed. But to the liberal it is their “Intent” and not the “Outcome” that is important. They continue to ride this horse today with programs like the stimulus and Obamacare. They knew before they passed them that they would never succeed but they felt good enacting them. And with their “We know what is best for you” attitude, they will continue to do it until we wake up and throw them out.
John;
“I still can vividly recall leftist professors constantly raving about how bad America was…”
Y’know, John, watching the Alleged Hawaiian’s speech last night, I realized what his appeal was to the Moonbat Left.
This is a man who is FAR better at cataloguing America’s faults and apologizing for them than he is at celebrating what is good and highlighting what America does right.
Nowhere in his speech did the Alleged Hawaiian point out that it was American blood, treausure, and will that liberated Iraqis from the yoke of a cruel and brutal dictator, as well as removed a rapacious predator’s influence from the rest of the region.
Matthew Sheffield gets it exactly right when he points out:
“In short: liberals don’t hate America, they simply hate Americans,”
Which is why moonbats can engage in the most blatantly treasonous activities and seriously declare “Don’t Question My Patriotism!”.
These people can only feel and express their esteem at abstract concepts. Contrast the rhetoric at the Beck rally with the tone of the rhetoric at the Sharpton gathering.
A very stark delineation, and quite clearly indicative of where this country is going.
God Willing.
Bilgeman- Let’s see, by calling President Barack Obama the “Alleged Hawaiian” you show contempt for the Office of the President of the United States.
You want to be like Glen Beck? You want to be positive? Do you want to send a positive message about America? I suggest starting with the way you address the President.
Also, please do not try to defend the reasons we went into Iraq. Don’t try to twist it to fit your crazy head-movies.
We did not go to Iraq to protect the Iraqi people from a dictator. Please. The “rapacious predator’s influence” in the region. Don’t make me laugh.
We went into Iraq because the United States was hurting after 9/11 and we needed an identifiable enemy. Bush Jr. was also mad that Saddam Hussein disrespected Bush Sr.
It is as simple as that. It was a public schoolyard fight that should be a source of shame for the United States now and forever.
And the prospect of oil money never hurts either. The icing on the cake. (Cue Dick Cheney’s sinister cackle echoing through the White House).
Don’t let your political hatred for “Liberal Moonbats” cloud your judgment or your understanding of history.
Your drivel isn’t worthy of a reply, save this one:
FOAD!
Good day.
“It’s as simple as that”.
Ah yes the phrase always used when you have no compelling arguement and you want
to stifle the debat. Your statement may be simple, but the grown ups wish to deal with
the complexities of modern problems. Causation of our present problems is a trouble
when the left has to deal with reality.
Our chum stuck axle-deep in arrested adolescence whines:
“We did not go to Iraq to protect the Iraqi people from a dictator. Please. The “rapacious predator’s influence” in the region. Don’t make me laugh.”
Had this pathetic stooge bothered to actually READ my copy, he might have noticed that I was pointing out what our armed forces, in spite of the present Alleged Hawaiian commander-in-chief, had ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED.
You will note that he seems peculiarly fixated on proving himself somehow to be vindicated rather than graciously recognizing plain facts that are manifestly evident to even the most casual observer: urban residents of Western Iran, Bahraini fishermen of the Persian Gulf, or Bedouin tribesmen of Northern Kuwait, for instance…all of whom don’t need ANYONE to tell them what kind of beast Saddam Hussein was.
And the Kurds likely don’t laugh at all about the Hussein regime…probably for the exact same reason that “Hitler Jokes” never made it big on the “Borscht Belt” circuit.
Smells to me like Moonbat Nathan, and the Alleged Hawaiian that he apparently worships, have a bad case of the “shames”.
…and they SHOULD. The conduct of the anti-war Left WAS shameful, and in many cases it crossed over into treasonous.
I look forward to working with Nathan and those like him on their many deep-seated and chronically debilitating problems once President Palin appoints me the Commandant of the largest Moonbat Re-education Camp east of the Mississippi River.
You can be cured, Nathan…we can fix you.
Don’t give up hope!
Hey Nathan, where is the oil money from Iraq?
“The office of the president”. Have you seen what it looks like after the extensive remodel while the Obamas were on yet another vacation? The dignity is gone and it is more like the registration office at a Days Inn. Honestly, can the Obamas leave any tradition alone? Some people go to Washington to do something, the Obamas went to be somebody.
a side note, can we hope, if we win control of either the house or senate, or hopefully both, that we can rid ourselves of the horde of obama commissars inflicted on us with no legal standing or place in american government other than obama’s fiat.
As an Australian who loves the U.S.A. (I have an American daughter in law, who I adore), may I comment on BO. I have a great interest in American politics. When I first clapped eyes on BO. I thought the American people have more sense than to elect this intellectual pygmy and phoney. Alas, I was wrong. The Australian elected K. Rudd as our PM. and we fell into the same hole (he is another intellectual, moral pygmy). At last both countries are seeing through these imposters, but I fear we have a lot more suffering to bear before we see the end of these traitors. Bless Amercia and Australia.
They left me! I used to read two papers a day, and the NYT twice a week, and listen to at least two national newscasts. Now? I haven’t seen a national, in fact even a local, newscast by the MSM in over a year, and I scan the paper at the coffee shop for free. When they were just biased, it was one thing, but when dissing me and what I believe in became their main focus, well, excuse me! but I know when I’m not wanted.
The nasty left has been spewing its poison so long nobody takes it seriously anymore. In fact, it sorta is getting funny. The genius of the Beck rally was that the people there didn’t give the angry left any purchase — no nutty signs, skin-headed KKK types, or crazy behavior. MSM whore Bill Press was reduced to sputtering that the Lincoln Memorial was no place to be mentioning God.
This is a wonderfully concise tour d’horizon of what is going on in the media generally and among our cultural elites specifically. I can’t remember the source of the quote but someone once said “The Left is always looking for somebody to surrender to.” Ths has certainly been true since the 1960′s. Progressives love public displays of their own virtue and nothing says “virtue” to them as a mindless embrace of every opponenet of U.S. policy and every hare-brained critique of America’s past particularly if it is couched in terms of “victimhood.”
Journalists have embraced this stance because (a) they have nothing but contempt for anyone is isn’t a celebrity and (b) it instantly bestows on them a degree of intellectual respectability and automatice membership in what they perceive as the new “elite.” The actual readability or profitability of the publication is of small concern.
Tom Wolfe brilliantly depicted this view when he described the aghast reaction of the elite literary world to the publication of The Gulag Archipelago….”And the literary world ignored him (Solzhenitsyn) completely. In the huge unseen coffin that Solzhenitsyn towed behind him were not only the souls of the zeks who died in the Archipelago. No – The heartless bastard had also chucked in one of the last great visions; the intellectual as Stainless Steel Socialist glistening against the bone heap of capitalism in it’s final, brutal facist phase. There was a bone heap all right but socialism had created it.”
Wolfe’s description of the mind-set of the Left cannot be bettered. This is why there is the ongoing need to “surrender.” They must separate themselves from THEM -Those uneducated, uncredentialed and unfeeling brutes who simply refuse to acknowledge the simple superiority of the “progressive” mind. And the best way to do this is to endorse the views of anything and anyone who is opposed to the “brutes.” The truth must always be sealed away from view.
I realize that this is a tangent, but from now on, I request that
this site and this writer keep in mind that to those of us living
here, the term “flyover country” is as dismissive and demeaning as the
N word is to African Americans. Kindly stop using the term.
Have the common courtesy to not promote the bigoted thinking
behind the use of such terms. The Coastal snobs that drip this stuff would never use such a term to describe a racial or ethnic group, so
please expose their bigotry instead of promoting its advancement into
polite social discourse.
I have taught my son that he should feel free to use any and all ethnic slurs related to his own genetic heritage. I told him if you use them then you own them and they cease being insults. I recommend the same to you. Embrace the term flyover country. For one thing flyover country people are superior to coastals and second by using the term as source of pride you stick it to the effete liberal elite.
Hi BRM, (in response to your tangent) I hear you, although I don’t think the term is used in this conversation in a dismissive way. Perhaps the writer could have said the so-called “fly-over” country. Many people on the coasts haven’t the slightest idea what the middle of the country is like. This is why as an East Coaster I encouraged my children to attend colleges in “fly-over” country, and they did. To my mind, learning about our own country should be part of a person’s education.
Brm,
where does the “flyover country” start? Is it everthing apart from Washington,New York and California dreaming? Just asking as am visiting a friend in Smithville ,Tennessee soon!
Flyover country starts at the Lincoln Tunnel. The Boston-DC corridor, the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Madison, Chicago; anywhere where fashion is more important than religion; anywhere where the Beamers outnumber the pick-up trucks;anywhere where rich people call for higher taxes for everybody and employ expensive financial advisers to help them avoid those taxes; those are the places exempt from the ‘Flyover’ label.
Mr. Stanley;
“…where does the “flyover country” start?”
Travelling westwards from DC, flyover country starts at the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Once you are in the Shenandoah Valley, you might as well be in Omaha.
(And we like it that way).
LOL! Well that’s only because the suburban sprawl from D.C. extends that far! It used to start (for D.C.) anything outside the Beltway. And for NYC, anything west of the Hudson river bank.
For LA, it was any thing east of the 605 (I-605) and north of the 210 (I-210) and west (up the coast) from Malibu.
Only San Francisco counted, then “nothing” till you are in Seattle.
For the two other west coast cities (San Francisco and Seattle), fly-over country starts at the foothills east of the cities and extends to the Atlantic Ocean.
Chicago keeps “trying” to be a “real presence” but it’s still too Midwestern and regional for the ‘bi-coastal’ elites.
Right now stuck in the Bos-Wash megalopolis, hope to return someday to the REAL USA in “flyover” country.
If you are far enough away from the coasts to recognize that such a dismissive term is insulting, you are in the so-called “fly-over country”.
If you can fly into LA, Chicago, SF, DC, NY, or SEATAC and be home in less than 1.5 hours, you are not in flyover country.
If you have no local media that isn’t a slave to the progressive political machine, then you are not in fly over country.
If you don’t see at least one of the following three commercials on local TV: Seed, Fertilizer, or Implement dealers, you are not in fly-over country.
If you can’t demonstrate that the river that flows past your town is at least a 2nd degree tributary of the Mississippi, you are not in flyover country (with the exception of Non LA/SF California and the inter mountain states.)
If your idea of the Air Force is the missile silo down the road, you are in flyover country.
If your idea of the Air Force is a Pentagon Col. that lives down the street and puts out the neighborhood’s token Republican campaign sign in his yard, you are not in flyover country.
For starts…:)
If you have a rational grasp of the complexities and hardships of
everyday life, you are in flyover country. By that I mean the ability
to fix problems and take care of yourself in a self reliant manner.
Maybe the MSM should take their cue from Fox and have more Fox News Alerts about strippers and spring break.
Now Betty, that isn’t nice.
Control of the media was one of the mainstays of liberal dominance. Even in its weakened state the media was able to neuter any conservative impulses the Bush Republiclowns might have had. We saw Senate and House Republiclowns looking over their shoulders, worrying about media vilification and moderating any impulse they might have had to inhibit the creeping growth of the feeble and oppressive bureaucracy. Now a new breed of conservative is emerging who are not afraid of the declining MSM and who have the support of a conservative media that has gained the ear of a majority of Americans. This looming victory of reform in November will start the collapse of the left in this country. It is backed up by the universally perceived need to rein in out-of-control government spending. The age ushered in by FDR is over.
Why shouldn’t they be furious?
They joined the cult with blood lust. They lapped up the training like starving dogs. They worked like passionate beavers to implement the cons. And they are still losing the war.
They gave 1010%, and the rubes have still figured out the truth and hold them in the highest contempt imaginable.
They could not have been more loyal, yet everything they were told to do has failed. Their lives are crumbling around them.
I would be just as angry as they are.
The bigots in the room are the Left Stream Media.
It is helpful that they and their paymasters are all publicly wetting their pants, enabling additional Americans to figure out who the national arsonists are.
The Progressive movement is a code word for Communist. And if you forget that or slough it off, you are likely to think incorrectly that the Main Stream Media didn’t do it’s job. It did it’s job that it has been doing for decade,destroy the fabric of American values and leadership from within. This is not a question of the press being lazy, this is complicit treason.
BRM we all can relate to your pain. We almost all live in “fly over country” when it comes to the opinions of our elected politicans and our unelected betters in the Main Stream Media.
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning Mike Barnacle asked the weather man in the middle of the weather presentation about the looming hurricane threatening the East Coast of the US…”Where exactly will it hit?”
When the weatherman hesitated the coven of six talking heads all from the upper West Side of Manhattan, blurted out, what about the Hamptons.” at which point the weatherman said no it won’t hit the Hamptons,”
And on a national newscast the weatherman never actually finished his sentence since no one on the set now cared what or where it would hit.
That is fly over country, everywhere outside Manhattan and the Hamptons.
Wonderful story.
Thus the very reason that Glenn Beck’s DC rally eschewed partisan politics and focused (like a laser) on restoring Americans’ sense of individual honor and integrity. He rightly asked those who attended and those of us who wish we had, how we can expect our elected leaders to act morally and honorably when we, their bosses, don’t. Once we as a people address this failing, and begin again to act according to our highest nature, the rest will follow. The more I ponder Beck’s manifesto, the more I think he is right.
thanks for the info,
now I know where the “real” America is?Its about 90% of the land mass but what % of the population?
Huh? Americans comprise something like 5% of the world’s population, so by that token, how much of the evening news should be devoted to us, do you suppose.
My MIL (“granny” to the kids) watches the Western Channels, Discovery and sometimes TV Land. She long ago let all her subscriptions to newspapers and magazines die.
My mom (“Grandma Darling” to the kids) seldom watches TV, but she will have it on for the sound in the house. Usually some cooking or home decorating/design show. She does watch the local Fox station (has the “old” CBS and some of the “old” NBC affiliates’ news and weather people) for local news and weather. She still gets the local papers, but only reads the obits to see if someone she knows has died, and where to go for visitation.
I will never forgive the media for their treatment of the hundreds of thousands of Americans that gathered to protest the HealthCare law. They actively slandered those citizens and uncritically accepted and promoted the canard of the Congressional Black Caucus (a racist organizaion) that the crowd behaved in a racially bigotted way. But worst of all, the media glorified the horrible spectacle of Nancy Pelosi as she paraded her Speaker’s Gavel through the crowd as a show of her disdain for the anger of the people. That is something I never want to see again in American politics, and the media gloried in it. Thus I am their sworn enemy and wish to see them utterly destroyed, and I suspect many Americans have adopted the same position.
It looks as if the journo-lostboys crowd have become full fledged members of the North Kosanese Army to me! The talking head chattering class of news-speakers are totally beneath contempt, and the same applies to our current crop of politician critters too. It’s high time we wiped both of them from the soles of our shoes and moved on.
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/96feb/media/media.htm
I am with you all the way. Although I don’t live in Pelosi’s district, I live close enough which is bad for my blood pressure. The woman has to cover for her vacuousness by being arrogant. I’ll never forget her statement that we have to pass the healthcare bill in order to find out what’s in it. Regretfully I have lost all faith in the American voters, and will be pleasantly surprised if they actually throw some of the bums out in November. Judging from Arizona though, I am only cautiously optimistic. McLame gets another term? That is so discouraging.
The “Ike Turner School of Patriotism” might well also be called the “James Joyce School of Patriotism.”
After all, it was Joyce who remarked that he showed his love for his country by getting out of it as quickly as he could.
Though, now that I consider it, that remark does cut both ways.
So, in the immortal words of Roseanne Roseannadanna, “Never mind.”
In a way, “The Pressure-Cooker Theory” applies to what’s happening right now with conservatives. For so long, they’ve been shut out of culture and politics, to the point where this November, the lid’s gonna blow.
I remember when they called in the Big Dog, Billy Bob Clinton, to admonish the dems about the reversal of fortune should they NOT pass Obamacare. Now…we all can admit that the stainmaker may be a lot of things, but one thing he most definitely IS NOT is politically naive. So many were wondering just what made him assert such as absurdity since he had his own experience to draw upon? I think the Clintons must be having the greatest laugh after all. Didn’t anyone ever consider that his “advice” was sabotage and far from supporting his wife’s campaign rival, he stuck in the sharpest shiv of all? How anyone in the democrat party could have anticipated he would have done otherwise beggars belief. And their stupidity in that regard is just a microcosm of their overall stupidity. Bet Billy doesn’t even feel their “pain”.
brilliant piece
Excellent piece, Ed. You really are one of the best media writers today. You manage to weave the past & present, other media critics’ works and your own observations into a insightful column almost every day. I am a newcomer to all this and it’s so helpful to understand how far this extends beyond the “liberal bias” we’ve all come to expect. Especially now as things seem to be spinning out of control for the MSM. Thanks.
Or else American liberals are Linus van Pelt…
“I love mankind, it’s PEOPLE I can’t stand.”
…complete with thumb-sicking and government-funded security blanket.
On election day 2008 my daughter had been to vote and had her 3 year old son with her. She had a McCain sticker on and her son had one on. Afterward she went downtown walking around when two unhinged liberal women walked up to her and proceeded to berate her for having “that sticker” on her child and how she should be ashamed of herself, in that horrid, face twisting, angry way that we now equate with Helen Thomas’s face! I was stunned when she told me what had happened. Granted I automatically loath the person in a car with an Obama sticker but I would never assume that I have the right, to think that is not their RIGHT. We have acted as their enablers for too long allowing them to stomp, scream and play holier than thou to deprive us of our rights while continuing theirs. This didn’t just start after 2000 it just became super ugly then, and now we have one hell of a mess to clean up.
These media outlets have made themselves obsolete, choosing to create the news rather than simply report the news; choosing to act as the mouthpiece of government, rather than act as another means of checks and balances.
Where are the editors? Part of the decline of journalism has been the loss of the editor.