It's been obvious to all of us for some time that people on the extremes of US politics, both left and right, are growing more and more intolerant of anyone who disagrees with their warped, twisted, monomaniacal perspectives. Please note that I blame both sides equally. You can't point a finger at a right-wing screed without finding one just as bad, if not worse, on the left, and vice versa.
That said, this diatribe by a far-left-wing commentator is so over-the-top as to be nauseating.
When I write that CNN politics writer Chris Cillizza is the rankest ***brain in the Western Hemisphere, I am not being nice to him. When I write that God clowned Chris Cillizza before he was born by making him Chris Cillizza instead of a ****-eating maggot, I am being unkind. When I say that Chris Cillizza himself is the punchline to the cruelest work of absurdist comedy in the history of the ****ing universe, and that the title of that work is On the Origin of Species, I am being mean. Likewise it probably is downright nasty for me to write that on the whole American society would benefit greatly by Chris Cillizza being fired out of a large cannon into an even larger cliff face. But I am not bullying Chris Cillizza. Categorically, I cannot do that.
“Wolf’s treatment of Sanders was bullying,” Cillizza wrote on CNN’s website yesterday, because he is an obsequious slimeball even more slovenly with language than his forebears were in the dispensation of their chromosomes. He’s referring to the standup set Michelle Wolf, a comedian, performed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night, somewhat at the expense of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a brazen, knowing, and hugely powerful enemy of the free press and deceiver of the public by trade. As you’ve surely read by now, Wolf joked that Sanders’s makeup—her “perfect smoky eye”—is made of the ashes of the facts she burns.
. . .
A frank and honest description of who she is and what she does would be much more harsh: Every day, Sarah Huckabee Sanders plants herself, by choice, between the public and the facts of what’s being done at the very highest levels of American executive power, and does her damnedest to break and delegitimize the means by which the two are brought together. She is one of the most visible and powerful people in American civic life, and she uses her visibility and power—she chooses to use her visibility and power—to confuse the public and degrade its grasp on the truth, rather than to inform or empower or serve it. Her willingness to do this on behalf of Donald Trump, day after day, and the unmistakable teeth-gnashing relish with which she does it, are the substance of her power, and the reason why anybody knows who the **** she is at all. What history will remember about Sanders is that she is the scum of the ****ing earth, and not the jokey means by which one comedian pointed out this inarguable fact—and that’s only if the senile rageaholic ****baby moron on whose behalf she shames herself on television every day doesn’t annihilate the human race, first.
There's more at the link . . . if you want to read it (which I don't recommend).
This obscene rant is precisely why I, and others like me, fear for the future of the American republic. When the two extremes of political opinion are so far divided, so lost to facts and reality, so obsessed with their own (profoundly flawed) interpretation of current events, then the time can't be far away when some of them stop talking and start fighting. Some would say that time has already arrived, given the antics of Antifa and their ilk (e.g. Berkeley) on one side, and the posturings of racial and far-right-wing extremists (e.g. Charlottesville) on the other. There appears to be no middle ground whatsoever between such extremists: no place where they might agree to differ, or exchange views in at least a semblance of civility.
Oh, well. I suppose that means the rest of us, the civilized majority, will just have to deal with all such extremists, Left- or Right-wing, in the same way. We'll have to regard all of them as a clear and present danger to our lives, safety and well-being, and respond accordingly. I've done that before, in another country and another context. So have many Americans in these troubled times. We can always do so again closer to home, if that should become necessary.
Peter
12 comments:
Being so far to the right that I left the republicans for not being conservative enough, I disagree with the guilt being EQUAL for both sides, though I will say that there is guilt on both sides. Interestingly enough, though I consider myself an independent, I've been called both reactionary and liberal. I guess it all depends on who is casting the stones.
I understand what you are saying. Two completely opposite groups that can't get along.
But...
Charlotteville would not have been an issue if:
A. The city leaders and the police had provided proper security, rather than forcing the legal protesters (paid and permitted, and unmasked for all to see) to evac through a gauntlet of illegal protesters (unpaid and unpermitted, and masked to boot.) and,
B. If the illegal protesters had acted like civilized human beings, or at least, semi-civilized human beings.
Yes, the loons on the (supposed) right (hey, what's with all those flags that look like they just came out of packages...) were ignorant, stupid, dumb asses, but they had the legal right to be ignorant, stupid dumb asses. They also paid for the privilege to be ignorant, stupid dumb asses and followed all the laws and rules set forth by the city and state. They weren't the ones crashing someone else's party. So, in this case, I side with those slope headed, ignorant, stupid dumb asses. As much as I hate to.
I also sided with the Illinois Nazis to legally march wherever they wanted to. And in that instance, the protesters acted like decent, intelligent, humans and showed those bigoted arseholes that the good people of that town and pretty much the state and nation wouldn't tolerate the 'Nazis'. Even though the 'Ill Nazis' had nothing to do with national socialism...
I also look at one side (the Left) who are constantly whining about "why can't we all just get along" at the same time they're ruining the lives of anyone who doesn't fit into their very narrow world view, and wonder when someone within the media would finally notice the hypocrisy.
And now, thanks to some foul mouthed, evil hearted twit, some media people have finally reported that things have gone too far. That the left is using the very things they are supposedly against to hurt and destroy anyone who doesn't fit in.
Yes. I hate all the hate. But... I am enjoying the spotlight on all the people who are now standing around shocked at what was finally exposed. All the evils of the DNC didn't do it. All the evils of Planned Parenthood didn't do it. All the evils of a previous unnamed administration didn't do it. It was one stupid twit who finally cracked the media awareness.
Yay. Keep going, media. Now that your collective heads are out of their rectal resting places, try looking around and seeing what else you (the media) finally can see.
Now, in the interest of Shadenfreude, I will lean back and laugh, "Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha."
Gloat over, on to the next story.
Your point of an unbridgeable gap is a good one, and one in which I agree.
However, there is a long and storied American tradition of political invective. For example: He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight. - John Randolph
Preston Brooks beat Charles Sumner with a can on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Will Rodgers said that one day of each year should be Open Season on Senators.
Err, and everything ever written by Ambrose Bierce or H. L. Mencken.
It may be that the previous 75 years have been one of unusual unity for the American polity and we're now just regressing to the mean. There's certainly no reason to gravitate to it anymore, as the Elites have set such a pathetic example.
The idea that there is a good centreist solution and that the middle ground is where most people's opinions lay is simply no longer true. The last middle ground generation is the Baby Boomers, and their hold on the political debate is slowly slipping away. Each younger generation is increasingly polarised, and nobody has any faith that third way, 'silent majority' type politics of the centre will produce anything worthwhile.
It's not just the US, it's the same all over Europe. The left won the social war, the neoliberals won the economic one and that's the new political paradigm. It's either globalist economics and cultural Marxism on one side, and a revolt against different elements of that on the other.
There is no compromise between healthy food and deadly poison.
Should we roll over and die, and let our people and our culture be exterminated, in the name of civility? I say no.
Leftists know that words can hurt them. That's why they want to silence us.
Leftists also know that political power flows from the barrel of a gun. That's why they want to disarm us.
Speak up. Cowboy up.
I look at the right as largely non-aligned. We can't even police who gets called 'right', since many leftists who are not considered part of the cool in-group are called right by the left.
But the left is aligned, and seldom condemn their own side. People still proudly wear Che t-shirts, and condemnations of Antifa didn't show up until on the left until certain politicians started to be afraid of losing votes.
So, the game of 'both sides' is not actually balanced and fair. The Republican/Democrat scam is to try and play it that way, and have some 'conservative' pretend to oppose the progressive moves forward.
We can see this mindset, a bureaucratic mindset, taught even in churches, with regard to marriage. We know what marriage is, many churches actually teach what marriage is, but how many churches allow people to marry without reference to the state. No, they are bureaucrats, so they insist you go get the marriage license that their fellow bureaucrats want you to.
And if you look into it, a break with the state institution probably should have happened years ago when the feminists started meddling legislatively.
But few are actually talking about it at all, with most 'leaders' just marching along. The things of this world, like non-profit status, health insurance, and retirement seem to be too important to risk.
So true dissidents show up, and they are just labelled right, alt-right, rude, unbecoming, deplorable, whatever- they are all different kinds of people with differing ideas, some obviously not right at all. (Richard Spencer was most popular when he wasn't allowed to talk.)
Blame can lie with individual dissidents. And blame, lies with left for the continued injustices visited upon the people. It is not a good idea to subvert the justice system, because the justice system is a way to seek justice without having to resort to violence.
"I blame both sides."
Srsly??
Manners, decorum and respect for your blog alone restrain me from fully and properly describing that false equivalency between the sides as the sort of utter codswallop which it is, in the fullness of language which it richly deserves. And from someone who ought to certainly know better. Tsk, tsk.
And on May Day, of all days!
I will let two cinematic moments suffice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ5sjFf4w1k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl9pfOxlfXM
The "two sides" are not both to blame.
One side has tried to be left alone, overwhelmingly restrained itself in the face of predations which earlier generations would have used as pretext for bloody revolution long since, and instead taken recourse to naught but rhetoric and permitted civil remedies to maintain that status, going back for nearly a century's time in this country. How's that workin' out for ya?...Anybody?? Beuller? Ferris Beuller...?
The other side has pushed, shoved, kicked, punched, bitten, clawed, and killed, in a ceaseless effort to have absolute sway, 24/7/365, not just in the public square, but in your living room, the words from your own mouth, and inside the very thoughts of your head, from dawn to dusk and back again.
It may be somehow comforting to pretend to be agnostically Swiss in such a time, particularly as events seem to portend a reckoning of the disparity, but it is a fool's errand for anyone to think that will avail for any length of time.
One side's been pushing, pushing, and pushing some more, ceaselessly.
Every man has a limit, beyond which he'll be pushed no farther.
(And when you're out of men, you get...Europe, today.
Having left the bulk of their manhood scattered across Flanders Field a century hence, we see what an invasion opposed by women of both sexes looks like.)
The push-back here isn't going to go the way the pushers think.
One may wish otherwise at their inclination, but the physics of pendulums are inexorable.
Aesop is correct.
I don't usually do this but...
+1 - Aesop is indeed correct.
Sorry Peter.
I think some of you have lived a relatively sheltered existence when it comes to right-wing extremists. Think of some of the venting during the Obama administration. Think, too, of right-wing terrorism, some of whose disciples I encountered during my time as a prison chaplain. Think "sovereign nation", think "Freemen", and so on. They were (and the few survivors out there still are) every bit as extreme as left-wing moonbats.
However, if you disagree that both sides are equally guilty of such extremism, that's your prerogative. I'll accept that I've been exposed to some aspects of extremism that are less commonly known. Some of that comes from my background in South Africa, too. See this link:
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2015/06/neo-nazis-in-action.html
They're in this country, too. I've met them.
The difference, Peter, is that the right-wing whack-a-doodles are just that: extreme fringe, few, far between, and far beyond the mainstream of conservative thought or action.
Whereas the Left-wing whack-a-doodles are right down the middle of the Leftards' fairway, and in most cases, the most radical lunatics are their designated spokesholes and leadership.
Game. Set. Match.
A (thank-a-merciful-God-former) Supreme Court Justice wrote a column openly advocating the repeal of the Second Amendment (and mirabile dictu! has not gone into hiding for fear of being whacked, as he ought to be in a more just universe - because he knows our side isn't as bug nuts as his side is), to attempt to restrict a right guaranteed to citizens since hundreds of years before the bill of Rights was penned, and granted indeed by the Almighty: the right to defend oneself.
Give a holler when National Review or the WSJ editorial page publishes an editorial calling for rounding up the entire Left, from Shrillary to Julio and Maria next door, stripping them of their belongings, and putting them in tar-paper shacks in the desert, a la Manzanar, and will have actual equivalency, and my retraction.
And let me know when some blue-collar Republican working man from the VFW takes time out of his day to go attempt to assassinate twenty Democrat members of Congress with an AR-15, and you'll have proven your point.
As Wilford Brimley told the deputy in The Electric Horseman,
"I wouldn't be getting my hopes up."
I’m with Aesop 100%.
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