The New Jonestown ... Mark Steyn

Well, we are seeing the death of a cult.

I've never thought of that . . . but you're dead-on right! Great analysis!

Will it be televised?

happy warrior
MARK STEYN

The New Jonestown

The day after the election, I found myself behind a Vermont granolamobile bearing the sticker Bush Scares Me. And stuck in its wake on a winding country road, I found myself more bemused by its message with every passing mile. Even given the general emotional exhibitionism of the Democratic party — "I feel your pain," etc. — it seems very odd to go around advertising one's fear. When I was tootling around the Sunni Triangle last year, I was a little twitchy in the dodgier parts of Fallujah and Tikrit, but I don't think it would have helped matters to paste Baathists Scare Me to the back of my beat-up rental car. When fear's a bumper sticker, you're probably safe.

So I assumed that Vermont lady wasn't advertising her fear so much as her membership of the club: All decent persons are revolted by Bush.

But a couple of days later I wasn't so sure. A lot of Democrats seem to have succeeded in genuinely terrifying themselves. "Dejected Voters Find Themselves In An Even Bluer State," ran a Los Angeles Times headline — in its Health section: "'People are in absolute post-traumatic stress and total despair and pretty much believe American society is permanently destroyed,' says Renana Brooks, a Washington, D.C., clinical psychologist whose practice was flooded with calls on Wednesday morning . . . It looks to me like a worse trauma than 9/11." According to the San Francisco Chronicle in its post-Election Day roundup, "Of the eight patients San Francisco psychotherapist Frances Verrinder saw Wednesday, seven were upset and frightened to the point of tears . . . Vicki Cormack found her neighbor on her knees, weeping. Ron Armstrong of San Francisco is waiting for his upstairs tenant to come out of his depression so he can ask him for the rent check . . ."

The next time some Hollywood A-lister claims from behind his entourage, security detail, and perimeter-surveillance cameras that "Bush scares me," he might want to think about the effect on his more impressionable fellow Democrats. Sophisticated liberals aren't meant to be impressionable, of course. That's for us rube-hick-hayseed types warned by our preacherman to follow the Lord Bush or burn in Hell with the fornicators and sodomites and multilateralists. But you can't help noticing that, for all the Jane Smileys, Bill Mahers, and Maureen Dowds scoffing at Jesus-freak Republicans as fearful, superstitious, closed-minded simpletons, it's their side that's carrying on like a millennial suicide cult. Conservatives have long argued that the strident moral absolutism of modern liberalism is a new religion, but we made the mistake of assuming it was the new Rome rather than the new Jonestown.

Last year, I happened to catch a BBC documentary arguing that the Bush administration was controlled by Christian fundamentalists who believe in the Rapture — the moment when the faithful will ascend in a mass migration to Heaven. But a big chunk of the Democratic party seems to be made up of liberal fundamentalists who dream of ascending in a mass migration to Canada. Good luck to them. If you think Massachusetts is a blue state, you should try the Yukon in February. Scientific rationalists would point out that, though the true believers always talk about their wish to ascend to Canada for an after-Bush afterlife, there's no evidence that any of them actually does so.

On the other hand, they are longing for deliverance from the Bush Terror. In the New York Times, Dean E. Murphy explained that Democrats were pinning their hopes on an "act of God." By "act of God," Mr. Murphy didn't mean an earthquake or a hurricane, but something more along the lines of Leon Czolgosz, President McKinley's assassin. As Mr. Murphy explained, "Had McKinley not been killed, Marcus A. Hanna, the political handler who was as instrumental to McKinley's success as Karl Rove has been to Mr. Bush's, would have pursued his dream of 'creating a Republican machine that would go on forever,' Professor Wilentz said." That would be Sean Wilentz of Princeton. "Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush now have a chance to do what Hanna and McKinley never did: Lay the foundation for lasting Republican dominance. 'The Republicans are basically unchecked,' Professor Wilentz said. 'There is no check in the federal government and no check in the world. They have an unfettered playing field.'

"Until the next act of God, that is."

Okay, you sold me, gimme the sticker: Bush Scares Me, Too. He scares me because he came within two points — or, as they say on the cable shows, 136,000 votes in Ohio — of handing over the country to this crowd. Yes, Karl Rove's Hanna-esque strategy has its merits: Incremental gains are often the ones that last. But this was way too incremental. Imagine if those exit polls had been right. I wrote in our last issue that I believe Bush missed an opportunity three years ago. Back in the days of his 80 percent approval ratings, when the embers at Ground Zero were still smoking, the president could have made a big effort to shift the culture of the country away from the stunted emotional narcissism of modern liberalism.

But he didn't.

Fifty-five million people voted for John Kerry. Imagine how things might have gone on November 2 with a likable Democratic candidate. Scary.

I have waited for 44 years for this. In my moronic simpleton way I hate these people from the depths of my soul.

In my time I have watched these people, starting with JFK, destroy the country of my youth, and corrupt the State of my exile. The Rat Party is Evil, as I teach my Grand Kids, I take a lot of pleasure seeing them snivel.

"We simply drop to our knees for guidance rather than climb on a couch at $300 bucks an hour."

We have courts, jobs and schools that often order psychiatric counseling, intervention, etc. They do not see prayer as a (preferred) alternative. But I do.

Excellent post. Rush predicted we would see the wackos come unhinged, and he is exactly right.

Thanks CD!

'There is no check in the federal government and no check in the world...

Well, there is this little thing called elections that we hold every four years.

It's only been four short years since the Dems had the White House and they are already reduced to throwing tantrums. Four years. Get over yourselves.

granolamobile

Meaning it's full of nuts, flakes, and fruits.

Thanks for the ping

BTTT

Anytime!

BTTT

Thank you

Mark Steyn BUMP!

Tell them rope is a cheap and enviromentaly friendly way to take their "Final exit" and then everything will be better.

Yeah, tell them it's "Eur Rope", that's the ticket.

Great post, geedee! Just great!

"'People are in absolute post-traumatic stress and total despair and pretty much believe American society is permanently destroyed,' says Renana Brooks, a Washington, D.C., clinical psychologist whose practice was flooded with calls on Wednesday morning . . . It looks to me like a worse trauma than 9/11."

Amazing.

Because they might come and get you in the middle of the night,...

...and take you out of your hospital bed, put cuffs on you, and arrest you for abusing a vegetable, the crime of which is no crime where you live. Oh, wait. That DID happen here. Never mind.

Uh.... I followed the link but I didn't see what story you were talking about. Care to tell me more?

These people are so blessed to live in this country, they have forgotten to be grateful. They have nothing to be passionate about, so they get all worked up about nothing. It's the Seinfeld syndrome. It's about nothing.

Good post -- that's tag-line material:

The Democrat's Dilemma: Which nothing shall I be afraid of today?"

Thanks for doing the right thing!

I try. :)