Posted on 11/27/2007 10:25:19 PM PST by smoothsailing
November 28, 2007
Eight Years of Liberal Hatred
By J.R. Dunn
In politics as in personal life, hatred is a dangerous tool. It's like one of the early medieval cannons, just as capable of blowing up in your face as it is of lobbing a ball at the enemy. Of course, the medieval metal casters realized they had a problem and worked to correct it. Haters never seem to get that far.
For the latest evidence of this, we can thank Peter Berkowitz. Berkowitz is that rarity, a sincere liberal with as critical an eye for his own side as he has for the opposition. In a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, "The Insanity of Bush Hatred", Berkowitz attempts to take the measure of the haters, a phenomenon generally unmentioned by the legacy media, which prefers to act as an unknowing conduit for these people (watch how quickly this changes if Madame Hillary manages to squeak in).
Berkowitz gives us several fine examples of individuals on the very edge of permanent cognitive damage from Bush Derangement Syndrome. People who can't so much as hear the name without their faces going red and their features distorted. (My favorite is the "political moderate" who answers a civil question with: "I . . . hate . . . the . . . way . . . Bush . . . talks", an excellent illustration of the psychological factor called "displacement".)
(Other examples, if such were needed, can be found in this piece, concerning the next president's options in Iraq. According to Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, the surge and its results are no more than a piece of theater worked up to allow Bush to hand the disaster over to the next administration. That is to say, Al Queda in Iraq is allowing the tar to be beaten out of themselves on behalf of their old pal George. Thanks for the input, Joost.)
Berkowitz gives us a nice guided tour of liberal follies from the inside. But he fails at coming up with an explanation. He's a rational man, looking for reasons in the record, sorting through the facts in an attempt to pinpoint exactly where Bush hatred began to metastasize within the liberal mentality. But all he succeeds in doing is to underline the fact that there is no rational explanation. Bush v. Gore, the War on Terror, the administration's trampling of the Constitution... all clearly reveal themselves as hollow excuses, created ex-post-facto to hide the actual explanation. The Supreme Court decision was triggered by Al Gore himself. Future historians will marvel over the fact that an attack against the U.S. generated hatred not for the enemy but for American leadership. And whatever depredations have been carried against American rights and liberties (and I don't believe anything of the sort), they pale in significance against those of FDR, Woodrow Wilson, and, for that matter, Abe Lincoln.
All the same, the two Bush terms have been on unending carnival of hatred. Just to hit the high points, there's the novel blueprinting his assassination, a film on the same topic, and probably more. We've had several impeachment attempts, all hopeless on their face, the latest proposed by the noted statesman Dennis Kucinich. And all this before we get to one single word of media coverage on Karl Rove, waterboarding, surveillance, Virginia Plame, or Scott McClellan.
It's a waste of time looking for a rational explanation amid all this. None could conceivably cover every last convolution of paranoia, delusion, and obsession. "Bush hatred," as Berkowitz writes, "is different." It's different because it has its roots in ideology.
Ideological Devils
We often overlook the fact that liberalism is an ideology, and has been since the days of the New Deal. It is not a doctrine or a school of thought, and does not operate by the rational rules required in those cases. It's an ideology in the sense of a synthetic, politically-based replacement for religious belief, and it operates by the rules of an ideology -- irrational, compulsive, and totally divorced from anything outside of the ideological system itself.
Hatred, along with fear, hysteria, and conformity, is a basic element of ideological thinking. I know of no exceptions. For the Nazis, the hate-figures were, of course, the Jews. For the Soviet communists, they were a shifting cast of kulaks, socialists, capitalists, Trotskyites and "wreckers" (saboteurs out to destroy communist achievements on the orders of any of the above). For the New Dealers, it was businessmen (as it is today for some Greens).
The need for devil figures remains true no matter what part of the political spectrum the ideology lies on, what other elements are present, and whatever the ideology's goals may be. You could go so far as to say that hate is necessary to the definition of any ideology.
The hate figures are often synthetic. Orwell recognized this in his creation of Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984. Goldstein (who was based on Trotsky), the victim of the book's five-minute hate, was a semi-mythical entity with the exact characteristics required to fit the passions of the moment.
If the hate-figures aren't completely artificial, if they're based on real individuals, then they're caricatures, figures distorted to an extent that all sense of reality has been drained out. We've seen this repeatedly from American liberals.
Richard M. Nixon's notorious social gaffes (which are usually a product of extreme shyness) were presented as evidence of incipient insanity, with all of Nixon's actions analyzed for evidence of a breakdown. Thus the 1970 incursion into Cambodia, the result of months of pleading by U.S. military commanders to be allowed to hit the PAVN's supply dumps and training camps across the border, was explained with a claim that Nixon had seen the film Patton the night before.
While it was forgotten amid all the adulation following his funeral, Reagan was loathed nearly as much as Bush during his presidential terms. (A critical moment in my political education occurred when I stepped out of my office moments after Reagan was shot in 1981 and saw Americans dancing in the street over the news.) Reagan, of course, was the halfwit who needed to be led around by his "handlers" lest he stumble in front of a bus or hit the wrong button on the nuclear football. Almost everything he said or did was reported to fit that image, for example, the widely-covered incident in which he referred to Thailand as "Siam". What the reporters failed to realize was that for the first third of Reagan's long life, the name of the place actually was Siam. (Late in the 80s, a small number of liberals began to wise up. Prominent among them was the cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who published a cartoon showing one of his trademark wimpy liberals saying, "Reagan said the Berlin Wall would come down, and I said Reagan was a fool." Each panel featured yet another statement by Reagan answered with the same refrain, until we reach the last: "Because if Reagan was right all along... ... then what kind of fool am I?")
We could go on for page after page if we liked. Eisenhower, the man who coordinated Allied strategy against Hitler's Germany (a better piece of work than any of his critics ever achieved) was dismissed as the "Great Golfer". Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay. Possibly the most odious case I'm aware of: Garry Wills. After it was revealed that an Iraqi hit team had been stalking George H.W. Bush, Wills produced a column in which he said, "Who cares? It's only George Bush."
Then, after all that, and only after all that, do we get to George W. Bush, baby-killer, torturer, trasher of the Constitution, and slave of Halliburton. In the context we've established, none of this looks particularly unprecedented or unique, or even surprising. Bush is simply the latest of a long line of hate-figures -- it's the way the liberal-left does things
Liberalism does things that way because it has devolved into an ideology with an ideology's characteristics. (Liberalism may well be the only ideology that has actually gone through a process of development: most of the others were designed, to one extent or another.) Little trace remains of discussion, debate, consensus, or any respect for democratic norms and procedures. There's only the philosophy of "whatever it takes", the strategy of "by any means necessary".
It will grow more rabid in time, as it always does. When Rudolph Giuliani is elected, they will turn on him the same way they did Bush. They already have in New York City. (In all discussions of Giuliani's "failings" I have yet to see anyone point out that Giuliani is the sole Republican candidate who has put the boot to the liberals successfully and repeatedly.) For that matter, Mitt Romney would be in for the same treatment if he were elected. Even Ron Paul, borderline radical that he is.
Any Republican elected to high office will be treated the same for the foreseeable future. So the media may as well knock off all the marveling on how hated Republican office holders are. At this point, it's simply part of the job description. Liberalism has become the party of hate -- the first major party to fit that description since the heyday of the Know-Nothings. You can check the record and see how long they lasted.
Can liberalism change? It's doubtful. There are still decent liberals. Berkowitz is only one example. But they are islands. They alone can turn it around, and I don't think there are enough of them. (By his own admission, Berkowitz doesn't seem to have had much luck with his intellectual friends.
In any case, what's required would be that the liberals "de-ideologize" themselves, and there's no record that any political entity has ever accomplished this. Communism was de-ideologized by collapse, fascism by Allied tanks. Not much of a choice from the liberal point of view.
So we can look forward to more viciousness and more nastiness, more foully and more often expressed. It will only break when liberalism does.
Speed the day.
.............................................
J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/eight_years_of_liberal_hatred.html at November 28, 2007 - 01:17:42 AM EST
If Hillary Clinton wins we'll see what irrational hatred really is.
I believe the credit was misplaced. I personally don't think Clinton would have done "welfare reform"..if the Pubbies didn't have the majorities in the houses.
It was just another "stick his finger in the wind" moment..for him.
All of course...IMHO.
btt
It's obvious that the so-called leaders on both sides of the aisle have made the left and right despise each other enough that we dont talk to each other any more without automatically calling each other liars, boot lickers or kool-aid drinkers.
Neither side has all the answers in this country and sooner or later, we'll need to come together or the country will fail.
I want to thank you for my new tag line. That’s a keeper on the same scale as Savages statement that liberalism is a mental disorder.
Name Republican leaders anywhere who behaved as the Unamerican Dems have? (where do you think Republicans get their nickname as the stupid party, and as spineless, over the decades?)
Al Gore, a DEMOCRAT, who began THEIR hysteria by refusing to concede in the election of a United States President, for the good of his country. (as other good men had done before him)
They and their media then started a campaign to de-legitimize President Bush, saying he STOLE the election, knowing it was a lie.
They then began accusing him of lying to go to war, being cold hearted and sinister enough to kill soldiers for his own political and financial gain. He, the VP and staff have been drug thru the mud and been slandered as corrupt, evil, have been investigated and thrown in jail by rogue CIA officers.
The Dims in Congress and our Intell agencies have leaked intell to their MSM sabotage our war efforts, have aided, abetted and comforted the enemy in two war theaters, leading to God knows what on the battlefield for our soldiers.
No, calling them vampires who suck the lifeblood out of their country everyday does not dehumanize them at all, they admittedly call their actions a proud “dissent”, and they have proved everyday that they are no longer the loyal opposition, but an enemy to the Untied States.
Show me where a Republican has undermined his President, sabatoged his country, abetted and comforted our enemies at a time of war?
I believe most of their hate and anger stems from their
inherent sense of superiority, elitism, and arrogance.
They DESERVE to be in power, and anything else is some sort of evil aberration.
To understand why leftists are arrogant, elitist, and self-superior, you should read “A Conflict of Visions” by Sowell. Leftists believe all decisions should come down from an elite few at the top of the power structure.
Of course you rest your case, because you don’t have one.
Giuliani (YOU just posted this "Yes, one must vote for a lifelong abortion foe, or we will go to hell, lose our soul and become unprincipled scum of the earth." here, Bush (think education and medicare at least), McCain and every damn Republican that ever voted for a tax increase under the progressive tax system, minimum wage, anything dealing with Social Security that isnt specifically to abolish it, gerrymandering or any gun control measure. Should I continue?
see #71. Lady, you’re a loon from the right.
There is something positive about the two Cs, Jimmah Cahtuh, or the other two? Who would have guessed.
Michael Frazier
Anyway, your policy differences with the hundreds of politicians elected BY YOUR FELLOW AMERICANS, who beg for more gov largess, and more gov power, year after year, is not the subject here.
And you know it.
Name a time when the Republican Party, has undermined his President overseas in wartime, leaked intell to our enemies, aided and abetted our enemies, sabotaged and propagandized against their country?
You cannot.
My 87 year old mother, otherwise as sharp as a tack, is an F.D.R. democrat and there's no talking politics with her. She gets down right irrational and I know her blood pressure is soaring. I never bring up anything political with her and when she does, I change the subject.
I've seen the theory that he knew in advance that Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked. Reminds me of the mindless liberals who think Bush knew about 9/11 in advance (Or even master minded it).
Maybe you should have put a sarc tag on there. Your fault, not mine.
You know, I didnt pay attention to you changing the subject. I never said Republicans undermined a lib pres during war.
I said the right actively demonizes the left just as the left does to us and you know it.
We will have to agree to disagree, I thought I explained myself thoroughly in post #56, before you even posted to me.
I have never, ever, ever, heard the Republican Party dehumanize Dems. They accuse them of wanting big gov? They admit it, hardly demonization.
But I have heard for decades upon decade, Dems outwardly calling Republicans racists, bigots, homophobes, sexists, wanting to starve children and kill old people, wanting polluted water and air, warmongers, hating poor people, and on and on.
Here’s another analysis of the Left’s hatred for Pres. Bush, which is really a hatred for all moderate and conservative Americans:
http://www.talkaboutgovernment.com/group/alt.politics.usa/messages/623416.html
Oh, my yes, and it isn't restricted to the left although their insistent secular element trends that direction. I'm working on a thought I read in Paul Hollander's The End Of Commitment that seems pertinent here so I'll offer a little of it for a proper FR thrashing.
It concerns the source of morality. Commonly (and not only in Western cultures, nor even in monotheisms) that source is religion; that is, a God's-eye view if not God Himself is posited as the perspective from which everyone's behavior is assessed. When individuals within that culture reject religion as a source of morality that source devolves to politics.
This has some interesting effects. Politics as a source of morality is inherently tribal; that is, the perspective from which one's behavior is assessed is that of one's political affiliation. That can be economic class in classic Marxism or the race/sex/sexual preference trinity within the modern Left. Foucault treated it as a base axiom to his approach to all of politics.
The upshot is that that behavior that is considered to advance the interest of that political affiliation is considered moral; that which serves to act against it is immoral.
It is for this reason that partisans can project a level of hatred on such a lightning rod as Vice President Cheney, for one example. Note that nearly none of those involve specifics. They take the form of "looking out for his friends in Big Oil" or "trampling on the Constitution" or "taking our civil rights away," and when the accuser is pressed for specific incidents he or she treats that as a threat. When that accuser has only abstractions to offer clearly some standard other than specific activities is in place.
This is seductive for partisans on both sides because ideology is an intellectual short-cut, a substitute for the taxing necessity of judging individual acts by universal standards which often conflict in the real world. "He's not from my tribe, hence he's wrong" is considerably easier and often one hasn't the information necessary to go beyond it anyway. That failing is occasionally mine as much as anyone else's.
Tribalism, unfortunately, begets tribalism. One who has proclaimed him- or herself your enemy may often not be dealt with on any other basis however noble your intentions. Someone who excuses violence against you based on some class affiliation has fully accepted politics as the sole source of morality. They might someday be talked out of it but in the meantime they'll kill you.
Just some thoughts on the topic of politics and tribal hatred - criticism is welcomed.
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