Meet The New Left. Same

Meet The New Left. Same As the Very Old Left - The left - from Jeff Fecke to Josh Marshall and everyone in between - is all but declaring victory in 2004 already. They see the President's slip below 60% approval in many polls as a harbinger of electoral doom.

Podhoretz (via Instapundit and Jarvis) in the NYPost has an excellent piece today on the new left and the pitfalls - the culture of snobbery and hatred, as well as the preening overconfidence that seems to be swallowing so many - that await them.

The triumphant success of Howard Dean's once-quixotic presidential campaign in marshaling genuine grass-roots support and money over the Internet demonstrates that there is a large and hungry audience in the land for a leftist political-cultural message.

The Dean campaign is a more mainstream outgrowth of the popular demonstrations against the Iraq war organized last winter by the Stalinist anti-Semites of International ANSWER.

That's the part that so many relatively well-meaning people on the left miss - or, perhaps, just don't find all that bad (as I think we're seeing in the left's complete ignorance of North Korea and the cynicism of their spin in Iraq).

Part of what fuels this alliance is a feeling of powerlessness — of not being heard, of not being paid attention to. Note the rise of what I like to call "Foxanoia," the lunatic theory popular these days in leftist circles that the Fox News Channel has become the dominant voice in all of America and is controlling every piece of information that gets out to the American people.

This is, of course, what gave rise to "conservative talk radio", as well as the libertarian/conservative hegemony over the Internet.

I think it's interesting to watch what sort of media arise from these feelings of powerlessness:

• Conservatism - Decentralized media like the large, well-developed libertarian/conservative presence on the Internet, as well as entrepreneurial assaults like talk radio.
• Liberalism - Highly-centralized media hives, whether in the open market (the publishing industry, the media), or "independent" media that exercise a high degree of collective control (Indymedia).

Podhoretz continues:

...it's absurd to claim that, because Fox has bested CNN and MSNBC in the cable-news race, its influence surpasses the combined might of the three broadcast networks, the news magazines and the editorial guidance given at most of the major daily U.S. newspapers.

It's so absurd, in fact, that few on the right genuinely believe that people on the left genuinely suffer from Foxanoia. My fellow conservatives tend to think the argument that there's no liberal media anymore is simply a smokescreen, a sophistic dodge.

It's not. They do believe it, because they believe so ardently in the power of the media that they figure their inability to stop the Iraq war from happening can only be explained by the rise of a pro-war media.

In fact, they lost an argument about the nature of terrorism, rogue nations and world power after 9/11. But they can't bear to admit that, so they instead argue that Bush only prevailed because of lies he told, that Fox and Ann Coulter only succeed because they lie.

This last statement is interesting to me, personally.

This site has long documented the nearly-institutional condescenscion liberals feel for conservatives at large, but the extent to which this has devolved into open hatred.

This connects with the feelings of powerlessness Podhoretz addressed earlier. For indeed, what breeds hatred and bigotry but the feeling of powerlessness?

Examples abound throughout history:

• During reconstruction, Southern whites felt deprived of power. Disbelieving that their loss could be chalked up to the bankruptcy of racism, they blamed everyone - carpetbaggers, the Northern/Jew/Catholic media, conspiracies in every holler.
• As many empires or societies have decayed, the majority stakeholders have taken out their frustrations on their minority countrymen; Turks against Armenians, French and German skinheads against Turks, New York English against New York Germans...
• After World War I, German powerlessness combined with what Goldhagen referred to as the endemic, eliminationist antisemitism in German culture to lay the groundwork for the Holocaust.
• Yeah, I think the conservative exodus of the nineties may have created a lunatic fringe market for Michael Savage. Nostra Culpa.

Powerlessness breeds bigotry and hatred.

And the denial that goes with it...:

These folks believe a grotesque, nearly cosmic unfairness is going on — a wrong that must be righted. Everything — everything — has gone wrong since 2001. "The Bush administration has done virtually nothing good for the country," says Michael Tomasky, who as editor-elect of the American Prospect magazine will be making the more cerebral versions of the arguments offered in Franken's unabashed screed.

That is a powerful glue, the perfect opinion for the rise of a mass movement.

The problem for the Foxanoia axis is this: What, aside from hating Bush and the Fox News Channel, do they believe in?

Is there anything positive they can say about America? And I don't mean about George Bush's America — I mean about America in general.

Ask a liberal. Let's find out.

Most of them are out of practice.

Podhoretz continues:

Take almost any subject. On race, can a Foxanoid leftist say anything other than the relations between the races are in disastrous shape? On the environment, does a Foxanoid have anything to offer other than that the sky is falling and the earth is melting?

On economics, the Foxanoid mantra is always the same: There is a growing gap between rich and poor, a growing deficit that will eat away at everything, a growing job loss. Oh, and tax cuts are evil.

And don't even ask about the War on Terror, which according to the Foxanoids is a) going badly because we haven't been tough enough on al Qaeda and b) going badly because we've been too tough in the application of anti-terror laws and c) going badly because the world hates us and d) going badly because we deserve it that the world hates us.

What can the Foxanoids offer as a message of hope for the future? Cheaper prescription drugs? Please.

Bingo. It's a message not unlike that of Bob Dole's "At Least I'm Not Clinton", back in '96.

I want to highlight this next bit, for the Jeff Feckes and Josh Marhalls and Kos Kosensteins of the world to try to absorb. It's an important point:

Yes, the left is rising. But for the left to truly challenge the right for dominance of the intellectual debate, its leaders and thinkers will need to be able to offer a picture of a better, safe and wealthier United States.

And the problem for those who describe themselves as "progressives" is that they can see no progress anywhere. All they see is misery stretched out far into the future.

Bingo. There is not a single "progressive" vision for American that doesn't read like my daughter's vision for the hamsters she wants to buy; everyone taken care of, nobody wanting for anything (at great expense to Dad, but never no mind)...none of the stuff that the hamsters citizens themselves say, and feel in their guts, that they need to really live with confidence in this world. No More Terror. A Nation that can say it's done its part to rid the world of the type of human bacteria that carried out 9/11, that jail children, that rape women, that feed families into plastic-shredders.

Their failed philosophy has blinded them, left them incapable of conceiving of a positive future or offering even a road map out of their own misery.

Except, maybe, if somebody would come along and invent a rival to the Fox News Channel.

I can't wait for the fabled liberal talk network to go on the air. Expect wall to wall kvetching, wrapped in the invincible, myopic belief that everyone would really feel the same, if they just weren't so stupid (and susceptible to lies, lies, lies, of course).

Posted by Mitch at August 29, 2003 03:08 PM