Shot In The Dark: "And Stop Socializing Everything, Too, You Conservative Bastards!"

September 26, 2005

"And Stop Socializing Everything, Too, You Conservative Bastards!"

Do conservatives hate liberals?

Unquestionably, some conservatives hate some liberals.

Does either side have the market cornered?

I dunno. For purposes of argument, let's leave out the fringe, Democratic Underground and Free Republic. Then, compare the leading conservative sites - Instapundit, Powerline, Michelle Malkin, Captain Ed - with the leading lefty sites, the Daily Kos and Atrios.

Of course, it really depends on how you define "hate". To most conservatives, I'd suspect, it implies active and abiding mortal malice toward another human being.

To the left, the definition seems to be "disagreeing with the left".

Case in point: our old friend , one Paul Scott, generic lefty writer-without-portfolio from Rochester, returns to the paper.

And he's mad. But not choked with hate.

Oh, no.

Let's look through his piece and see if we can find an example of anything that any normal person would call "hate":

There are days when one can feel as if the mounting and faceless stressors in American life -- technological change, acceleration of life, materialism, economic uncertainty, fear -- have turned inward on us, dividing us like Sunni and Shia. How else can you explain the way Americans now talk about each other?

I am talking about the way in which conservatives speak about liberals. Consider the creepy trade in "books" a person must pass on the way to the coffee bar at Barnes & Noble. In powerless bouts of protest I have turned upside down more anti-liberal manifestos than I can remember. Just look at some of these titles: "The 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America,"Surrounded by Idiots,"Useful Idiots,"Intellectual Morons,"Liberalism is a Mental Disorder,"How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must),"Persecution,"Slander,"Treason,"The Enemy Within" and my personal favorite, "Deliver Us From Evil." And this is from the movement that complains about the coarsening of America culture.

So Mr. Scott vandalizes store displays - but we're the hateful ones?

And where's the hate? Calling someone names isn't "hate" - please show me a non-hyperbolic example of a mainstream conservative wishing death on a liberal.

Then there is the sight of Fox News, which tends to talk about just two things: liberals and child abductors.

Right. Because it interests their audience.

Where's the hate?Liberals, it seems, are deranged morons, cunning and powerful misanthropes to be patronized at worst, institutionalized or outfitted in orange jumpsuits at best. On good days, you wonder how this outrage industry, as it has been called, can possibly turn up the heat any higher. Should we prepare for a book titled "Impale Them All. Now"? On bad days, you order your latte and wonder if this is how they started in on the Tutsis. No. It started when the Hutus decided they were better people than the Tutsis.

The left is not above demonizing the other side, but we don't do it nearly as well. Perhaps we don't have the stomach for it. The left has never managed to demonize the word "conservative," for instance, while the word "liberal" now rolls off tongues in quarters across the land as a nasty pejorative. Liberal books tend to target Bush, not Everyone Not Like Me.

Really?

Liberals - very mainstream liberals at that don't denigrate and insult conservatives at large?

Liberals don't act on their boundless rage by taking it out on innocent conservative bystanders at all levels?

Liberals' hatred doesn't splatter like a shattered vat of hydrofluoric acid over everything that surrounds it?

Self-congratulation, thy name is Paul.

Then there is the issue of access: You need to go to the back of the Nation to order a roll of George W. Bush toilet paper. But you need only look up from your treadmill to hear Bill O'Reilly. Forget Bin Laden; to American conservatives, it's liberals who have become the Other.

And there's no reason conservatives are angry at liberals?

Of course there are reasons. Many of us see reasons that fabian socialism, in its current American guise, is bad for this nation - and where the lunatic fringe of that movement, which seems in the pages of the Daily Kos and the Nation to be becoming the mainstream - is a bad thing for this nation. We see the damage that two generations of unfettered statism did to this nation, in the form of an entrenched entitlement class (of all income levels, races and classes!), and are calling spades spades. We see the awful results of a biased media and the generations of groupthink it's created. And we're flailing away at it.

And it's not hate. And we all know what happens to those we cast as the Other, of course. We turn them into a big white sheet to aim our projectors at -- after we load them with film of every quality we like least about ourselves. Ah. The old "I'm rubber, you're glue..." defense. Hard to argue with that.

This helps me understand, then, how liberals this past year became the "haters." If you hadn't noticed, the last election found the conservative movement adeptly playing the "hate" card at every turn.

Paul Scott; on the off chance you read this, please relate the story of the Swift Veterans to your thesis. Remember them?

They were right, of course. But for daring to speak out against John Kerry, they were torn to shreds in the media. Remember - they had the facts, the very truth itself, on their side - but the left went after them, personally and with a viciousness they can't seem to even muster for the murderers among us.

As an example of "hate", Scott cites Randy Kelly's statement:

"People want to vote for something," said St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly in the Sept. 19 Star Tribune. "You have to appeal to their instincts of a better future. He [Chris Coleman] hasn't done that. He has a message of partisanship and ideology. ..."

This is a sanitized version of the official Republican script, which is to paint liberals as bereft of ideas, filled with hate, blind with anger. Nobody likes an angry person, after all.

Huh?

"This is a sanitized version...?" That's akin to saying "If I could just run four times as fast as I currently do, I could make it into the Olympics!"

And has Paul Scott heard what DFLers are saying about Randy Kelly?

It's not pretty.

Consider the handiness of this strategy: You take power with the slightest of electoral advantages, attempt to change nearly everything, and when the other side complains, accuse them of being against everything.

Politicians doing politics. Shocking, isn't it?

Forget about his endorsement of the most divisive political figure of our times -- Kelly deserves to lose simply because of the way he has taken up this faux-populist, demonizing language about his opponent.

So...you don't like his rhetoric, so it's "hate"?

On a larger level, by painting such a pitiful caricature of the opposition, the right denies the fact of its robust trade in hate-mongering. It also insulates itself from ever having to take seriously any criticism to its failed policies. Don't listen to them, it says, they're just the America-haters.

Ah. The old "If you don't see things my way, you're in denial, and denial is a form of mental illness, therefore you're crazy, and crazy people kill other people, ergo you are a potential murderer" defense.

Again, hard to argue with that.

In the eyes of Republicans we are shrill, hysterical, comical.

And this piece tends to confirm that impression, along with "poorly educated, incapable of reasoning, and promoted beyond one's skills".

Every day that the right entertains this narrative about the left is another day in which it knows nothing about 50 percent of the voting public, its own friends and neighbors, many of whom do not wear horns.

It is likely that the ringleaders behind this message think this is all a big game. It is no game at all. It is shards of glass thrown across the road. Next time you hear about the festering hatred in the hearts of liberals, ask yourself who the real haters are. Better idea; stop trying to impute other peoples' motivations by your own prejudices; it's the ken of hysterics and the sadly dissipated.

A simple case in point: Ask yourself, and do try to answer honestly, the following question: After Bill Clinton won the White House, how many conservatives...:

...threatened to leave the country?
...proposed secession from the Union?
...Proposed separate nations for the smart red-staters and the dumb blue-staters?

Submitted for your approval; if conservatives compain about liberal hatred, it's because there's plenty of it out there. The odd Ann Coulter tantrum doesn't come close to counterbalancing it all.

Posted by Mitch at September 26, 2005 06:05 PM | TrackBack

Comments

He obviously doesn't shop at the Highland Park B&N, where last's years election display was entirely books like "Bushisms, "Bush Family Fortune's: The Best Democracy money can buy" and The I Hate George W. Bush Reader"

The one copy of say O'Reily's book is well hidden in the back, so as not to disturb any wander liberal as they enjoy their half-caf soy blueberry iced cappuccino

Posted by: CCK at September 26, 2005 04:28 PM

"Remember - they had the facts, the very truth itself, on their side..."

Too bad that -- if I had to guess, and I do -- Mr. Scott likely doesn't even share your reality enough to agree with you on that. I've noticed several examples of MSM mentions of the SwiftVets that go out of their way to mention that they were discredited and/or a political attack group. Scrupulously avoiding mentioning that, you know, they *might* have been right on a couple of points...

Posted by: Steve G. at September 26, 2005 04:47 PM

"The left is not above demonizing the other side, but we don't do it nearly as well."

Now that's called irony, folks.

Posted by: Sav at September 26, 2005 04:57 PM

CCK’s right about leftist hate-books tending to be more prominently displayed in the store. I usually go to the B&N in Roseville (best collection of discount graphic novels in the Twin Cities) and last time I was there, there was a display of anti-Bush/GOP books right when I walked through the entrance from the parking lot.

BTW: did anyone else notice that most of the books that the Schott listed were written by only two people (Ann Coulter and Michael Savage) many of which haven’t been on the shelf for months if not years? On the other hand, the ones CCK listed are currently on the shelf at major book stores along with “Stupid White Men” (which has its own display at a number of shops), "The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception," “Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine,” etc.

Seems to me that Mr Schott doesn't get out to bookstores much or recently.

Posted by: Thorley Winston at September 26, 2005 05:09 PM

I should forward this fellow some of my mail. The ones I got after I wrote a piece about the tottering stacks of anti-Bush books in 04 earned me some marvellous vile correspondance.

As for ""Lying Liars and the Liars who Lyingly Lie Them," or whatever it was called, I suppose that's not mean. Not if it's true!

Posted by: Lileks at September 26, 2005 06:01 PM

Right...

The left has had just oodles of folks talking about the acts of the right as treasonous.

Or saying that you should only talk to liberals "if you have to."

The right has fostered an anti-black, anti-catholic, anti-social responsibility cult for more than 100 years. It also fostered anti-semitism until it became (mostly) fashionable to cater to them in an attempt to undermine the Democratic base (most important) and glom onto pro-defense, pro-Israeli contract positions.

Ah well.. enough of that .. on to better "non-hate" conservatism.

In it's unabashed attempt to blame the shiftless, criminal blacks in New Orleans and the Democratic corrupt administrations of Louisianna and New Orleans, the call was, "but it's first responders that have the responsibilities, and there were 2000 buses unused, and they didn't ask, etc..." Of course, there were 200 buses, most of which didn't have drivers, and of which it would have sufficed for 10%, and of course there was no where to take them, nor civil authority to accomplish it, nor ability to force those to leave who refused, and of course there was a request, and not withstanding the insurrection act which the President could have used to usurp the Governor, etc...

Let's then for a moment look at Texas.. good ole' shoot em first, fix the evidence, execute mentally retarded children Texas. SURELY in that GREAT state, THEY had evacaution plans, THEY did their jobs RIGHT, after all, the Governor is Republican, and so are almost all of the mayors, including Houston.. they MUST have planned..

Oh wait, there were 100 mile long traffic jams, and a bus burned up some elderly, and people pushed their cars after they ran out of gas.. oh.. darn, but that's SOOO much better planning than in Louissiana, I mean.. well.. wait, no, it wasn't, but blame the Democrats for the ineptitude of the Administration in putting cronies into FEMA, blame the Democrats for underfunding soil conservation (darn that conservat shun word), for looking to protect rich homes first, and the needs of an entire region second, for pursuing an underclass of workers.. yep, after all Ray Nagin caused the problems in Texas too.

Posted by: PB at September 26, 2005 08:12 PM

"The left has had just oodles of folks talking about the acts of the right as treasonous."

Big shock - the left doesn't carp on "treason". They don't recognize the concept; if they did, they'd have to jettison International ANSWER. The Dean wing of the Dems aren't ready to do that.

"Or saying that you should only talk to liberals "if you have to."

It's called a "joke". Perhaps you've heard of 'em.

"The right has fostered an anti-black, anti-catholic, anti-social responsibility cult for more than 100 years."

Bzzzt.

THe right has attempted to cultivate color-blindness. "Social responsibility" is a code word for "statism". And you can't seriously tell me that the left isn't anti-catholic.

" It also fostered anti-semitism until it became (mostly) fashionable to cater to them in an attempt to undermine the Democratic base (most important) and glom onto pro-defense, pro-Israeli contract positions."

OK, PB, you've gone far enough.

Show me ANY credible, accepted, mainstream anti-semitism in the GOP in the past thirty years. Ignore Nixon's japes, while you're at it; show me any *substantive policy* of anti-semitism. Do it now, with no more prevarication, if you please. If it's not within couple orders of magnitude of the hard left's morbid hatred of Israel, please don't bother.

"Ah well.. enough of that .. on to better "non-hate" conservatism."

"In it's unabashed attempt to blame the shiftless, criminal blacks in New Orleans..."

Game misconduct; blazing strawman. Suspended from the rest of the comment.

Posted by: mitch at September 26, 2005 09:44 PM

To: PB

From: Steve Martin

"You know when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea: have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener"!

Posted by: Sav at September 26, 2005 09:49 PM

"...let's leave out the fringe, Democratic Underground..."

ROFL! Don't let the DUmmies read that part. They'll be more than eager to tell you in very annoying and vulgar terms that they represent the mainstream and majority of Americans. ;)

Posted by: Jinx McHue at September 26, 2005 11:17 PM

I knew it wouldn't be long before someone pointed a finger at the traffic jams and the single bus that burned as a disastrous consequence of an evacuation plan executed. Never mind that 2.5-2.7 million folks were moved out of the way and that Texas Rita Operations are already terminating while Louisiana Katrina (much less Rita) Operations continue.
Thanks PB. Why don't we jump in and use Babs Streisand's claims that Global Warming has caused all of these Hurricanes; and since Bush didn't sign the Kyoto pact, ergo Bush is responsible for the Hurricanes which led to the disastrous non-evacuation in Louisiana and the disastrous evacuation in Texas.
Kool aid please.

Posted by: fingers at September 27, 2005 09:15 AM

Talking about forwarding the author some emails, I should send him the batch I got for refusing to go on strike with the Universtiy's AFSCME unit and speaking out about my decision (Over 60% of the unit didn't strike as well)

Posted by: Michael at September 27, 2005 09:28 AM

"Why don't we jump in and use Babs Streisand's claims that Global Warming has caused all of these Hurricanes"
How about NASA, which says that global warming is a contributor to the problem.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
Library/GlobalWarming/
I'm glad to know that the reason coffee shops such as Starbucks are doing so well is because there are so many Democrats drinking their specialty coffees. Or could it be that attaching latte drinking to Democrats is a stereotype?

Posted by: Teena at September 27, 2005 11:50 AM

I'm tired of the liberal bashing and the conservative bashing. There are some on both sides who peddle in rhetoric that's over the top, and they deserve to be smacked down. Here's the deal: shit stinks no matter what asshole it comes out of.

Posted by: Peter at September 27, 2005 12:12 PM

Peter,

Duly noted, and I agree. Inchoate rage is ecumenical.

But the point is that the Strib will only seem to recognize half the problem.

Posted by: mitch at September 27, 2005 12:34 PM

Thank you to everyone who posts a link to source information when spouting off. Opinions are fine, I've got plenty, and one's that I'm fairly sure are well informed, but I regurgitate here and paraphrase there. Exchanging ideas is precisely the point of all this, right? However, if you ar one of those "I'm absolutely certain of my position on this" types, no matter what side of the fence, please site your source, or kindly admit that you're just as confused as the rest of us. Thanks.

Posted by: Eddie D. at September 27, 2005 01:51 PM

Ooops. System locked up, hit the send key about a million times too many. Sorry for the triple posting.

Posted by: Eddie D. at September 27, 2005 01:53 PM

Mitch, I'm with you in that the Strib will only see half of the problem. Their blinders make it hard to trust them.

Posted by: Peter at September 27, 2005 04:41 PM

The reason there are so many Bush-bashing publications available is because he is in office. When other presidents have been in office, they got their share of criticism, too.
We also seem to be more of a society of writers lately. Lots of people - even those who never typed before - have taken up sending posts to weblogs, right? We all have something to say and technology and the publishing industry make that possible.

Posted by: Teena at September 28, 2005 09:32 AM

Teena, you're right - but the point is that the columnist's claim that conservative "hate" books dominate the retail space is baked wind.

Posted by: mitch at September 28, 2005 09:34 AM

I did a little experiment last night to test the author’s thesis about the prevalence of conservative “hate books” dominating the book stores. On my way back from the Serenity preview, I stopped off at the Barnes and Nobles in Roseville (one of the largest bookstores in the metro area) and I didn’t see any of the books he mentioned on display. I did however see the following on display:

“Contempt: how the right is Wronging American Justice” by Catherine Crier

“Blood in the Sand: Imperial Fantasies, Rightwing Ambitions and the Erosion of Democracy” by Stephen Eric Bronner

“Who Let the Dogs In? Incredible Political Animals I Have Known (now with more Bushwhacking)” by Molly Ivin

“The Bush Betrayal” by James Bovard

“Cronies--Oil, the Bushes and the Rise of Texas” by Robert Price

“Sore Winners: (And the Rest of Us) in George Bush's America” by John Powers

Again I have to ask, what bookstores is the author going to since one of the largest in the Twin Cities show exactly the opposite trend?

Posted by: Thorley Winston at September 28, 2005 12:15 PM

"Show me ANY credible, accepted, mainstream anti-semitism in the GOP in the past thirty years. Ignore Nixon's japes, while you're at it; show me any *substantive policy* of anti-semitism. Do it now, with no more prevarication, if you please. If it's not within couple orders of magnitude of the hard left's morbid hatred of Israel, please don't bother."

Well, I took your challenge, and I found antisemitism within the Republican party, and quite high up, in fact, both within the party itself and within closely allied conservatve groups (the Christian Coalition, surprise surprise). In the GOP's defense, I honestly don't believe the vast majority are antisemitic, especially when compared to Europe or domestic groups such as the Nation of Islam.

While there were few out and out expressions of antisemitism, the tollerance for it within some sectors of the Republican party is higher than I am quite comfortable with. There is no substantive policy of anti-semitism, I have to agree with you there. But please don't use this agreement as a lever to ignore that there *is* a a low level of anti-semitism within the GOP, and at quite high levels in some cases:

former Sen. Warren Rudman charged while appearing opposite Karl Rove on "Meet the Press" that supporters of Bush phoned voters in South Carolina telling them that primary rival John McCain's campaign co-chairman - namely, Rudman - is Jewish.

Haley Barbour, a Washington lobbyist and former chairman of the Republican National Committee who is running for governor of Mississippi, politicked at a July 19 barbecue sponsored in part by a local chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a neo-Confederate group accused of promoting racist and antisemitic views. A photograph of Barbour at the event is featured on the council's Web site amid links to a tract titled "In Defense of Racism," an "Action Alert" urging supporters "to stand up for law and order and white America" and a site defending Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel.

The Christian Coalition, the best-known Religious Right organization, played an active role in both the [1996] presidential and congressional elections. In addition, the Coalition, led by the Revd Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed, also focused on local electoral races throughout the country.

Reed denied charges of antisemitic bias in the Religious Right. However, some of Robertson's published writings attacked "liberal Jews" and he made constant negative references to "international bankers".

In the fall of 1988, Vice President Bush had to fire several neo-Nazis and anti-Semites from his Presidential campaign. The scandal erupted when Washington Jewish Week and other media outlets discovered that the Bush campaign harbored well known neo-Nazis, including Jerome Brentar, a holocaust revisionist who claims that the Nazis never deliberately gassed victims of the Holocaust, and Akselis Mangulis, who was involved in the SS-influenced Latvian Legion during World War II.8 George W. Bush, the campaign's hatchet man, fired the Nazis.... After the election, four of these came back to work for the Republican Party according to USA Today.

Responding to this, the New Republic argued in an editorial that the discovery of "seven aging Eastern European fascists in the Republican apparatus" really wasn't the threat it was made out to be. Their form of anti-Semitism was merely traditional bigotry without an agenda.

There are numerous expressions of anti-semitism by Pat Buchannen; I won't quote any of them since it should be easy enough to google. I know a lot of people see him as a joke even within the party, but it didn't stop him from working in the White House.

And then of course there's David Duke.

(Interesting side note I discovered while researching: Prescott Bush had his bank shut down in 1941 for trading with the enemy; he was highly involved in funding Hitler and sheltering German assets)

Posted by: Bill Haverberg at September 28, 2005 07:16 PM