It was a drive-by blogging!1
I’m swiggity swamped for the next couple of days; I’m far too busy to blog. Still, I wanted to repost this amazeballs comment by zizi2 in response to a spot-on post — “Let’s Talk Some R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The Ugly Racism on the Fringe Left” — by Deaniac83 over at The People’s View:
“What we have taking place is a convergence of different factors, in addition to all that you have said. I’ll try to shed some light:
1. Transference: It’s a term in psychology referring to the tendency of a person so scarred from a traumatic event or abuser that they “transfer” their anger onto another person, usually an ally who is the easiest to reach. These self-professed liberals/progressives have been whiplashed from the capacity of Wingnuts to seemingly get their way ALL the time, and never facing consequences for their vile behavior. Their anger is a direct barometer to their sense of ideological DEFEAT. Bottom line: In order fro them to feel defeated, it means they never first defined VICTORY on their own terms, but the wingnuts’. So their cry is “why has Pres. Obama not brought VICTORY on wingnut terms?.
2. Mercenary incentive: Immediately after the 2008 elections, David Sirota, Jane Hamsher, Cenk Uyger and others loudly opined about how they were going to deal with the likely shortfall in cyber traffic and ad-click revenues with a President in office from their ideological ranks. Their behavior shows the fruits of the Faustian bargain they struck: i.e. to make money as contrarians. They have no actual commitment to any policy cause. Notice their reactions are always predictable no matter what policy issue is on the table. No sane person remains a ONE NOTE track on every single issue in their lives. Their one chorus tells us all there is to know about their motives.
3. The tweeterization of News: More importantly how is it the same people appear as expert pundits on EVERY single policy debate? It used to be that real journalists, no matter how brilliant they are as generalists, CANNOT claim to have disciplinary expertise in more than one or two areas. Yet these fauxgressives know every thing? The foreign media truly laughs at the total lack of serious expertise in American media reportage. BBC invites people who actually know the technical details of policy to talk about said policy. Here we are being “informed” by idiots. This is anti-intellectualism, of the left wing variety, no different from the right wing’s.
4. Exotic ideas about Black Civil Rights Struggles: The fauxgressives learned nothing other than the sanitized Cliff’s Notes versions of the civil rights struggles of minorities. They never grasped the true nature of those struggles as “PAINFULLY SLOW” and often “OBSTACLE RIDDEN” processes that often took one step forward to three steps backward. Heck they have no idea how long the protests against the Vietnam war took. So it is very easy for them to be keyboard commandos. They wanted a time-warped version of the black and white newsreels they’ve seen on PBS about struggle, to OBSERVE from behind the safety of their keyboards. In other words they wanted the REVOLUTION TWEETED in 140 CHARACTERS, with a Gil-Scot Heron Swagga. So if they are not getting it, then Pres. Obama must be no good.
5. They need a Janitorial Presidency: Overt and residual features of White privilege. Some of these folks remain willfully or inadvertently unaware of the baked-in cosmology of white privilege. It manifests itself in the expectations you mention. To them a black person cannot be average. Either they are superhuman or mediocre, or both. Initially they imagined candidate Obama to be “magical’, just like in the movies or in sports. But when they now take a closer look at the complex human being that he is with flaws, their new default posture is that he must be mediocre.
I could go on and on….”
[Emphasis mine.]
Right on.
1 Why not a Mrs. Doubtfire reference? Why not, I say? Anyway, I will be scarce for the next few days. Work and stuff. You know how it is — oh wait, some of you don’t, and your purported “ZOBAMA IZ THE DEBIL” allies don’t seem to give a shit! Ah well. These are good times, aren’t they?
Also, if you poli-junkies haven’t checked out the epic discussion going on over at Osborne Ink (here and here), there’s probably something wrong with your political mind-head.
[via The People's View]
No. 4 sticks in my craw real bad.
According to firebaggers’ self-professed knowledge of history regarding social security, medicare, or desegregation of the armed forces, there was once a progressive la-la land where everyone was allowed to participate in everything all at the same time because [x] Democrat showed “spine” and signed shit.
HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Thank you for that. If another self-righteous, so-called progressive trots out DADT to wave in my face after a long list of grievances against Obama, I’m going postal.
I don’t know how many idiotic conversations I’ve had to have in which to say, GO LEARN SOMETHING — ANYTHING — about desegregation of the frickin military BEFORE you make comparisons. Parallels are not equivalencies. No, don’t give me content of character and I have a dream, come with dates, names, places, rulings, and results. And on and on.
These were precisely the people 6 years ago BLAMING us for Kerry’s loss. Too many have never been on board with LGBT rights, except as a trophy to remind themselves what fantastic progressives they must be.
There’s a lot more, but thx for the good word.
Truly insightful comment. Best analysis I’ve yet of the “professional left”
I vote for number 2 – attempt to be provocative in order to evoke more click revenue. As Deep Throat (and Alan Greenspan) said, “follow the money.”
This was my comment over at http://www.osborneink.com:
And meanwhile, in the darkest depths of Mordor, the GOP is laughing its ass off at all of the infighting going on amongst those on the left. The Hamshers and Greenwalds have a right to hold the POTUS responsible for things they see as deserving of criticism, but not at the expense of sacrificing the left’s overall position to the GOP. I can’t comment to Hamsher’s or Greenwald’s motives, only their actions, and those actions are seriously aiding and abetting the real enemy. Obama isn’t perfect, but if you expect immediate and complete and total change (which seems to be the position of Hamsher and Greenwald) then you have unrealistic expectations, and have only set the POTUS up for failure from the get-go. You can close your eyes, make your fists and stamp your feet all you want in true tantrum fashion that the POTUS has betrayed his base (a nebulous concept at best), but in doing so you seem to have no idea about what really goes on in DC. Personally, I hate compromise, but sometimes it is necessary. Politics is utilitarian (doing the best for the most), and pragmatic (doing what works), and sometimes that means our little pet legislation gets watered down, or has things added we don’t like, but that’s no sin. It means the process is working, because there are two parties at odds in Washington, each working to best the other, with our lives in the balance. Change always takes time and if you think the POTUS should move at the unreasonable pace you set then you show a lack of understanding of the way in fact the political process works. I for one will not sacrifice Obama on the altar of purist ideology just to make a political point, when the real world repercussions of that action will harm real, flesh and blood people. If you ARE willing to sacrifice Obama for that purity, then if and when the GOP regains power, be prepared to reap the whirlwind. It’s not always about us here on the left, but about EVERYONE, and we’re no better than the GOP if we can’t see this fact, because that mentality should be the one we’re fighting.
My cybercup runneth over.
some “manic progressives” are indeed ridiculous, as are some people who keep defending obama and the democrats.
presumably you do not have a funny/demeaning psychological snapshot for the folks who keep repeating “but the republicans are really really really really bad” and “think about this: president sarah palin” over and over until the phrases lose all meaning.
more often than not, i vote democrat as the lesser of two evils. does that obligate me to pretend i’m happy about it? does that obligate me to pretend that i don’t understand why voting for the lesser of two evils simply isn’t enough for other people? it’s sad that this is what liberals are reduced to: marginalizing and demonizing those we disagree with in a fashion eerily reminiscent of what republicans do to their enemies. is there a need in almost all of us to blot out any criticism when it’s at odds with what we prefer to believe is true?
anyway, have fun with your strawman.