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The worse, the better

By Michael J. Smith on Wednesday March 4, 2009 06:30 PM

I've noticed an interesting phenomenon of late. Some of my liberal friends have begun to send out triumphant emails every time Obie does something that's not positively awful. Look! they say, between the lines. There is a difference! M'lud, the defense rests!

I got one of these yesterday, from a chap I'll call Bruno:

Obama , getting money to the working class, pronto

3/3/09 Notice of Certain Benefits Unemployed Workers May Be 
Eligible For Under the Economic Stimulus Package.

1)Extra $25 per week in unemployment benefits
2)Period for Collecting Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extended
3)Partial  (first $2,400)Suspension of Federal Income Tax On Unemployment Benefits for Tax Year 2009

Obama , Obama , Obama !
Now all these steps are OK things to do, as far as they go. But they're quite tiny. In fact, they qualify as crumbs under the table. Bruno thinks they matter because he thinks -- and who knows, perhaps he's right -- that Bush or McCain wouldn't have done even this much.

What interests me here is the recalibration of expectations. Bruno, when he's not cheerleading for Obama, fills up my inbox with Talmudic exegeses of obscure passages in the Grundrisse. He presents as a case-hardened heaven-storming Marxist, and keeps a sheaf of the Old Man's proof-texts at his fingertips for every occasion. He has, ex officio, a world to win, and fully expects to win it.

And yet he gets giddy with delight at a niggardly partial "suspension" of income tax on unemployment benefits. The world can wait to be won. In the meantime, Bruno is grateful for crumbs -- or rather, not just grateful; downright triumphant. I told you so! Obie is not Bush! We'd have had no crumbs from Bush! Or not as many! Or they'd have been even smaller!

One of the interesting consequences of this mode of thought is that the more the A-Team reactionaries overreach, the better it is for the B-team lesser-evillists.

The more grotesque and cartoonish the Bushes and Cheneys and Coulters and Limbaughs become, the better our guys look -- as long as they stay a pace or two behind the lead monsters in the sprint to the abyss. Really, all our guys have to do is speak in complete sentences and avoid going red in the face, and they look like the Second Coming. The fact that they're a pace or two behind is what's important; the fact that they're also heading for the abyss doesn't matter, and you're a prick for bringing it up.

Perhaps this is why liberals love to pay so much attention to ineffably boring figures like Bill O'Reilly, and George Will, and whatsisname from Louisiana -- it takes people this dismal and abandoned to make them feel comparatively virtuous.

Comments (22)

op:

from the pop of bruno's eye
seems something in marx
has him alerted
to possible
errors of line

An extra twenty-five clams?!

Hot damn' diggety! Thanks, President Timberlake! I'll try not to spend it all in one place.

AlanSmithee:

$25 whole bucks? Wow, trickle down really does work!

They may have been groomed by our system of philanthropy, where captains of industry dispense ten cents on the dollar to charity from what they stole from the public purse. Progressives are often the ones applying for these dispensations, and are accustomed to whitewashing the crimes of their benefactors.

Those Kids Today:

And, ironically, you're doing exactly what you're condemning.

You're concentrating exclusively on the Clintonite libdem blogs.

Atrios, Kos, Crooks and Liars et al just do what the faxes from Carville, Rahm, and Begala tell them exactly the same way as Rush, Coulter and O'Reilly used to do exactly what the faxes from Rove told them to do.

So what else is new? What exactly are you telling us here?

Maybe you should talk about how scale affects how ideology is translated into the political system.

In a country as large as the USA is, leftism gets translated into Hillary and Obama. Conservatism gets translated into Rush and GW Bush.

You're the little needle bitching that it couldn't get through the elephant's skin to reach its heart.

The Clintonite libdem blogs at least have a political agenda. I'm not sure what yours is.


Those Kids Today:

Of course what you guys really remind me of is a lot of Ron Paul supporters, who spend half their time bitching that the media thinks Bush and Rush represent the right.

You guys are all pissed that the big time media think Obama represents the left. Oh woa is you. The big time media ignore the "real" left like yourselves.

But once again, it's about SCALE. Read Lord Acton's letters to Robert E. Lee. He discusses this problem AT LENGTH. It's about SCALE. SCALE. SCALE.

Try to imagine you're in a stadium with 50,000 people but you don't have a microphone. You have to SHOUT. You have to go from section to section and SHOUT at a few people at a time. And you have to KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID.

Billy Graham knew this. Every preacher at every revival meeting ever held has known this.

You want your politics to translate into a political arena containing 300 million people, you set up a few simple narratives, a few simple villians, and you stay on message.

Coulter and Limbaugh are CARNIVAL BARKERS. They know this.

Obama and Rahm know it.

Carnvial barkers shouting at carnival barkers shouting at carnival barkers while all the rubes stand around listening with their mouths gaping open.

Only now they have chain e-mail on the right and the Daily Kos on the left.

Ha. Ha.

op:

Tkt
Glad u came back here

The acton/ bob e lee
Reference made my day

I can only note my own feelings of course

mjosef:

Those Kids, you're spraying accusations around like you're a park-bench shouter. Quel problem?
You seem upset. What in particular has you in caps-lock fury (CPF)? So you are against some things - who isn't? If the answer to all is SCALE, as your right reverend Lord Acton wrote to Robert E. Lee, which I believe was a plot element of an ABC afternooon special, why do I think next of Liechtenstein?

mjosef:

Those Kids, you're spraying accusations around like you're a park-bench shouter. Quel problem?
You seem upset. What in particular has you in caps-lock fury (CPF)? So you are against some things - who isn't? If the answer to all is SCALE, as your right reverend Lord Acton wrote to Robert E. Lee, which I believe was a plot element of an ABC afternooon special, why do I think next of Liechtenstein?

Those Kids Today:

Upset? Whatever gave you that idea? And what motivated you to post it twice.

If I seemed a bit agitated it was only because I was trying to get into the spirit of the original blog post's righteous anger.

YEAH MAN. FUCK OBAMA. FUCK EVERYBODY WHO DIDN'T VOTE FOR MIKE GRAVEL!!!

That felt good.

I have a certain respect for hard lefties who attack liberals and I have no respect for right wing statists like Limbaugh.

But, and here's the big but, hard lefties very rarely know much about history or think about how they ultimately want society organized. They're usually about righteous rage and moral absolutism.

Take two of my favorite hardcore lefties, Amy Goodman and Michael Ratner. Do you think either of them has ever heard of Lord Acton, let alone read him?

DN March 5th, 2009:

"AMY GOODMAN: Why was Posse Comitatus first put into effect, first passed?

MICHAEL RATNER: You know, that’s a good question. I don’t remember, Amy."

Well Amy, some of us do. And if you took the time to look it up it would rock your simplistic little commie world.

The Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878 to prevent the feds from sending the army into the south to stop the Ku Klux Klan.

So you have a good (ending racial terror) clashing with another good (protecting American citizens from their own army).

Now what does this have to do with the original blog post? Plenty. When Obama's hero Lincoln smashed the Confedaracy, he sent us all down the road to living in a 3000 mile wide, 300 million person consolidated, centralized leviathan state.

Had the history of America worked out differently, had Lee won at Gettysburg, or, even better, had Hamilton not been able to destroy the original articles of Confederation, we could have all retreated to our own little statelets where the political system would have been so much closer to the individual and more responsive to their idealogy.

Hard core lefty purism works great on a small scale. Ralph Nader could have been president of Rhode Island. And you could have all stood on the border nude, wagging your dicks at the sellouts across the border in Massachussetts.

But instead ah, America's like a bad stadium rock concert with all the gates locked. Y'all would love to go down to some club with 20 other people and listen to the Dead Kennedys. But instead you're stuck with Journey and 50,000 of their fans. The only answer is to rip down the stadium.

Revolution man. Revolution now. But let's found 10000 Liechtensteins (and I'm highly impressed you spelled it right), not one USSR.

Al Schumann:

TKT, all your recent complaints have been liberal boilerplate, of the kind routinely cranked out by liberals whose entire gig is slicing off their left flank.

But, and here's the big but, hard lefties very rarely know much about history or think about how they ultimately want society organized. They're usually about righteous rage and moral absolutism.

What theirs, and yours, boils down to is essentially a consumer complaint. Celebrated individuals have failed to live up to the branding that reached you. The much maligned paleocons have the right answers. Change the channel. Take up that remote and take personal responsibility. Or take it a step further and put on your own show on a community access channel -- in between the nude professors physical culture hour, a panel discussion moderated by someone wearing only Lord Acton's beard, and the televised support group for people with CIA transceivers in their molars.

Those Kids Today:

Al my good friend. What a wonderful idea for a TV show.

op:

when al's slices up some one
they end up
like
those candle in the movies
that appear to be still intact
after the hero
swats thru em with his sword

if they could talk they'd say
like tkt

"hey i'm still standin' ain't i bub"

op:

"hard lefties very rarely know much about history"

alas
who does know
Clio's time buried treasures ???

paraphrase:

today like ireland
is a nitemare from which we try to awake

mjosef:

Al - is it "liberal boilerplate" to say the wrong side won in the Blue-Gray festivities? And that Michael Ratner is a dunce for not knowing on what date, time, and variety of parchment paper the Judge Roy Bean Posse Comitatus act was written on?

My head hurts. I feel that they should be coming round with those sweet orange and pink meds for me any second now, and all because I hit the "Post" button twice without waiting.

Those Kids Today:

Mr. Black Op. Al doesn't sound very impressive to me.

In my former days as a mohel, I once circumicized a baby who was able to pass as a gentile until his 19th birthday.

Those Kids Today:

Dear Mr. Josef.

You defend Michael Ratner when he clearly needs no defending.

"And that Michael Ratner is a dunce for not knowing on what date, time, and variety of parchment paper the Judge Roy Bean Posse Comitatus act was written on?"

The point isn't that Ratner is a dunce. He's clearly not. The point is just the opposite. Why do so obviously intelligent lefties like Ms. Goodman and Mr. Ratner know so little about certain kinds of American history when I'm sure they can all give you a rundown from memory of every concert hall Paul Robson ever played in.

I've already told you I admire Mr. Ratner and Ms. Goodman in their role as critics of power out in the wildnerness.

I just added the caveat that I wouldn't want to see their communist, statist ideals anywhere near the White House.

Obama is about as close as it gets. But alas, some lefties, lefties all being natural sectarians, have already produced people who think Ms. Goodman and Mr. Ratner are on the payroll of the Ford Foundation and, as a result, are going easy on Obama.

I mean, neither of them is as hard on Obama as they were on Bush, right?

But I also know even harder core lefties than the kind of who vote for Nader. I actually READ an occasional Trotskyist newspaper and I assure you every one of them spends a lot of time attacking his fellow commies for being sellouts.

Articles of Confederation Baby!!! It's the only way to go.

mjosef:

TKT,
Thanks for turning the burner down a little. If Michael Ratner and Amy Goodman are your Enemies, fomenting worldwide communism that is just one short step form taking over the known corporate military empire of America, then you will always get a free round of drinks here, be feted and saluted and carried around and given the occasional spelling lesson ("Robeson," and yes, from birth, we are expected to memorize the Grundrisse), because you clearly think this is is 1955, the left is in satanic control, and OP and MJS are Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch combined, which is ego-inflation that they, frankly, deserve.

Those Kids Today:

Ah. The usual lefty backpeddle.

1955? How about 1917? 1871? 1848?

The problem with the left today is that they can't agree on an ideology and they don't have any state or any army to threaten the man with.

Back in 1955, the left had the Soviet Union. It had power (corrupt though it may have been). Eisenhower and Kennedy got so sick of the Russians brining up Jim Crow and running around Africa creating mini Stalins that they decided to do away with Jim Crow and send actual troops to the South to smash white supremacy.

Now what can you threaten the man with? The Zapatistas? Some kids with masks running around Seattle turning over trash cans. Moral harangues.

The man doesn't care. In fact, he won't even listen. That's what lefties spend so much time attacking their fellow lefties for not being lefty enough.

It's simple. No Soviet Union. No Mao. And nothing replaced them. The left doesn't scare anybody these days.

Comeon. You lefties love history. But when confronted with the truth, it's like Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the founders and giants of your movement never existed.

You're all like Christians afraid to talk about Jesus.

Those Kids Today:

Then again, I sort of get it now.

America's like the Columbia campus and this is an Ivy League nerd table.

Hillary and Obama are the big time lefties on campus, cleaning up the grant money, getting invited to lunch with the endowed profs, and, in the end, getting interviewed by the college TV station and maybe an occasional national magazine, but, in the end, moving on to Wall Street.

Amy Goodman and Michael Ratner are more your earnest lefty nerds who never leave the office. They get less grant money than the big guys do. But they slog along year after year.

This place is a bit like the left out lefty nerds sitting around shaking their fists every time some big time lefty on campus sells out. Obama got hired at Sullivan and Cromwell. Sellout. Hillary is working for Bear Stear...or probably Google or Microsoft now, sellout!!!

But the ultimate betrayal is when of your earnest lefty nerds with a little power and access here and there, your Amy Goodmans, Scott Hortons, Chris Hedges wind up saying something nice about Hillary or Obama. Oh Obama. Seemed like a nice guy. Certainly better than those College Republicans.

Ah my, we're all alone now. Let's go off, smoke pot and listen to Rage Against the Machine.

(am I dating myself with that Rage allusion?)

And on that note, it's warm outside and I'm heading to the park. I'll come back in a few days and check out my good friend Al's witty and cutting remarks.

**standing up and applauding****

Man, this post got me so excited that I almost started speaking in tongues.

You, as the say, rule!

**standing up and applauding****

Man, this post got me so excited that I almost started speaking in tongues.

You, as they say, rule! I have a bone or two to pick w/ the Dali-Obama myself...

Finding this blog made me feel sane. I am surrounded by delusional liberals and "progressives" who start foaming at the mouth when I make even the slightest criticism of the Annointed One. I mean, this Obamania brand of nationalism is more frightening than the Toby Keith songs that were released in the weeks following 9/11.

Thank you again for this post!

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