Our good friend Craig over at The Crazy Years has some words of wisdom regarding some of the militarism and jingoism that can come from left-leaning sources. Check it out.
Great points. I find myself in the same "kick ass" mode quite frequently. Part of it is reflexive, and as a long-time fan of Maher I think this is the case with him as well. It's the extra effort to announce pre-emptively (this is key) that you're not some stereotypical pussy liberal.
And Maher is not a pussy. Neither is Craig; neither am I; neither are Digby, or Atrios, or Jesse, or Ezra. Okay, Josh Marshall looks like he might not take or throw much of a punch, but he's doing damned excellent work, and he doesn't need to go into that pre-emptive aggro mode. This is just another way the debate has been stolen before it has even begun; people have to flash their kick-ass quals to try to hit the opposition's "liberal=pussy=traitor" boilerplate before it can be launched.
Because we all know it will be launched. The dynamic is nothing if not utterly predictable anymore. For us long-time warriors (and even though this blog is new, I have been at this for a good seven years now, at several excellent discussion fora, including at Slate's original Fray), the reflex is almost second nature at this point. We do not want to communicate with them anymore, and yet we must, because they keep winning. Christ, what a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This dynamic of anger and ad hominem attacks and pre-emptive jingoism can be useful when trying to fight the good fight against the people who have hijacked the Republican Party, because supposedly being on the side of the angels just doesn't matter anymore. But when projected across seas and continents, the dynamic has become destructive and counter-productive. It's just not worth it anymore.
The way to get the jingoes in the crowd to at least sit up on their hind legs and pay attention for a second is to emphasize the counter-productivity, the cost to them, in blood and treasure and honor. They have bought far too much in this "Arab mind" crap, invested all their intellectual capital into thinking that the only reason they could possibly hate l'il ol' innocent us is because they're all out-and-out psychopaths.
Some of them are. Some of us are. All of us have to stop taking our marching orders from the loonies in our midst. The real enemy is right up in our fucking faces every damned day.
No comments:
Post a Comment