One of the most memorable scenes in the movie Crocodile Dundee is when ole Crock and his lady friend are accosted by a mugger with a knife. The lady friend is alarmed and can’t understand why Crocodile Dundee is not, “He has a knife,” she says, to which Mr. Dundee says “That’s not a knife, this is a knife,” as he pulls his own, more formidable blade from its sheath.
So the kerfuffle was based upon a misunderstanding of what a real knife was, you see … uh, not. The scene was a variation of the older adage, namely, don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.
In our current political climate, the Republicans are still slurring “liberal” opponents. This is an old campaign, begun when the GOP still had liberal and conservative wings, but times have changed. The GOP has purged all of its liberals and almost all of its moderates, leaving only conservatives and archconservatives. (Actually, if you look back at the election of Barrack Obama and the emergence of the “Tea Party,” it is easy to see that the Tea Party was the hard core conservative center of the GOP. That core rarely got anything but pandered to (where else could they go) but the exposure of this bedrock was probably driven by the retreat of many more moderate Repubs not wanting to participate in a system that would elect a Black, aka liberal, president.) The Democrats then made a move to “occupy the center” that the GOP vacated, thinking they would have both the liberals and centrists and be in an overwhelmingly commanding position. After all, it isn’t as if the liberals will vote Republican, they have nowhere else to go. So, the Dems abandoned labor and racial minorities as a focus of their efforts and became centrists.
Basically there are no liberals left in federal office. If there are, they are extremely few.
But the GOP keeps banging the drum that has served them so well, so now the centrist Democrats are “liberals.” They’ve effectively demonized the term for half the political body, why not keep using it to demonize all opponents? So, if you are running outside of the GOP, you are automatically a “liberal.”
But then Bernie Sanders showed that there is a place in American political discourse for true liberals, even if Bernie is a tepid one. I would very much like to see some real liberals come out of the closet and run for office to see how they would fare.
A real liberal would reclaim the term “redistribution.” Republicans have vilified “redistribution” as some kind of crazy, against nature, Robin Hood fantasy, while at the same time practicing high level income and wealth redistribution from the poor and middle class to the rich. Republicans have vilified diplomacy in favor of war making. This a true liberal would not abide. Republicans want to privatize public education and have been joined by centrist Democrats. This would not be acceptable to true liberals who rightly see public education as a pillar of our democracy, a democracy that will crumble if the foundation is degraded. Republicans favor corporations over people because they say we can trust corporations as they would do nothing to besmirch their reputations as those reputations are the very foundation of their success. Real liberals read the news and know that this is not true or even close to being true. To the contrary Republicans worship shareholder value above reputation and, really, any other corporate goals you might mention. Republicans aren’t in favor of regulations, while true liberals realize that good sets of working regulations are necessary for the functioning of society’s institutions. (The question shouldn’t oscillate between “too much regulation” and “too little regulation” but should be focused on finding “just right.” Doesn’t Goldilocks teach any more?) Does no one else perceive the GOP’s demand for “no rules” as being antithetical to true conservatism? Where are the true conservatives? Apparently not in the GOP. The GOP has been captured by faux conservatives in the pay of wealthy interests. That the Democratic party seems helpless to hinder them shows the rot at its core. Maybe us liberals can help with that.
Bashing Conservatives
Tags: anonymous comments, conservatives, liberals, right-wing bloviators, social media
I was commenting on something posted on Swarn Gill’s very good blog “Cloak Unfurled” and I thought that you, my wonderful readers (Practicing your pandering you are. Shut up, Yoda.) might like to share. The topic was “liberals bashing conservatives.”
The current liberal bashing of conservatives is, in my opinion, a delayed response to the conservative bashing that began before there was social media. The phenomenon that was Rush Limbaugh is a good marker. Prior to Mr. Limbaugh, bashing of liberals had few column inches anywhere and no distinct voice. Before the first Gulf War I found his radio show and actually enjoyed listening to it as he lambasted caricatures of liberals (Femi-Nazis, etc.). At first this seemed in good fun but then I noted a commitment to lying that caused me to turn him off. He then became almost 100% politics-focused but kept bashing the liberal side as clueless, etc. In his footsteps, there followed the Fox (sic) News hordes and Glenn Beck, etc.
There was no particular response from the left-wing media (as claiming a liberal bias has always been a lie—to true conservatives, the truth has always been left-wing).
With the advent of social media, the anonymity provided right-wingers cowed into keeping their mouths shut due to social pressure (Why can’t we call a nigger a nigger? What’s wrong with that?) now had voices not subject to social pressure, in fact they could bask in the amounts of social outrage (impotent rage) that they could provoke. And now we have liberals bashing of conservatives … anonymously and the world turns
This escalation of rage in the debate, however, serves only one group: the oligarchs already in control of the U.S. government. While our heads are spinning around, we aren’t addressing our sole problem, the one solutions to all of the other problems must lead through, … them. For them Donald Trump, the master distracter is a god send. Until we address the oligarchs and pull their fangs, swathed with money, we will not be able to get through to climate change, off shoring of jobs, the real problems we face because they will just have too many paid thugs running interference for them.