So, I write a blog about the Steelers game (last posting) and then the crowd responds by personally insulting each other. I know this was in part a continuation of the previous conversation, but how did we get there from the Steelers game? And you folks are probably not even from Cleveland or Baltimore, so you don't have an excuse.
Oh well. If you had been with me at noon time in PG+, you could have commented in real time on Jack Kelly and I debating the tea party and Joe Wilson's remark in the joint session of Congress.
Jack is of the moral equivalency school - the Dems in their criticism of Bush were no better or worse than the Republican criticism of Obama. I don't buy that at all.
Oh sure, there were plenty of leftist rat-bags saying bad things about Bush but they were hardly representative of most liberals who have no taste for turning up at public forums to yell at people. If liberals had a tea party, they would serve tea and cookies and they would wave nothing more threatening than a teaspoon.
I believe the angry tea party people are far more representative of the right than the Bush haters were of the left. Far more. In fact, it's Jack argument that they are a large and significant force that cannot be ignored.
The far left was such a pipsqueak presence that it couldn't even get Nancy Pelosi to sign on to impeach Bush (for the record, I opposed it too).
No liberal ever went to a Bush rally wearing guns to bear intimidating witness to their views.
No liberal member of Congress called Bush a liar to his face from the floor of Congress despite the fact that the guy was a political Pinocchio - and don't give me the malarkey that Bush was shouted down in his state of Union addresses. For my sins, I watched every last one of them and all I heard was some common or garden catcalls and booing. No, Joe Wilson plumbed depths no liberal member ever did.
And although a fuss was made by Democrats when George H.W. Bush addressed the nation's kids, school districts didn't join in on the act of dissing the president, as the likes of Upper St. Clair and Fox Chapel did recently.
Hatred of this president is above anything seen in recent years, and that's the fact of the matter. You can almost hear the social fabric tearing.
I think most liberals understand this, but most conservatives, or so it seems, do not. Or, more frightening still, they don't care.
Far from being the stereotypical angry types of right-wing fever dreams, liberals as a group are far too nice - and it's not always helpful to their cause. They are predisposed to give people the benefit of the doubt. Their first instinct is to compromise. While they like ideas, most don't have a taste for endless confrontation. That is why liberal talk radio is pretty much a failure. It's not that their arguments are weaker - it's because there isn't the same mass audience for anger.
Obama himself is the perfect example of the nice guy liberal tendency. He has made one compromise after another in order not to offend people whom he hasn't yet figured out will always be offended by him. He is not a socialist, he is a pragmatist. Even now, when it's plain to see that the Republicans have no interest in helping him in health care or anything else, he extends the bipartisan hand of friendship.
By the way, liberals are not only nicer but also make better lovers, but I have already given you Reg-ulators enough fodder that you can now denounce me instead of each other. Denounce me (and each other) with civility please. If Jack Kelly can do so with me, anybody can.
Posted
Sep 14 2009, 04:05 PM
by
Reg Henry