The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Objectively Worse: Democrats to Blame for the Hyper-Partisanship They Decry

Posted on | December 28, 2012 | 12 Comments

NYPD arrest Occupy Wall Street protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge, Oct. 1, 2011

Commenting on the post-election rancor – e.g., Log Cabin Republicans targeting Chuck Hagel — Professor Glenn Reynolds observes:

You know, somebody — Dave Weigel or Matt Yglesias, I think — was tweeting the other day that the GOP was doing worse post-election than in 2008. Well maybe; at this point, after all, Bush was still in the White House. But Obama is definitely doing worse than in 2008. First the Susan Rice debacle, then the departure of scandal-plagued EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and now the stalled Hagel nomination. Definitely not as well as in 2008.

Meanwhile, we see gloomy prospects for avoiding the “fiscal cliff,” and the question we ought to be asking is, “How did we get here?”

The problem in trying to answer that question is that the information stream is polluted by the Conventional Wisdom manufactured by the national media, where Democrats out-number Republicans by a factor of no less than 7-to-1. Thus, we must begin the quest for truth by un-learning what our indoctrinators –  the “apparatchik MSM,” as Ed Driscoll calls them – would have us believe, and consider the possibility that something quite nearly opposite is true.

Our liberal friends would have us believe that the problem is that Republicans have been captured by Tea Party extremists and are engaged in politically motivated “obstructionism” because the GOP is captive — “epistemic closure”! — to extreme voices on Fox News and talk radio.

What if that MSM-produced narrative is, in fact, the mirror-reverse of the truth? This relates to a comment I made about Barrett Brown, the “Anonymous” spokesman arrested in September:

The specific object of my critique is the outlaw “civil disobedience” vigilante protest mentality involved in the “Anonymous” and “Occupy” movements, an attitude that excuses crime so long as it is committed against enemies of The Cause.
This attitude was revived and popularized by anti-war protesters during the Bush era, where the information-warfare aspect of their propaganda was clearly displayed: President Bush himself was de-legitimized as an election-stealer, the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job,” and the U.S. military response to those attacks was “war for oil,” allegedly undertaken on behalf of Halliburton, etc. There is a narrative that justifies Barrett Brown’s demonization of the FBI, you see. The fact that this left-wing rationalization has passed its sell-by date — like the fragments of the Weather Underground that continued their “revolutionary” violence long after the Vietnam War ended — does not prevent people from continuing to carry the radical torch as if it were still 2005.

As Rodgers and Hammerstein might say, you have to be carefully taught to think the way Barrett Brown and his comrades think, and what Andrew Breitbart called the “Democrat-Media Complex” never bothers to expose and debunk the counterfactual beliefs of the radical Left. Why? Because liberals believe that having a loud, militant left-wing fringe — angry shock troops to assault the GOP-allied institutions of bourgeois society – is good for the Democrat Party.

Whatever you may think of the Republican Party, it is not (as the MSM would have you believe) controlled by “Birthers” and other kooks, and the GOP is not pursuing any kind of extremist agenda. It is actually the Democrats who embraced a dangerous anarchist fringe movement, “Occupy Wall Street,” and in fact it is Democrats who are even now pursuing the radical OWS agenda against “the 1%”: Taxes must be increased on “the rich,” Democrats keep telling us, and they are willing to take us over the “fiscal cliff” if they don’t get their way.

 

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Category: #Occupy, Budget, Democrats, Instapundit, Media Bias, Taxes

Comments

  • DavidD

    Tyrants need anarchists to foment the kinds of unrest that will cause a frightened populace to demand strong Government intervention.

  • willpeir

    The important thing about pushing the extreme is convincing people that the center will hold. The American public wants news like a sitcom or drama: Something shocking and interesting, but then you’re back to getting the kids ready for school and all is well. That’s why it’s very important to never, ever report things like the decline of black culture or the dangers of abortion. That’s how you get a generation like mine: either completely brainwashed or not willing to play the games at all.

  • robertstacymccain

    Democrats actually understand informational warfare far better than do Republicans. The problem is that the GOP’s “base” subscribes to traditional values, including what we might call bourgeois respectability. Thus, Republicans cannot succeed by pursuing the kind of raw dishonesty and corruption that the Democrats engage in on a daily basis, and all the Democrat-friendly MSM needs to do is to paint Republicans as “extreme” (i.e., beyond the limits of bourgeois respectabiliy) and large segments of the GOP electorate retreat in a panic. Watching the two sides do battle is like watching bloodthirsty lions stalk, attack and devour a lame water buffalo.

  • willpeir

    That’s true. Especially since the GOP narrative pushes against good “storytelling.” As in, you tell a story on the exceptional, not the common place because the common place is boring.

    In other words, enough years of watching television that tells you that the hooker secretly has a heart of gold and the hard working father secretly beats his children is sure to warp anyone’s worldview.

  • PhillyCon

    and what Andrew Breitbart called the “Democrat-Media Complex” never bothers to expose and debunk the counterfactual beliefs of the radical Left. Why? Because liberals believe that having a loud, militant left-wing fringe — angry shock troops to assault the GOP-allied institutions of bourgeois society – is good for the Democrat Party.

    Excellent point. May, I also add that this “loud, militant … fringe” also assaults our up and coming leaders like Sarah Palin, Allen West, etc and go after them until they are either deemed “stupid” or “evil.” Unfortunately, it seems to work.

  • http://saberpoint.blogspot.com Stogie Chomper

    “Civil disobedience” is not always a bad thing, especially when it is to oppose unconstitutional laws, or is used as a nullification measure. I am hoping for widespread “civil disobedience” if Diane Feinstein gets her anti-gun law passed.

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  • Quartermaster

    Worse yet is that our “friends” are the worst of the lot when it comes to attacking those same people. The GOP establishment is worse than useless.

    I hope they can kick Cryin’ John Boner out of the Speaker’s chair come Jan 3.

  • PhillyCon

    Yes, those people too.

  • FOAF

    “the national media, where Democrats out-number Republicans by a factor of no less than 7-to-1″

    That’s a typo, s/b “70-to-1″.

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