What Are They Going To Do With Themselves?
A Washington Post political gossip blog reports on a new piece of BDS weirdness. Apparently, a Seattle artist received an invitation to participate in a White House contest for designing a Christmas ornament, of all things, and decided to turn it into an “impeach Bush” rant opportunity.
This raises again a question of what people who seem to have structured their entire emotional lives around their hatred of George W. Bush are going to do with themselves when he leaves office. Their problem is exacerbated by the lack of any politically viable Republican power in the new government. Congress is a Democratic bastion that, with luck in Georgia and a little theft in Minnesota or an election override in the Democrat-led Senate, might even be filibuster-proof. Even after eight years of a Republican White House, the courts remain at most a 50/50 liberal/conservative split and likely to turn further leftward.
This creates a problem for the BDS brigades — they need to have people to hate in order to feed their image of themselves as “telling truth to power” or “fighting for social justice” or any of the other variations on their Manichean worldview. Who are they going to hate now that they’ve totally won? Railing against the excesses of some small-town school board president that has managed to evade the edicts of the courts doesn’t seem likely to fulfill their appetites, and they can keep recycling the Sarah Palin boogeywoman over and over and over only for so long.
The psychological frustration that comes from needing to hate but lacking a suitable target might produce some entertaining stuff over the upcoming months and years.
Then again, they can always repackage President Obama as the new evil liar.
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We should ask the Republicans who demonized Clinton “how they got over it”?
I would, except they didn’t keep going on and on and on and on with their obsession even after the approach of the end of Clinton’s term. Then again, the 2000 election had a…distracting effect. Also, like herpes, the Clintons never really go away.
If in two years we still hear “Bush” as the continued source of all of our problems then we need to ask:
“What’s the point of elections then? If one person can totally screw things up then why even try to change course? “
c3 said: “If in two years we still hear “Bush” as the continued source of all of our problems…”
Good point c3 and exactly why many of us shake our heads in wonder at those who continue to rant and rave about Carter and Clinton.
I agree -many never got over Clinton or Carter as the source of all of our problems. On the blogosphere- how many complaints about Bush were answered with “But Clinton did it too?” Even the economic collapse was blamed on Clinton’s attempt to curb the redlining in real estate.
Can those who still dislike Clinton- as Jason obviously does- admit that he left the US in much better shape than W has?
What are you talking about, Kim? On balance, I have more admiration than contempt for Clinton’s presidency. His personal and stylistic failures aside (and those were legion), in policy terms I have a generally positive assessment of his presidency. My “herpes” comment was a snarky indictment of the relentless self-promotion of both Bill and Hillary and their stylistic tendency to make themselves personally the center of every issue than it was a blanket hatred of them.
So your attempt to cast me as a Clinton hater is just a pure fabrication on your part.
As for redressing redlining by mandating subprime mortgages, it actually WAS a contributing factor to the mortgage crisis. When asked by my students who was to blame, I pointed the finger at three places: (1) Democrats who championed the creation of the subprime mortgage industry as social policy to combat redlining; (2) Republicans who resisted attempts to regulate the derivatives market in the late 1990s; and (3) every single one of us including myself who overleveraged ourselves with consumer and credit card loans. In short, I think that there is plenty of blame to go around, I don’t exempt anyone, including myself.
As for “but Clinton did it to”, I would challenge you to go back through the archives on this and any other site I have ever written for to find even a SINGLE instance of me every saying anything like that. I don’t buy it and I think it is an illegitimate argument. “The other guy is worse” is one of the common arguments in the blogosphere that I hate the most because it is fundamentally non-responsive. That is why I avoid it. My recollection of some of your comments on TMV, however, is that you are quite willing to embrace it whenever Democrats or lefties come in for criticism (just as you are doing on this thread right now by trying to change the subject away from Bush-haters by talking about Clinton-haters and Carter-haters instead).
Bottom line: You misrepresented my position and engaged yourself in exactly the same bad debate tactics that you are trying to accuse others of. Shame on you.
> “Then again, they can always repackage President Obama as the new evil liar.”
After his comment about “are there going to be more Latino’s in his cabinet” today at his press conference.. “It’s about excellence, the best person for the job”
I’m sure there wil be more crying foul from the left as well. (Not that I agree that Bill Richardson is the best, but his general comment about excellence (read, to me, not so much about racial quotas) will definately ruffle some leftist feathers.
Jason,
You may not be guilty of it, but blaming Clinton and even Carter for any particular evil is endemic on right wing websites and talk radio. It is far to early to tell if Bush hatred has that kind of staying power. I would guess that the answer is yes, but only on the fringes. I would say on the whole there is considerably more justification for BDS than CDS, but YMMV.
My favorite “Jason article”, seriously, he’s very objective.
And by the way… the Bush Bashing in this country, is no where… no where… near any sort of bashing of Clinton. Clinton was only bashed a few times, when he made direct mistakes like not helping in Rwanda or when he raised taxes etc. (but hey, even Bush the FIRST got blamed for raising taxes, so you can’t say it’s Democrat Bashing; it’s just a common feeling on taxes).
But trust me, no one accused Clinton of “trying to destroy the world”, or of being a “warmonger” (Even though Clinton started wars too). The double standard for Republicans, especially ones with Southern accents who sort of look dumb on TV (get it especially hard), that’s why people tried to defend Bush even if they disagree with him themselves.
It’s OK to disagree… but stop bashing.
I’ve completely stopped criticizing Obama, since he is the president-elect even if I disagreed with some of his policies.
Elections are elections, stop taking politics like the end-of-the-world.
Maybe if you watch the show “24″ seeing that both the Democratic president and Republican president seem to do a good job ; you might become more moderate and less “rabid partisan”.
What have they said about Clinton and Carter?
I’ll tell you what radio talk show hosts say about them:
“Clinton shouldn’t have lied”
“Clinton is immoral”
“Clinton should have done something about Rwanda”
“Clinton should have gotten Bin Laden”
“Carter ruined our economy”
“Carter messed up the Iranian crisis”
That’s it.
And none of them are far fetched either. They are all fair critiques.
Has anyone accused Carter of “creating a terrorist attack against the US” or some other conspiracy? NO.
Liberals don’t say this about Bush:
“He couldn’t explain to us the reason for the Iraq War, what is he hiding?”
“He enlarged our debt”
“He messed up our world image”
All valid points.
Instead Liberals say this about Bush:
“HE RUINED OUR ECONOMY, I CAN’T AFFORD THE IPHONE I HAVE TO SETTLE FOR THE ITOUCH!”
“HE CAUSED 9/11!!”
“HE LIED ABOUT IRAQ HE PURPOSEFULLY MISLED US FOR OIL MONEY!”
“HE CAUSED THE DEATHS OF MILLIONS OF AMERICANS AND OTHERS”
“HE IS DUMB AND HE MAKES AMERICA LOOK LIKE WAR MONGER OIL PIGS!”
And trust me, I haven’t even said the WORST of it.
You were a champion of the very same thing Kim – only in Reverse.
And I suppose some could say Clinton left the US in better shape – if he actually did. hence the silence on his doing it.
Of course – you would say
correct – not so much.
I think the political derangement syndrome has a long and tiresome history. While it’s true that there were and are some on the right who have continued to see the Carter and Clinton administrations as the root of problems, I think this is much more deep rooted on the left. The comparisons of Carter to a fool and a wimp seem almost quaint compared to the characterizations of Bush as evil incarnate that seem to be the stock in trade at sites like Kos. My word choice is intentional – many who object to the previous administrations take issue with the policies, but appear to recognize the political legitimacy and personal humanity of Carter and Clinton. Many of the comments about Bush show no such recognition of Bush.
So, no one accused the Clintons of murdering Vincent Foster and then covering it up?
Or said that Hillary was some sort of socialist lesbian?
Yes, Orson, it is telling that for all the claims of equivalency like Tom and Grewgills try to make (apparently, changing the subject to “the other guys do it too” is their standard response to ANY criticism towards the left — its like push the button, get the pellet with these people), they cannot provide examples of:
(1) A movie being made about the assassination of Carter or Clinton (such a movie was made about Bush)
(2) A major critic calling for a military coup against Carter or Clinton (such a post was made about Bush on HuffPo)
(3) Equation of Carter or Clinton to Adolf Hitler as a routine part of mainstream critics’ writing (such comparisons, many of which claim Bush to be worse than Hitler, are common among writers and commenters in the leftist blogosphere — I specifically recall Libby at Newshoggers saying that Bush was worse than Hitler, also, some time right after she predicted that Bush would cancel the 2008 elections)
(4) Demands that Carter or Clinton be jailed or executed after leaving office (such demands are currently common on DK and HuffPo and, of course, GG)
Also, other than fringe characters like Michael Savage ranting incoherently about liberalism as a mental disorder, I cannot think of equivalents for the “conservatives are crazy” academic studies funded and promoted by the left. From what I can tell, many current-day liberals seem to ccept the Soviet dogma that any dissent from their ideology is in and of itself insanity requiring condemnation and confinement, or at least censorship.
So, yes, while I concede the point that Carter and Clinton both had some clearly deranged critics of their own (e.g. the conspiracy theories about Vince Foster’s suicide), I will NOT concede that it was equivalent in either tone or frequency to what has been deployed against Bush (and pretty much everyone who disagrees with anyone on the left at all these days — it doesn’t require much for GG to condemn someone as a “neocon warmonger” at the same time he complains about all the name-calling in the blogosphere
). I am myself a centrist and a moderate who sees good ideas on both right and left, but I do NOT see equivalency in pathological cultural elements on both right and left. I think the left has a much more serious and widespread problem with hatred and extremism than the right has and I believe any measured, non-ideological assessment bears that out. The fact that people like Tom and GG can’t even bring themselves to discuss it without trying to constantly change the subject back to their obsessive hatred of conservatives kind of proves the point.
I also will not concede that pointing a finger towards Clinton’s or Carter’s deranged critics constitutes a legitimate excuse or even a relevant response to criticism of BDS. I don’t understand why people like Tom and Grewgills and the other leftist commenters and writers in the blogosphere seem completely incapable of acknowledging or condemning the excesses in their own ranks without immediately trying to change the subject to talk about conservatives. But that has been the clear pattern from that particular ideological group for the last 4 years that I have been in the blogosphere. Literally every single time I have written or seen a post that criticizes BDS, te instant response from the leftist faction on the site has been to say, in effect, “but conservatives are worse!” (but without providing any evidence or direct comparison, of course, just asserting it angrily).
It is however fair comment when BDS is being used as supposed proof of liberals being more partisan or more unhinged than their conservative counterparts.
What I object to is the unfair playing field you have set out.
Someone on the right complains of overwrought criticism of Bush and then proceeds to use that as an argument that the right is morally superior to the left. When it is pointed out that the right engages in just the same behavior and so that it is not proof of moral superiority of one side or the other, you then point to that as proof of your position. It is a circular argument.
Blaming any and all of societies ills on any president is both inaccurate and pointless, but to claim that one side is the primary repository of this all to human frailty is not justified or accurate.
The left blogosphere is considerably larger and so more examples of virtually any activity (good or bad) can be found there just as the same can be said of conservatives and talk radio. Is conservative talk radio more inflammatory than liberal talk radio simply because I can find scores more examples of inflammatory speech on conservative talk radio than on liberal talk radio, or is it simply a product of who dominates the medium?
BTW you have complained about others putting words in your mouth and you have just done that to me in saying, “it doesn’t require much for GG to condemn someone as a “neocon warmonger” at the same time he complains about all the name-calling in the blogosphere.” Of course it is far easier to argue with a caricature than a real person.
By most measures I can think of that don’t involve keeping his pants zipped I think Clinton was a far superior president to Bush. I cannot think of any failures of Clinton that rival the scale of the lead up to and first couple of years of the Iraq war, nor the federal response to Katrina. Can you?
I don’t thank that necessarily makes Bush a bad man, just a bad president.
About which I said nothing of the kind on this threaduntil the subject was changed by you and your friends. Go back and look — the original post said nothing in a comparative way. That discussion only emerged after the inevitable “but conservatives are worse!!!” BS initiated (as many times in the past) by Kim.
I’ve had enough of this hijacking every single time BDS gets criticized. There is no legitimate excuse for it.
GG in that quotation from me referred to Glenn Greenwald, not you. And accusing Glenn Greenwald of hypocritically name-calling everyone he disagrees with while at the same time (twice in the very same post) complaining about all the awful name-calling in the blogosphere isn’t a caricature, it is an accurate and faithful description of his vicious pattern of behavior, for which he receives nothing but love from your side of the ideological spectrum.
Try to find that part where I said that there was equivalency between criticism of Dems and Reps…
…but it turns out that I can’t find it. Perhaps that’s because I never stated how much criticism any one person received; lacking some sort of quantitative instrument I really don’t want to say who has it worse. Only wanted to point out that it’s something that seems to happen to all presidents.
And Grewgills does have a point; even if the original intent of this thread wasn’t to say liberals were worse than conservatives it seems to have headed that way in the comment threads.
Statistically Liberals are worse than Conservatives, this is not an assumption it’s a fact.
It’s rooted in the base of both parties currently. (now in the past there were racists/fascists/neo-nazis, but those are almost non-existent now-adays)
The BASE of Republicans, are working class families, many of them religious, usually rural, many of them business/finance.
The BASE of the Democrats, are young voters, minorities, females, middle-to-upper class, non-religious (or less religious), urban, and entertainers.
Who would you bet would be more “aggressive” in their arguments?
There is no question.
Now I’m a Secular progressive, I live in urban areas, I am a minority, and I am young per say ( i hope! ), and I am middle-to-upper class, I fit perfectly with the Democrats. But I can see through that, I also happen to like reading politics, hence I have analyzed both parties, and currently am Republican (though this may change in the near future, depending on Barack Obama’s term and who’s running 2012). So please don’t think I’m biased, I haven’t been Republican before 2007.
The psychological frustration that comes from needing to hate but lacking a suitable target might produce some entertaining stuff over the upcoming months and years.
It’s already hilarious, as they rush to blame Bush for things that haven’t happened yet and probably won’t. I even know a few over-obsessed BDS sufferers who swear Chimpy McHitlerHalliburton is going to use the military to stay in office.
Could you provide those stats?
and my original response wasn’t about demonizing republicans or conservatives, but noted a similar phenomenon and speculated that this newer phenomenon would likely play out along similar lines. We will have to wait and see, but my guess is that given the similar circumstances following each person leaving office (complete control in the aggrieved party’s hands) they will play out the same. That is a relatively small but vocal minority that blames all ills on their chosen bogeyman. You wanna bet on it?
My second comment was a direct response to Orson’s comment and your rather long rant against the political discourse of the left.
Both were well within bounds and addressed your points (and his) directly and fairly.
I wouldn’t expect that you would be able to think any other way than that.
If one were to sit and list Clinton’s accomplishments in a rational manner.
You would be sitting for awhile with a pencil, worn eraser, and a blank piece of paper.
Interested said: “If one were to sit and list Clinton’s accomplishments in a rational manner.”
Here’s what the National Archives did with their pencil, worn eraser and case of paper… “The Clinton Gore Administration: A Record of Accomplishment” http://clinton3.nara.gov/WH/Accomplishments/
Results may vary depending on perspective.
Actually, that would be an account provided by the Clinton administration itself, not the NARA. The National Archives doesn’t write anything, it stores the records of previous administrations.
Interested,
Steve has answered your question for me. I take it by your response that you have no answer to mine.
ask one and you may get an answer. And Steve pointed to Clinton’s own account to account for what Clinton may have done.
from the comment you responded to and included in your previous comment,
Sorry, I naturally assumed you were laughing your butt off when typing that. For it would naturally lead to the question – did he do any good – to point out the bad.
however – continuing. Your question would also assume that Bush had the power to declare war against Iraq and keep the troops there beyond his legal limits. Which also naturally leads to the thought of – oh wait – congress does.
This also then leads to the natural progression of – who holds the purse strings to keeping the troops there. After all troops cannot be kept in any location without funding to put them there.
Now, once you declare this inept Democrat led Congress has had it’s due faults to iraq – we can discuss further. And yes you bet we’ll dive into American deaths unanswered by clinton.
And Katrina, I suppose you are also going to bring out the Local and State responses to Katrina, coupled by an examination of Fema’s response to Katrina compared to other Federal disasters, and then pinpoint if if was a continuation of a broken system long put into place before this administration or something new.
And still waiting on clinton – but take your time, he had 8 years and was unable to.
Interested,
So you’ve got nothing. Nice try at diversion, but that leaves you still with nothing.
Congress did go along, but other than giving Bush a green light and keeping the money flowing did not make the decisions in Iraq. It was Bush and his team, not Congress, that horribly mismanaged the first three years at least in Iraq.
Re: Katrina, regardless of what the state and local response was the federal response is universally recognized as both slow and poor. Fema’s response in previous hurricanes and other disasters was both timely and effective.
Now do you have a real answer or just more evasion?
Re: Clinton
Did you follow Steve’s link?
Who cares about Steve’s link Grewgills? All that is is proof that clinton had to pay people to make up some type of accounting that he accomplished something.
That much is plainly obvious.
As you should be aware, Federal response to any disaster is last resort. Disasters are expected to be handled on a Local & State level first. We are after all, a Republic (in case you were not aware). and Fema’s response was not more timely in other disasters – you should try a little research first.
So by your admission, this worthless Congress gives the green light to Bush in regards to all things iraq – and you choose to not hold them accountable? The troops wouldn’t be there if not for them.
I’m still waiting.
All house and senate members that went along share some of the blame. That, however, is entirely beside the point in comparing Bush et al’s tremendous failures in the lead up to and first several years in Iraq and the lack of a boondoggle of anywhere near similar magnitude on the part of the Clinton administration.
Regardless of what you think of the merits of the linked list Clinton’s accomplishments listed there are at least a match to any such list that could be compiled by the current admin. If you disagree list Bush’s accomplishments that overshadow those listed along with Clinton’s failures that rival Iraq (yrs 0-3) and the federal response to Katrina. So far all I have seen from you is diversionary tactics. Why is that?
Continued failure to do either of these will IMO be tacit admission that you cannot.
That would be a feature of federalism, not republic (in case you were not aware).
Snark begets snark.