In a way, just for now, things are going a bit too much better than hoped for to require much comment, though I’d love to be working on Age Epoch Episode of Obama Year One commentary, Scott Brown commentary, James Cameron/Avatar follow-up, the new seasons of 24 and American Idol and their deeper meanings (there must be some, right?), a landmark Supreme Court decision, jaw-dropping Senate testimony on the Abdulmuttalab arrest, shorting China, several book reviews, updated macro-economic observations, the state of the conservative coalition, and what-all-else, but I’m still more than a little bit distracted by real life at my own (rainswept) ground level (ecch!).
I have however been managing to keep track of leftist responses to the the Massachusetts Miracle and the apparent collapse of Obamacare, and I found some recent offerings from the leading lights of the progressive blogosphere highly amusing: Krugman throwing up his hands and assaulting the big O with the kind of venom he normally reserves for right-wing troglodytes; Ezra Klein putting up an hilariously tone-deaf, naive and simplistic proposal (massively expand Medicare and Medicaid and pay for it by eating the rich); and Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo publishing an equally hilarious, 100% self-serving analysis from a Democrat hill staffer, who, like the MSNBC crew and your average 20-year-old Democratic Underground vulgarian, just doesn’t even remotely get it that there is nothing approaching an adequate constituency for the heroic progressivism of all their fantasies, or that disagreement on the practicality and wisdom of their approach can be anything other than sociopathologically insane and immoral.
I invite you to read the TPM post especially, and to imagine the proverbial world’s smallest violin playing all the way through. The paragraph highlighted by Marshall is worth highlighting here, because it’s the point where the sheer disgust with political reality as everyone else understands it sneaks its way in:
The worst is that I can’t help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They’re afraid to actually implement them and face the judgement of the voters. That’s the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.
If your whole life and career are built around the idea that the federal government can and should take ever more control over American economy, culture, and politics, to the greatest glory of hill staffers and the undeserving, benighted “Members” they shepherd along – yes, I can see why you find the “dynamic” scary.
This sentence from The Life of Belisarius seems relevant to this all, but especially the Obamaism obituaries (and I’ve been eager to share it anyway): “It is rarely that men reject any tale, however fantastic or improbable, provided it tends to show that their own sect or country is the peculiar favorite of heaven.”
Comments 10
feeling favored today?
enjoy.
January 21st, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Mister Brown goes to Washington is a heartwarming story, wonderful, because it is a real story. He could be the next JFK, a JFK without all the tragedy.
January 21st, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Well, I like the “Mr. Brown”/”Smith” allusion. I’ll be alert for coverage of Scott Brown’s bird calls, and his introduction of a bill for a boys’ camp.
That’s a great passage, CKM. These lines are priceless:
Quite frankly, I’m for whatever posture hurries the weaker ideas off into the great beyond. At this point, that might be handing the lefties a hankie and crooning “There, there.”
It’s not just too early to gloat — it could be counterproductive, and it’s always in bad taste anyway. Conservatives should keep in mind that the point here is not to “defeat Democrats,” but to prevent them from implementing policies that are guaranteed to make our liberties unexecutable quantities. Achieving that goal means getting Democrats de-elected, but the actual good news is the potential (not yet realized) prospect of smaller government, less spending, less taxation, and a continuation of what’s good about America. If it were possible to have all those deeply silly Democrats stay in office and also achieve the important objective, I could be happy just muting the TV when they’re talking.
But it’s not. I don’t know if the left’s ideas are weaker, but they are certainly wronger.
January 21st, 2010 at 11:25 pm
The Mr. Smith dynamic is strong, it’s really what is at the heart of the Sarah Palin boomlet and nowBrown. Our ideas are right, yet the opposite ones are entrenched in the SRM media, in academia, and have for a generation. They shape the perceptions of what is and is not an acceptable opposition
January 22nd, 2010 at 4:19 am
What the progressives take as a given is that a solution must be centralized and uniform, and that anything else condemns 100s of thousands of Americans to unnecessary miserable deaths, and untold millions more to cruel suffering. That’s what powers a good part of their self-righteousness. They see their opponents essentially as mass murdering sadists, or accomplices, and, even when their own efforts collapse under the bad economies of mega-scale and the arguably more mature and more comprehensive cost-benefit calculations of a skeptical electorate, it doesn’t and can’t deter them: They still believe that failing to make the attempt would be morally unacceptable.
Maybe it would help to attach a body count to busting the budget and other externalities of various proposals – along the lines of an environmental impact report. If Obamacare had been an oil refinery, it would never have gotten so close to siting and groundbreaking.
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:20 am
@ J.E. Dyer:
I’m all for preventing the implementation of bad policy. BUT:
What scares me (really, not in the wimpy, pathetic ‘fraidy cat language of the non-spanked) is that you can’t prevent the implementation of things that aren’t being implemented, like sound national security policies. Three big scandals erupted this week with respect to the Abdulmutallab case, two of which were “non-implementation” and one was apparently “default implementation” that is, tell the boss, and if he doesn’t tell anyone else, tough.
1. The joke that is security screening at all points of the chain.
2. The fact that there is no procedure for processing for intelligence foreign terrorists who are apprehended on our soil (feeling a 9/10-y here)
3. That the interrogation group that is supposed to handle the processing of foreign terrorists that are captured anywhere else doesn’t even exist, except on paper.
If I were a Democrat, I’d be dumping policy and pol.
January 23rd, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Hi I’m completely new here at ckmac.com so uncertain if i should write-up this within this
Every body seem very helpful here at ckmac.com
.
I like to relax and play video games online but my institution has blacklisted me from my favourite site, can anyone recommend a website which has a good choice of flash games ??
March 8th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
if flash games involve raincoats and athletic foot wear or simply fungal infections, ckmac.com is the name you can count on.
if your institution allows unsupervised visits, is located on the West Coast, and you have proof of age and legal competence, all the better.
ckmac.com has a tradition of excellence stretching back for over 1/200th of a century!
March 8th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
hmmm… should I, or shouldn’t I, break in on a conversation between a pseudo-frog and a spambot?
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
March 8th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
and if fungal infections aren’t your fave, there are now reports of possible head lice!!
that’s ckmac.com a veritable abudanza for the pestulentially inclined!
March 8th, 2010 at 10:01 pm