Am I just getting older, or does the left get nuttier and more violent with each passing year? They’re not even coherent anymore. They squeal incessently about abrogation of free speech, then hold a ‘Shut-Up-A-Thon‘ in front of Fox news. Suppose they see the irony in that? I doubt it.
Gotta love the title too. Reclaimthemedia. At least they’re upfront about their intentions. Suppress the broadcast of non-leftwing thought to the American populace. Information control. Some tendencies in the left must be just inborn or something.
I suppose having ONE politcally conservative media channel is just way too over-the-top for the ‘free speech’ folks. Can’t have people hearing alternative viewpoints and all. Of course, to these folks, NPR is merely a tool of the evil, corporate, warmonger-profiteer-babykiller-oilbarons.
Paul Breston, writing in The American Spectator, recounts his adventures on the streets of NYC among the ‘peace’ crowd:
The demonstrators have assaulted Republican delegates, hurled objects at cars, and provoked police. They fulfilled at least one of their pre-convention threats, hijacking a delegates’ bus and forcing the police to evacuate it for the safety of the passengers. All the while, they chanted about freedom of speech and President Bush’s repression of same. You could call them hypocrites, or ironists, or, if you’ve lived here long enough, just idiots.
I guess puppet making is out this season. He makes this common insight:
The protesters have functioned as a kind of free PR agency for conservatism. The more infantile and destructive their rage and the more disgraceful their provocation of the police, the country has seen them for who they are. What a wonderful opposition for Americans to choose from: gangs of Leninist thugs versus the men and women of the NYPD.
Then goes on to make this deeper one:
And then there is the contrast between the parties. Besides all the obvious ones, there is this: One party had the guts to take its message into hostile territory — really hostile, trust me — and the other was content to stay in friendly confines and preach to the converted.
UK citizen and left-wing intellectual, ‘joe 90’, who likes to troll comment at Armies of Liberation recently clued us all in on the real state of the world, lest we be otherwise deluded:
* The US is ‘the world’s largest soup kitchen’
* Israel is ‘the world’s ultimate failed state’
* The US & UK are ‘rogue’ and ‘terrorist’ nations
* The pentagon is the ‘world’s largest terrorist organization’
* The pentagon operates 30 gulags
* The US has invaded two ‘defenceless 3rd world countries’
* Terrorism in Iraq is Bremmer’s fault
* WMDs never existed. It was all a ‘concocted lie’ and ‘everyone’ knew it
* The more media you read/watch the less you know. That’s been ‘proven’.
Melanie Phillips has noted a similar trend:
For the dominant force in British society is the opposite belief, that this country’s values are rotten and have to be replaced — and indeed that the whole edifice of western culture is oppressive and coercive and has brought only misery to the rest of the planet. It is a profoundly reactionary viewpoint, anti-progress, which is increasingly having the effect of returning us to a pre-modern state of social anarchy — despite the fact that it is espoused by people who call themselves ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’.
Well, these are people who can’t differentiate the United States from the Third Riech. Or Bush from Hitler. Of course, they continue to support international terrorists like Yassir Arafat and when they held sway brought the likes of Lennin and Stalin to power, but let’s not confuse the issue. Nitpicky of me, I guess.
She goes on…
There was a time, of course, when liberal progessives believed they had a mission to improve the world by promoting values such as truth, law, justice, morality and freedom. That, of course, is precisely what Bush believes he must do (and, for that matter. so does Tony Blair). For that, he is denounced and vilified as a war-mongering imperialist. Democratic nation-building is now regarded as the new fascism…It is the left, by contrast, who now believe in preserving the tyrannical and murderous status-quo. In this respect, indeed, Bush is not conservative at all but an old-fashioned liberal radical … And by golly, do they hate him
We’ve noticed that too, Melanie. But judging from their past performance, I wouldn’t put too much faith in their judgement.
‘Reclaim’ is the correct word…but it’s not going to happen. Stick a spear in it, Og; that dinosaur is dead.
I’m not sure that i would agree with Paul Preston on “preaching to the converted”. Both conventions did this, as the audience for a convention is inside the hall and on TV, not in the streets of the city where the hall is situated.
Hijacking a delegate bus? I defer to Sylvain on this, but that seems to me as if “demonstrations” here are starting to get as extreme as in Europe. When i was at MIT in the early 70s, the anti-war demonstrations mostly consisted of marching down the largest street they could find, thus snarling traffic. Damage was confined to a couple of parked cars turned over. Not even as bad as recent end of season NCAA football “rallies”. From the news and pictures at the time, Japan and Germany had real violence in the streets, closer to the 60’s riots that burned US inner cities.
But i do think the media, and hence comments randomly overheard in restaurants and stores, has gotten more strident. As i’ve said before, time lessens the memory of pain and i could be wrong here. But i think Bush is being kicked even harder than Nixon and Reagan were. Yes, there were some references to ‘fascist’ of course, but less publication of those epithets in books and magazines.
Also, i don’t remember anyone in the conservative press, or any Republican congress critter, referring to Clinton as a Stalinist or Maoist, which would seem to be the equivalent epithet to use.
Yes, i think the nutty violent factor is increasing.
Matya no baka
The left is in a death spasm and is knows it. The whole scene reminds me of a scene from the Wizard of Oz, as the wicket witch screeches to high heavens as she melts away and disappears into the mists.
The New York City protests were the logical consequences of Post Modernism and Nihilism; the protesters could make neither logical arguments nor even think. Many of them were locked in a 1960’s time warp; doomed forever to repeat the mistakes of the past. What I saw bears the marks of a religious ritual little different from self flagellation. It mattered to the protesters not at all if they convinced anyone. So, they did not even try. Each person was a punch line waiting for a joke.