Over at Protein Wisdom, commenter “Andrew the Noisy” notes, referring to the Time magazine story on Glenn Beck:
It’s not bias. It’s like they can’t see their own anger. It’s like all Moveon stuff was done by someone else.
Well, no, of course they don’t. It’s absolutely fundamental to their worldview that they not notice.
As I have noted before, for an insult to sting it has to be applicable — its target has to feel as if it describes some quality or characteristic that actually exists, or that might be mistakenly concluded actually exists. And most people aren’t introspective — the vast majority of people simply go with what they’ve got or have already concluded, rather than examining their own precepts in an outside light.
A Progressive’s entire worldview is built upon the foundation of Doing Good, interpreted in a physical or worldly sense — feeding the sick, housing the hungry, curing the homeless. They never even consider the difference between doing good to and doing good for, so Thoreau’s comment (“If I knew … that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.”) is simply incomprehensible. Unintended consequences are not a consideration; they are shrugged off when encountered. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, after all.
That’s why the ACORN business is reducing them to gibbering, non sequitur, and lashing out at random targets. They support(ed) the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now because its charter is to Do Good, and any peccadilloes it may have engaged in are trivial and below notice — diversion of funds? Phooey! Just give ’em more, so enough gets through to the Needy. But there is no way to characterize the enslavement of teenagers, especially brown teenagers, to force them to work as prostitutes as “Doing Good”, nor is there any way to dismiss it as simple peculation. If it happened outside the United States, they could shrug it off as a cultural peculiarity; but it’s right here, right now, and that sets up an intolerable tension between the self-image of Doing Good and the obvious reality of Doing Evil.
The tension is intolerable because, as noted, like most people they aren’t introspective. They aren’t capable of bringing reality into contact with preconception in order to resolve the tension because they aren’t capable of either contradicting their own assumptions or internalizing what is laughably known as “the real world”. The only resolution of the matter, for them, would be for the issue to go away, either by dropping below notice or by introducing something else to take attention away from it. Unfortunately for them, this time the real world is bombarding them without letup, and the shrieks and howls are music to their opponents’ ears.
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18 September 2009 at 2:42 pm
BJTexs
Well done, Ric.
What’s most satisfying about this little dust up is the shear desperation of the left in their frantic efforts to reclaim Teh Narrative%trade;. i have a vision of the troll-bots, boxes of 3X5 index carded talking points at hand, desperately shuffling the pile to come up with something – anything that will stop the noise.
Unfortunately for them, it’s a a very different world out there when your side is in power. Most of us smile sweetly at the jabs and reply, “sorry, bubby, but Bushhitler ain’t power anymore. Why can’t your side get anything done again?”
As Krauthammer said the other day, “Accusations of racism are the last refuge of the liberal scoundrel.” When one’s progressive “doing good” expectations have been raised by transcendent victory, the crash not only seems harsh but so darn unfair.
Desperation: It’s what’s for dinner!
18 September 2009 at 3:19 pm
happyfeet
Anyone what has ACORN on their resume should probably fix that I think.
18 September 2009 at 3:41 pm
BJTexs
Yes, ‘feets, and they prolly should consider using Clorox and a really stiff scrub brush, I think.
18 September 2009 at 4:21 pm
Cowboy
Ric:
Ive been thinking about the left’s response to the ACORN firrago for a while and Ive been wondering–do you think there are two “camps” (for lack of a better word) in the Progressive Community, one that sees ACORN and its efforts merely cynically, as a means by which to gather, secure, and maintain its power…and another camp that is so naively optimistic about human nature that its response is to overlook (or ignore) the obvious problems within that organization and concentrate on whatever good they believe it accomplishes?
[Wow, thats a long and largely horrible sentence for an English teacher. Screw it, its Friday.]
18 September 2009 at 9:21 pm
cynn
I assume you mean by “they” you mean dross like me. Your childish assumtpion is that we on the left can’t think or intuit for ourselves. That is is a costly misapprehension;
19 September 2009 at 7:10 am
Cowboy
cynn:
I assume your comment was directed to mine.
Please show me where I made the implication that the left of either “camp” can’t think for itself.
I fully admit that what I’ve proposed is based on a generalization–several, probably–but it’s only a theory.
cynn, I teach English in a university, so most of my friends are VERY liberal. Most of my family votes automatically Democrat. My question is primarily aimed at trying to understand how otherwise good people can align themselves with a party that from my perspective is bent on destroying much of what America is and has always been.
As a liberal yourself, I’d hope that you could help me understand this.
19 September 2009 at 9:42 am
Classical vs. Quantum Politics « Ric's Rulez
[…] September 2009 in Uncategorized Commenter cynn sneers: Your childish assumption is that we on the left can’t think or intuit for ourselves. That is is […]
19 September 2009 at 12:32 pm
sdferr
You can’t assume cynn is directing her comment at you though Cowboy, can you? First, cynn has long demonstrated a mastery of the vague proposition, far and away beyond ordinary blog commenters, such as to nearly approach deserving a class name all her own. Unspecified antecedents, unnamed conditionals, non sequitur, unattributed quotes, untethered pronouns, it’s an enormous bag of tricks. Cynnicism might befit it. Second, and more to the point, a word search on “they” turns up the first use in Andrew’s quote and the second in Ric’s very next sentence.
As to your plea for help, perhaps I’m simply forgetful or perhaps I’m overlooking an obvious example or yet again perhaps I haven’t been reading PW long enough or not attentively enough to have captured the relevant example, but can you point me to an occasion in which you think cynn has gone out of her way to be helpful to an adversarial interlocutor in a discussion of political matter? The instance hasn’t jumped out at me.
19 September 2009 at 5:16 pm
Cowboy
You’re probably right, sdferr. I was optimistic that she’d at least try.
This is something that I’m interested in, but finding a liberal who isn’t insulted at being referred to as either cynical or naive has been…well, difficult.