So what's going on on the liberal side of the aisle that we're no longer the focus? Internal bickering and fighting. Conflicting issues. Power struggles and power plays, not just by the candidates, but by their supporters. Different factions are turning on each other, liberal bloggers are attacking other liberal bloggers, and the entire situation seems to be hitting a feeding frenzy mode of lib blogger eat lib blogger. One blogger at DailyKos makes this observation:
I’ve been posting at DailyKos for nearly 4 years now and started writing diaries in support of Hillary Clinton back in June of last year. Over the past few months I’ve noticed that things have become progressively more abusive toward my candidate and her supporters.
I’ve put up with the abuse and anger because I’ve always believed in what our on-line community has tried to accomplish in this world. No more. DailyKos is not the site it once was thanks to the abusive nature of certain members of our community.
I’ve decided to go on "strike" and will refrain from posting here as long as the administrators allow the more disruptive members of our community to trash Hillary Clinton and distort her record without any fear of consequence or retribution. I will not be posting at DailyKos effective immediately. I will not help drive up traffic or page-hits as long as my candidate – a good and fine DEMOCRAT - is attacked in such a horrid and sexist manner not only by other diarists, but by several of those posting to the front page.
I don't even have to do any research on this one to know that it's liberals attacking liberals here. DailyKos is not well known as a bastion of Conservative thinkers.
But this is just one isolated incident, one might argue. One blogger who feels "picked on" by the other hens in the chicken yard, so to speak (simply putting things in terms where the concept of a "pecking order" is more visual to the mind of the reader. Trust me, you don't want me to try to draw chickens pecking each other in a chicken yard. One of my psych professors tried doing that. It wasn't pretty). No, this is merely one very visible and telling indication of what's going on in the blogosphere: the liberals are suffering something of a cyber-civil war, and the conservatives are sitting back scratching their heads wondering what, exactly, to do.
Why do I say it's a liberal civil war? Let's examine that, shall we? Grab you fedora's, your bullwhips, and your colt .45's (the pistol, not the malt liquor), it's Indiana Jones time for just a little bit as we go on a little adventure: comparing the conservatives to the liberals to examine what the hell is going on.
Picture, if you will, a conservative. Get a good mental image of what you THINK a Republican Conservative would look like if you passed one walking down the street on any given day. Got it? Good, because I want you to hang on to that thought for just a moment, I may just be on the verge of shattering the image you conjured forth in your mind. Brace yourselves, now, this might hurt just a bit. Are you ready? Good. If you pictured a portly gentleman in a three piece suit, bald head, smoking a cigar, gold watch chain stretched across his ample paunch leading to a pocket watch stuffed into the pocket of his vest, you've just envisioned the Hollywood and dinosaur media perpetuation of what a Conservative Republican looks like. Shake your head, clear your mind, get that image GONE, it has a place, but we don't need to conjure it forth again just yet. Now, breath in, breath out, and focus. Picture for yourself a man climbing a pole on a set of hooks, safety gear at the ready to lock into place when he reaches his working height near the top of the pole, be it cable, telephone, or electric. Picture the soccer mom driving the crumb crunchers to school in the morning and taking them to ball practice this afternoon. Picture your neighborhood church's pastor. The small business owner. The entrepreneurs. THESE are more likely to be the kinds of people who are more adherent to the conservative line of thinking today. That other fellow, the big guy in the business suit who's enjoying a cigar while telling you that he needs to raise the taxes on your cigarettes? That's more like your modern day liberal than you can imagine. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty, PLENTY of working class liberals out here, too. I bet, I would just BET, that if I had asked you to envision a liberal, you would have had trouble coming up with any one clear, concise image of what you had in mind that a liberal might look like.
If you ask the average conservative what makes him (yes, I use "him," it's grammatically correct and refers to both male and female in instances such as this. If you're looking for ME to be politically correct, don't hold your breath. It ain't happening. I'd rather be grammatically correct) a conservative, you're going to get a basic rundown of answers that fall in line with the conservative mindset: limited federal government, lower taxes, strong national defense, and rugged individualism. There might be other inclusions into that according to the individual, but that's going to be pretty much the answer if you ask more than two or three of us separately.
What do you suppose the answer would be if you asked a liberal why he's a liberal? Can you imagine the number of answers you would get going from individual to individual asking this question? I've asked this question of liberals; I've yet to see any binding thought process behind liberalism other than bigger, stronger, more controlling governmental legislation to fix everything.
Wanting the government to control things isn't a guiding principle. Wanting the government to control everything is giving up yourself unto the control of someone other than yourself. Whether by force and coercion or by choice, the giving up of ones rights to another is a form of slavery.
So if the liberals want us all to become slaves of the government, according to that thought process, why all the internal bickering and fighting among the liberals? Let's go back to the conservatives for a moment. Among the conservatives, you have a clear, defined, coherent set of core beliefs that, as a group, the conservatives adhere to. It isn't brainwashing, it isn't "group-think," it's individuality expressing itself in the common thought process that man is a creature who longs for, and strives for, and will die for, to attain a goal, and that goal is individual freedom and individual responsibility. That doesn't mean that there aren't conservatives out there who don't do volunteer work in the community, it doesn't mean that there aren't conservatives out there who won't help their fellow man, it doesn't mean that conservatives are self-centered and self-absorbed people who look out only for themselves and care nothing for others. If you'll examine who the conservatives are in your community, you'll more than likely find them giving their time to coach little league baseball, serve as volunteer fire fighters, and lead in other community projects. And they do so quietly, for the most part, without the need to feed their egos with the gratitude and platitudes of the mass public. Their satisfaction comes from knowing that they are doing something positive, and by choice, and that they're doing the things that they want to do rather than being forced into doing something against their will. There is a binding, unifying common thread among conservatives that cause them to stand together under the idea of a common thought process, and the code for that ideology is what I mentioned before.
But the liberals, as I said, are turning on each other, devouring each other, and doing their best to do each other, and ultimately themselves, in. There are so many causes that fall under the umbrella of liberalism that lie in contradiction with each other that they are finding themselves unable to survive the existence of each other.
I have often said that contradictions can not exist. Modern liberalism is proving that theory to be correct. When you have a party, such as the modern Democratic party, that hosts so many conflicting points of view, it's going to come apart at the seams.
What are these contradicting points of view, you ask? I'm glad you asked that. Let me point out just a few of them. When you have a governor who proposes, as we do in Tennessee, that everyone should stop smoking, who puts forth legislation to stop smoking in public places, and then sets forth legislation to raise the taxes on cigarettes in order to fund education projects, that is a contradiction. You can not force people to stop smoking or curb their habit and yet and still rely upon the taxes raised from smokers to fund anything. To have a party that promotes abortion on demand and opposes the death penalty for capital crimes is a contradiction. Both activities mean someone is going to be killed. For a party to demand to live in freedom and yet ask that the government take more control of their lives and take care of them from cradle to grave is a contradiction. For a party to demand that all religions be respected equally unless they are based in Christianity is a contradiction.
And the list goes on. There are literally thousands of other examples. Save the dolphins, but not the tuna? That's always been one of my favorite examples. The point is this: contradictions can not exist. A contradictory thing will struggle to center itself to a point where it no longer lies in contradiction. And that is what we are seeing coming out of the liberal blogs.
When you see news footage of liberals protesting, how are they acting? Are they marching along peacefully, as they did in the days of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (one of my favorite liberals, by the way, from a time when being liberal truly did mean being progressive)? Likely you'll see them shouting, as the Code Pink members protesting in front of the Marine recruiting station in Berkeley. A great, great many liberals feel like they have to shout and go on the offensive to make their point. That's why it's referred to as militant liberalism. Unfortunately for the liberals, the generals are clashing (everyone is a general in the militant liberal movement, by the way. There are no privates. Well, there are, but, um, never mind). Group A is attacking group B while reacting to an attack from group C who is being assisted, for the moment, by group D while fending off a counter-assault from group E, who just recently decimated in an onslaught of rampant verbiage groups G, H, and J (there is no I in liberalism, it is all, "we").
The save the polar bear people are attacking the save the baby seal people because that's what polar bears do, they attack and eat baby seals.
The plastic baggers have just recently sacked the paper baggers.
The save the whales people are treading water amongst the save the sharks people. We're still waiting to see what happens there when the save the dolphin and bottle nosed porpoise people show up with the save the orca people in that one.
The save the predatory ocean bird people have egg on their face because of exposure from the save the sea turtle people.
It goes on and on and on, but seems to be centering itself in a conflict around "do we want Hillary or Obama?" Each side has decided that they will do what they need to do to shout the other side down. The side that shouts most loudly wins, rights? The question is, what are they shouting about, and why are they shouting in the first place? At some point, during the 1960's, someone, possibly Abby Hoffman, decided that liberals should shout to make their point. Yes, I know King shouted, too, but honestly, how many Baptist preachers have you ever listened to in your life who didn't shout? I'd say not very many. Not that old school, Bible thumping, fire and brimstone type of preacher, anyway.
Part of the problem that the left is facing is that the "inevitability" factor of Hillary Clinton didn't quite pan out the way that they expected. According to (pardon the tongue in cheek moment here, but I have to) conservative thinking among the left, Hillary Clinton had all but been anointed as the next to take the throne. And then along came the newly appointed pastor of the Church of Hope and Change. And people remembered, with a new player on the scene, "Hey, I don't LIKE Hillary Clinton." The "inevitable" has suddenly a heated race for the top spot. And as the smearing and mud slinging heats up between Clinton and Obama, expect it to pick up in the blog world.
Just don't let me run out of buttered popcorn that was popped in coconut popcorn oil while we're watching them slug it out. And if anyone wants to bring along some ice cold Corona, we might even watch them with the windows open this spring, listening to the coyotes yipping across the distance...
Once and Always, an American Fighting Man
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