I was aware that the CPAC just took place. One couldn’t help but notice the various headlines on the news sites, but I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. Why get myself worked up? So I let Jon Stewart get worked up for me last night and learned that a few of the participants called this the “conservative Woodstock.” Talk about a stretch.
But the other thing that struck me is this: When this crowd gets together, they expend an enormous amount of vitriol fixating on lefties and declaring them the ruination of America. It’s the same rhetoric that used to go down 40 years ago about intellectual-homosexual-communist hippies. After all this time, the Right still hasn’t gotten the paranoia and hatred out of its system.
Now, I’ve posted here before that the Left simply isn’t as well organized, but you don’t find us deriding conservatives the same way. Sure, we poke fun at the teabaggers, but only because they’re so laughable. But why is it that we find conservatives ludicrous – or at worst bothersome – while they brand us a threat? They’re like the retired military types from Monty Python forever protesting the impropriety of the sketches.
Their rebuttal of course would be that they love America, and Glenn Beck would throw in a few tears for effect. Just like wrapping themselves in the flag, they seize on all the patriotic fervor and claim exclusive ownership. But not admitting other points of view – in fact, degrading other points of view – isn’t what the America that the rest of us love is about.
One can’t help but admire the Right for its cohesiveness, even if it’s too lock-step most of the time. But they need a little perspective, not to mention the ability to laugh at themselves. (I don’t know that that’s happened since W did his mock-search for wmd’s at the press corps dinner. And as the Daily Show demonstrates, we lefties at least know how to poke fun at ourselves.) Because without that ability, they simply hark back to another Python sketch: “twit of the year.”
But the other thing that struck me is this: When this crowd gets together, they expend an enormous amount of vitriol fixating on lefties and declaring them the ruination of America. It’s the same rhetoric that used to go down 40 years ago about intellectual-homosexual-communist hippies. After all this time, the Right still hasn’t gotten the paranoia and hatred out of its system.
Now, I’ve posted here before that the Left simply isn’t as well organized, but you don’t find us deriding conservatives the same way. Sure, we poke fun at the teabaggers, but only because they’re so laughable. But why is it that we find conservatives ludicrous – or at worst bothersome – while they brand us a threat? They’re like the retired military types from Monty Python forever protesting the impropriety of the sketches.Their rebuttal of course would be that they love America, and Glenn Beck would throw in a few tears for effect. Just like wrapping themselves in the flag, they seize on all the patriotic fervor and claim exclusive ownership. But not admitting other points of view – in fact, degrading other points of view – isn’t what the America that the rest of us love is about.
One can’t help but admire the Right for its cohesiveness, even if it’s too lock-step most of the time. But they need a little perspective, not to mention the ability to laugh at themselves. (I don’t know that that’s happened since W did his mock-search for wmd’s at the press corps dinner. And as the Daily Show demonstrates, we lefties at least know how to poke fun at ourselves.) Because without that ability, they simply hark back to another Python sketch: “twit of the year.”
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