4.19.2009

This Is The Air They Breathe

An interesting editorial today by Dana Milbank of The Washington Post:

Next Choler, Please

Milbank - a self-avowed leftist - is pondering a phenomenon that goes against his orthodoxy. Namely, the left's current anger at Obama. In particular, the intensity of that anger has him scratching his head in wonderment.

    It made sense for them to be angry when George W. Bush was in the White House. But now, even under Obama, the anger on the left is, if anything, more personal and vitriolic than on the right.

He queried his readers as to the source of this anger.

    ...many focused on a frustration on the left caused by Obama's centrism -- his opposition to prosecuting those involved with torture, for example. "I am angry because the whole Republican party has not been rounded up and thrown into a black site," one wrote. A reader in Evanston, Ill., took a similar view, that true believers on the left don't want "b.s. rhetoric about looking forward."

These answers obviously haven't relived him of the moral dilemma he faces: leftists' anger at a leftist.

Having observed the left now for the past 30 years - both as an witness of their leadership and policy and as a conversant with my liberal friends (hey, I get along with everybody!) - I have come to a conclusion.

If you tell a fish it's swimming in water, it will ask you, "What's water?" It cannot perceive of the medium in which it moves because it knows no other environment.

The same is true of the left. The medium through which it moves is anger. Individual leftists cannot see this quality in themselves because they know no other environment.

Those outside this "rarefied" liberal air are all too aware of it. We've seen it for decades: in violent protests, hectoring town hall rampages, physical attacks against any person or institution that stands in the way of liberal hegemony. And to those of us observers the left's anger has always been "personal and vitriolic"; it knows no other manifestation.

The Bush years were actually good for America if for no other reason than it forced the left out into the open. All their bile and hatred were now on public display. It sickened us; we couldn't comprehend how people who thought of themselves as open-minded and compassionate could display so much venomous rage.

But it didn't surprise us, because we had seen this anger before; just not on this scale.

Before Bush liberals were very successful at portraying the right as America's Haters. Their tactic was not unlike that of a grade school bully. They would continually poke the right with a sharp stick. We would quietly say, "Please stop." They would poke us again. "Please stop."

Poke. "Please stop." Poke.

Poke.

Poke...

...until we just couldn't take it anymore and would stand up and clock them in the face, at which point they would jump up, point to us, and yell as loudly as they could, "HE HIT ME! TEACHER, HE'S MEAN! DO SOMETHING!"

Milbank's quandary should be self-revelatory. Not likely. Just as the fish cannot survive without water, so the left cannot survive without anger.

It is the air they breathe.



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2 Comments:

At 5:37 PM, Blogger Joe said...

Excellent piece. I particularly liked:

"If you tell a fish it's swimming in water, it will ask you, "What's water?" It cannot perceive of the medium in which it moves because it knows no other environment.

The same is true of the left. The medium through which it moves is anger. Individual leftists cannot see this quality in themselves because they know no other environment."

Spot on.

 
At 2:40 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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