The Shrill, Hysterical, Fear Mongering Mark Morford

I haven't talked much about Mark Morford in some time for the same reason I rarely mention Ted Rall's latest strips or commentary: it gets a little old, doesn't it? But Mark Morford's column today cracked me up.

Most conservatives I know are convinced that Bush is the right guy for the job, but that if Kerry wins our world won't come to an end. There is a certain left fringe, though, that is represented by this award winning columnist that seems to believe that if Bush wins a second term we will see the end of civil rights and freedoms and a reverse of all progressive social policies of the last five decades.

The funny part of this is that Morford, in a dizzying display of optimistic defeatism, thinks that this Republican-led rape of the land and people might be a good thing. A good thing because it might teach all of us Americans to properly appreciate the Bill Clintons of the world.

...and this would resemble a more typical and historically proven 20-year pendulum swing, in this case one toward neoconservative right-wing hate and homophobia and warmongering that will careen us toward heretofore unprecedented extremes of sadness and isolationism and far too many overweight white people with guns.

But here's the catch. Here's the argument: This dark era, this wicked 20-year dystopia America could now be facing, it might be a very good and necessary thing indeed.
[...]
But, rather, it will be necessary because the moral and spiritual and physical hemispheres of our existence will quickly become so dire and toxic and the nation's socioeconomic situation will become so extreme and desperate that maybe, just maybe, we will finally learn something.

This is the kind of scorched earth political policy that informs the cheerleading of the Rall crowd when soldiers are killed in combat. This crowd, who truly does cheer on the enemy, says that an American loss in Afghanistan and Iraq is a good thing because it will teach us all to be less arrogant, less militaristic, and properly sorry for all the horrible things our wars have wrought.

Don't ask them to recognize the possible good or necessity of our military actions, and certainly don't ask them to recognize the good in anyone in the Bush administration (much less the very humanity of Bush himself). And don't ask them to honestly, without caveats, and without moral equivocation condemn the Taliban for their oppression of women or homosexuals or anyone who didn't follow Islam to the Taliban-approved letter. And don't ask them to honestly, without caveats, and without moral equivocation admit that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein at the head of a country.

No, their ire is reserved for BushCo.

But seeing this kind of defeatism, this kind of resignation to a Bush victory, in Morford does feel good. Where I wrote that if Kerry won it wouldn't really be such a horrible fate for the country, Morford sees the downfall of our liberal institutions--and a kind of far left secular salvation in a phoenix-like rise from the ashes of a conservative helmed country that will save the world's poor and downtrodden from Starbucks and Wal Mart. Or something like that.

And, furthermore, if Kerry wins, history might not be as fully and inevitably antagonistic toward BushCo as his short, dreadful despotism deserves. Our national memory is frightfully short. Everyone will think, oh well, it's all over now and the damage has been done and it wasn't all that bad, really, was it?

The most hilarious part, though, is that Morford continues to accuse the Bush administration of fear mongering. At one point he even states that the GOP brand for the upcoming election is " Vote for Us, or Die." While throughout his own article, he brings in the kind of talk that usually surrounds a millennialist's discussion of an upcoming apocalypse. Morford has raised leftist activism to the level of a religion that must first be sacrificed at the altar of man so that it can be resurrected and lead humanity down the right and proper path.

Maybe it has to happen. Maybe we need four more years of BushCo (though not, let us pray, 16 years of toxic Republicanism) just to see how bad it can get, to snap us out of this fearful lethargy, this ignorant numbness, this weird and tragic belief that it is only through sheer faux-macho posturing and pre-emptive bombings and through decimating foreign relationships and igniting holy wars and trying to prove that our angry acidic well-armed God is better than their angry acidic well-armed God, that we are actually safe and healthy and spiritually attuned.

And Bush is the fear monger?

It continues to amaze me that he is published, that he wins awards, and that an apparently large number of people don't recognize him for the kook and crank that he is; his entire career is based on lies, distortions, name-calling, ranting, and peddling fear that he crazily wraps up on something that is supposed to be aiming the enlightened toward a positive conclusion. He despises the great majority of Americans, rejects capitalism, utterly hates Christians and conservatives, and has never in my memory written a single good word about people on the opposite side of the political aisle.

In fact, he's worse than the man who he seems most to resemble. Michael Moore at least makes the occasional jab at being reasonable or fair; Morford, like Rall, feels no such compulsion.

And I continue to read him because it's fun to watch insanity dressed up as political commentary.

Read the story.

Posted by zombyboy at September 15, 2004 11:07 AM