Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Could it Ever Happen?
What’s the over-under on the number of Kossacks who hate al Qaeda more than they hate Fox News? My guess is that the number would be pretty low…
To that question, Shawn has a quick thought for hour day:
But when I scroll down this thread and read the words of a Kos commentor who agrees with a comrade that Roger Ailes is Zawahiri incarnate, but disagrees--dissent is patriotic!--that O’Reilly is bin Laden ("Murdoch is bin Laden"), I say to myself, “Well, at least they understand what’s at stake and who the enemy is.”
When we elect liberals who hate al Qaeda as much as they hate Fox News, there will be more preemptive wars and shock-and-awe bombings than George W. Bush could ever dream of.
Comments & Trackbacks
luckily we don’t usually elect daily kos posters for president, or conservative political blog people either. Straw man argument, there…
Well, I’m a liberal, and I hate al Qaeda, or more specifically bin Laden, more than I will ever hate FOX News.
Maybe I should throw my hat into the ring, just to give blowhards like Shawn Macomber something else to bloviate about.
"Blowhards” and “bloviate.” Not words I would use to describe Shawn, although they might make him smile. He drops by semi-regularly, so maybe he’ll let you know what he thinks.
Anyway, first: anytime someone likens Roger Ailes to Zawahiri, they are begging to be mocked. In fact, it is almost criminal to not mock them.
Should he have extended that umbrella to the bulk of the people on the left? Probably not. Although, from my standpoint (firmly to the right of either of you), there is only one candidate that the Democrats are running that I consider to be reasonable on national security issues (both in inclination and in experience).
For that matter, most of the liberal sites that I visit regularly spend far more time talking about how to defeat the GOP, whether Bush should be impeached, or mocking “Faux” News than they do talking about what steps we can take to win our war against Islamic extremists. Me, I tend to talk about American Idol than I do about more weighty political issues right now, so perhaps I don’t have much room to talk.
Still, from this Republican’s POV, the left leaning sites that I am most familiar with are far more interested in the idea of losing with grace than they are with finding a way to update our strategies and beat the living snot out of the people who most want to blow us up while helping convince the leaders (political and/or religious depending on the country) of the Middle East that they need to find a happier way to coexist with the rest of the world. Since most of my surfing to the left goes by way of Kos, Oliver Willis, Huffington, Atrios, and Tapped (which I mostly disagree with, but find far more serious than the rest), it would be hard for me to come to any conclusion other than that a good part of the activist left is more concerned with hating Fox News than fighting our enemy.
Fair? Maybe not. That might be like asking a lefty to read nothing but a steady diet of Free Republic to introduce them to contemporary conservative beliefs and still expect them to respect my views. Hard to imagine.
Anyway, Shawn is a hell of a good guy and a very good writer. Check out some of the other stuff that he’s done and I’ll bet you find yourself agreeing with him on occasion.
Well, first of all, David thanks for the probably far-too-kind estimation of my personal attributes! Usually I steer clear of these comment wars about things I’ve written because a writer can really get caught up in them and lose sight of the fact that he needs to be writing what he gets paid to write in order to, you know, pay the rent and keep him, his wife and dog fed and off the streets. But I love this site, and I think David’s fine writing attracts an intelligent audience, so I’ll take the bait this time:
As to the question of whether attacking a Daily Kos poster is a straw man argument because a Kos poster will not be the eventual Democratic nominee--well, sorry, that’s just silly. Neither Ted Haggard nor Karl Rove would ever be the Republican nominee, either, but, I think we can all agree, the question of influence remains relevent.
What is the influence of Daily Kos in the Democratic Party? Well, the Yearly Kos convention isn’t until August and already Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Barack Obama, Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Richard Durbin, Gov. Howard Dean, and Gen. Wesley Clark have all eagerly confirmed their participation.
Further, at the risk of appearing like a jerk peddling my wares, I also addressed this issue in my column from last year’s Yearly Kos in beautiful Las Vegas: http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9959
Even as Kossacks summon antipathy toward all things mainstream to apotheosis, they wish concurrently and fervently to claim they are the real voice of moderation.
For example, during the Q&A session following Barbara Boxer’s speech, a young woman complained to the California Senator about how “convenient” some in Congress found it to think of Kossacks as “extremists.”
“We pretty much consider ourselves ordinary Americans, but I get the sense that’s not what they think of us,” she said.
“There have been so many efforts to marginalize us by the media and political elite because we had the temerity to feel passionate about politics,” Moulitsas likewise taunted during his keynote address. “How dare us riffraff demand a voice in our democracy? So they marginalize us. They say we’re extremists. We’re politically naive.”
BUT WHO IS MARGINALIZING the “netroots”? Howard Dean—whom Moulitsas all but claimed sole credit for installing as Democratic National Committee chairman—confided during his Saturday morning speech, “We actually have a whole department in the DNC, the internet department. What they do is read you all day long so they know what’s going on.” Of course, there’s a difference between listening to advice and taking it, right? Actually, according to Dean, “What you do every day has a significant effect on Congress...and that’s saying something.”
Okay, okay. So Dean is on board. Judging by the “we’re not crazy” rhetoric of Kossacks, one might assume Dean is the exception to the rule. Er, not exactly. “We don’t have a bully-pulpit, but we do have you,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said during his appearance. “We need you to be our megaphone.” Former Virginia governor and Democratic presidential wannabe Mark Warner at his Yearly Kos party at Stratosphere—rumored to cost $100,000—gushed, “You guys are here to stay. You are bringing renewed energy to our party. This is the new public square, the new face of democracy and the new face of the Democratic Party.” Barbara Boxer told the gathered they were the “most powerful answer” to the “Foxification” of media, which to this crowd was the highest of high praise.
As for you, Off Colfax, I don’t really understand why you feel the need to hone in on bin Laden specifically rather than al Qaeda--it isn’t like moneybags did any of this himself--but I’ll take you at your word. And while I’m not quite prepared to support your presidential aspirations, I would say Daily Kos might want to think of adding someone with your good sense to its frontpage.
ell, the Yearly Kos convention isn’t until August and already Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Barack Obama, Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Richard Durbin, Gov. Howard Dean, and Gen. Wesley Clark have all eagerly confirmed their participation.
Okay, I find that shocking. I hadn’t realized that the Kos event had grown to include all of these names. At least it clarifies the level of influence that the Kos has within the mainstream of the party.
Wow. A writer for a mainstream publication has mentioned my name! (Or at least my nom de blogAnd said I have good sense! Pardon me whilst I preen in the background for a few hours.
But in response to both the above comments, it is not that the Kossacks (in addition to the Eschatonians and Pandagonians and Alasites) have moved to the mainstream of the Democratic Party, but that the Democratic Party has moved towards them. As I wrote not two weeks ago (Unlike Mr. Macomber, who officially receives a retraction from my “blowhard” assignation above as it was an unkind and inappropriate pigeonhole, I have no shame in blatantly promoting my own writings on the subject. Then again, he also gets more readers in a second than I do all month, so he can afford to be modest.), the wingnut wing of the left-o-sphere is undergoing the same increase of power as the religious right did almost three decades ago. Therefore, the Yearly Kos guest list is far from shocking to me.
However, what does continue to be shocking is that the pure partisans on the left fail to see the metamorphosis. Yet another circle in the political Venn diagram that these developments have in common with the changes that the GOP went through.