An “orgy of rage and spite”
Camille Paglia has this to say:
“In an abject failure of leadership that may be one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the modern Democratic party, Chuck Schumer, who had risen to become the Senate Democratic leader after the retirement of Harry Reid, asserted absolutely no moral authority as the party spun out of control in a nationwide orgy of rage and spite,” she said in the interview published Thursday. “Nor were there statesmanlike words of caution and restraint from two seasoned politicians whom I have admired for decades and believe should have run for president long ago ”” Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.
“How do Democrats imagine they can ever expand their electoral support if they go on and on in this self-destructive way, impugning half the nation as vile racists and homophobes?” she said.
The answer is simple. They think the charges will stick.
And if most of my friends are any indication, they have succeeded. It is accepted as a tautology that half the nation—not their half, and present company excepted (despite my unfortunate politics)—bears just that description of vile racists and homophobes.
I agree somewhat with Paglia about the rage and spite of elected officials such as Schumer, but Paglia makes it sound as though their accusations are hot-blooded. There is some of that hot rage and spite, because they fully expected to be in the driver’s seat after the 2016 election, and they are not. But their calculations are also quite cold-blooded and strategic; what they are doing is akin to the Two Minutes Hate described by Orwell:
The Two Minutes Hate, from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting the Party’s enemies (notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them for exactly two minutes.
The difference here is that there is no two minute time limit.
Also, I believe that many garden-variety liberals (not elected officials) now feel tremendous fear as well as rage and spite. At least, quite a few of my friends seem to feel fear. They truly believe that Trump is a Hitler-like maniac who is bent on destroying the country and everything they hold dear.
The opinions of Paglia (a registered Democrat and supporter of Bernie Sanders) on the subject of HRC and Trump, as well as on the left’s assault on free expression, are well worth reading in the latest issue of The Weekly Standard.
The democrats play on peoples fear and paranoia. Remember in the Romney campaign that VP Biden said Republicans Are ‘Going to Put Y’all Back in Chains’
> They truly believe that Trump is a Hitler-like maniac
Doesn’t surprise me. I assume many of your friends are Jewish as well. I recall similar sentiments when Nixon was elected, in particular my girlfriend’s uncle, who was seriously considering immigration just in case. Nevermind that Nixon was probably the best friend Israel had at that time.
your friends feel fear because there is a nationalist tsunami building, and they are on the wrong side of it. they will pay for their many manifest sins against American (and Americans).
chuck:
Your assumption is incorrect.
None of the people I’m thinking of are Jewish.
If those who fear Trump=Hitler stopped listening to or reading the msm, and paid attention to the terrorism of the hard left, they would learn who the brown shirts are in America. But that would make them uncomfortable so nah, ain’t going to happen.
“…truly believe that Trump is a Hitler-like maniac who is bent on destroying the country…”
Gosh, (as I calmly toss a banana peel into the waste bin; inconsequential detail) I wonder if it has anything in the world to do with Trump’s mouth. Gosh, co, cou, could I be onto something? No, that’s not possible.
“They truly believe that Trump is a Hitler-like maniac who is bent on destroying the country and everything they hold dear.”
The thing is, they don’t hold this country dear. They want to destroy it themselves. “Fundamentally transformed”, as their god once said.
And what’s with the hate and fear? Doesn’t the Blue Tribe always go on and on about how the Red Tribe appeals to hate and fear and that’s a bad thing that the brave Blue Tribe doesn’t fall for? Of course, it’s OK for THEM to hate and fear the right people.
> I wonder if it has anything in the world to do with Trump’s mouth.
Probably not, but I wouldn’t discount the big mouths writing for the papers and rabble rousing on TV. Nor the silient mouths of the Democratic leadership.
Gemer, I am impressed that you can calmly toss a banana peel into the trash; but, less impressed with your rhetoric. I doubt that you can link to a single statement or action of President Trump’s that qualifies. Anyone who tries to make a linkage between him and Adolf Hitler is either profoundly ignorant of history, or cynically dishonest.
Camille Paglia tarnished her own credibility by opining that either Feinstein or Pelosi should have run for President. Seriously.
What % are pretending fear as virtue signaling?
> Camille Paglia tarnished her own credibility by opining that either Feinstein or Pelosi
Feinstein isn’t so bad — for a Democrat 😉 I do find Paglia’s political choices bizarrely out of touch with her own observations and critical intellect. It’s one of those mysteries of the heart.
Us Rednecks in flyover land, Racist, no – going back for years folks down here take people for being all right until they show us otherwise. We are a very mixed lot of people, working together, living together and most families with a bit of inter marriage and loving the babies because we love our babies. With a few exceptions we welcome assimilation and a lot of my friends identity as Texans first, then some other descriptor.
I also have not seen the political rancor and I have a lot of friends who are die hard Democrats they will always support their party and that will never be a reason for losing friendship.
As for homophobic, most every extended family has what we used to call and alternative lifestyle person or two. I moved from Dallas four years ago where I lived in a neighborhood where the homes were being gentrified by gays and lesbians and as values came up they were being torn down and big old houses build on the lots. My next door gay neighbor and his other were active members in the Dallas county Republican party and he was always bringing me election signs for my yard.
I know some parts of the country are not like this and some parts of metro areas here in Texas are polarized but I think this middle part of the U.S. really is different from what you experience in New England.
The last thing in the world we want to see is any kind of open shooting violence in the name of a civil war. What the heck is wrong with some of the dem ding dongs who advocate taking it to the street with violence. We are the guys who actually have guns and know how to shoot them and we, conservatives are the ones who send our sons and daughters to be part of the military.
In the case of a conflict we the conservatives are the ones who have people who know how to drive trucks, build road barriers, and move earth around. We the conservatives mostly own and work in the companies that build arms and ammo. This part of Texas in the Hill Country is populated with retired military and their families and our little zip code has more FFL – Federal Firearms Licenses than Denver so I have no idea why anyone would ever consider a civil war with people who know how to make war.
Any violence at any level would only end up a total mess full of unintended consequences that would be a disaster. So I don’t understand the Democrat’s rhetoric and the apparent encouragement of violence. We saw what happened in the last century when Russia and China killed millions with their social experiment of communal living.
Failure to compost a banana peel and instead send it to the landfill to emit methane is an act of eco terrorism. Shame on you Gemer for hating Gaia! I hope you are eaten alive by rats after leeches suck enough of your blood to make you unable to #resist the rats.
“Live by idiocy, die by idiocy.” I have bumper stickers for sale. Just $5.99 plus shipping each.
> We are a very mixed lot of people, working together, living together …
I’ve noticed the same among my relatives who could be described as working class. Economics alone tends to generate mixed neighborhoods in low cost areas, and many also attend church together and socialize with their neighbors. I think there is often more integration and variety to be found in such neighborhoods than in upscale communities.
One thing I’ve noticed about the churches is that there may be an international flavor deriving from missionary work and visiting church members from other countries. That certainly doesn’t fit the stereotype of insular folks with no experience of the other.
Gemer– “…I wonder if it has anything in the world to do with Trump’s mouth.” Having just completed reading Metaxas’ biography on Bonhoeffer, I am freshly aghast at the IGNORANT charge of “Hitler” against those that merely hold a different point of view. With so many people not having a true accounting of what the evils of Nazism meant and mean we have become quite foolish in our understanding of our present state of affairs and what could be. The reality of tyranny is manifest in our present times as a “soft tyranny” (Mark Levin terminology). As in, unless you agree that male/female bathrooms should no longer exist, you’re a hater, and we’ll see about pulling corporate business out of your state altogether. Or if you have a business and refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding, we’ll see that you are run through the legal mill and put out of business. Where are the “soft tyranny” examples emanating from the right?
‘What % are pretending fear as virtue signaling?’
In my opinion, quite a few because they aren’t actually doing anything about it. They just complain about it on Facebook. It’s similar to the climate change doomsday types that then hop on their private jets and live in their mansions.
Griffin,
P.J. O’Rourke referred to something like some years ago when he opined that somebody talking about republicans mass arresting libs (Self Proclaimed Exceptionally Wonderful, aka SPEW) like him didn’t have his lunch running down his pants.
Had a prof say, with a resigned smilel, that LBJ was going to arrest intellectuals like him. He, too, had clean pants.
OldTexan,
The cannon fodder of the left do not think, they are in the matrix. Their puppet masters most definitely think, but they are blind to the simple facts that you note. Trump needs to purge the Pentagon of all awarded high positions by the Messiah. Estimates are that 6% of Americans were killed/wounded during the civil world. CW2 might, I am guessing, result in 10% KIA and twice that wounded; or it might be over in a few days given we on the right can shoot 1MOA at 400 yards.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
> given we on the right can shoot 1MOA at 400 yards
Speak for yourself. These days, with my eyes, I’d be happy to get 3MOA at 7 yards with a pistol. There would be a lot fewer wars if fighting was confined to old farts over 60. On wounded vs killed, I think that has settled in at about 7:1. Medicine has improved a lot since the Civil War.
It was all supposed to be nailed down with one final election.
Middle America was supposed to die off. Extraction industries close, manufacturing migrate, the center of the landmass become “buffalo commons”, the left be free to inherit or redistribute your stuff, and a new class of tractable outsiders imported in to do the service work.
Life in the new New America … typified by pansexual pan paniscus dwelling on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. The Washington Memorial to be replaced by a giant statue of a tattooed Mark Morford autofellating in his most advanced yoga pose; the true Age of Aqueerius.
It did not happen. An election got in the way.
Someone somewhere is indifferent to them.
He, they, must all be depraved.
Can’t be anything else.
Gemer may be trolling, but I will take up the part of devil’s advocate with this disclaimer: Trump has shown by his actions since assuming office that he’s probably not the authoritarian some of us originally thought he was.
1. He ran on the promise of deporting 12,000,000 plus dark-skinned people. Not only that, he singled out many of them as murderers and rapists, and to drive home the point found a handful of victims and their families to parade before the cameras. Like the Jew’s in Germany they were made to be the scapegoats of our economic problems. Those here illegally were “stealing” jobs. Those in Mexico working in NAFTA arranged factories were also “stealing” our jobs.
2. He campaigned almost exclusively by setting up rallies and public appearances before large crowds. Individually they may not have equaled the stadium filled extravaganzas of Hitler, but collectively they probably exceeded them. While it’s true he didn’t have an ideological message, he nevertheless got his audience pumped up on hate as much as the fantasy of rebuilding an industrial economy with millions of new jobs, all in an age of robotics, e-commerce, and digital supremacy.
3. His entire demeanor was that of an authoritarian who was going to clean the swamp, build a wall, and ram through his agenda. While he’s toned it down a lot since January, he can’t erase his praise for dictators and thugs like Putin and Duterte and his admiration for their methods.
4. While they are undoubtedly fine and honorable men, the mere fact that he instinctively chose generals to fill key administrative positions should give pause.
I’ve come to believe Trump isn’t the bully and would-be dictator the left wants to see. He just seems that way. Right? Right?
chuck,
Used to be 20/10 now still 20/20. With a scoped rifle I can hit 1 MOA at 400. Handgun at 25 yards I get a 1 MOA group. Practice, practice. Reload, reload so you can afford to practice.
I admire Camille Paglia’s intellect. However she is living proof that intelligence and wisdom are entirely separate qualities. Living proof that deeply held attitudes are rarely questioned, regardless of the degree of intelligence.
As Frog pointed out on another thread, ‘confirmation bias’ is a powerful element in human nature. It’s what we deeply believe to be true… that just ain’t so, that makes fools of us all.
The left and establishment seem quite sincere to preserve the status quo by any means necessary, including immigration reform to gerrymander districts, treating people like subsidized (i.e. dependent) sardines in high density urban population centers, Planned Parenthood to promote dysfunctional behaviors, decarbonization justified by catastrophic anthropogenic global warming to force redistributive change (i.e. compensation for trillion dollar misalignments), etc.
We live in interesting times.
decarbonization… to force adoption of so-called “green” non-renewable technologies to convert renewable, intermittent drivers (e.g. wind, solar energy).
Democrats are members of the Pro-Choice Church. They advocate for [class] diversity (i.e. judgment by “color of skin”) because they don’t respect the moral principle of individual dignity. They advocate for abortion rites (justified by the fantasy of spontaneous human conception a.k.a. “viability”) because they don’t respect the moral principle of intrinsic value. Not surprisingly, they are enthusiastic supporters for social justice adventures including elective wars (e.g. Libya, Syria), elective regime changes (e.g. Libya, Ukraine), and forced catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform (e.g. refugee crises). And now, they have been conducting baby hunts from before the election in order to disenfranchise Americans. Even going so far as to project their sins on other people and nations.
I wonder what a Democrat district would look like if they were forced to personally subsidize high density populations centers for votes and compensate people for loss of opportunity through insourcing/outsourcing and [class] diversity politics.
I admire Camille Paglia’s intellect.
She even has the intellectual integrity to acknowledge that the homosexual orientation is located in the transgender spectrum. As are bisexuals, crossovers, and other behavioral deviations from Nature’s male and female binary human sexes with normal distributions of masculine and feminine characteristics, respectively.
Of course Neo’s Boston friends feel fear. Sheep feel fear. It is really all they know. They have been frightened, oddly enough, since World War II was won. Fear of nukes, fear of plastics, fear of acid rain, fear of insecticides, fear of GMOs, fear of gluten. And the list goes on.
I am sure they have their anger side too, anger at profiling, anger at anything disproportionate that is to a white advantage, anger at social injustice, anger at individual liberties with which we were endowed by our Creator and so refuse to subsume to the collective good.
I cannot comprehend why Neo hangs out with these chronically fearful sheepish people. Maybe they’re all cat-lovers to boot.
Me, I prefer dogs. Dogs anger; they bark and bite, they hold their ground, they don’t sheepishly bleat and run.
I heard a sheep rancher talk about his critters once and it was not complimentary. Sheep are healthy or they’re dead, no in-between; sheep that land on their backs in an empty ditch just lay there and die.
Frog Says:
June 16th, 2017 at 9:04 pm..
I heard a sheep rancher talk about his critters once and it was not complimentary. Sheep are healthy or they’re dead, no in-between; sheep that land on their backs in an empty ditch just lay there and die.
* * *
I visited a sheep ranch in Wales some years back and it was very enlightening. Although there are literally dozens of breeds of sheep, all very different in appearance, the “standard” sheep most of us would recognize are, in fact, abysmally stupid. Apparently, breeding for the white – thus dyable – wool bred out the brains.
Black sheep are the smart ones.
PS Same thing with turkeys. Breeding for the big fleshy eatin’ kind bred out the native brains of the wild progenitors.
Pretty much says it all.
http://www.nationalreview.com/slideshows/cartoon-day
Parker,
It won’t come to that unless we have an economic meltdown. The ball park shooter is an outlier as was McVeigh. Of course it never hurts to be prepared. And stay away from crowds, inner cities, public transportation, and universities.
The Other Chuck,
1. I hope you are correct. 2. I follow your advice except when visiting daughte4 and her family. Then I carry my Colt Goverment 380 with 2 extra mags and the Missus carries her S&W 38 with 2 speed loaders. We don’t leave home without our concealable pistols. We know we have a ‘permit’ in all 50, its best known as the 2nd.
I felt I was having deja vu reading this, then remembered why. I encountered the same quote earlier today here: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/alt-hate-who-knew-the-left-had-so-much-venom/
The real 2 minutes of (Trump and GOP) hate is happening on tv every night, via a combination of new opinion shows like Rachel Maddow, and comedy shows like those by Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, Bill Maher, SNL, etc..
In the age of Trump that is no longer enough. The entertainment and news media like to re-run the ‘sickest burn’ clips from the previous night’s shows – see Morning Joe on Mondays re-run SNL’s political skits or Kimmel’s epic Trump slap-down every half hour, or check EW.com for the daily run-down of last night’s best anti-Trump rants (e.g., ‘Seth Meyers smacks Trump on immigration!’ or ‘Samantha Bee schools Catholic church on women’s health!’).
It’s real, and it’s a lot more than 2 minutes of daily hate.
It’s no surprise that the Alexandria shooter’s favorite shows are those that participate in the hate-fest, including Maddow, Maher, and Oliver. Message received! How many others are they poisoning with their hate?