The conservative policy of pettiness
Whenever I go against my better judgment and watch a clip from Glenn Beck’s show, the end result is usually not much more than a severe headache and a wrist sore from constant fist shaking. But his recent unintentionally hilarious hour-long interview with nonconsensual fondler Eric Massa actually provoked some thought from me, though not the kind Beck was intending. The lachrymose host was chomping at the bit to crown Massa a new conservative hero of the first order – the liberal apostate, eager to dish dirt on the perfidy of his previous ideological allies. But sadly, Beck ended up with little more than an hour of lame backpedaling and tickle-fight tales that made him the butt of more jokes than usual. Where did America’s favorite crazy crybaby go wrong?
Now, at least some of the blame for the primetime train wreck can be attributed to Beck’s habit of uncritically embracing every half-baked conspiracy theory that comes down the pike. But the bigger part of it has to do with the host exhibiting a trait common to nearly every conservative on the spectrum these days, whether they’re a fundamentalist railing against the evils of gay marriage or a Cato fellow ranting about the evils of the estate tax. It’s a bug that’s turned into a feature over the years: the kneejerk impulse of conservatives to choose their policy preferences, their rhetoric, and their heroes based on what most pisses off liberals.
Smells Like Teen Spite
It’s a tendency familiar to anyone who remembers being a teenager. When Mom and Dad zig, Junior’s gotta zag. Most of us grow up and grow out of this annoying trait, and at least try to pick our tastes and actions on the merits. The conservative movement’s ‘innovation’ is to take this contrarian stubbornness out of adolescence and build a thriving industry around selling it to adults. But how are right-wing leaders able to trigger such instantaneous obstinacy? They do it by manipulating a long-standing inferiority complex among the faithful.
Since Nixon, right-wingers have harbored – or perhaps manufactured? – feelings of victimhood to achieve their ends. No matter if they’re in power or out, they see themselves as the perennially beleaguered, the permanently embattled, the eternally put-upon. If the title “The Wretched of the Earth” wasn’t already taken by a post-colonialist author, I’d wager Regnery Publishing would have offer something along those lines. But, of course, the disenfranchised-in-name-only don’t lie down and take their phony powerlessness without a fight. That’s when the auto-intransigence kicks in.
Is this just a case of differing viewpoints? If they agreed with everything, they’d be liberals, after all, right? But I’m not talking about simple disagreement. I’m talking about the above-and-beyond-ness of it all, the need to rub their difference of opinion in the opponent’s nose constantly even when it would seem to go against core principles or even self-interest. But enough flat assertions – let me give some examples of what I’m talking about.
Any Friend of the Earth is an Enemy of Mine
Environmentalism was always going to be an ill fit for the big-business wing of the party. But it’s amazing to watch just how enthusiastic the ordinary conservative has become about thumbing their nose at even the most banal of conservation measures. Drive on any red-state highway, and you’ll be treated to a parade of bumper sticker belligerence about ‘tree-huggers’ and boasts about how much carbon the driver is wasting. Go on any right-wing forum on Earth Day, and read some of the ridiculous bragging about how they’re going to leave all the lights on and spray their aerosol cans in their air for no reason. Even if you don’t fully buy into the claims of environmentalists, I can’t even begin to understand the mentality of a full-grown adult who would intentionally and happily throw trash on the ground just to ‘spite’ Al Gore. This is beyond traditional liberal and conservative values. It’s the difference between a jerk and a decent human being.
Torture Porn
One of the most shameful and depressing polls in recent years was the one showing white evangelical Christians overwhelmingly supporting torture against suspected terrorists. What Would Jesus Do? It involves ripping out people’s fingernails and pretending to drown them, apparently. But even seeing surveys like that, I was still under the naive belief that torture supporters only took that position with somber reluctance, a last resort for national security adopted with the utmost gravity.
Nope! Liberals hate it, so not only do they have to support it, they have to support it in the only way they know how – obnoxiously as possible, at maximum volume. From Rush Limbaugh joking about Abu Gharib being little more than hazing to Giuliani cracking sleep-deprivation quips to ‘humorous’ waterboard shirts jumping off the shelves, the torture of fellow human beings is little more than punchline fodder for the average conservative these days. Again, I can’t grasp the mentality of someone that both supports and jokes about torturing another person.
Hero With a Thousand Angry Faces
I could point out many more examples of this nihilistic exercise in picking one’s policy positions by what happens to be the most pointlessly antagonistic to the other side. Heck, you could write a whole psychology paper on the mentality involved in the right-wing cheering against the U.S. hosting the 2016 Olympics. But even more than this or that stance taken out of spite, I think we can judge the movement by its heroes and why exactly it puts them on a pedestal in the first place.
Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, and Michele Bachmann: is there any chance in hell that these empty-headed empty suits would be right-of-center superstars if their main shtick wasn’t tweaking liberals? They can barely string a sentence together without sounding either stupid or crazy. They have ethics issues out the wazoo. They’re ambitious incompetents whose sole value to the conservative cause is causing steam to shoot out of liberal ears. But lucky for them, that seems to be the sole criterion for right-wing pedestal placement.
A One Way Street
We have our own ways of being obnoxious, but liberals just don’t do this sort of thing. We didn’t elevate Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, or Ward Churchill to heroes just because conservatives hated them. And the fact that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are viciously hated by the right doesn’t make them any more popular on the left. In fact, liberals are quick to abandon and denounce their polarizing elements. Ask Michael Moore how many calls he gets returned from Dem reps. And while we have our share of partisan apparel and car accessories, they’re not nearly as gleefully combative as those on the right. “Coexist”and “Visualize World Peace” don’t exactly get the blood boiling. Sure, we had stuff like “Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot”, but that’s a far cry from a “Liberal Hunting License”. Mostly, liberal gear is light propaganda, not taunting through text. One side is trying to persuade, the other is trying to provoke.
That’s a major reason why, politically, we’re at where we’re at – which is basically, nowhere. When one side of the spectrum performs their political calculus based on being the exact opposite of the other, who would expect anything to get done? In their eyes, compromise is basically surrender, or to quote Grover Norquist, “bipartisanship is just another name for date rape.” Besides, if you think government is useless, what does it matter if it fails to function?
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Mr. Childers,
Conservative strategy is might appear to be nothing but petulance but there is actually method to the madness. Conservative strategy is to paralyze government at all levels. They do this fiscally by lowering taxes and increasing spending thus driving up debt and deficits. They do this politically by opposing every possible positive initiative. People get disgusted with “politics in general” and withdraw from political dialog in general and voting in particular. This of course favors conservative candidates. This is why the Republicans oppose expanded voter registration programs, ACORN, the census, and take positive steps to dis-enfranchise minority voters. The lower the voter turn out, the better conservative candidates do.
The more public dismay there is about politics there is, the better conservatives do. This is why they have embraced people like Mr. Beck, Mr. Limbaugh, Ms. Palin, Ms. Bachman, Ms. Malkin, &c ad infinitum. These people cause confusion and disgust among the non-true believers. The health care debate is a perfect example. All of the non-sense about “death-panels” and “socialism” and the conservative scorched earth tactics made people turn away from the debate, not because they were not in favor health care reform but because they could not stand all of the non-sense and rancor.
Conservatives may act crazy but they are sure getting what they want.
Davidlosangeles, you are indeed a master of the straw man argument. Your screed is truly an example of precisely what is wrong with what passes for political discourse.
Let’s go orthogonal on this. The argument of who spews uglier venom can go on forever. I’ve seen it from both sides, and it ain’t pretty. For every extreme bumper sticker one party has I can find another one from the other party. The quality of political discourse has descended in to a morass of petty name calling, character assassination, and misrepresentation. This may make for lovely 24 hour news program fodder, but it isn’t helping this country’s politicians do anything productive.
However, deep within all this is a discussion that many refuse to have. It’s about genuine philosophical differences that can not be articulated in a five second sound bite.
For example, I do not wish to starve my government. I want it to do everything it was intended to do. However, if we raise taxes too far, revenues will actually drop as businesses pick up and go elsewhere in this global economy. If we lower taxes too far, our government won’t have the resources to keep its constitutional obligations. Somewhere in the middle there is a happy medium. In that perspective, is it so wrong to ask to keep taxes reasonable and to ask for a balanced budget? I’m sorry, I understand that you think we MUST raise taxes, but I think you’ll discover doing so doesn’t guarantee that we’ll have more revenue to work with.
What you and your fellow party members are doing is following talking points. Know that these talking points are just as silly to me as listening to Limbaugh, Beck, Malkin and others. Let’s dispense with the talking points and get to the hard issues that exist. We can’t win them all. But each party can get what matters most to it. Is it so wrong to “get what we want.”?
To have these discussions, we must first dispense with our preconceived notions, we must tackle all of these problems together as citizens of the USA. We can wear the R and the D on our sleeves, and that’s OK. What is not ok is for you to misrepresent other views, and all the while decrying the poor state of political discourse.
That’s disingenuous. And as long as you do that, it makes it very hard to take you seriously.
In response to another comment. See in context »Not to say that I completely agree with David above, but to say that he is completely disingenuous with his statements is somewhat disingenuous in its own right. Exaggerated? Probably. But off base? No.
The fact of the matter is, the GOP has been a party where everyone shuffles their feet to the music for a couple decades now. Even when it is blatantly obvious that something NEEDS to be done, like Health Care reform, it is the do nothing party. Even worse it is the “bog down” party. HCR needed to be done 16 years ago when Clinton brought it up, but they were bitter after losing the White House for the first time in 12 years so they put the kibosh on that. It needed to be done during the Bush years, but the party was too busy writing checks they couldn’t cash because they just had to have their tax cuts because it’s the opposite of what Dems do. And it NEEDS to be done now – the details of which I’m perfectly willing to discuss and debate – but with 16% of the population uninsured, rates rising 30% a year, an industry that spends as much money fighting claims as paying them, 120,000 lives a year ruined either through death or bankruptcy, how anyone could not do nothing about that situation is mind boggling.
Except when it comes to the GOP, the decision is easy, because it’s the opposite of what the “Muslim, Socialist, Kenyan” wants to do.
The same goes for the Clean Energy movement. Yes, even I think the idea of the effects of Global Warming has been exaggerated, but to be so naive as to not think we are doing some harsh things to the planet that people need to actively campaign something that can make us a crapton of money and create jobs because a popular, former Democrat VP made a documentary about it is borderline psychotic. Landfills and oceans filling with plastic, ungodly amounts of smog causing lung problems and birth defects, and two wars in the past 20 years fought over some stuff that comes out the ground half way across the world when we could just be harnessing wind here, and a different “war” has to be waged because a movement to try and reverse these trends got a little too big for its britches? That’s the epitome of cutting one’s nose off to spite their face. It’s better to risk ruining the one place we have to inhabit together than to admit the other side may have a point, all over a silly video?
And it goes down the line. Gay marriage debate, business regulation reform, etc. Lives can and are being shattered and no compromise can be reached because is a “safe move” until they can regain power. And the sad thing is, it’s all to gain power from a bunch of guys that aren’t much better. The true horror behind this all is that it’s all stemming from a game between two groups of people that are equally inept at their jobs. It’s Aliens vs. Predators. Whoever wins, we lose, and it’s a craptastic show all the while with just as bad acting and low production values.
In response to another comment. See in context »Jake,
Right now I am pissed and I blame you for my anger. I have had it up to my ears with conservative double talk and horseshit.
Straw man my ass.
If only what you say about a happy medium were true. IT IS A LIE. YOUR LEADERS LIE LIKE SOCIOPATHS. FUCK. CHENEY IS A SOCIOPATH.
Let’s try reason:
When JFK lowered taxes the upper rate was 90%, Reagan lowered to 37%, Bush even further. With all the fancy deductions the 1% of the population who control 90% of the money pay about 19%. About what the middle class pay. Is that fair? Maybe but not when the country is in crisis. We need revenue to dig ourselves out of the hole we are in.
Republicans will not support any the rise of anyone’s taxes even those who could afford the price, to them it would be like breaking one of the ten commandments. Not even to pay for a war or to prevent the country from going broke. We used to make up some slack with tariffs but now that we have fair trade that is anything but fair to this country no republican would ever do anything to eliminate it.
While republicans don’t want to spend another dime because of the deficient they refuse to agree to a pay as you go plan that they supported during Clinton. They have run up trillions in deficient spending for wars and tax cuts and defense contracts the pentagon doesn’t need or want and subsidies for oil and gas that don’t need it but refuse to spend a dime on the health of our citizens.
They insist on unregulated markets even when those markets fail and deride a bank rescue they voted for while courting money from insurance companies and wall street banks that have survived only with tax payer money.
The rich have the money…without them…the only recourse is to print money. See the middle class don’t have any money…they haven’t even had a raise in twenty years.
The conservative crusade to dismantle FDR’s new deal reforms have resulted in one financial scandal after another; from Reagan to Bush junior more scandals than the previous 50 years by far.
While government was the problem and agencies were underfunded and undermanned at home and incompetent cronies put in charge the rising budget was used to enrich war profiteers at the expense of soldiers in the field.
Under the three monkeys of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld we have had more government scandal than anytime previous from prostitutes at Defense procurement to unarmored humvees to contractors killing soldiers in the showers to 50 million dollar children hospitals uncompleted to no bid contracts and cost plus contract where it is more profitable to junk trucks and replace them than buy new tires for them to hiring private soldiers to guard the politicians at $30 thousand a month while in the field our soldiers were stretched thin fighting Malcontents as Cheney described insurgents. While this was going on billions in cash disappeared while the government reduced the number of auditors to keep track of the money. Shameless war profiteers wrapped in an American flag. A disgusting insult to every American that is indefensible to anyone but die hard conservatives.
The republican solution is an easy one to understand on any problem: First identify the problem as caused by the government, second say new need lower taxes or tax breaks or tax incentives. It’s just like interest rates…they just can’t be low enough. Well now they are at zero for banks. Low enough? The highest earners pay less than 20%, they are the only ones in the country who do not owe money…can it be lower for them…lets go to zero.
So here we are. The conservative movement has moved the entire country to the right talking about abortions and gays and guns and war on Christmas. Time to really get down to fixing the mess the country is in. After we stop talking about birth certificates and nazis and socialism and secret muslim cabals in the oval office and states seceding from the union and rebelling and getting them census people off the property and keeping government officials from taking office over banning candy cigarettes in Canada and getting closeted democratic homosexuals to reveal the goods and generally ignoring everything until you guys can get control of congress and kill all those reforms and get back to fucking everyone in the country.
There may be good conservative republicans, good families out there who love their country and play by the rules and want everyone to get along and who don’t hate Obama or Hollywood and who watch Fox News and are decent people. Suckers.
They are all enablers to a bunch of crooked, god damn thieves who put themselves above country for the sake of money. They enable fools to lead them blinding their reason with stupid platitudes while pitching themselves to, yes, Hollywood. They enable circus clowns like Beck to spout nonsense. The enable Hannity to form a charity for soldiers that actually gives most of the money to themselves to keep up their grandiose lives.
This is conservative America. Broke, beholden to
Socialists and out of work, crumbling infrastructure, engaged in two wars and witness to the ugly sight of Christians defending torture.
You have all lost all credibility. I live in the country you all created, the government doesn’t work, its everyone for themselves, Rand’s individualism at its best.
Liberals, Progressives, Democrats…we’re ugly and nasty…we’ve been fighting for health care.
HEALTH CARE.
While the right is defending torture, eliminating habeus corpus and gay marriage and whining like frightened children over trying some cowardly fat fuck in New York.
There is no comparison.
You don’t deserve the right to be at the table.
In response to another comment. See in context »Hello jake brodsky,
To examine this question all one need to is google the phrase “starve the beast” and “norquist” you will see that many conservatives have openly and unapologetically embraced this approach to political rhetoric. President Reagan told us that “Government is the problem, not the solution”. This is not some argument that I thought up on my own.
Let us ignore rhetoric and examine the actual practice of conservatives in government. They cut taxes, raised spending, and drove up debt and deficits. Government services have been cut as a result. Many state and local governments are furloughing their employees, if not actually laying them off. On January 1, 2001 there was no Federal deficit, zero and the national debt was on a downward path. Eight years later it was in the trillions of dollars. Newt Gingrich’s congress shut down the US government.
You may not hold these views but a large portion of the people at the top of the conservative movement do.
In response to another comment. See in context »There are nuts on both sides of the ideological divide. By hopping in the mud with the idiots, you bring yourself down to their level. You are a Maddow/Olberman wannabe circus act.
For the record, I find Maddow’s show to be boring and incompetently produced TV, and I think Olbermann is an unwatchable pompous blowhard. But I think all cable news is a cancer on society, so nevermind that.
I admit in the piece that both sides have their ways of being ignorant. Liberals are prone to condescension much more than conservatives and Dem politicians are much more inclined towards the stereotypical pol habit of spineless triangulation and talking out of both sides of their mouth than Republican reps. But that’s a different post, and one I’ll probably never write b/c it’s well known and kind of a cliche at this point.
I don’t believe in a “pox on both their houses” approach to political commentary b/c I think it’s disingenuous and, well, incorrect. The two political parties are different and to pretend they behave the same is to be even-handed just for the sake of seeming even-handed, an impression I have no interest in leaving. Balance does not equal truth. Sometimes one side is right and one side is wrong. Conservatives are much prone to the kind of adolescent antagonism and eliminationist rhetoric described here. If you can find similarly violent and aggressive juvenilia on the left, I’d love to see it. (Popular stuff that people actually purchase and wear/put on their car, not some random website jpeg).
In response to another comment. See in context »” I don’t believe in a “pox on both their houses” approach to political commentary b/c I think it’s disingenuous and, well, incorrect. The two political parties are different and to pretend they behave the same is to be even-handed just for the sake of seeming even-handed, an impression I have no interest in leaving. Balance does not equal truth. Sometimes one side is right and one side is wrong. Conservatives are much prone to the kind of adolescent antagonism and eliminationist rhetoric described here. If you can find similarly violent and aggressive juvenilia on the left, I’d love to see it. (Popular stuff that people actually purchase and wear/put on their car, not some random website jpeg).”
Thank you!!!!! That is exactly what I’ve been saying for ever now. Balance does not equal truth, and I hate how conservatives try to make the bad qualities on both sides even when it’s not true
In response to another comment. See in context »Such bs! Maddow and Olbermann are not even close to being as bad as people like Beck or Hannity. They’ve never started a conspiracy especially about random coincidences. They’ve never made up outrageous lies. Do they leave things out? Spin? Sometimes, yeah, but don’t say that they’re nuts when they really aren’t especially Maddow, who’s the most honest on both sides. I guess people think that these two are the left wing equivalent because they seem to be the most prominent liberal pundits so I guess right wingers automatically make them out to be nuts to feel better about the nutjobs on their sides. Michael Moore (I’m not a fan) is the most left wing pundit I can think of, and he isn’t as crazy as Beck
In response to another comment. See in context »“No matter if they’re in power or out, they see themselves as the perennially beleaguered, the permanently embattled, the eternally put-upon.”
Wow, this article really resonated with me. It’s like you live in my area of TX and experience what I do! They used to say Democrats were too weak to handle the presidency and now they all feel put upon, mistreated and persecuted. It’s also the same group who feel they are being persecuted for their religion. I make a comment and the next thing I know, I am being asked why I hate Christians when I said nothing about Christians in the comment!
It is a tactic that works for them though. Fox News has done an outstanding job of lathering up the sheeple to believe such nonsense.
What happened to critical thinking, logic and reason?
Thanks for the article.
Forgot to add that no, it isn’t as hateful on both sides. When someone makes that assertion, I ask them to list examples that are footnoted and let’s do a comparison. It is met with utter silence.
Here is my anecdotal. I receive countless hateful and often incorrect emails about Obama, socialism, loss of patriotism and so forth from friends and family. Not once have I sent them anything similar. Not once have I sent them any political email of any sort. If I hear a rumor about Dubya or Cheney, I read it and go on. Not once have my liberal friends forwarded some conspiracy email to me. I can confirm that those friends also don’t receive hateful emails from other liberals.
As far as bumper stickers, the liberal ones I see are usually in support of same sex marriage and co-existing peacefully.
I have to comment yet again. After having to hear nasty comments from conservative FB friends already this morning, this article rings true more and more!
So while there may be pettiness on both sides, it is not even remotely equal.
I am sure I will have to endure snide comments from my sister about the health care bill…all while she tries to find my son’s inhaler to take a puff because she cannot afford to buy her own inhalers!!
Spot on with your article