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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS HERALD |
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ENRAGED INTERNET CULTURE OF THE LEFT Coffee-shop Al glanced down at the Washington Post article I had spread out before me. “Those people are nuts,” he said. The “people” he meant are the “outraged liberals” writer David Finkel describes in his puff-piece on Maryscott O’Connor, darling of today’s left-wing internet-blog-culture. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401648.html ) Mr. Finkel depicts Ms. O’Connor sympathetically as a California housewife (with husband and 6-year-old son) who just happens to spend every day – sunup to sundown – exchanging vitriolic leftist rhetoric, on-line, with others of like mind. Ms. O’Connor writes “The Daily Rant” on “My Left Wing” – her own web-site, subtitled “Rage against the Lying of the Right” (http://www.soapblox.net/myleftwing/frontPage.do ). To read her material and her readers’ responses is to submerge oneself in the strange, twilight world of left-wing rage (she calls it “wrath”). When bloggers busted Dan Rather’s fake document scam in 2004, he dismissed them as “guys typing in their pajamas”. But they exposed Rather’s fraud on substantive grounds. They didn’t just post obscenities and rude adjectives on the Internet. Ms. O’Connor exemplifies the blogger style with respect to the pajamas, but it is hard to find much substance. Angrily slinging obscenities is her shtick. (“Everything [Bush] touches turns to [expletive]”; “Go [expletive] yourself, Mrs. Cheney”; etc.) Mr. Finkel seems to think the crudity shows that Ms. O’Connor and her fellow bloggers are full of “righteous anger”. Leftist bloggers are, by Mr. Finkel’s description, “outspoken and uncensored”. The exchanges he relays are long on potty-talk and short on analysis. One blogger called President Bush the “…asinine, brutal, criminal, disgusting, enraging, felonious, gross, horrendous, incompetent, jaundiced, kleptocratic, lazy, malicious, nefarious, objectional, psychopathic, quarrelsome, repulsive, sanctimonious, treasonous, unfit, vindictive, wasteful, xenophobic, yahooish, zealotic piece of [expletive] inhabiting the White House…”. This fusillade of alphabetical adjectives came at the close of a semi-jocular debate on whether Mr. Bush has attention-deficit disorder (ADD). This must be the “rich political dialogue” for which the intellectual left is so famous. Ms. O’Connor refers to the anonymous bloggers who spout this drivel as her “community”. They are bonded by mutual wrath. “I feel more connected than I ever have,” she says. With this heart-warming touch Mr. Finkel slides over the fact that there is no “there” there. He does not amplify Ms. O’Connor’s “message” because she has no message except incoherent rage. Like someone suffering from Turets Syndrome, she only hurls obscenities. What makes Ms. O’Connor and other leftist bloggers so mad? Mr. Finkel wonders, too. The closest he gets to the answer is “powerlessness”. Ms. O’Connor and her “community” are hysterical because Republicans are in charge. The situation is so patently “wrong” – so immoral, obscene, etc. – that Ms. O’Connor must spend all day smoking cigarettes, drinking non-alcoholic beer, and posting deathly prose like “Wake the [expletive] Up” on the internet to “have an effect”. No joke – Ms. O’Connor is sick. Indeed, she admits it: “I’m insane with rage and grief. I am this close to being one of those muttering people pushing a cart.” And those who reply to her rants are equally crazed – possibly more so. Does David Finkel really believe he is helping the Left by airing the rubbish they are strewing across the Internet? Perhaps he does, but I suspect a more salacious purpose. In a letter to the Washington Post I suggested that Mr. Finkel’s article resembled a detailed report on someone who has a disgusting illness – say, uncontrollable diarrhea. (Oh, look! She’s going to do it on the Capitol steps this time…) “What would be the value of recording every gross detail of such an affliction?” I asked. Mr. Finkel has simply exploited Ms. O’Connor and others similarly afflicted to write an “entertaining” article. That aside, what are we to make of the garbage-spewing “outraged left”? Have 100 years of caring about child labor, racism, minority-rights, health-care and other great liberal causes finally distilled into one long scream of anguish because voters have rejected socialism? Does the world have to look unbearably bleak every morning simply because George W. Bush is still president? Has it all come down to “Get Bush”? What kind of people have we become? When I was a boy, highway billboards read, “Impeach Earl Warren.” Later, I learned that citizens were mad at the chief justice over the Brown vs. Board of Education decision which abolished racially segregated schools. In reaction to that decision, some Maryland counties closed their public schools to evade integration. For several years white parents sent their children to whites-only private schools. Colored students in those places got no schooling during that time. A former neighbor played football in the mid-50s for Gonzaga – a Catholic high school in Washington, DC. After Gonzaga integrated, many Virginia and Maryland schools cancelled their games with the team. The Gonzaga team had to travel to Pottsville, PA, and other distant locales to fill their schedule. Many people were upset during that time, but eventually sanity prevailed. Communities adjusted to the new reality. People worked, raised their children, and lived their lives in relative peace and order. Life went on, and people got past their anger. Political realities have changed again, but the Left has not adjusted to conservatism and a Republican majority. Instead, they are filled with impotent rage. Everything is ruined, and it will never be the same. “W” is the reason for it all. He must be stopped. Except, of course, that “W” is not the villain. He is the result of change, not the cause. The country has changed. A large investor class has arisen. (Half of all workers now own stocks.) People are building their own financial futures. They are empowered, less dependent on government. Even minorities see themselves less as victims and more as independent agents able to grow, build, prosper and provide for their families. Suddenly, the future seems boundless. Caught in their own time-warp, the Left somehow did not see all this coming. Or they saw it, but denied it was coming. Or perhaps they tried to stop it. Whatever the case, things changed. And the Left finds itself trapped in a prison of soul-destroying rage that accomplishes nothing. My hope is that they can leave the anger, get on with life, and do positive things to help themselves, their families, and the country. Rage does not empower. It only destroys.
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