Another
excellent article from Glenn Greenwald, this time highlighting that the crazy aspect of the modern conservative movement is not new, but at the very least decades old. A quote that I particularly like: " It didn't just become true in the last few months or in the last two years. Recent months is just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are: a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don't really believe in the country's core founding values and don't merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren't part of their movement."
I think many intelligent people have a tendency to assume that if someone like me makes a strong statement against the political party whose views are most opposite to that speaker's own, that view cannot be true, or at the very least, must be bookended by statements that the political party more sympathetic to the speaker's views has identical flaws. This has come to be known as "fairness," or "balance."
I agree that when someone is badmouthing their opponents, some caution must be used before assuming said badmouthing is based on fact. However, that does not mean that it cannot be based on fact. At the moment, most of the things said against the conservative movement are true, and moreover have been true for a long time. We liberal complainers about the unnecessary and misguided wars, the illegal spying, the pro-wealth policies, the torture and murder, and so much more, were right. This is now known. And yet we are treated by almost the entirety of the mainstream media with considerably more disdain than the people who perpetrated these wrongs. We are the "unbalanced" ones because we fail to draw equivalence between those who did wrong, who bullied and scared and manipulated the country into accepting wrong time after time, and our ourselves, with our protests of those wrongs.
We are called "shrill." Apparently "shrill" is the sound of a voice raised against obvious and acknowledged wrongs.
Edit: Another article,
this one from the Daily Howler, pushing back on the the idea that the conservative bile directed against Obama is somehow new and surprising.
Also, I am in no way blind to or trying to pave over the massive flaws in the Democratic Party, including their support for many of the aforementioned wrongs, their many corporatist members, their contempt for their liberal wing, etc. etc. I just want to make it clear that while they have flaws, their flaws are not identical to, nor in any sense equivalent with, the cesspool that is the modern conservative movement.
Edit (2): One further thought. If the modern conservative movement and its Republican Party suddenly magically disappeared, and instead only had the modern Democratic Party, I would still have a lot to protest. The work of this country would not be ended on the day that happened, nor would it be done in the fifty years after. But maybe, just maybe, on that day it could begin.
Edit (3): There's another nice Greenwald article from a few days ago
highlighting the "balance" issue of false equivalency. He highlights
an article in the reprehensible Politico which claims equivalence between crazies like Orly "Where's the certificate?" Taitz and Sarah "Death Panels" Palin, and Democratic representatives Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.). The latter pair claimed that Bush would "mislead the American public" to justify going to war with Iraq, and argued that we should just let the weapons inspectors look for WMDs without using unnecessarily storming buildings with armed troops and helicopters. In short, crazy conservatives who make up bullshit to get attention and stir up ugly hatred are morally equivalent to liberals who point out important and substantive things which at the time were fairly obviously true but not allowed to be said and which history has entirely vindicated. Bear in mind the Politico article was written in the last week. Now that's balance.
Also, it looks like the article was updated on 9/11 to scrub out the false equivalence.