Quit Arguing With Douchebags that Everyone Hates
Catching up with email and blog posts I missed while on vacation for a few weeks has been instructive. It appears to me, from this fresh perspective, that progressive bloggers, journalists, and activists are wasting a lot of their time.
To understand why, we need to be clear on the current landscape. Right now, Republicans represent about 30-40% of the public. They are increasingly beholden to the hardcore, angry-white-man demographic, which is getting increasingly insular and wingnutty, screaming about socialism and handshakes with Chavez and one-world currency. Republicans in Congress have decided on a program of total obstruction.
This shrinking minority and its representatives in Congress are unreachable and unreasonable. They speak only to one another and their shared mythology of victimization and looming threat is increasingly baroque and opaque to those outside. They are shrinking into themselves, drifting into the wilderness, becoming more and more cultish. There is, in short, no reason to pay much attention to them.
Meanwhile, among the other 60-70%, there's a serious debate happening about how best to act on climate and energy. There's broad understanding that there's a problem and broad support for moving forward, but among industrial state Dems and many citizens there's fear that the transition will be painful.
The rational response to this landscape would be to spend time arguing -- and displaying real confidence -- that the transition will in fact be good for the entire country; that industrial states will benefit as well; that the nation will be stronger, safer, and more prosperous as a result of action. It is the waverers and nervous nellies who need attention and persuasion.
Instead, progressive media types and activists spend a wildly disproportionate amount of time running around like their hair's on fire every time a wingnut goes on cable news or writes an op-ed saying ridiculous things. Every time Newt Gingrich or Marc Morano or Joe Barton says something stupid, green bloggers start holding strategy sessions and freaking out about how to pressure this or that media outlet to repudiate the comments. They write more about, and to, the 35% than they do the 65%.
This makes them -- and the forces of climate action generally -- look defensive and brittle and jumpy. It gives the wingnuttery they're responding to more credibility and oxygen than it would otherwise have. After all, if the people who want action think these arguments are worth so much time ...
Progressives need to get it through they're heads that they won. They're in charge; they hold the levers of power. They understand the nation's problems and are proposing credible solutions. They should feel a sense of momentum and optimism and confidence. That feeling is contagious. It's what draws people in and soothes their fears. It's what broadens a movement and creates social capital.
(Think back to when you were a marginalized nerd in high school. Yeah, you. Did the "popular kids" spend a lot of time arguing with you? Explaining why you were goofy and wrong? Getting upset when you said nerdy things? No. They paid no attention to you. Such are social hierarchies built and enforced. If you think public life is not just a larger version of the same thing -- if you think it's some kind of salon where the best facts and arguments win out -- well, good luck.)
Anyway. Quit playing defense when you don't have to. Quit paying so much attention to wingnuts. They are douchebags. Everyone hates them.
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While I do agree with much of this post, what is missed is that so many of these douc.he.bag.s everyone hates are continually on radio and television hammering on their crazoid talking points with *absolutely no pushback* from the corporate media hacks, who simply nod their heads and accept the framing they give to issues. If weekend news show panels, for example, had proportional representation of views - say 1 right wing lo.on and 3-4 moderates and progressives - it would be more apparent just how far out of mainstream - nay, rational - thought these people are. Instead, the media hacks are only too happy to give Michele Bachmann, Karl Rove, Cheney père and fille, et al. plenty of airtime to spew their nonsense.
Ignore fasci$ts at your peril.
That's what I thought immediately when I read the post, however I think you can monitor their lunacy without wasting time acknowledging it.
"Right now, Republicans represent about 30-40% of the public."
Not anymore. Latest major polls released yesterday show that figure has plummeted to just over 20%.
Let's see...8 people like this song and 2 people like that song...hmmmm. I guess I'll play that song, the one only 2 people like.
Wait a minute! Why is my advertising revenue in the toilet?!?!
AMEN!!!!!
thank you for this observation.
this has been driving me nuts!
I suppose that we should send the tanks onward towards Berlin, and let the guys with the flamethrowers clean up the stragglers, eh?
Thank you :)
During hard times Americans have always rallied together to fight oppression and those who hate the American way of life. After the American Revolution many Loyalist left the country because the Patriots did not want them here and they did not belong.
Now is no different the American people are at war with the Republicans. May we be saved from their tyranny, bankrupt ideas and their foul stench. Repugs don’t let the door hit you on your way out. You will not be missed.
Seconded.
As a descendant of theose Loyalists, I can tell you that they left because they wished to remain LOYAL (they were patriots: they came from Britain and wished to remain British. Loyalists were given free farmland-it was a good deal. Many Loyalists were Natives, who fought well against the Americans in the War of 1812. Many freed Black slaves frought in the Canadian militias as well. The Edisons were loyalists. Thomas A. Edison was only born in the US because his parents fled Toronto after participating in an anti-government rebellion.
Well, the analogy only goes so far anyway.
The Republicans AREN'T loyalists because they are loyal only unto themselves. They looted the system while in power, bankrupted it squeezing out every drop of profit they could for themselves in offshore tax havens, thinking of America as only regulatory and tax obstacles to their wealth. They pride themselves on Patriotism in order to get a few votes so they could get a few more tons of cash as they treasonously destroyed the country. If the country were to crash they wouldn't be nostalgic for the lost democracy, they would merely adapt to the new rules in order to maximize their profits in a new environment. They are a cancer to our country, and cancer is an internal threat to survival.
Um, many of the American people ARE Republicans... even if they don't particulary like the people representing their party at the moment...
This is the way it SHOULD be, and the way it was for Republicans during the Bush era, we all just quietly went to sleep.
But now, it seems that if I don't come on here everyday to fight the trolls, they will sway the opinion of some poor unsuspecting reader. It makes me feel good that I can debunk their lies and stop the madness. It's just a little something I can do for my country, every day.
Absolutely correct Cherokee Girl, now is not the time to back off. As the saying goes "To acquiesce is to agree." To not challege whatever meme the Right is pushing is to cede ground. My personal fear is that young people will be lead astray. They're already conditioned by the Rights hegemonic control of the media. If Republicans are allowed freedom of movement we could lose a generation.
I sometimes think that the left is all too ready to rest on their laurels. The Tea Baggers were a hoot, yet for Republican purposes, it was successful enough to build upon. I not only disagree with Mr. Roberts, I believe lefties should focus unrelentingly on tearing down any evidence of opposition to the Leftist agenda.
I respectfully disagree- any published or broadcast comments and outbursts from liars and hate preachers should be confronted with facts, follow up questions reveling their false logic, and as often as possible their own hypocrisy. I would agree that we should not get so worked up, (it only encourages them) but we need to confront them. Ridicule and derision are good weapons in this case.
I think there is a larger problem- there are hours of uncontested garbage from these guys broadcast every day, and precious few minutes are used to address it. That has to change. Our journalists and news correspondents are confusing confronting the lies and fallacious arguments of political nut jobs with expressing bias, so they let all kinds of garbage get said and accepted as a valid point of view. It is only later, on Comedy Central, or here at HuffPo where we can go on an on about how absurd it is- when a hyperbole or lie should have been confronted by the journalist when it is uttered.
"The Truth does not exist somewhere between the Right and the Left- all you'll find there is the Center."
When Tom Foley was Speaker of the House, the right-wing types in his district ran a year-long campaign based on lies so outrageous even some of the local talk radio people noticed. But by repeating the lies often enough, an increasing number of voters gave them credence. At the same time, Democrats stayed home on Election Day, secure in the knowledge that nobody with the smarts of a hubcap would vote against having The Speaker of the House representing our district.
We ignore the ignorant at our peril. We ignore the vicious at our peril. We ignore the purveyors of halftruths, misstatements and outright lies at our peril.
Right now, Conservatives have nothing upon which to hang their hats beyond the babble of the extreme. That will not last. It never does. Someone will rise from the heap and find ways to make the lies sound reasonable.
The current approach of responding in reasoned, measured tones does two things. First, it gives the rest of us support against the "Obama is Arabic for Antichrist" crowd. Second, it drives the Right Wing types crazy. When they shout, they want their opponents to shout back. It increases the chance that someone will say something they can warp into yet another Talking Point. But a calm response? It's"watch the idiot shout at the rain" time.
I'm weary of the claim that the progressive agenda "won." It's not clear that the progressive values and interests are expressed by ethically and practically viable policies, if only because the policies framing those values are still inchoate (e.g., if we take women's reproductive rights as a majority/progressive value, it still rests precariously on Roe v. Wade and state legislation. or again, if we're de facto interested in ecological regulation, what protocols are in place to suggest a meaningful and permanent change?).
It was naive for Reagan era conservatives to claim that they had won the culture wars of the 60s, and it would be just as naive of Obama era progressives to assume that a country wherein GWB was twice elected has undergone a broad paradigm shift.
I wonder how many commentors have science degrees? I am quite sure Mr.Gore does not. I have yet to meet someone that is not relying on Govt. money to survive, accepting the unsupportable theory of Global Warming. NASA has now confirmed that ice mass is GROWING in Antarctica. Evidence from verifiable sources confirmed the relationship between particulates from Desert storms and volcanoes as the main driver of Atlantic sea temps. We have problems and I support working toward resolving them. But using measurements that are not accurate more than 30% of the time which is what Gore is doing is ignorant. Carbon trading is a nothing more than another Ponzi scheme that rests on the fears of the uneducated (scientifically). UK has now rejected Global Warming on it's scientific merits.
We can affect change but stop throwing money at another political slush fund and start recognizing where our dollars are best spent (water filtration and land management would serve us better).
Please stop. A righty questioning Gores science pedigree is as laughable as a righty questioning the evidence of global warming.
The UK has rejected global warming? Where did you come by that notion?
As much as I would like to agree with this opinion, and to tell everyone to calm down, I can't. Even if it is true that only 30 percent of the country is still in the caves of right wing nuttery, there is another 30 percent that has just recently come out to see the light of day. The rest of us are so afraid that they will find the light too bright and painful to their eyes and start slinking back into the darkness. That's why we can't shut up.
This is one of the silliest posts I've read, at least among post by someone I mostly agree with. Progressives do NOT hold the "levers of power." The corporations, including the military-industrial group, hold the most of the main stream media, most of the economy, and much of the government. They can stop anything they want. They can get much of what they want even from a Democrat with good intentions. Have you not noticed that the Iraq war is still steaming along after the voters sent a message in the 2006 elections saying they were sick of it? Have you missed the fact that about 40% of President Obama's economic program is giveaways to financial and corporate entities, just like Bush's TARP? We know President Obama didn't want it that way. Did you miss that there's only lip-service to re-regulating Wall Street? And so on. And so on. Think about how much chance there is for national health care even though most people will benefit hugely from it.
Please open your eyes. There may be ways to get some things done if we notice that politics happen in reality.
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