Hey! Remember when Libs and Dems automatically assumed they were smarter than their so-easily manipulated, low-convolution count Right-Wing counterparts?
Remember when they pitied those squelched, moderate, sane Republicans who had clearly been overwhelmed by their party's deep, wet, sloppy embrace of the of fringe berserkers and who were almost forced to jettison any pretense of achieving things through a traditional democratic process?
Remember when the Left even accepted the fact that it was itself ill equipped to wage a similar psychological blitzkrieg by dint of its sheer damnable humanity and cursed reason and swishy analytical tendencies, lacking the cohesion to put even the least offensive social policies across in order to sate an exploited and misused public hungering for simple answers to complex questions, they at least had an understanding of the predictable ebbs and flows of our nation's sociopolitical history?
Then you're just playing the role you're being programmed to play.
For, to buy into the writ-in-crayon meme of Obama having "let us down" or being "vulnerable in 2012" or that he is in any way "less than what we hoped he would be" makes us -- the supposedly smarter, more sensitive, better educated Liberals -- into the slobbering chumps we have characterized our opposition to be. We've just processed our hypnotic suggestions through our hopelessly-hampered-by-Liberalism brains differently.
Here are the facts: Barack Obama was handed the worst situation imaginable in this modern era and has taken all the steps possible to correct the catastrophe. And saps that we are, many -- including myself -- have felt less than satisfied.
It's a cheap parlor trick and the Right has been expertly employing it (the only employment they can be credited with creating) for some time: going so extreme in rhetoric and gesture that any compromise in response only seems reasonable and right, even when by most standards it most certainly ain't. Going absolutely apeshit with the manufactured debt ceiling crisis yielded a shit deal which seemed reasonable and in their favor. Going bull goose loony with health care yielded flawed and inadequate legislation. Vomit round-the-clock nonsense about patriotism and "otherness" and socialism and you get a comfortably ignorant mass, motivated by fear and repulsed by traditional values of ethics, service and thrift. But be assured that this is a pas de deux, not a solo.
The Right is such a writhing spectacle of insanity, hubris and Bald, Bullying Bad that the Left's inevitable response, as much devoid of subtlety, is a fitting match and anything other than the Right's complete eradication -- an understandable but irrational desire given the IEDs strewn in Obama's path from minute one -- is doomed to failure. This president has had attack dogs snapping at his legs, hands, throat and nuts while still trying to govern a broken country with intelligence, play the corporate game and just survive. And all at the same time.
But the Left forgets that it, too, lives in a world of the 24 hour spews -- sorry -- news cycle and despite a healthy disdain for such Orwellian invention is itself vulnerable to it's toxic runoff and collateral effects. Witness then, the current and utterly predictable disappointment with our besieged president.
So even the highest dudgeon fits the contrived scenario perfectly. American consumers didn't buy the unholy scourge that is Ring-Around-the-Collar for nothing. The dudes marketing capitalism know exactly what they're doing and how to pierce even the most impregnable hearts and minds.
So just because you listen to NPR, wanna sleep with Rachel Maddow (even if it's only for the cuddling) and know that there was a film industry that pre-dates Star Wars doesn't mean your brain is not washable. Our instincts about Obama were sound -- he's got the goods. The Right's instincts about him were sound, too. He threatens their primacy for a reason and are therefore going after him with everything they can concoct. Hell, the Tea Party's instincts, misapplied and misused though they may be, are sound as well. Better, more efficient, more accountable government? I'm there!
So, Libs and Cons alike: turn Slim Whitman up to 11 and fight the power that is desperate to stop Americans from doing the work that is before us. And that we smartly elected our president to do.
Snap out of it!