We’re All Day-To-Day

The Minority Report ^ | 14 March 2008 | .cnI redruM

[.cnI redruM]

Rich Lowery finds himself surprised that a former Democratic Vice-Presidential Candidate just got compared to David Duke. While I enjoy schadenfreude as much as the next guy, I wasn’t particularly shocked or surprised.

I had two initial reactions. First, the Dems should relax. This was Kieth Olbermann making the comparison; as opposed to a rational human being. Secondly, this is nothing new to American politics; it’s just a long-term trend, bulked up on HGH.

However, when I give it more thought, the Democrats and the Republicans are not self-destructing under the weight of their own warring factions. They are being systematically dismantled. Olbermann is not only a nut job; he’s a calculating nut job. He doesn’t feel any more emotional about this than Elliot Spitzer did when he was up on the podium “apologizing.” This is the Jane Hamsher Connecticut Primary Playbook.

Olbermann serves up the extra helpin’ of crazy in as a tactical methodology. He is attempting to intimidate and bully moderates out of the political conversation. Thomas P.M. Barnett, his intellectually vacuous piece on the Fallen Admiral Fallon aside, is one of the most intelligent men alive still deluded enough to hold liberal beliefs. He wrote a few months ago about the “Democratization of Bullying” that he felt had taken the place of rational discourse on the internet.

Why do these guys like Kos and Ralph Reed and the rest of them always get so drunk on themselves and start acting so creepy and intolerant the minute they gain the slightest pull over others? Where does their humanity go?

I'm not talking about not pushing hard or maintaining all the necessary ego for the fight. I'm talking that nasty, creepy, hate-filled sense or moral superiority that I associate with fascism and other over-the-top, emotionally distorted, authoritarian tendencies we normally link to retarded social development?

It's just so pathetically millennial.

Why does America so often nowadays see its politically ambitious types grow so power mad so fast?

Barnett may unfairly slander the millennial generation therein, but he does raise some valid questions. When you care about something profoundly, whether it provides your remuneration or not, it’s easy to lose objective decency. Others will no doubt link to where I’ve done so myself. So be it; the cheap-shots cost less and are hence more economical.

However, there is a difference in succumbing to excess cranial steam pressure and indulging in that sort of nastiness as a tactical matter. What Barnett talks about people becoming power mad, he nails the trend, but he misses the point. They are not mad, they are methodical. They are employing it as a premeditated strategy of argumentation.

So maybe I only think one thing about Rich Lowry’s feigned and somewhat gloating shock and surprise. Olbermann, while not particularly bright for a Cornell grad, is not arguing ad-Hitlerum out of desperate mental deracination. He’s doing so because he believes that it works more efficiently than logic and reason.

He thinks he’s found a short cut to the land of hope, change and higher broadcast ratings. He no longer has to reason soundly, when the only choices aside from his personal favorite are ChimpyCheneyMcHitlerBurton or Caligula Rotten Klingon. He slags all of his opponents down to the point where they no longer belong on a debate stage.

The goal here is to win not be reasoned articulation, but rather by default. There is no need to debate someone that a significant majority of the population wants to see dragged forth and hanged. This is why moderate or even middle-of-the Left Democrats should worry. Olbermann won’t discard that shtick even when the Girandist Old Party has been cast out of power and placed under the parlance of The Committee of Public Safety.

The Arbitron dials don’t register and the blog hits won’t pile up unless someone is being pilloried as a human diabolist who the masses can blame for their personal travails. When Olbermann, Kos, Hamsher or the guy on the Right end of the political spectrum who accused John McCain of being a Manchurian Candidate after his stint as a Vietnam POW, run out of “them” they come looking for us instead. At that point, as Keith used to say on Sports Center, we’re all day-to-day.

[.cnI redruM]

What really scares me about Kwazy Keef Olbermann is that his shtick is calculated. He deliberately acts that crazy to appeal to certain people.

[Eurale]

Olberman’s irrelevant. Just look at his ratings - he only talks to himself. I’d prefer that he be forced to suit up and be assigned to the front lines in Iraq. Then the bed wetter will at least be able to see how real men and women are to act.

The fact that he’s even allowed on the airwaves is a real statement on just how far our country has devolved at the alter of tolerance and PC.