The Left Gives Up On Democracy... Again
http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010111212094/editorial/us-opinion-and-editorial/the-left-gives-up-on-democracy-again.html
12 November 2010
Daniel Greenfield
While grief counselors are once again being rushed to congressional
offices, the left is throwing a full blown temper tantrum. After
spending two years warning about the threat of right wing extremism,
MSNBC featured Ted Rall calling for a violent takeover of America.
It's easy enough to write off MSNBC as a collection of television
losers who exist only to cater to their own class of angry
disenfranchised liberals with six figure salaries, but it doesn't end there.
Rall's Anti-American Manifesto which calls for enforcing left wing
social policies through a violent takeover of America using
"Al-Qaeda" like cells, got a positive writeup from Publisher's
Weekly, "His revolutionary rants and belief in a green, egalitarian
world are compelling, yet a stubborn truth remains: most Americans
don't want to revolt". The Seattle Post Intelligencer
enthusiastically endorses it. And Firedoglake, which spends so much
time worried about "right wing extremism" hosted a chat session with
Rall, where participants discussed field stripping AK-47's and
discussing the role of "minorities" in the uprising. It's safe to say
that sanity has not been restored.
The issue isn't really Rall, the Alan Grayson of cartoonists, an
angry clown rehashing tired sixties tropes to senior citizen hippies
who regret missing out on the Weathermen. Like much of the far left,
Rall views America as an evil empire, rather than his country. And
his prescription for terror comes down to promoting violence by other
people in order to secure an expanded version of Lenin's "Land, Peace
and Bread", or rights such as free health care, internet access,
clothes (Gucci or Armani?), college and transportation. Rall himself
can't decide how the revolution should happen, or even if the Tea
Party is a racist protofascist movement, or a potential ally in
overthrowing the system. Instead he fixates on arguing that the end
is near, so it's time to step into the power vacuum.
The real issue is how quickly and easily the left abandons even the
pretense of democracy, when things don't go their way. Rall taps into
the left's cynicism toward democracy, justifying violence because the
system is already rigged by a small group of rich white men who are
"all corporationy", elections are useless and so we might as well
just start blowing up police cars. But all it takes is a minor
setback, an inevitable defeat in midterm elections, for their inner
Bill Ayers to start whispering in the liberal ear. "Yes Billy, blow
up the banks. Levitate the Pentagon. Forget Obama, he's a tool of the
corporations. It's time for a populist movement led by
underappreciated alternative weekly cartoonists to finally rise up
against 'The Man'. The Age of Aquarius is only five minutes and five
sticks of dynamite away."
But does the left want power because it's angry-- or it is angry
because it wants power. The middle and upper class roots of its
leaders, from Lenin to Castro to Rall, suggest that it all comes down
to power. It's not the working class that wants the uprising, so much
as the people who have just enough status to be close to the centers
of power, but not close enough to actually control them. That is the
real revolutionary paradigm. Revolutions aren't led by people who
have nothing to lose, but by those who have something to gain. By the
second tier that has a taste of wealth and power, but feels
unappreciated and marginalized at the top.
The open collar shirt, the khaki outfits, the keffiyah, the red
bandanna and the rest of the revolutionary chic gear is about the
sons of the upper and upper middle class, posing as something they're
not. The working class oppressed. On one level, it's camouflage meant
to guile middle and upper class youth, or more optimistically,
potential working class recruits that they're one of them. On
another, it justifies their furious entitlement, turning their
narcissistic vendettas over slights and grievances within their own
class into outsized fantasies of oppression. Lenin and Castro were
motivated by personal grievances, more than anything else. Rall's
latest book which calls for violently nationalizing corporations
seems timed with his own firing by the United Media group.
For the left, the perfect is always the enemy of the good. Let alone
the mediocre. Because the goal of perfection justifies radicalism and
terror. Since democracy is naturally mediocre, the left always always
has cause to call for an armed takeover. At its best, democracy
maintains a balance between factions and ideologies. But the left
despises balance. Balance is mediocre. It requires compromise. It's
just another way to marginalize talented Ivy League graduates who
know what needs to be done, but aren't given the carte blanche they
want to do it their way, with no restrictions or public oversight.
In the shattered worldview of the left, any limitation of their power
is oppression. Losing an election is proof that the American Empire,
run out of Wall Street and overseen by Rockefellers and Waltons, is
keeping the little guy down. The little guy, somehow being them. The
poor little guys who just want to take over, shoot everyone in their
way and establish a totalitarian state that promises free internet
and clothes for everybody, and only ends up offering dead end misery
to everyone but the "little guys", the Vladimirs, Maos, Fidels and
Kims at the top.
As Rall puts it, his side or "Us" consists of the "Hard-working
underpaid put upon thoughtful freedom-loving disenfranchised ordinary
people". And his others, the feared, "Thems" consist of "Reactionary,
stupid, overpaid, greedy, shortsighted, power-mad, abusive
politicians and corporate executives." With nothing in between. No
middle ground. Just Us and Them. With that kind of polarized
narrative, the left's angry old/young men have full and free license
to turn their personal anger into political outrage. To create a
polarized snapshot of America that is wholly rotten and evil, and
call for its elimination.
Most of the left has not yet gone the way of Rall, but he has been
working that side of the street long enough to know what's
marketable. Had the Democrats held their own in the 2010 election,
it's unlikely that Rall would have gotten a forum on MSNBC. But now,
talking armed revolution channels liberal anger into fantasies of
recreating the Battle of Algiers.
The ridiculously optimistic emotional excess accompanying Obama's
coronation as Messiah-in-Chief is now flowing another way, like the
Hudson River it is reversing itself, into anger and venom. In
egotists and narcissists, there is always a thin line between love
and hate. And all it takes is a little frustration, an unmet need, to
turn one into the other. Their prescription for change is to spill
rivers of blood in order to create a perfect system that will meet
all their needs. Free internet, free clothes, guaranteed job
security... hell, free everything.
Like violent children, the left is always directing its anger
outward. Always on the verge of another genocidal tantrum. And always
disguising it with collectivist rhetoric. We're doing it for "Us". Us
being the kindly, decent, reasonable people who want to kill everyone
who disagrees with us in order to get our way. That is why the left
is incapable of democracy. Freedom is not in its DNA. Because freedom
means tolerating what disgusts you. The left is constitutionally
incapable of doing that. Its tolerance is reserved for those things
that meet its approval. The rest has to go. And if it doesn't go on
its schedule, then it's time to start field stripping assault rifles
and building bombs.
The same left which cheers Rall shows that it can't manage to do what
most five year olds on soccer teams have already learned to do. Admit
that they lost. Not because the game was rigged or because the evil
American Empire stole their soccer nets, or because Pee Wee soccer is
controlled by Wall Street bankers-- but they lost by the rules. They
lost because most Americans don't want the same things, that they
want. Rather than using Al Qaeda as a role model, perhaps Rall and
his readers should pause to consider whether enforcing their social
system on people who don't want it can ever lead to anything other
than tyranny and death?
.
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