Sunday, August 23, 2009

Frank Rich: Fantasy Edition !

I usually never bother to read Frank Rich - he's little more than Keith Olbermann in print - but I thought his piece today railing against the hatred and violence of "the right" revealed a bit too much.

Quoting the widely discredited Homeland Security report casting pro-lifers as potential terrorists while referencing the Southern Poverty Law Center (who create and fan the flames of racism where it doesn't exist in order to give itself a purpose), Rich quails at a political atmosphere that "keeps getting darker", due to "far-right fanatics bearing arms at presidential events".

No mention, of course, of the only act of political violence so far in the Obama era, a black conservative beaten by union thugs in St. Louis. No, the facts would mess with Rich's storyline, so he disposes of them, and goes to a 1962 sociologist to explain why the people are restive. And we get the same old, same old: it's because we're dumb, scared animals:

“What the right as a whole fears is the erosion of its own social position, the collapse of its power, the increasing incomprehensibility of a world — now overwhelmingly technical and complex — that has changed so drastically within a lifetime.”

Wait! It's because the right is made up of dumb, scared, white animals!

The G.O.P., whose ranks have now dwindled largely to whites in Dixie and the less-populated West, is not even a paper tiger — it’s a paper muskrat.

So we can add Frank Rich to Michael Moore , Politco, and Bill Maher school of thought that it is the stupidity of Americans (particularly white ones) that are preventing the implementation of the utopian liberal dream. Let's also add Rich, with his premature dismissal of the Republican party, to co-worker Paul Krugman's school of ramping up the unilateralism, disposing with dissent, and dismissing all those whom disagree with liberal doctrine. After all, they're just overwhelmed by a world that has become too technical and complex for them - why bring them in to the conversation at all?

I'll go a step further. Rich bemoans what he sees as signs of potential violence, but in his black heart he fervently hopes for this violence to occur. Obama's agenda is on the ropes from a Republic which disdains government interference in their lives, and can see the liberal agenda for what it is: government control - liberal control - of almost every key decision in a citizen's life. Rich sees what will likely be his last chance for power (as a voice of liberal morality, no doubt) about to slip from his grasp, and he dreads the return to angry minority status. So he believes that (hopes for?) an attack on the president, or an attack on any liberal symbol, would turn Americans against "the right", against their better judgement, and into the arms of the Left, who will take care of them via government enslavement for the rest of their lives.

And of course, it would prove him right - and after all, what is more important to an op-ed columnist than that?

One would hope - for many different reasons - that Rich's Tarentino-like fantasy does not become a reality. One suspects it will more likely be the Left who will strike out in rage first, as the bussed-in and paid-off union thugs and ACORN brownshirts continue to angrily confront law-abiding citizens everywhere.

Then who will Rich blame? Certainly not the Left, or his party, or even himself. After all, they're the "smart" ones...right?

5 comments:

Jeff Guthrie said...

"No mention, of course, of the only act of political violence so far in the Obama era, a black conservative beaten by union thugs in St. Louis."

Really--the Holocaust Museum shooting wasn't politically motivated? Nor the Wichita abortion doctor murder?

The JerseyNut said...

Bush is to the liberals what Emmanuel GOldstein was to Orwell's 1984

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Emmanuel_Goldstein

Steve Scroggins said...

For a dose of background on the Southern Poverty Law center, see this item:

SPLC's Reputation as Frauds and Conmen Grows - Commentary by J.A. Davis & Steve Scroggins

The JerseyNut said...

Great link, Steve. And yet Rich uses them as one of only two sources for his 'right-wing hate" piece.
Not sure which is worse - if he is ignorant of SPLC's tactics, or if he is aware of them, and cites the SPLC approvingly nevertheless.

Unknown said...

I couldn't even read Rich's entire article - it made me so upset. I have a question: aren't the media, aside from the super rich and powerful, the least bit worried about what is in the healthcare bill? Or do they not believe the analysts?