Apparently we liberals are prone to freaking out - who knew?

Just a quick little note. I've been reading recently from various conservative bloggers and opinionazi's about how we on the liberal side of things are consistently 'freaking out' or thus and such. This is pretty standard parlance amongst those like Limbaugh, Malkin, Coulter etc who apparently want to believe that we are just as riled and angry as they are. They want to believe that they are having some sort of effect, mainly because they like to know they're getting our goat. Well, they're partially right. They've gotten my goat. Not because of any issue or perspective that they might espouse because, though i do listen, i have my own mind, keep my own counsel and use what little actual information they might spew in an effective and thoughtful way. I don't get transported to new heights of hysterics in railing against the effrontery of their positions. Frankly i wouldn't waste the time or energy.

What has gotten my goat is the assumption that their nonsense and verbal garbage has any effect whatsoever on anyone. Honestly i don't care about Dick Cheney or his position on national security. Why? Because his team, his views, his regime was soundly rejected by an election. That and he's a nutball. For me it would be the equivalent of the nitwit with a placard slung around his neck telling me that Aliens were responsible for Danny Gokey getting kicked off of american idol and because of that the future of the free world was at stake. It has pissed me off that Ann Coulter claims some sort of victory because she feels validated by people calling her crazy. It makes me a little mad that Limburger can espouse undoctored, unblemished refined hate on the air waves and then when someone dares to call it hate he calls it a victory of free speech. Sure. He's right. Just like calling a pile of poo stinky is a victory of free speech.

It seems to me that the rhetoric used on both sides is just dumb. It obfuscates everything. I see it most profoundly on the conservative side who literally conjure victories out of cloudcookooland, probably because they can't concieve of just how diminished their present relevance is. To me it's the equivalent of the Black Knight of Monty Python fame, rooted in the ground, legless and armless but still willing to fight. "I'll bite your knees off! Oh yeah. Run away!"

I suppose there isn't anything i can do about it except to state here in this blog that i for one could give a lesser crap. If i have any opinion at all - aside from the occasionaly mild irritation that comes from having to occasionally suffer through this stuff - it hovers somewhere around melancholy dismay. I feel a little sorry for these folks who seem so disastrously unable to carry through their own arguments to their conclusion. If Dick Cheneys vision of america showed up America would effectively be finished. Limbaughs version looks more and more like a brown shirted Bierhall Putsch than anything else and Coulter? If you can parse the dizzyingly bad, byzantine and labyrinthine logic she so chaotically employs her version looks more like a meth binge than sanity. (That's IF you can understand her, which i can only claim to do about 30% of the time.)

We need a valid opposition. I mean really. I am looking forward to getting on with business, politically speaking. Sure. I'm happy the Dems won. I'm a Dem and a liberal one at that. But i will admit that we desperately need a valid opposition and believe me when i say i'm looking, but lets face it folks, the Republicans have really painted themselves into a corner. In sidling up to the conservative viewpoint and carrying it forth as a banner they've alienated alot of people and they can't just put it down. This viewpoint has a disastrous effect on serious debate because it is at it's base untenable and static. By not permitting change and insisting on a return to values that only existed in a fully fictionalized version of WASP utopian america they have created a narrative for themselves that has already ended.

My advice to them, and i give this with all the spirit of friendship i can because this country desperately needs coherent and well reasoned opposition, is to close that book. Put the banner of conservativism down and try to figure out a new story. Overly emotional, knee jerk reactions have been the province of conservativism for a long time now and it has to stop. We need reason. I would say we need reason on both sides (dems have a tendency to gloat and be a little smug in their sense of things). But we definately have to figure this out.