While Jim Treacher continues his lobster roll-tasting tour of New England, other people will be trawling. Like John Hayward, AKA Doctor Zero. Follow the good Doc on twitter, and read him at his home and in the Hot Air Greenroom.
There were plenty of vendors dispensing Big Gulps of vitriol at the Netroots Nation conference this week. Belligerent language is to be expected at a pep rally, especially for a team cruising into a rough season. I can forgive the Kos Kidz prowling the floor and muttering about “strengthened Democratic majorities” while slapping at the imaginary spiders crawling out of their ears. What else are they supposed to say?
The Netroots were positively obsessed with the Tea Party this year, an obsession which illuminates their hunger for crushing inconvenient fellow citizens. The media fusses endlessly over the “hateful” spirit of the Tea Party movement, but the anger among its members is directed primarily at power-hungry politicians and the bloated government they’ve been nourishing. The Netroots, by contrast, are furious at the citizen resistance to this government. The thought of subduing it, as forcefully as possible, is the only thing that cheers them up.
The plans of leftist dreamboat Barack Obama will require a great deal of submission to carry out. The thousands of new IRS agents Obama hired will be busy processing millions of new tax forms required by ObamaCare. State efforts to resist the unconstitutional mandates of the plan must be crushed. The middle class will be expected to meekly fork over a huge chunk of its income when the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire. If the cap-and-trade energy taxes are implemented, Americans will be expected to sit quietly while their standard of living is permanently reduced. Entire industries will be expected to go quietly into the goodnight as Obama’s taxes and mandates delete their business models.
The public is expected to submit to all this without a word of protest, since all such protest has been classified as racism and treason by the Left. There is simply no acceptable criticism to be leveled at any aspect of the monster State, no matter how alien it might be to the traditions of liberty and independence cherished by millions of Americans. Don’t call it fat, or ugly, or blind. Give it anything it demands, and be prepared to give more.
The Netroots are the loyal acolytes of an aggressive government. It must be aggressive, to fulfill its role as the wise mother of an improved society. People aren’t going to do the “right” thing on their own – there would be no need for socialists otherwise. Left to their own devices, the primitive boobs of middle America would be driving eighteen-wheeled SUVs to their beloved NASCAR events, laughing as they passed poor folks dying from a lack of free health insurance, and running over helpless minorities and illegal immigrants who happened to stumble into their headlights. Compulsion is necessary to make these throwbacks live virtuous liberal lives, and intoxicating power flows from compulsion. Van Jones offered the Netroots crowd soothing assurances that even the most titanic deficits can be easily controlled by seizing the property of people he doesn’t like. It might sound like pure stupidity to you, but to a liberal, it sounds orgasmic… especially the seizing part.
Lying, as the Left does incessantly, is a form of compulsion. Nancy Pelosi treated the happy Netroots crowd to a serving of delusional jobs data. Harry Reid assured them all those Obama promises about “keeping your own doctor” were abject lies, and a public option for health care would be poured down the public throat soon enough. Voters who base their support on make-believe data and hollow promises are not casting informed votes as respected citizens of the Republic, any more than people buying a product based on fraudulent advertising are participating in free-market commerce.
The same people who lined up fifty reporters to point cameras at six bored party hacks sipping lattes, and declared it a “grassroots” Coffee Party, spent their annual convention dreaming of the Tea Party dissolving in tears. The two movements are polar opposites, because the Tea Party seeks to defeat politicians, while the Left must defeat its fellow citizens. Their success is measured in your shrunken liberty. Their agenda can no longer be satisfied by a few marginal tax hikes on the upper income brackets. Their next annual meeting, in which they cope with their blind rage at your successful resistance, should be exciting. Their opinion of the American public will not have improved.