What Us Angry Lefties Are Angry About

OK, now I’m really pissed.

Michelle Malkin declared herself judge and jury, found some student protesters to be guilty of sedition, and published their names and phone numbers so that they would be harassed.

And she calls them moonbats.

The students were protesting military recruiters on campus. For the record, I disagree with the students’ position. The military services are not our enemies; they are not the ones who make decisions to wage unjust wars. Blame the bleeping idiot civilians running the military for that. As long as the recruiters are not press-ganging students into boot camp, I say leave ’em be.

But as long as the protests against the recruiters are nonviolent, they’re not anyone’s business. They are especially not that bleeping blogging Nazi’s business, if she is not a student or faculty member of the college. If the students committed acts of vandalism, as some have alleged, then charge them and let the criminal justice system take care of it. But stirring up vigilante mobs is crossing a line.

Now Crooks and Liars reports the students are getting death threats nonstop. The students asked Malkin to take their contact information off her site; she refused.

Malkin’s hate-mongering is the stuff of legend. She’s even been criticized for it by Cathy Young at the Boston Globe, who is hardly a leftie. Now Lulu has put some college students in real danger. If any of them gets so much as a scratch because of Malkin, I sincerely hope somebody prosecutes her fascist ass.

And you want to know what else I’m pissed off about? This weekend, the Right Blogosphere whooped over the WaPo “angry left” and smugly boasted of their moral superiority because they are not as “angry” as we are. Which is bullshit, as Glenn Greenwald documented — see also The Wege at Norwegianity — but never mind. People bullshit themselves about themselves all the time; we all do it. If they want to point to the anger in us and ignore the bile and hate in themselves, fine. Sticks and stones, etc.

But right this minute I’m very angry. Most of the time I’m not, but now I am. I admit it. Malkin has crossed a line. Now let’s all step back and watch the Right Blogosphere’s knee-jerk defense of Malkin. Righties don’t threaten the lives of students out of anger; it’s just concern. Hate the sin, love the sinner. If somebody gets hurt that would be so unfortunate, but you know — stuff happens. If those young people don’t want death threats they should keep their mouths shut, right?

Nazis, I say.

Ezra Klein writes,

I know I’m not supposed to, but I pity Michelle Malkin. Really, I do. Punditry is a game of incentives, encouragement, luck. You write a hundred articles before striking paydirt with one. That zeitgeisty dispatch activates an eruption of applause and adulation, so you try to repeat it. Soon enough, you’ve got a niche, a style, a persona. The lucky ones, among whom I include myself, find their path opening towards responsible, serious commentary. The sort of articles that allow us to wake up, yawn, look in the mirror, and feel good about what we see. And then there are the unlucky ones, the Michelle Malkins, who achieve acceptance through hatred and venom, and find themselves groping down the darkest path to political success. …

…Malkin has created an identity of outrage, she trades in hate because she proved unable to achieve recognition for anything more elevated.

Sorta related — see also Digby, David Neiwert and James Wolcott.

Update: Malkin is today’s Countdown Worst Person in the World.

Pink Is the New Red, and George Is the New Jimmy

With the caveat that I admire Jimmy Carter and generally have a low opinion of Dick Morris, I give you Dick Morris in today’s New York Post:

GEORGE W. Bush is a one- term president now serving deep into his second term. Like his father, he shot his bolt during his first four years. Unlike his dad, he was able to persuade America to keep him around for another term. But he seems destined to spend the remainder of his tenure, à la Nixon, “twisting slowly in the wind.”

Bush has truly become the Republican equivalent of President Jimmy Carter, out of control, dropping in popularity, unable to resume command. He barely skated through 2004 using the issue of terrorism. But his very success in preventing further attacks has eroded the strength of the issue and has undermined its political importance. Tax cuts, the cause celebre of his 2000 campaign, have long since been passed and yielded their economic growth. But they’re long gone as a key issue.

Yet Bush, like his father, fails to invent issues to give his presidency a new lease on life. Is he too tired or lazy to do so? Does he not believe in government doing very much in the first place? Or is he so preoccupied with Iraq – as Carter was with the hostage crisis – that he can’t divert his attention to new issues?

Even when he seeks to develop an issue, his approach is half-hearted and ineffective. It seems that on any issue other than taxes and terrorism, he has attention-deficit disorder. He squandered his re-election “political capital” on a Social Security reform he spent six months pushing and a year and a half running away from.

His energetic denunciation of America’s “oil addiction” animated his State of the Union speech but, by March, it was missing from his rhetoric. It never even got to the stage of a program before he abandoned it. Now he flirts with the immigration issue – seeking a middle course that satisfies nobody.

And so, with no political immune system, he is subject to the infection du jour, be it the Dubai ports deal or the Iraq leaking scandal. In the meantime, his party is wallowing in a massive public perception of congressional corruption.

OK, one more quibble — second paragraph, “But his very success in preventing further attacks has eroded the strength of the issue and has undermined its political importance.” Nonsense. His “accomplishments” in the national security arena are now understood to be more from luck than skill. After Katrina, after the 9/11 Commission flunked his administration on security, it’s too painfully obvious that we remain woefully unprepared for a terrorist attack, which could happen any minute.

So it’s going on six years since 9/11. Big deal. Eight years went by between the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 9/11 attacks. (I distinctly remember, sometime in the late 1990s, arguing with some rightie in an online forum that we need to remain concerned about terrorist attacks. I was pooh-poohed.)

Morris goes on to suggest what Bush might do to salvage his second term. Not only are most of these suggestions inane, Bush wouldn’t do them, anyway, so we don’t need to bother about them.

Instead, see “Pink Is the New Red” by Richard Morin at WaPo.

States that were once reliably red are turning pink. Some are no longer red but a sort of powder blue. In fact, a solid majority of residents in states that President Bush carried in 2004 now disapprove of the job he is doing as president. Views of the GOP have also soured in those Republican red states. …

… Of course some states are still dependably Republican. But even these are not quite as red as they were a few years ago. For example, Utah residents showered Bush with 72 percent of their votes in 2004, his biggest win that year. But the latest statewide poll by the Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV suggests that 61 percent approve of the job Bush is doing as president, a double-digit drop in approval since June. “Bush is dragging down every Republican officeholder in the nation, even here,” pollster Dan Jones, a political science professor at the University of Utah, told the Morning News.

On the other hand, states that were blue are now a deeper blue.

Speaking of anger (see previous post), James Carroll writes in today’s Boston Globe,

An Iranian official dismissed the talk of imminent US military action as mere psychological warfare, but then he made a telling observation. Instead of attributing the escalations of threat to strategic impulses, the official labeled them a manifestation of ”Americans’ anger and despair.”

The phrase leapt out of the news report, demanding to be taken seriously. I hadn’t considered it before, but anger and despair so precisely define the broad American mood that those emotions may be the only things that President Bush and his circle have in common with the surrounding legions of his antagonists. We are in anger and despair because every nightmare of which we were warned has come to pass. Bush’s team is in anger and despair because their grand and — to them — selfless ambitions have been thwarted at every turn. Indeed, anger and despair can seem universally inevitable responses to what America has done and what it faces now.

I guess it’s not just us leftie bloggers, huh?

Tom Engelhardt writes,

You can count on one thing. All over Washington, Republicans are at least as capable as I am of watching and interpreting the polling version of the smash-up of the Bush administration. …

… Despite various bumps and plateaus — including a conveniently engineered, Karl Rovian bump just before election 2004 — it’s been a slow, ever-downward path that, in early 2005, dipped decisively under 50%; by the end of 2004 had crossed the 40% threshold; and is, at present, in the mid-30% range.

There’s no reason to believe that the bottom has been reached.

Here’s the juicy part (boldface added):

This is the situation before some future round of hideous polling figures sets off a full-scale panic in the Republican Party, leading possibly to a spreading revolt of the pols that could put the present revolt of the generals in the shade. Given the last couple of years, and what we now know about the Bush administration’s inability to operate within the “reality-based community” (as opposed to spinning it to death), there is no reason to believe that a polling bottom exists for this President, not even perhaps the Nixonian Age of Watergate nadir in the lower 20% range.

If current trends continue, I can foresee a point at which the Republican Party abandons Bush to save itself. We may even see the political marginalization of the neocon-fundie axis that remains what is left of his base. It is possible — not in the cards yet, but possible — that by 2007 the GOP will be frantic to get Bush out of the public eye so that he doesn’t drag down the 2008 elections.

Then Republican leaders will march to the White House and demand that he resign, which I guess would make Bush the new Dick Nixon.

Speaking of Anger

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. –Mohandas Gandhi

Ran into that quote this morning. It picked me up.

On to the news: Righties were prompted by the WaPo article on the “angry left” to spend much of the weekend congratulating themselves on how un-angry they are compared to those unhinged lefties. Yes, they’re deluded. I know. But that’s why I had to laugh at a headline in today’s WaPo:

Anger at Bush May Hurt GOP At Polls

Oopsie!

In the article, Charles Babington writes,

Intense and widespread opposition to President Bush is likely to be a sharp spur driving voters to the polls in this fall’s midterm elections, according to strategists in both parties, a phenomenon that could give Democrats a turnout advantage over Republicans for the first time in recent years.

Polls have reflected voter discontent with Bush for many months, but as the election nears, operatives are paying special attention to one subset of the numbers. It is the wide disparity between the number of people who are passionate in their dislike of Bush vs. those who support him with equal fervor.

Remember when we had a 50-50 nation? Now it’s more like 60-40. In our favor. And according to Babington, the ranks of the genuinely passionate are even more unequal —

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll showed 47 percent of voters “strongly” disapprove of Bush’s job performance, vs. 20 percent who said they “strongly approve.”

The GOP is getting nervous.

“Angry voters turn out and vote their anger,” said Glen Bolger, a pollster for several Republican congressional candidates. “Democrats will have an easier time of getting out their vote because of their intense disapproval of the president. That means we Republicans are going to have to bring our ‘A’ turnout game in November.”

Anger is a tricky thing. It can motivate people, but it can also repel. I wrote last week, for example, that antiwar protests are more effective when protesters are serious but not angry. That’s because people who are not angry at the same things you are will be uncomfortable with your anger. If you want to persuade people to see your point of view, it helps to do it in a not-angry way.

Blogging, on the other hand, is not about persuasion as much as it is about peeling away layers of socially conditioned bullshit to get at bare-bones truth. A good blogger is an honest blogger. I’d say to any blogger that if you’re angry, dig into yourself to find the source of your anger and blog it. Don’t worry about what the neighbors will think.

Saturday I quoted Sam Keen;

Honor your anger. But before you express it, sort out the righteous from the unrighteous. Immediately after a storm, the water is muddy; rage is indiscriminate. It takes time to discriminate, for the mud to settle. But once the stream runs clear, express your outrage against any who have violated your being. Give the person you intend to love the gift of discriminating anger.

This is exactly what fuels much of the “angry” Left Blogosphere. Anger motivated a whole lot of leftie bloggers to start blogging. Collectively, these past few years, we’ve been sifting through the mud to achieve clarity, to understand the lunatic impulses that sent our nation down a self-destructive path. Through blogging we inform each other, we focus, we prioritize, and we organize. But we’re not a bleeping public relations service. If you’re uncomfortable with our anger, go somewhere else.

Another interesting thing about anger is that it’s often in the eyes of beholders. How many times have you read about how “angry” Hillary Clinton is? Now, think about it — have you ever seen her be really angry? I have not. I don’t know the lady personally — maybe she is angry — but in public appearances she’s never struck me as being all that angry. At most, I seen her annoyed, or maybe mildly alarmed, but I can’t say I’ve seen her angry.

Awhile back I read a social psychology paper that measured people’s attitudes toward displays of anger. One interesting finding was that many people approved of anger coming from men — angry men were perceived as being “strong” — but were offended by anger coming from women. Angry men are strong, but angry women are bitchy.

Thus, Republicans loved Zell Miller’s foaming-at-the-mouth performance at the Republican National Convention, but when Hillary Clinton disagrees with some conservative policy she’s out of control. (Ambition inspires a similar dichotomy — it’s a virtue in a man but a vice in a woman. But that’s another rant.)

I infer from this that anger is one thing coming from the powerful but something else entirely coming from the powerless. Anger in defense of the status quo may be more acceptable socially than anger at the status quo. Over the years I’ve observed that when neutral (or uninformed) people are exposed to two opposing angry factions, most of the time they are more sympathetic to whichever side represents the Establishment. I know we like to say we cheer for the underdog, but that’s only when the underdog doesn’t growl.

I admit this rightie has a point — it’s not psychologically healthy to be angry all the time. However, repressing anger isn’t good mental health hygiene, either. In our culture women in particular tend to suppress anger (wonder why?). I’ve done it myself in the distant past. We’ll go along, denying our own anger, putting up with slights and indignities, telling ourselves that I shouldn’t be angry or even I should be more understanding, and all along that anger is buried deep inside, festering and malignant. Until one day the dam breaks, and it all spills out. And then you realize it was there all along.

The wrathful dakini is a common figure in Tibetan Buddhist iconography. Dakinis are female archetypes representing the energies of enlightenment. Meditation on the image of a wrathful dakini helps the meditator get in touch with his own anger. Only until anger is fully realized and honestly acknowledged can it be released, and then the passions of anger can be transformed into a positive energy.

Conclusion: Anger by itself is neither good nor bad; it’s what you do with it that matters.

Lacking a smooth transition here, let’s swoop back from the spiritual realm to politics. Will voter anger finally turn the tide against the VRWC? DemFromCT has this observation:

Americans are at the ‘tune out/go away’ phase with Bush. He’s a reminder of that painful mistake at the voting booth… the one that makes Bush voters ‘not interested in politics anymore’ when you talk to them. Denial, bargaining, anger, depression, acceptance. They are somewhere between depressed and accepting of his incompetence. keep that in mind when you talk to them, and don’t rub their faces in it. Just give them an alternative.

I agree; the enormous majority of Americans don’t want to hear about Bush any more. They don’t care what he says. They don’t care what he thinks. He can trot around the Rose Garden and declare he supports Donald Rumsfeld and we’re winning in Iraq and Health Savings Accounts are just peachy all he likes; hardly anyone is listening. He has become irrelevant.

This by itself is not going to turn the House and Senate over to Dems in November, but surely it will help.

And let me say that I’d rather see an angry electorate than a complacent electorate. Angry people care.