I’m on your side, Brad. I didn’t read the post, but then again, I rarely do.

You’re way sexier than Retardeau.

I am not convinced of the utility of terminology like “moderate liberals” and “progressive liberals”, Brad. I’m not sure the groups they claim to refer to actually exist – mostly because I think the divides between them are far deeper than surface appearances let on.

“Progressive” is an American synonym for “Leftist”, because nobody in America can be a lefty anymore, thanks to Uncle Joe McCarthy.

“Liberal” is an ever-increasingly out of date political term that most accurately refers to a person’s conceptualization of what a state is and how it should function – it has nothing to do with “left” or “right”.

The extremist Dutch political party most responsible for stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment in the country spends a good bit of time complaining about how “liberals have moved too far to the left” – a statement that makes no sense in the currently jargon gumbo that passes for political discourse in America today, but makes perfect sense if one doesn’t confuse “liberal” with “leftist”.

I hate to say it, but the Left doesn’t really have all that much in common with liberals, aside from accidents of political expediency.

I swear, it’s like 1848 again anymore. I’m tempted to just junk the entire exiting political terminology and start calling everyone Tories, Whigs, and Communards. Maybe then things will be less confusing.

I’m down with the Communards, because I remember them from the 80s. And the rest of this horse-shizznapple, even assuming that the internet is nearly infinite in its bit-bounty, is really wasting valuable space.

Could be.

Then again, I still think the main reason the Dems are so hamstrung is this unresolved tension between what makes a liberal and what makes a progressive, and I think they’re going to stay hamstrung until it’s resolved.

Say it loud: I read Drum and I’m proud!

The apostates are always treated harsher than the heretics.

Women can’t get involved in pissing fights, it just runs right down our legs.

y’all are acting like colonels rubbing your hands in glee and arguing over how to divvy the spoils when the GOP comes crashing down. they’re still up and stomping, lamebrains. kick their asses out of their comfortable sinecures, and then figure out whose ideological thrust is better suited to strike resolutely against the neo colonialist warmongers.

Brad – I certainly understand the larger point of your post and the need to forge a Democratic coalition that can defeat the Republicans. However…

Digby’s post on Cox was very reasonable. Cox, for whatever fucked up reason, was considered the apex of the liberal blogosphere for a few years. When she then pokes the liberal blogs in the eye in Time magazine, a response is expected. Atrios chimed in by saying he hated Cox’s book. Again, a perfectly legitimate opinion.

Kleiman then responds like a petulant, whiny child, immediately making a snarky comment about Atrios “always being mad at someone.” The whole thing degenerated from there. When an adult acts like brat in the grown-up world, they deserve to be called out on it.

The country is counting on us to get our shit together for the midterm elections, and we need the various Dem factions to forge kind of understanding if we want to oust the GOP. Calling each other “misogynysts” and “wankers” isn’t going to fucking cut it.

The Atrios-Kleinman dustup is not going to cost the Democratic party a single vote. Once it’s time to go to the polls, all of us here in the blogosphere will be pulling the lever or touching the screen for the candidate with “D” next to his name.

On the other hand, Wankette deserved the dissing she got, because now that she has the big MSM job she has obviously always coveted, she starts right in with MSM-style wankery. Ooh, how contrarian– she thought Colbert sucked! Wankette is BORING, and now she’s becoming an enabler for the suckass Beltway-insider press corps. She is an egomaniac, and she has about 1/100th of Colbert’s talent. Her DC insider assfucking blog was entertaining for about two months in 2004, but really, she’s washed up.

Have we already forgotten how this all got started?*

Cox decided to join the sensible liberal types who tut-tutted over Stephen Colbert not diluting his humor with anodyne pleasantries, as if it really fucking mattered. I’m sorry, but there’s no reasoning over that kind of difference. You either see why it’s important that a lowly comedian had the guts to poke Bush’s bubble with a sharp stick, or you don’t. Maybe if our useless media actually did their fucking jobs, comedians could get back to knee-slappers about the differences-between-the-sexes-shtick to suit idiots like Cox and Richard Cohen. No wonder they were so quick to defend the sanctity of bubbles and the people who live in them, though. Those are the kind of fucking morons who would have been griping about the performance of the band as the Titanic sank. Totally goddamn clueless.

The point being – as long as those fuckstains are going to keep scoring points by sneering at the unwashed masses and their gauche mannerisms outside of the Beltway, there’s going to be people calling them on it. No point in lecturing us about it.

Besides, Brad, I’d take your point a lot more seriously if you hadn’t wasted space just a week ago sticking up for a useless sack o’shit like Andrew Sullivan on a trivial point. It seems you’re just a little too into the idea of fairness for the sake of fairness, regardless of context.

*You could argue that this entire phenomenon of Sensible Liberalism all got started with a group called the DLC, the likes of whom apparently still haven’t gotten the message that constantly pissing on various parts of your base isn’t going to work anymore, but that’s another topic.

I also dislike the circular firing squad, but if some ‘liberal’ or ‘leftist’ or ‘progressive’ or whathaveyou is going to drool out the wingnut-serving “manners-over-morals” stuff, he or she deserves to be slapped. Unless I was mistaken (a definite possibility!), Retardo seemed to anoint Kleiman as King Wanker for that reason.

That manners-not-morals stuff (flashbacks of Victorian hypocrisy) is of a piece with “angry liberals” and “activist judges” and “with us or against us”– they’re intellectually dishonest GOP memes deployed to unfairly tilt to public discourse in a manner advantageous to the GOP.

Brad,

Annie’s having a bad day. Stop by and cheer her up. Or at least spring for some more corona’s.

*bawls more*

I love you guys.

start calling everyone Tories, Whigs, and Communards.

And the Know Nothing Party!
Don’t forget the Know Nothing Party!

But I take your point- it was a silly waste of space on my part.

Isn’t there a point where we all step back and realize that it’s just blogging, that the people who read this (or Powerline, or Atrios, or Instawhatever) are the already politically active, and have probably already formed their opinions? I mean, I doubt any blogs have changed the world–take down Jeff Gannon, and another will take his place, and it won’t have mattered really.

In other words, don’t most of us have day jobs? Don’t we have a right to waste space? Or does every single blog post have to be serious? Does every blogger have to worry that everything they write will damage The Party?

Hopefully, No!

Hopefully, No!

Good one!

The internecine squabbles of online essayists who lean democratic have turned me off so much that I have no choice but to support Sen. George Allen in his bid for the presidency. Just thought you’d like to know.

Norbizness, the Communards? Really. That Jimmy Sommerville is teh shrill.

I’m tempted to just junk the entire exiting political terminology and start calling everyone Tories, Whigs, and Communards.

Way ahead of you, Jillian…

Commutards.

I love you guys.

What-ever! You admit you don’t even read my posts, and you say that Bradrocket is sexier! Where’s the love in that? (Love for Brad, certainly.. but..)

“The internecine squabbles of online essayists who lean democratic have turned me off so much that I have no choice but to support Sen. George Allen in his bid for the presidency. Just thought you’d like to know.”

Nicely put Alloicius.

The unspoken idea behind these arguments is that Democratic voters are all fuking pansies. Look, it’s the internet. When somebody calls you a dimplewad on-line, you have plenty of time to cool off and deal with that person on a rational level.

Civility is important in face-to-face interactions but it has no place on the internet.

“y’all are acting like colonels rubbing your hands in glee and arguing over how to divvy the spoils when the GOP comes crashing down. they’re still up and stomping, lamebrains. kick their asses out of their comfortable sinecures, and then figure out whose ideological thrust is better suited to strike resolutely against the neo colonialist warmongers.”

What I’m hearing here is, “First elect the democrats, and then you’ll have time to figure out whether you agree with their politics”.

That seems backwards to me.

I’d read your posts but they re too involved and difficult. Make one on Tom Cruise and I’m yours.

You want uncivil? Go check out a Fark thread. Dem v. Dem is a fucking tea party.

I dunno. I spent the weekend skiing on clear lake, and I missed a bunch of this. And I kept going: “Yeah”. “Good Point.” “Makes sense to me.”. “I’ll go along with that.” Ah hell.

I’m gonna take the Colbert approach and speak truth to pundits. Ready? OK, here we go!

I come here for teh funny. Every now and then, something compelling happens. So I want you all to go back up and read all this shit. No problem, I’ll wait.

OK. Done? Good. NOW LISTEN CAREFULLY!! People are DYING! Real people, with real blood and extremities are being shot, blown up, tortured, indefinitely “detained”, kidnapped and murdered. Families. Children. American kids. WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING NOW!!

I want you all, right now, to look into your heart. Stop acting like a bunch of kids at a field day debate contest, and open your fucking eyes. Ask yourself one question. Is the current administration likely to stop the killing and bloodshed and warfare? Lemme help you here. sADLY, NO!! They will start more wars and kill more people (In YOUR Name) without a thought to further their agenda. So whaddaya gonna do?

One. We have to get them out of power and somehow make them accountable.

Two. We have to take the control of the American Military out of their hands, so they can no longer expoit that power to advance their political agenda, in spite of the human suffering it engenders.

Three. We have to take back the true definition of what it means to be an American. We have to make them accountable to their oath to protect and defend the constitution. I ask you–what has become of the separation of powers? Indeed, what has become of the 4th amendment? How much more can we afford to give away in the next 2, 4, 8 years?

So stop it. Recognize that these are, indeed, real differences, and that there are people in YOUR party who are first-order wankers. Now, examine your conscience and ask yourself how you’ll look in a fucking mirror if this shit goes on to it’s logical conclusion. These assholes are thugs who have hijacked the American Political Process, and are SHITTING on everything you believe. Put your goddam ego in your pocket and DO SOMETHING!!!

mikey

Just for the record, though various people attacked Colbert as “uncivil,” I didn’t, and neither did Cox.

I thought he was great, and said so both at the time and at the beginning of the post that set Retardo off. Since when is a comparison to Jonathan Swift considered a put-down?

Cox said he mostly wasn’t funny, which I thought was mostly right. But there are better things to be than funny. Colbert was on target.

You’re way sexier than Retardeau.

Nonsense! At least, theoretically, we have some idea what Retardeau looks like, and while I am infrequently partial to guys with long hair…
um…
OK, I’ll stop now. I see that look of gathering panic in your eyes. Sorry!

Mikey is right. The last thing liberals/the left/progressives / WHATEVER-T-F you want to call us need is to continue our decades-old habit of sniffing out the ideologically impure and refusing to see that we all have a common goal of getting these criminals out of office. Clutching pearls: “Oh, my land, that other person who thinks the President is a lawbreaker isn’t a vegetarian/meat-eater/gay/straight/pro-choicer/pro-lifer/anti-capital-punishment wonk/pro-capital-punishment wonk/(ad inf.) like me! How could I possibly work with such a person?” I’m so tired of this quest for impossible purity while the Rethugs merrily destroy the Constitution.

This issue goes waaaaay back in all of the socially progressive movements. And there is, as far as I can see, no right answer.

Women in America had been agitating for the right to vote since the early nineteenth century. Although there were territories where women had the franchise before the Civil War, that right was scarce for women. When the war came, women were urged by the liberal abolition movement to put aside their divisive pandering for the greater good of the emancipation movement. As a result, it would be another fifty-five years before women got the right to vote.

Black Americans were told time and again to put aside their calls for equality in the face of a never ending succession of crises – World War I, the Depression, World War II – that demanded the country present a unified face against whatever the threat of the week happened to be. As a result, there’s a good argument to be made that the Civil War didn’t really end until not 1865, but 1965, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. And I have to tell you, that battle is STILL only half-won.

There comes a point where making common cause with groups who really don’t have your interests at heart is no longer laudable, but laughable. I’m not trying to say that this is such a time, because I’m not in a position to make that call for anyone else.

I’m just saying that if the Democrats find it hard to get the support of people on the left, then perhaps they might want to spend less time pointing fingers at those of us who are, and maybe a little more time figuring out exactly why it is we’re so unhappy with them.

I simply cannot recommend strongly enough that people read Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” on this topic. Mostly because he is far more eloquent in explaining this than I could ever hope to be.