Has Anyone Else Noticed...
...that the basic tactic of the liberal press recently has been to abandon reason and retreat from emotional self-awareness?
I sure have! Of course, I live with the Strib every day, so it's been extra hard to avoid.
Yes, we're faced with a full court press of stupidity lately. It's a brilliant tactic, in its way. It wears me out, I know that. Although it does also mean the left is surprisingly quickly becoming captive to the most spasmodic intellectual impulses of its most immature members - and again, I rely on watching the Strib editorial writers for this analysis.
It may be that at any particular point in this country, one side is rational and emotionally honest, while the other is not.
There have been revisions to how issues of the past are perceived. Yet it remains true that in the1950's and 1960's, the conservative status quo - that portion that avoided problems of pollution, or resisted civil rights legislation, or refused to accept that possibly Viet Nam was a debacle - back then, the conservatives played the stupid role.
It was a particular kind of stupid, a defensive, sullen stupid, and it was a hell of lot of fun to rail against.
But it's possible there's been a global shift, akin to the poles sliding 90 degrees like we're always being warned about. It may be that the left is becoming the stupid side.
It's a different kind of stupid. It's more aggressive, and it's anchored in dissent.
Dishonest stupid aggressive dissent: that's hard to respond to, it seems to me. Am I becoming a Burkeian?
I sure have! Of course, I live with the Strib every day, so it's been extra hard to avoid.
Yes, we're faced with a full court press of stupidity lately. It's a brilliant tactic, in its way. It wears me out, I know that. Although it does also mean the left is surprisingly quickly becoming captive to the most spasmodic intellectual impulses of its most immature members - and again, I rely on watching the Strib editorial writers for this analysis.
It may be that at any particular point in this country, one side is rational and emotionally honest, while the other is not.
There have been revisions to how issues of the past are perceived. Yet it remains true that in the1950's and 1960's, the conservative status quo - that portion that avoided problems of pollution, or resisted civil rights legislation, or refused to accept that possibly Viet Nam was a debacle - back then, the conservatives played the stupid role.
It was a particular kind of stupid, a defensive, sullen stupid, and it was a hell of lot of fun to rail against.
But it's possible there's been a global shift, akin to the poles sliding 90 degrees like we're always being warned about. It may be that the left is becoming the stupid side.
It's a different kind of stupid. It's more aggressive, and it's anchored in dissent.
Dishonest stupid aggressive dissent: that's hard to respond to, it seems to me. Am I becoming a Burkeian?
posted by Lonesome Payne at
11:05 PM
