Why Must They Always Insist On Being Wrong?

Please, pardon my incoherence, I'm supposed to be writing songs - not anything resembling an essay:

After the last presidential election, an arrogant President Barack Obama informed Republicans we had to accept his stimulus package because "I won." So the Tea Party got organized, and under a wave of media slander - claiming we were a bunch of crazy racists - we gave the president a "shellacking" like few had seen in politics before. And it was done legitimately, one could even say cleanly - without misrepresentations or violence - just patriotic Americans going to the voting booth and doing what they thought was right.

The Democrats of Madison, Wisconsin, on the other hand, haven't seemed too happy with democracy since then, or the "I won" message now coming from Republicans. With Democrat politicians running away to Chicago to halt further changes, their supporters engaging in street protests, committing acts of violence, and issuing threats to Republican public officials and anyone else they thought was against them, now, as a new election nears, they are trying to install a judge they think will overturn the results of their previous loses, Joanne Kloppenburg:



As I've said, that "simple protest" the video refers to was hardly simple, filled as it was with lying and acts of mayhem on the part of Democrats, so the happy-go-lucky style of the ad is misleading. In keeping with that unfortunate approach, their candidate, Kloppenburg, also doesn't appear to be a woman who values basic decency, as this exchange between she and her opponent, the incumbent Judge David Prosser, reveals:



Not only that, but one of the victims in the ad they're discussing has come forward to say Kloppenburg is dishonest:



This prompted a retired attorney, who goes by the initials AST, to recently comment:

I'm watching "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," when I find the same eerie feeling coming from Madison, Wisconsin. 

If the people of Wisconsin are so dumb they can watch all this without being sickened by the crass, anti-democratic behavior of the Democrats in your state and the thuggish behavior of the unions.

If this is "Midwestern Values" the country is in bigger trouble than I thought.

Yeah, well, welcome to reality. Frank Zappa famously noted that, in the struggle of man against the world, you should bet on the world - and good men are starting to see what he means. Apparently, only the good men, though.

A blogging pioneer, by the name of Dennis the Peasant, recently announced he's had it with blogging:

It's time for me to face up to the fact that the political blogosphere is a near complete bore.

There are two reasons for this boredom, as far as I am concerned. The first is as follows: Six years ago, the political blogosphere was not dominated by the money and resources of mainstream media and professional political advocacy groups. Now it is. The political blogosphere has now acquired all of the defects (and none of the virtues) of mainsteam and advocacy media. With money has come self-censorship and intellectual dishonesty.

The second reason is a function of the first: Simply put, the vast majority of the political blogosphere's heavy hitters aren't worth reading. Beyond being captives of those corporate and political interests who pay them, lots of those folks can't write, are remarkably uninformed, and quite a few are just plain stupid. They are paid to bring eyeballs. They are not paid to think. And you know what? It shows...

That it does, as I've made abundantly clear for some time, and in a variety of ways. Though Dennis found some support online, many of the comments ran to the usual, immature, "he's jealous" variety, without engaging with his premise at all:

Why doesn't anyone try to change the lousy political leadership of the blogosphere?

Of course, the main reason is because the internet's conservative gatekeepers like things the way they are, seeing how it flatters themselves as visionaries and keeps the philistines away. Dennis used to be hooked up with Pajamas Media, but now - Hey - if Pajamas Media's Glenn Reynolds doesn't like or understand you, right or wrong, what's to force him into directing traffic your way? He's the king of the roost, Mister, and that's all that matters. If he and his suburbanite supporters' nerdy tunnel-visioned interests are the problem, so what? They're in charge and don't have to listen. Unfair or not, they won! They'll spread the wealth, maybe, but admit they may not deserve it? Never. (As far as I know, Reynolds never did link to Dennis' complaint.)



An example of all this (and, I admit, it's not a great example but it's what I got) was Ann Althouse, a Reynolds favorite, posting the viral video above and calling it "The essence of conversation, revealed by the complete absence of meaningful words." It's nothing of the kind, just two babies da-daing each other to death, as though they were talking. Of course, Ann's not the only one to believe this is actual conversation. And that's sad, because - like the recent success of Rebecca Black's "Friday" as good music - this video is actually a highly embarrassing exhibit 'A' of how adults delude themselves. Just as pet owners are known to do, when they claim their charges "think" in human terms, this is nothing more than the sharing of an erroneous meme as though it's gospel, and, like a cat owner who thinks it's cute when the feline jumps on your lap, anyone who doesn't go along is just "mean". Like, those two kids are somebody's babies, right? Yeah, and you're adults - and, in the case of Ann Althouse, an educator - but, like the president Ann helped vote into office, she should know better than to be doing such things.



Everyone should know better. But how can they? They're in charge! The president, of course, was a constitutional law professor. Ann Althouse, too, is a law professor, and, as I said, she voted for Obama. This means Althouse, Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds - also a law professor but one that didn't vote for Obama - and the president still all have something in common:

They're in charge - while happily existing with scum like Bill Ayers in academia.

While Reynolds is constantly harping on the cost of a college education (which even he acknowledges, from time-to-time, may not be worth it) he rarely raises the question of what good an American education if the profession is so corrupt even murderers are allowed to educate, and so cowardly a murderer has been doing so, for decades, without serious challenge? How, with them in charge, can that be? And why, if a college education is so great, is academia's thinking so screwed up and trivial?

That Bill Ayers video, above, has also gone viral - not because anyone is interested in exposing him as evil and, somehow, drumming his corrosive likes out of polite company, but because this figure of evil is on a college campus exhibiting snark regarding the rumor he may have written the president's memoir. (What would the internet be without snark, huh? What would a president be like, or a college auditorium, without a welcomed dictator or domestic terrorist?) No, Bill Ayers is merely presented to us for internet chatter, reminding decent internet denizens we're trapped in a nightmare, living in a relativist's dream world.

Like Ann Althouse, until recently Andrew Sullivan was another Glenn Reynolds favorite, being one of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse", or one of the four early conservative bloggers to gain a major following. And, also like Ann Althouse, Sullivan, a confirmed NewAge weirdo, voted for Barack Obama, much to his current shame. Of course, all Obama voters brought shame upon themselves - and the rest of us - but Sullivan's now trying to maintain a badly played charade that he didn't know Barack Obama was as dishonest as Arianna Huffington and all of his other supporters of that untrustworthy ilk:

Many of us supported this president because he promised to bring back the constitutional balance after the theories of Yoo, Delahunty, et al put the president on a par with emperors and kings in  wartime. And yet in this Libya move, what difference is there between Bush and Obama? In some ways, Bush was more respectful of the Congress, waiting for a vote of support before launching us like an angry bird into the desert. Hillary Clinton, channeling her inner Cheney, said in a classified Congressional briefing that her administration would simply ignore the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that requires the president to seek Congressional approval within 60 days of the conflict starting. If the congress voted against continuing the war, it would be irrelevant to the administration. Beat that, King George II.

Yada, yada, yada. Sure, sure. You had two years of being told, in no uncertain terms, the man was a liar - with a domestic terrorist for a friend - and you still gave him power anyway. Please, just shut up and go away. (For the last time: why does he still have a job? Oh yeah, because Reynolds still links to him, bringing Sullivan tons of traffic, just so Reynolds can let him know he's a rube.)

Speaking of people who should just go away, Newt Gingrich has been forcing himself upon us lately, making us all have to deal with the results of his failed and messy personal life. This got Rand Paul to make a few comments:



Question - why is the audience groaning? It's not a bad joke or observation, so it must be because they thought it inappropriate. Well, this goes to the heart of the problem I'm writing about here:

The only thing inappropriate is allowing Newt Gingrich back in politics as though we can't see the true nature of the man.

Instead of a room full of movers and shakers tsk-tsking at Rand Paul, I hear a room full of morally deficient "players" trying to maintain a false image of sophistication in the face of a younger generation of leaders (Dan Quayle's son is also on the dias) who know more then the audience about what's right and what's wrong. Shame on anyone who thinks it's this new generation of leaders who should "tone it down." No, it's the previous set who should get out of the way because, as the architects of our current situation - as those in charge - they've outlived their usefulness, if they've ever had any. And their reaction to Rand's joke indicates they haven't.

They've been part of the problem.

Recently, while discussing the meaning of David Foster Wallace's final book, which was patched together after the NewAge author killed himself, I voiced a newfound post-divorce/murder ambivalence about life. Don't feel superior towards those who choose suicide, I warned, because what the rest of you have created isn't all it's cracked up to be. This prompted someone to say:

Crack, you seem to be morphing into that which you deplore.

Thinking of Zappa's admonition, my response was and is, "So what's your point?"

I grew up in the foster homes of South Central, Los Angeles. I left the ghetto looking for a better life that I only found in fits and starts, only to have it all come crashing down around my ears because of a bunch of silly NewAge "beliefs" Baby Boomers have been happy to entertain for over four decades. Then, once my life was over as I knew it, you went and handed our country over to a god damned socialist. Sorry, but now, having been marginalized for most of my life, I'm not going to pretend I'm one of the voices of power responsible for anything that's gone on out there.

And I've been around long enough to know those in power don't care, anyway, what anyone out of power thinks - no matter what an awful job those in power are doing - or even when you include concepts like "right" or "wrong" or just the idea of looking for what would be more effective. If they did, they'd be changing things, opening doors, promoting thinkers and ideas totally unlike their own. But, instead, they're feeding us a steady diet of failure and, except for themselves, making the world an ever more unpleasant place to live. Why not join them?

Like I said - please pardon my incoherence - but, please, also excuse me for reminding everyone, as long as these jokers stay in control, America's probably not going to be a much more pleasant place to die either.