Political immaturity. Jeff Jarvis notices that he's been called a right winger over at dKos (actually, a "right-wing media gadfly"—and the diary in question exists mostly to excerpt James Wolcott's dead funny, dead-on takeout of the smarm-fest currently being conducted in Jarvis's correspondence with Bill Keller, but Jarvis knows better than to try to do a number on Wolcott, who'd eat him for breakfast), and it prompts Jeffy to get all dudgeony about "the obnoxious self-inflicted orthodoxy of some on the left" which is hurting, um, no not Jeff's tender feelings, but the Democratic party. (A prize of some sort, by the way, to whomever can make sense to me of the phrase "self-inflicted orthodoxy.") Jeff has discerned in us "cultists" a desire to force the Democrats into permanent, ineffectual opposition, if not extinction (funny, I thought that was the platform of the Rove/DeLay GOP)—you know how we just hate it when liberals win elections.

So why do these guys want to drum me out of their corps (or what they think is their corps)? What are my crimes of political incorrectness?

: I didn't support Howard Dean.
[blather]
: I didn't support Howard Dean.
[blather]
: I didn't support Howard Dean.

And for these sins, Kos calls me right-wing, Alterman calls me all kinds of things, and Oliver Willis rises to the rhetorical heights of calling me, as he calls anyone with whom he disagrees, "stupid."

Is this the left, the caring, human, open, inclusive, warm, huggy, humanisitic left? Or is this just its wackier, ruder wing of the party? I vote for the latter.

But this is how liberals treat our own if we don't agree with ever syllable certain folks proclaim or if we don't seethe and spit at the other side.

Because I have an optimistic view of human nature in spite of myself, I left a comment at BuzzMachine in the hope of educating Jeff about just how, er, stupid this is. And because I'm lazy, and have a need for attention, I'm posting the comment here.

We are in a state of political emergency in this country. Our discourse is being brutalized, and the space for ordinary democratic politics being shrunk. This is not the product of symmetrical assaults by "extremists" of both sides, regardless of what moderates like to fantasize. Mainstream discourse is being handed over in great chunks, and increasingly, to the Hewitts and Hindrockets and Hannitys and O'Reillys—to the brutalists of the right, and only to them. (Find me any left-wing "brutalist" offered a platform remotely comparable in size. For that matter, find me any prominent left-wing commenter who approaches the routine rhetorical brutality of a Hindrocket.)

These are the people for whom "liberals" like Jeff Jarvis are happy to provide cover. Jeff, I don't give a good goddamn who you say you vote for, or plan to vote for. [Jeff proclaims elsewhere his "reluctant" vote for John Kerry and his hearty desire to vote for Hillary in 2008.] The actual effect of your work is to embolden the right-wing shouters and ranters. You consistently skew in their direction, too consistently for it not to be noticed. And they are a threat. As loyal servants of the proto-fascist tendency that now controls the Republican party, and the machinery of American government, the Hewitts and Hindrockets and their ilk are doing everything they can to undermine the legacy of tolerant, liberal democracy that Americans have enjoyed for so long. They are doing everything they can to make honest dissent impossible, and you're standing by and applauding as they do it.

Don't agree with me? Fine. But understand that there are quite a lot of us, ordinary, unflamethrowing left-liberals, who are terrified of where this country is being taken. We see an encroaching fascism, we see the destruction of American ideals that we love, and we don't have the luxury of making the nice distinctions of allegiance you'd like us to make, Jeff. Whatever you do in the privacy of the voting booth, you've set yourself up to enable the anti-democracy right. You willingly make yourself a useful idiot, and it pisses us off—not because we're "searching for heretics" [in the words of one of Jeff's glad-handing attaboy commenters earlier in the thread], but because it's do or die this time and we need everybody we can get, and you're on the wrong side. You don't have to agree with that. But that you can't even begin to get it—that you think it's somehow all about a Howard Dean litmus test—that's just proof, if any were needed, of your dire political immaturity.

posted by michael  9:46:44 PM  
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