Progressive Derangement Syndrome

I feel like I've stepped through the looking glass.

On the one hand, I read news articles about working class voters voicing their dismay and anger at Obama for dissing them at a fundraiser. On the other hand, I read comments and blog quotes confidently proclaiming that Obama has successfully dodged the bullet of negative fallout. Why, because the media whores on MSNBC don't talk about it?

There is a disconnect between Obamacans (which more clearly defines the particular participants than "liberal elite" or "wine track liberals"), particularly those in the blogosphere, and reality that is increasing exponentially. The less their version of the How the World Must Be corresponds to the everyday fabric of American lives, the more stridently they insist that All Is Well. I've come to the conclusion that it's not just campaign hype, either, or trying to put on a good face. They really do think that if they say something three times with conviction, that makes it true. Something has rotted the brains of previously reasonable people.

All I have is what I see and trying to make sense of it. I'm trying to put it into historical perspective as well, puzzling out where the hell this bizarre mind set has come from. At the core of theis syndrome is an enormous amount of resentment and a powerful desire to punish. I don't find this unusual, as it has characterized much of American national sentiment since the Iran hostage crisis, like an existential chip on the nation's shoulder. On the Left, I get the impression that what many people desire is someone to blame or something to expell to remove the tremendous run of bad electoral luck the party has suffered since, well, Nixon. This resentment has attached itself to the Right's Clinton Derangement Syndrome, but is not identical to it.

The Republicans have good reason to hate both the Clintons - Hillary and Bill beat them. Repeatedly. The Democrats have no good reason to hate the Clintons - they beat Republicans repeatedly. Indeed, most Democrats love these two and are proud as punch about them. It's not as though the party has had significant success otherwise. So, what gives? What is going on with this fanatical and self-destructive behavior on the part of alleged progressives? The closer you look, the more deranged it gets.

Obama goes to a fuindraiser thrown by a Republican billionaire, collecting 2.5 million dollars from the event, and talks about working class and rural Democratic voters as pathetic, bitter losers who have to console themselves gor their loserdom by shooting off guns and believing in superstitions and fairy tales. This is completely in keeping with the derision showered on Hillary for comparing herself to Rocky - to the Obamacan faction, Rocky is a loser, just like the other rubes. They are losers, i.e., they are the people on whom to place the blame for our losses, our humiliations at the hands of the criminal Republicans. I don't think the Obamacans have ever forgiven the Reagan Democrats for their defection to the Gipper.

On the other hand, they don't believe their own words. Obama's fundamental lack of faith was revealed in his dismissal of the faith of others, such that he now has to protest that he attends church. Yes, Precious, we know. That he would attend a church in bad faith, not really believing the Gospel but drinking in the antiquated and self-indulgent sociological arguments of his pastor, doesn't raise an eyebrow among Obamacans. But of course he wouldn't believe that silly mumbo-jumbo; it's just that he has to do some ridiculous things to get elected. (Roll eyes at the unreasonable demands of pandering to the simple minded.)

More important, they don't believe that words matter, at least not those spoken to the rubes to win votes. There is a bizarre belief, we might call it faith, that only the good and the best will be absorbed. Under the spell of this faith, they don't think Obama's words have any power except to make people swoon and no consequences save to increase his vote count. It is a postmodern conceit that reality is what you make of it, crafted and deployed to meet the circumstance, and only irony will result. They honestly don't consider the possibility that the working class and the poor are in a position to pass judgment on these statements and "performatives", that they form considered and sophisticated opinions on the world they confront just the way erudite UC tenured professors might do, or even Ivy League educated A-List bloggers. Whoda thunk it? Words do matter, but the words that people find matter most may not be those you want them to hear. The rubes have ears. They not only watch CNN, they occasionally read newspapers. Some of them even fire up the interwebs and look at them bloggy thingamabobs.

Reading - not just for the highly edjumacated.

What the hell is up with my party? Disenfranchising voters to throw an election? Dclaring vast swaths of party loyalists to be racists? Deriding party stalwarts as "Republican-lite"? Dismissing the economic successes of a previous Democratic administration? Just why are the self-described progressives so frantic to remove Bill Clinton from the company of Democratic presidents? I have provided my answers, but it still remains a mind-boggling phenomenon.

Their vision for America becomes less coherent, less relevant by the day. Their "progressivism" is defined by their adherence to CDS, and whatever else has been declared a worthy goal, like universal health care and economic policies that alleviate poverty, falls to the wayside. Think about it - GKJM's greatest claim to fame is being the center of the opposition to Republican attempts to privatize Social Security, shaming, hustling and supporting Democratic lawmakers into fighting back the attack. He is fully behind the ONLY Democratic candidate I can think of who argues for revisiting the Social Security battle and whose chief financial advsor is a conservative who wants to privatize Social Security. Ezra Klein will send his entire body of work about health insurance and health care down the toilet to support a candidate who didn't bother to address this topic at first and now offers warmed over do-nothing measures. W.T.F?

Netroots progressivism is shown to be rootless, and progresses into greater derangement by the day.

Anglachel