Saturday, July 09, 2011

The Great Madness of 2004-10

If you read nothing else this weekend
The Great Madness of 2004-10
by Victor Davis Hanson

The Trailer
 
The First Symptoms of Hatred—2004 to 2008
aize your hands if you've had enough global warming
During the years of insanity, Al Gore won both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award for his propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth—before the disclosures of climate gate, new data on everything from the Himalayan glaciers to polar bear populations, realization that temperatures had not risen in the last 12 years, and the rather blatant and various money-making scheme of Gore, Inc. (more good stuff) .... In these years of insanity, I used to be asked on campus questions as lectures along the lines of “Bush’s polluting pals are ruining the planet when we know Al Gore’s cap and trade would save us. Now it’s too late!” Of course, in 2006 gasoline will relatively cheap, unemployment low, and there was growth in the economy. College students had the luxury of declaiming how George Bush had wiped out the polar bears as they waited for several good job offers. [...]


Stage Two of Worship, 2008-10
Then the mad hatred turned to the mad worship. Do we remember the great campaign of 2008? The madness now metamorphosized, as an obscure, heretofore unremarkable rookie senator became the Great Savior who would deliver us from Bush. Newsweek declared him a god; almost nightly we heard of leg tingles and speeches comparable to the Gettysburg Address. To doubt was racist, to really doubt was un-American. But now there was no shrieking, shrill Hillary Clinton to scream that such dissent was not really un-American.(She would soon charge that doubt about Libya was a sort of un-American support for Gaddafi.) [...]

Diagnosis, Treatment, Prognosis
White Liberal Guilt
What caused the American madness from 2004 to 2009? Fury arose over Iraq in part. In part, the profile of George Bush as Texan, Christian, strutting, twangy ‘dead or alive’ stereotype was an easy target. The long years of liberal wilderness, out of power, had turned into a shrillness. The expanding economy had made life good and gave one the leisure to listen to the unhinged like Code Pink, Cindy Sheehan, or Michael Moore.

Obama was right out of upper-middle-class, liberal white guilt, central casting: charismatic, young, half-African, an exotic name, hard-left credentials  [...]

When I read high octane writing like this I find myself wondering to what end?  You know?  We're not the ones who need to read this stuff, and they don't know it exists.  You know?

5 comments:

toadold said...

Well very few hippies read VDH. But then very few are all that literate to start with. The opposition research of the left will read it though and there are others who will read it but never admit to reading it. I think of the posting and writing of people like VDH as death by needle. Every day someone needles the left and few drops of blood are spilled, nerves damaged, and muscles spasm. Death by laughter is also real.
I hope that sometime in August things are really going to go SPLAT and I can enjoy my popcorn.

Anonymous said...

Boehner just sold us out. Agreed to raise the debt ceiling $2Trillion and got bupkis from the regime.

Dickweed.

Correction that comparison is an insult to dickweeds.

- One Man Dang

toadold said...

I see no good or gain from raising the debt limit, but the fight isn't over. The debt limit was raised but taxes haven't been raised. That 2 trillion raise in the debt limit ceiling isn't going to last all that long at the present rate of tax revenue decline vs. the current amount of spending. The fight for deregulation and reigning in spending will continue. As Rubio said we need more people working who could pay current taxes than we need new taxes.
I expect Bonehere is getting an earful about now along the lines of WTF from the freshmen in the House and there are some conservative Republicans in the Senate that won't be happy with him.

Rodger the Real King of France said...

Not happy with him? I'm furious.

DougM said...

Yeah, frustrating, innit?
The answer is: because it doesn't fit The Template™, it'll never have an impact on The Narrative™ (which is dogma or canon, anyway).

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