Liberals - 1; Conservatives - 0

January 8th, 2011

Urgent: Flash e-mail from the White House: A message from OFA (Organizing for America) national volunteer coordinators:

Dear Blogger: By now you’ve heard the news. Time to mobilize. What just happened in Arizona (where else?) is more than murder. This is our opportunity to invigorate some of our policy objectives. Target gun control and talk radio (Limbaugh, Beck, etc.). Target the internet and capital punishment. Target Palin. For suggestions, go to xxx@yyy.com for templates and suggestions.

Get busy. Support the cause. Support Democrats. Support your president. Prizes for the most e-mails sent.

Remember, never let a crisis go to waste.
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The above fiction is nevertheless believable. How else can we explain the current feeding frenzy in the press and on the blogs? Clearly, what happened was a personal tragedy for all those hurt and killed. Also clear is that it’s a stretch to involve people who had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

More than the wounding and murders themselves, the real tragedy is what immediately followed. I differ from Limbaugh in one important respect: Whereas he sees it as a one last-ditch desperate effort - a ‘Hail Mary pass', if you wish - by liberalism losing steam, I see it as only the beginning - the opening salvo of what we can expect for the next two years. The media and Democrats are scoring big.

This morning, ‘The Hindu’, Chennai’s hometown newspaper will carry Paul Krugman’s column entitled “Climate of Hate”. In it he implicates and smears everyone who does not agree with his radical views. Indians will read this and, hearing no other American voices, will shake their heads sadly. Some who have relatives abroad will send e-mails to caution them. They will warn them of the Tea Parties, talk radio, FOX, the GOP, Palin, Beck, O’Reilly, conservatives, etc. All this will be done out of genuine concern and in good faith.

Talk show hosts are feeling the need to defend themselves today. Their faithful - even if in the numerical majority of the population - agree with them. But as a part of the overall national narrative they remain marginalized. Their protestations sound somehow hollow as the ball continues to roll left.

Liberals - 1; conservatives - 0

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Traitors In Our Midst

What does all this tell us? It doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know: We’ll swing Republican in the next election cycle. The Dems have overreached and frightened the people. So, while we catch our breath and wait (and make fun of the Dems) – just like we waited and made fun of Republicans the last time around - it might do well to take a few moments to consider what happens next.

We’ve already seen this movie before. The next scene should not come as a great surprise. Republicans too will be shown as dangerously inept and cruel-hearted. Every unfortunate child in the country will be afforded a page in The New York Times to shout its contempt the GOP; for capitalism. Obama will have been forgotten, as it is not the habit of Republicans to blame predecessors by name or party affiliation.

In fact, Republicans will be sorely tempted to outdo the Democrats in hopes of stemming the barrage of mainstream editorial and academic criticism. By doing so, they will earn the contempt of their base to no particular advantage. Two (or four) years later, it’s Democrats again; and so on and so on…

Luckily, there is a God. Clio will not allow people to go rushing from side to side on Titanic’s deck in perpetuity. At some point (with all due respect to Al Gore) she will put an iceberg in its path. This will come in the form of an outside event. The most likely (at this point) could be a coordinated attack on the dollar. It could also be war breaking out in the Middle or Far East, choking off our energy supply. Such events (and a host of others like it) could of course also conspire to happen all at the same time.

In any case, it would take on the function of a kind of Zen slap in the face, telling us that we have to pull ourselves together to survive to haggle about racial quotas and gay marriage another day. No doubt, it will signify our acid test to determine whether or not we even deserve to be called a nation anymore. Leaders will emerge. Will they be up to the task? When the chips were down, they always have been in the past. No reason to doubt their resolve and competence.

One thing they will have to face is the disposition of the traitors in our midst. In recent times unbelievable suggestions have been openly floated; history re-written, deleted or changed; constitutional principles ignored; heroes besmirched. This cannot be allowed to continue. For the very reason that our survival will be at stake, I can guarantee it won’t.