PrintLicking their wounds
It is amusing to scan the left wing pundits and read their sorry ruminations on the election results. William Saletan of Slate thinks that Bush won because he is simple (and so are you, stupid Americans).
Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don't—and there are more of them than there are of us.
Democracy really is a terrible burden on the coastal elites!
Nicholas Kristoff of The New York Times is more nuanced (forgive me that expression!). He understands that the elitism of the Hollywood and New York crowds is repelling more people than it is attracting. Still, he cannot help condescending himself, as he writes of
...millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting — utterly against their own interests — for Republican candidates.
I just love it when Harvard—educated New York Times columnists use their vast and all—knowing intelligence to lecture 'factory workers and waitresses' about where their real interests lie. When contained in a column regretting the excesses of elitism, it rises to the level of delicious self—parody. Best of all, Kristoff is utterly clueless about his condescension. He actually thinks he is being brutally honest and self—reflective. Not only is there no chance of others on the left taking his advice, I don't think Kristoff will able to either.
One pundit who definitely gets it is George Neumayr of The American Spectator. In a column that is a masterpiece of sarcasm he punctures the pretensions of the claim that America is 'divided' only when Republicans win.
What does all this talk of division really add up to? Aren't reporters really just saying that they feel divided from the country they cover? If the country is as divided as they eagerly assert, why don't the Democrats control half the branches of government? Why did they lose, not gain, votes in Florida? Why did Bush improve on his popular vote numbers so significantly? The country—is—divided chatter is not a journalistic report, but a wish —— the media's attempt to create the appearance of division so as to create division which might obstruct the progress of conservatism in the country.
There is a slight chance that some on the left may learn a few lessons from their defeat. But the vast majority will simply become more angry at the American people for failing to heed their advice. Will Elizabeth Edwards turn out to be prophetic in anticipating violence following a Bush victory?
Lenin (remember him?) wrote of the need for a "revolutionary vanguard" to show the peasants and workers the way out of their false consciousness. The failed left of America would be very foolish, indeed, to de facto embrace such a thoroughly discredited creed. But looking at their track record of embracing failed idologies, I take no comfort.
5:49 AM, Pacific Standard Time
