The Right Hand Of Satan Survives Assassination Attempt

Why, oh why, do they hate Dick Cheney so?

The
left, that is, not the Taliban.

It can’t be because he was a draft dodger, because the left has nothing at
all against draft dodgers – even ones who start illegal, preemptive unilateral
wars (i.e., Bill Clinton).

It can’t be because he swears a lot. After all, who
swears more than leftists? Or Hillary
Clinton for that matter?

It can’t be because he got a DWI. For all the leftists who think that is a
bad, bad thing, I have one word: Chappaquiddick.

And for those who think his relationship with Halliburton is such a terrible
thing, I have news for you – contrary to what you read at the Huffington Post,
Halliburton is not, in fact, the black hole singularity of all evil in the universe.

It can’t be because he actually likes JOOS and cares about Israel. Hell, I
bet some of you leftists out there know some jews yourself! You might even be
one!

I feel like I have said it a million times – the left blogosphere is far nastier,
puerile and stoopid than anything found on the right. Isn’t this exactly what
the Amanda Marcotte deal taught us? Oh, but the collective personalities that
are Glenn Greenwald warns us against ‘cherrypicking’
hateful comments to somehow prove that leftists are inordinately vile (and sorry,
Glenn, if I can’t squeeze out a tear if any Iranian nuclear scientists meet
an untimely end). Talk about low hanging fruit. You can’t surf through the leftist
blogosphere without being assaulted by f-bombs, infantile political ‘reasoning’
and constant, unrelenting demonization of all things Republican. So naturally,
all of their spite aimed at Dick Cheney is vastly overblown and way out of proportion
to any faults that guy actually has.

Why all the leftist hate?

Glad you asked! Apparently, when there is a chicken in every pot, there is
peace in the land, and a full gas tank in the hybrid, there remains this unfulfilled
longing to have an enemy, some kind of enemy, to rail against. Stanley Kurtz,
in reviewing
Peter Wood’s new book, A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now tells
us that

"Americans must now imagine and oppose oppressive authorities or
hateful enemies, even where none exist. The newly unbounded American self, says
Wood, is a ghostlike figure, perpetually in search of “something solid
against which it can prove its own existence.” New Anger, Wood concludes,
“is the desperately intense effort of these ghosts to feel real.”

Not everyone agrees with Wood’s analysis, and in fact Jamie
Malanowski complains that, no, anger is good!

When a man who ran as a moderate conservative governs from the
far right [heh, if only! - ed.] after winning an election he has
arguably lost, when he lies about the reasons for launching a war and then criminally
bungles the management of that war in such a way that it will redound to the
country’s disadvantage for at least a generation, I think folks are entitled
to be miffed. I also think that after a man takes an oath to faithfully execute
the laws of the country, and then takes another oath to always tell the truth,
and then tells lies, people are entitled to get a little hot under the collar.
Moreover, when one of the corporately underwritten political parties who run
this country gets us into a quagmire of a war, and the other corporately underwritten
political parties can’t get us out, I think all of us are entitled to be
righteously, Old Testament Yahwehly, smite-them-with-a-thunderboltly pissed
off. But maybe that’s just me.

Yeah, actually, it is just you Jamie – because there is not one scintilla of truth
in anything you have written there. Actually, I suspect Jamie secretly supports
Wood, and has graciously written an article to illustrate Wood’s point about needing
to invent enemies.

Update: Well ain’t this rich. The ‘cherrypicked’ comments are falling from the tree so fast and furiously that Arianna decided to do a little ethical cleansing on scores of the egregious comments to salvage some semblence of nascent decency over at HuffPo. Too late for that, I think.

Crossposted from WILLisms.com