By Charles Davis | False Dichotomy | June 27, 2013
Whether liberals are “stupid” is probably the wrong question. A lot of smart people support stupid things; their intelligence is irrelevant. But there can be no doubt that American liberals support — and lord knows, say — a lot of stupid things. Barack Obama, for instance.
Supporting Barack Obama on the basis that he was anything but a slightly lesser evil — itself very much arguable — was highly stupid. If you hated John McCain or Mitt Romney more, fine. Understandable, even. But claiming Obama was a great progressive leader in the making was always stupid. But a lot of smart (and stupid) people thought such things.
It’s worth revisiting, as a lot of bad things have happened because of it.
Quite by accident, this afternoon I came across a draft email from 2008 that I never sent containing excerpts from two different articles that I undoubtedly thought at the time were stupid, stupid, stupid, but which I apparently had neither the energy nor heart to dissect. Let’s look at them now, though, because it’s worth looking at and mocking what liberals, in this case the former head of Air America, Beau Friedlander, were saying before Barack Obama took office. It’s really embarrassing and it should give you pause when these very same people cast themselves as sophisticated and pragmatic realists.
In a piece published by the Huffington Post on November 23, 2008, Friedlander wrote this about the president-elect’s plans to fix the economy:
[W]hile many of us have expressed a range of positions from caution to strident criticism regarding the way Obama’s White House started shaping up this past week, there are some indications now that–contrary to the vague fear of a more centrist tendency that some, including myself, decried–Obama may well assume a fairly radical solution to the economic problems facing the nation, one that eclipses the craziest notions dreamt up by the progressive fringe. This will happen because he is a great leader, and the hallmark of great leaders is their ability to listen to the needs of his or her people and then translate what s/he hears into programs and workable deeds.
That didn’t happen. Whoops. I don’t feel like writing anything else about the above excerpt, except: look at that part in bold again. Ha ha.
In another piece published December 21, 2008, Friedlander wrote this about our great leader:
At first glance, sure, the president-elect might seem to be the ultimate confidence man. His manner is unflappable as he looks you right in the eye, calms you with that winning smile, and robs you blind. He’s from Illinois, after all. To many on the progressive side, the campaign for change seems like a good old fashioned bait and switch, with the final indication being Team Obama’s announcement last week that Rick Warren would deliver the invocation at the inauguration on January 20.
Here’s what’s missing from the grouch and brainstorm so rife among the dyspeptic tide of liberal resentment: a coherent thought. Obama is precisely who we wanted. He’s going to deliver the promised change, and we just can’t see it. And that’s how it should be, folks, because if we could see what Obama sees, we wouldn’t need a transformative leader. Remember, we elected him because he had the vision thing.
Oh, gosh. So close in that first paragraph! But Friedlander, being a liberal Democrat, doesn’t know how to turn his ideal programs into “workable deeds,” so he falls back on the tried-and-true partisan platform of trust, but don’t verify (that only helps the Republicans).
We all know liberals think they’re the smartest ones in the room, especially if there’s some hipster anarchist in it pointing out how full of shit their blood-soaked heroes are. But when they adopt the cynic’s stylings to piss on anyone who hopes for anything better — “This is the best we can do. The only hope worth having is the hope that things don’t get worse.” — it’s worth remembering what they and their idols once promised. And how stupid it all sounds.