Digital Lynch Mob
By Callimachus | Related entries in Blogging, General Politics, MediaWaPo columnist Richard Cohen, an amiable, tweedy old liberal with warm fuzzy memories of the ’60s, gets roughed up by the digital lynch mob over his disapproving comment on Stephen Colbert. Yes, it’s the left’s lynch mob, once again purifying its ranks and thinning its chances of really claiming a long-term hold on governance via democracy
The hatred is back. I know it’s only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations. I can appreciate some of it. Institution after institution failed America�the presidency, Congress and the press. They all endorsed a war to rid Iraq of what it did not have. Now, though, that gullibility is being matched by war critics who are so hyped on their own sanctimony that they will obliterate distinctions, punishing their friends for apostasy and, by so doing, aiding their enemies. If that’s going to be the case, then Iraq is a war its critics will lose twice�once because they couldn’t stop it and once more at the polls.
Cohen’s right. And he has a memory long enough to recognize the likely outcome:
The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before — back in the Vietnam War era. That’s when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.
I’m telling you, but you won’t listen to me. Maybe listen to Cohen: Lose the anger, or else resign yourself to permanent minoritarian status. Some seem to be not only resigned to it, but embracing it. That’s bad for American democracy.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 and is filed under Blogging, General Politics, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 9th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
You and Cohen don’t get out much; The right has a patent on anger. Take a spin on the am dial, or listen to Hannity/Rush/etc.
May 9th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
Rob, the point is that the “right” doesn’t argue amongst itself to the point of subdividng the republican party.
May 9th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Assuming for argument’s sake that this is true, this is a good thing?
May 9th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Depends if you’d want to be the party whose candidate says “why didn’t enough people vote for me” or whose candidate says, “I do solemnly swear …”
May 9th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
That’s a different discussion entirely. My question was normative rather than electoral in nature. One might suggest that internally enforced orthodoxy is a root cause of the polarization we see today.
May 9th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
Rob, the point is that the “right� doesn’t argue amongst itself to the point of subdividng the republican party.
This is the man who, in November 2000, said that if he could, he’d take his vote for Gore back and cast it for George Bush. If there’s a knife in his back, he should check it for his own six-year-old fingerprints.
May 9th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
The right actually does do a good bit of purging. Senator Voinovich from Ohio was crucified by right wingers after he decided to vote against John Bolton. And there is a whole republican organization that conducts what they call RINO hunting where they actively work to cast out Republicans who are not pure enough.
Both parties are being stupid about this. But I think Cal’s point is that the Democrats are the more stupid because, as the party out of power, they really can’t afford to be kicking people out of the party.
May 9th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
Not only the party out of power, Alan, but the party with the numerically smaller “base” and thus the greater need of wooing vote-splitters and independents.
You could argue that the strategy is to rachet up the anger level and the negativity till everyone but the GOP base is infuriated. Then you leave the nation an electoral choice between Dr. Frankenstein or the pitchfork-wielding, brand-bearing mob. Hardly Democracy at its finest.
May 10th, 2006 at 9:45 am
“Then you leave the nation an electoral choice between Dr. Frankenstein or the pitchfork-wielding, brand-bearing mob. Hardly Democracy at its finest.”
A validation of the importance for a successful Centrist Coalition!
May 10th, 2006 at 10:10 am
It isn’t just Cohen. Ann Althouse, who supports the war but is otherwise solidly left of center, has said she receives much nastier stuff from her fellow Democrats than from Republicans.
The Republican Party may get cut more slack than the Democrats on the subject of seeing things black and white, because they court groups like conservative christians who traditionally see things as right and wrong. Democrats purport to be more enlightened, progressive, etc. It’s more of a cognitive disconnect when the average voter sees the “kinder, gentler” party conducting inquisitions against what it sees as heretics in its ranks.
May 10th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
DINO Hunting Season?
Looks like the far left of the blogosphere has decided to start lynching everyone in the Democratic party who thinks differently from them including Joe Lieberman, Richard Cohen, Carl Pope, and Johnathan Chait just to name a few. Why? For thinking diff…
May 10th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Being a party that purges itself isn’t the problem, at least according to my perception of the Donklephant consensus. Rather, it depends more on -what- that party is purging. Purging your extremists = good. Purging your moderates = quite bad. I’d guess that the Democrats look like they’re purging moderates, and the Republicans look like their moderates and extremists are sort of tolerating each other. Advantage: GOP.
Consider recent reports of Bush’s job approval polls (and Congress’ even lower ratings) in light of this, and it makes you wonder what November will bring. If this Democrat purge is truly happening, then all those disaffected voters who voted Republican in 2004 aren’t necessarily going to just cross the aisle. Where will they go in 2006? …home?
Meanwhile – BrianOfAtlanta: I don’t see Democrats as any less able to see black and white than conservative Christians. At least, that’s not the impression I get from reading various left-wing screeds about the excesses of the Bush administration. I admit I kind of see your point about a cognitive disconnect, though; I get the impression I’m in the minority of people who believe the left can be just as zealous as the right. I’ve seen several left-wingers who consider themselves superior – on account of their tolerance of other points of view – to those backwater heartlanders.
May 10th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Yeah, Republicans are much more tolerant. That’s why they were so thankful that Brent Scowcroft offered them an alternative view to mull over. And why Colin Powell is considered such a well respected wise man by the party regulars. The Republicans seemed more disciplined because the White House had effectively cowed everyone from offering any criticism. Once Bush looked weak, it was a very different story.
And let’s be clear. E-mail has made it much easier for people to voice their opinion. People who would never have taken the time to write a letter can send a vitriolic screed to someone. One of the reliable talking points for the Right is to portray those people as representative of the Democratic Party. Someone gets a couple of hundred hateful e-mails. So what? That represents a couple of hundred people.
May 10th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Powell, I suspect, is still held in high regard by most people, including those who would call themselves Republicans. I don’t see him being run out of the GOP on a rail, so much as him choosing to leave, and even then, he hasn’t really left.
Meanwhile, maybe McCain’s bulletproof or something.
And I don’t really see this characterization of Democrats as angry armchair emailers. Maybe I got distracted by some This Modern World strips.
May 10th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
William Rivers Pitt throws the anger back at Cohen at truthout.org:
That is at least an articulate expression of the point of view of those who genuinely believe that GWB is the worst president we’ve ever had and that he has lied to us, ruined the country and put us in grave danger.
May 10th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
The simple truth is that some folks observe the action on the playground … and some people participate in the action. At some point, the crowd in the playground deals with the extreme behavior from the “middle” … the action stops, and everyone can get back to the important business in playgrounds everywhere ….kick ball!
There is no amount of chirping OR purging by the right or left, at this point, that will make the majority of the American people justify the Republican or Democratic parties in the results of the last (6) years. Period.
May 11th, 2006 at 9:17 am
That “articulate expression” looks so much like every other “ZOMG BUSH IS EVIL” screed I’ve ever read that I’ve become deadened to it. The writer has worked himself into a froth. Particularly when I come that paragraph that starts with GWB. Every point made in that paragraph comes across to me as either untrue, half true, or just as true of the alternative. It is blind rhetoric, irresponsible metaphor, proof by repeated assertion, and meant to make me believe something that is. not. true.
I feel like someone just used the tactics they ascribe to Bush. Once again, someone who felt they had a point couldn’t resist the temptation to abandon that mission in order to flex their bachelor’s degree in English. So yeah. Anger is something I’m fathoming right now.
May 11th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
I’m guessing that some folks wouldn’t get angry until GWB gets caught looking in there kitchen window.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:02 am
I can appreciate the passages Amba quoted, but I can’t recognize them. All because of one clause. I know people who are that angry. But, “at what has happened to this great country”? No, not if he means it. They never have, and never will, call America “a great country” without a sneer. Even as a figure of speech. Certainly not when speaking from the heart. They’d choke on the very words of it.