THE PRINCIPLE OF POWER ENVY
by Thomas M. Sipos, managing editor.
[March 15, 2007]
[HollywoodInvestigator.com] Conservatives and progressives
(as liberals now like to be called) suffer from power envy. They will say
or do anything, even subvert their own principles, to attain power.
Consider Arnold Schwarzenegger. He promised to halt California's big-spending. He did give it an
honest try. Propositions 74 to 77 would have crippled California's big-government
lobbies. Progressives panicked, spouting their usual hyperboles about
the end of civilization.
After
Arnold's propositions lost, he switched sides, endorsing 2006's budget-buster bonds to fund a progressive wish list. But did progressives
praise him for flip-flopping over to their side? No, that's no way
to win elections. |
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Instead, the folks at Air
America radio attacked Arnold for the "hypocrisy" of his reckless spending.
(Talk about pots calling a kettle black!) Of course, Air America
broadcasters have long condemned Bush for his big-spending, without
crediting him for an extravagant prescription drug plan -- surely a bigger
step toward socialized medicine than anything Clinton ever achieved.
Clearly,
progressives aren't upset with Republicans' reckless spending. Rather,
they're furious that they aren't the ones doing it. Power envy indeed.
Progressives
are no better on privacy and civil liberties. They slam Bush for
using 9/11 to push the Patriot Act, but few progressives attacked Clinton
for using
Oklahoma City to push the 1995 Omnibus Counterterrorism Act, easily
as bad as the Patriot Act. Nor did progressives protest the FBI's
profiling of NRA members. Few progressives care about the rights
of mostly white, middle-aged gun owners.
Shame
on conservatives who fail to defend Arabs and Muslims' civil rights; you'd
think after Janet Reno, conservatives had learned a lesson. Yet even
progressives demonize Arabs for political advantage. One Air America
broadcaster appealed to racism when attacking Bush for his Dubai ports
deal. She'd said the United Arab Emirates "injected" (her word)
several 9/11 hijackers into America. That's like saying Africa "injected"
OJ into America.
The hijackers were individual criminals, not government
agents. Their nationality is irrelevant. Similarly, University
of Texas professor Robert Jensen criticized
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 for using racist imagery for
political gain. I've also heard Air America broadcasters demonizing
Saudi Arabians, a necessary corollary to condemning Bush's "Saudi ties."
I don't
think Ann
Coulter is homophobic, but I do think she calculatingly woos homophobes
in order to sell books and get face time on TV to feed her narcissism (her
only real principle). I also don't think most progressives are racist,
but I think some do drop anti-Arab remarks, hoping to entice undecided
voters and "serve the greater good" of electing Democrats. ("See,
you can trust us with power. We bash Arabs too. Just not the
ones that Republicans bash." Similar to: "I support the war, just
not how Republicans are fighting it.")
That the
Iraq War was based on lies and ulterior motives is comprehensively documented. (See Neoconned and Neoconned
Again.) Opposing the war is moral and patriotic. Yet I
sense that many progressives are less opposed to the war, than they oppose
Republicans benefiting from the war. Progressives were mostly mute
during Clinton's wars.
Some years
previous (I think on a Sunday morning), I heard an Air America broadcaster
favorably compare Clinton's Balkan
War to Bush's Iraq War: "At least Clinton was smart enough to bring
in allies." Okay, but how is this a progressive argument? Progressives are supposed to favor peace and civilian safety, not smarter
warriors. And why do I suspect that, had Clinton fought alone, and
Bush brought in NATO, that same broadcaster would have said: "At least
Clinton had the guts to go it alone. Bush is like a playground bully
who's afraid to fight without his whole gang behind him."
Progressives
don't so much oppose war-making and reckless spending, as they envy the
power to do so. They aren't so much upset at Bush and Giuliani appropriating
9/11 and its attendant political capital as the fact that they didn't appropriate
it for themselves. Call it 9/11 envy. Progressives are like
Ann Coulter, whose main gripe with the 9/11 widows may well be that she
isn't one of them.
Both Republicans
and Democrats support imperialism, socialism, and unconstitutional civil
rights violations. Their only dispute is over who gets to wield the
power.
Copyright © 2007 by HollywoodInvestigator.com.
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