{"id":14548,"date":"2011-11-26T20:00:45","date_gmt":"2011-11-27T04:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=14548"},"modified":"2011-11-26T20:00:45","modified_gmt":"2011-11-27T04:00:45","slug":"an-open-letter-to-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=14548","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to the Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello. It\u2019s Jeff. I know, I don\u2019t blog much lately. I\u2019ve been busy. I have a job that\u2019s actually fairly demanding and a 9-year-old kid and a life. Plus, I have to admit, given a choice between writing jeremiads or watching Doctor Who on Netflix, I\u2019m choosing the Netflix. It\u2019s less depressing. And when I need to vent,\u00a0there\u2019s always Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But still, there\u2019s something that I feel I need to bring up. Something that\u2019s been becoming more and more clear to me over the past couple years, since around the time of the health care reform debate.<\/p>\n

But first, let me start by talking about the right. We all know the right. They\u2019re completely delusional, right? Out of control, drunk on anger and incohate rage, fed by a steady diet of propaganda from Fox and Rush Limbaugh. Amirite?<\/p>\n

Well, no. First, it\u2019s important to get\u00a0delusional<\/em>\u00a0out of there \u2014 it\u2019s ableist, yes, but moreover, it\u2019s simply not true. Right-wingers aren\u2019t delusional. They\u2019re quite rational. They\u2019re just dealing with a reality that doesn\u2019t really exist.<\/p>\n

The right is reacting exactly as any rational group of individuals would to the facts they\u2019re given. If the president is really a communist secret Muslim out to turn America into a caliphate, while stealing your money and personal freedom, then yes, he\u2019s someone that needs to be stopped at all costs. If you\u00a0don\u2019t step outside the bubble<\/a>\u00a0you don\u2019t see the facile nature of the arguments, the actual facts that don\u2019t fit with the spin. You accept as a given that what Fox tells you is true, and you go with that.<\/p>\n

As for Fox, certainly, some of what they report are outright lies. But much more of what they spew is not, not exactly. They have sources, however flimsy. They have references and hyperlinks, albeit ones to questionable, fly-by-night operations. They\u2019re not lying, or at least, they can tell themselves they aren\u2019t. They\u2019re just mainstreaming information that comes from dubious sources, because that information fits their narrative.<\/p>\n

Around the time of the health care debate, this same pattern began on the left.<\/p>\n

Probably, it\u2019s always been there. But it was at that time that it really began to get traction. Firedoglake began amplifying the message that Obama was selling out the left, that he was\u00a0intentionally trying to undermine the public option<\/a>\u00a0in order to\u2026something. It was never made clear exactly why Obama would work against a policy that he had specifically endorsed, other than that it meant Obama was in thrall to Big Business.<\/p>\n

Of course, Obama never did what the FDL crowd accused him of.\u00a0It never happened<\/a>. The public option was stripped from the bill for mundane reasons \u2014 it didn\u2019t have enough support to get through the Senate. But that didn\u2019t fit the FDL narrative, which is why they chose to believe and amplify information that came from dubious sources, because that information fit their narrative.<\/p>\n

Since then, the left wing of the American left has been more and more invested in finding bits of data to fit their narrative, rather than reacting to facts. Bradley Manning? He couldn\u2019t have been arrested for stealing military secrets, then treated badly in jail, though not uniquely so. He had to be a political prisoner, one who Barack Obama had literally ordered to be tortured. The Assange rape case? It couldn\u2019t be, you know, an actual case where women had been raped. It had to be a \u201choneytrap,\u201d a plot by the CIA to get Assange to the US, where he could be killed, or, alternately, a case of women who shouldn\u2019t be allowed to cry \u201crape\u201d over a little thing like someone not using a condom when he\u2019d agreed to and then refusing to stop when he was told to stop. And now, the unbelievably stupid crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street in New York and Oakland and Berkley? They couldn\u2019t be the combination of mayoral stupidity and police that have been slowly militarized over the past three decades. No, this has to be a coordinated plot, run out of the Oval Office, to destroy Occupy Wall Street.<\/p>\n

Karoli has a\u00a0good run-down<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0completely non-existent<\/a>\u00a0underpinnings of that last charge. Suffice to say that one article ran on a questionable website. It was loudly trumpeted by grifter and professional narcissist Michael Moore on Keith Olbermann\u2019s show, and now it\u2019s been taken worldwide by Naomi Wolf, who was last seen simultaneously defending Assange from the mean women who he may have raped and burning every bridge between herself and the feminist community.<\/p>\n

Of course, the story is too good to check, because it echos everything the pro-left wants to echo. Obama\u2019s a corporatist lackey who really doesn\u2019t want to improve things for anyone, and who harbors a very-well-hidden authoritarian streak. He\u2019s to the right of Reagan, and anyone who doubts that just hasn\u2019t read enough articles on FDL and Truthout.<\/p>\n

The people who say this are not delusional. They are perfectly rational.\u00a0If you don\u2019t step outside the bubble, you don\u2019t see the facile nature of the arguments, the actual facts that don\u2019t fit with the spin. You accept as a given that what the pro-left tells you is true, and you go with that.<\/p>\n

Enough.<\/p>\n

Look, as we on the left are fond of hurling at the right, we\u2019re entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. And too often lately, the left is going on with their own facts at the same time the right is going on with theirs. And this leads us to where we are now, where there is literally no common ground between the activists in both parties, because both sides are so certain that they are right, and everyone else is wrong.<\/p>\n

The truth is messy. It doesn\u2019t fit into narratives, and it\u2019s often uncomfortable. But damn it, it\u2019s the truth. If the left decides to completely divorce itself from reality at the same time the right does, then we are in trouble \u2014 big trouble.<\/p>\n

So, lefties, I am asking you politely: please stop. Stop pretending that questionable sources are the gospel truth. Stop pretending that rumor and innuendo are the same as facts. Stop listening to anything Moore and Wolf and Hamsher are saying \u2014 because their concern for the truth is roughly the same as that of Hannity and Limbaugh and Coulter, and believe me, it pains me to say that, but it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

Stop fighting the truth, and start accepting it. And when possible, work to improve it. For the good of our country and our world, please.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Jeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello. It\u2019s Jeff. I know, I don\u2019t blog much lately. I\u2019ve been busy. I have a job that\u2019s actually fairly demanding and a 9-year-old kid and a life. Plus, I have to admit, given a choice between writing jeremiads or … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,27,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like","category-elections-and-politics","category-media-criticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14549,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14548\/revisions\/14549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}