As Max Blumenthal takes an AK47 to some minnows in a barrel, Rick Hertzberg takes on last weekend's activists:
The protesters do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to
niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck,
Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national
microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they
cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful -- they all
routinely liken the President and the “Democrat Party” to murderous
totalitarians -- but they are employed by large, nominally respectable
corporations and supported by national advertisers, lending them a
considerable measure of institutional prestige. The dominant wing of
the Republican Party is increasingly an appendage of the organism --
the tail, you might say, though it seems to wag more often from fear
than from happiness. Many Republican officeholders, even some reputed
moderates like Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, have obediently echoed
the foul nonsense.
Dreher's analysis from last week was also dead on:
Despite what Sam Tanenhaus says, conservatism is not dead. Rather,
it's undead. The conservative movement is herking and jerking like a
zombie, dedicated to little more than frenetic gestures execrating
Obama, and to regaining power. To what end? Given that they're birthing
a conservative party whose instincts are dictated by loudmouths,
reactionaries and crackpots, and overseen by cynics, it's dispiriting
to contemplate.
Where can those who wish to think and debate clearly about a serious
politics of the right go? The degenerate form of populism now dominant
on the right loves to praise "freedom" - but it has no use for freedom
of thought, or thinking much at all. In turn, increasing numbers of
thoughtful conservatives have no use for it.
