How the liberal left eats itself

You want to help stop war?
Well, we reject your application.
You crack too many jokes
And you eat meat.

--The Dead Kennedys


As a working-class progressive, I find many of my fellow leftists a never-ending source of anger and frustration. Here are but two of them:

Mr. & Mrs. Manners. These good folks dream of changing the world into a Utopia of equal rights and justice for all people. Unfortunately, their chances of doing so are about the same as a snowball’s chance in hell—mainly due to their contempt for the people they long to save.

Mr. & Mrs. Manners exist in a hermetically-sealed environment of overly-educated, white-bread milquetoasts who insist on intellectualizing everything. And god help the person who utters an “F” bomb in their presence!

My question for Mr. & Mrs. Manners: How do you propose to change the world when you’re too goddamned thin-skinned to deal with a few lousy curse words? The people you need to reach out to use curse words on a regular basis. They attend films starring Will Ferrell and The Rock. Their choice of reading material leans heavily toward Harlequin Romances, pulp adventure fiction, and TV Guide. They’ve never heard of Ani DiFranco and Noam Chomsky, and might not like them if they had. They don’t know the difference between Merlot and Muscatel. And they don’t give a good goddamn about which utensil goes with which dish.

Until Mr. and Mrs. Manners take those people seriously, they have as much of a chance of changing the world as I have of becoming a Hair Club For Men “after” model.

The Diehard Democrat. In spite of everything, the Diehard Democrat insists on believing that the Democratic Party is America’s salvation. Never mind that some of the most damaging legislation to the poor and middle class became law during Bill Clinton’s presidency (Remember welfare “reform?”). Never mind that the Democratic-controlled Congress continues to fund Bush’s illegal war in Iraq despite a clear mandate from the voters to end it. Never mind that the party gave only lukewarm support to Ned Lamont when he defeated incumbent right-wing senator Joseph Lieberman during last year’s Connecticut primary. Never mind that the three major Democratic presidential candidates for 2008 all are in the pockets of Wall Street, AIPAC and the Pentagon. If we can just get a Democrat back in the White House next year, everything will be hunky-dory again!

Sure. And grasshoppers will fly out of my ass the next time I fart.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Suffice it to say, with the piss-poor excuses for gatekeepers currently guiding the left, I’m not optimistic that a truly progressive agenda will surface in Washington any time soon.