Yep, it's rant time again. Check out this article by James Bowman. In it he denigrates Democrats like Paul Krugman for being frustrated with Republican obstructionism. (The GOP, by the way, has given up the fight to line the pockets of insurance companies and has moved on to fight to keep polluters rich.)
He justifies the Right's directionless opposition by referring to a quote by a Victorian earl about parliamentary procedure: That the duty of the opposition is to oppose. While it is a cute and nearly clever phrase, I think it's fair to surmise that unless the earl was as shallow as Mr. Bowman, he didn't simply mean, "for the sake of opposition." Because, to be precise, the Republicans are not really opposing as simply being contrarian.
Remember the old Monty Python skit about the argument clinic? "An argument isn't simply the automatic gainsay of anything the other person says!" "Yes it is!" It was funny then, but it's not really that funny now, because all Bowman is doing is trying to be cute. By claiming that it's the Right's job to simply fight against ANYTHING the Left does, he's attempting to disguise the real issue, which is that the Right's real job isn't to block the Left but to ensure that their true constituents -- corporate CEOs -- can keep their yachts stocked with silk toilet paper.
Yes, Krugman employed some hysteria in his article. Yes, there is a reason we have more than one party (although we should really have a lot more than two). Yes, some Republicans actually believe helping poor Americans and curbing pollution is bad for our country. But you know what? You, Mr. Bowman, are still an asshole.
Yay! Go get them!
Posted by: Bertrand Le Roy | December 23, 2009 at 10:41 PM