Unhinged and proud of it

The Washington Post recently had an article about a Leftist blogger that made pit bulls seem like pussy cats by comparison.

Maryscott O'Connor says her liberal Web log, My Left Wing, is "one long, sustained scream." And scream it is.

Here are her opinions as she contemplates what she should blog about:

She smokes a cigarette. Should it be about Bush, whom she considers "malevolent," a "sociopath" and "the Antichrist"? She smokes another cigarette. Should it be about Vice President Cheney, whom she thinks of as "Satan," or about Karl Rove, "the devil"? Should it be about the "evil" Republican Party, or the "weaselly, capitulating, self-aggrandizing, self-serving" Democrats, or the Catholic Church, for which she says "I have a special place in my heart . . . a burning, sizzling, putrescent place where the guilty suffer the tortures of the damned"?

It would seem that Maryscott is not a very loving person. Certainly not ready to turn the other cheek.

But here is the amazing thing. The author of the piece ascribes her mental problems to the RIGHT! The author of the Washington Post article, David Finkel claims:

“What's notable about this isn't only the level of anger but the direction from which it is coming. Not that long ago, it was the right that was angry and the left that was, at least comparatively, polite. But after years of being the targets of inflammatory rhetoric, not only from fringe groups but also from such mainstream conservative politicians as Newt Gingrich, the left has gone on the attack. And with Republicans in control of Washington, they have much more to be angry about."

Sorry, I am part of the Right, and my side in no way and at no time directed the kind of hatred and venom at the Left and at Liberals that is being mainstreamed on the Internet, at rallies and in public discourse today. To see hatred and venom, one needs to go back to the Viet Nam era when angry leftists and their hangers-on spat at returning vets, threw urine and feces at cops, took over campus buildings (and blew at least one of them up), and in general hijacked American society.

Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff rightly comments:

But the author, David Finkel, presents no evidence that the left was ever the "target of inflammatory rhetoric" (at least from anyone with an audience) that resembles the raving he depicts here. And the reference to Gingrich is laughable. Like him or not, the former Speaker was (and remains) a man of ideas, not invective.

Finkel also appears to credit the left's excuse for its lunacy --"powerlessness." But, again, there's no evidence of this level of hysteria by conservatives during the long periods when they were out of power. Instead of trying to outdo one another in dreaming up slow painful deaths for their adversaries, conservatives did things like develop the National Review, the Heritage Foundation, and the neo-conservative movement. These outlets too were about ideas, not invective.

Moreover, what level of power would it take for unhinged leftist bloggers to indulge in civility? And not just towards conservatives. Right now, these folks don't have much more use for Hillary Clinton than they do for President Bush. A Democratic president unwilling to commit political suicide by veering radically to the left with respect to foreign, domestic, and security policy can expect to incur the rage of left-wing bloggers, a rage that more likely stems from psychological imbalance and an authoritarian personality than from powerlessness. Indeed, if the Daily Kos "screw em" crowd ever achieves what it considers the appropriate level of power, these folks are more likely to begin trying to impose on the objects of their hatred the psychotic fantasies they blog about ("I just want to see these [expletive] swinging from their heels in the public square") than to behave with civility.

Hugh Hewitt comments:

The left has become disfigured because the excess that dominates the lefty blogs is absorbed by rank-and-file activists and encouraged by the Democratic Party leadership, which embraces, posts at and praises the blogs that are among the angriest and most vulgar/profane/hate-filled.

The collapse of the left's ability to engage in politics will continue and in fact accelerate unless and until the leaders of the Democratic Party rebuke the party's activist base and its spokesmen, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon.