The liberal intelligentsia of our society may not be as sick as Jared Loughner — that would be hard — but they are exhibiting a depth of neurosis that borders on a collective personality disorder. And, to play psychoanalyst, I think this disorder points straight back to unresolved issues related to the experiences of the sixties and seventies... the left’s confused and ambivalent attitude toward violence has never gone away and has now been projected out on their opponents.
Exacerbating the situation — and increasing the left’s anger — was their recent electoral defeat and the attendant failure of Keynesian economics to deal with the financial crisis. Their ideology is dissolving around them. The attempts to blame the behavior of a clinical paranoid schizophrenic on the words of right-wing politicians and pundits are the acts of desperate people.Now that the smoke has cleared - clearing, anyway - that liberal intelligentsia is still desperately trying to claw back some of all they've lost by going on endlessly about Palin's 'blood libel' video as if it's yet another manifestation of the profound evil lurking in every conservative's heart - even extolling Obama's speech in comparison to Palin's but conveniently ignoring or looking past the awkward fact that Obama took them to task in it [albeit softly] for their mad rush to judgement [but honestly, what else was he gonna do? does any objective person doubt for a second that if there was any evidence at all connecting the wacko to Palin or the Tea Party that Obama's speech would have been much less magnanimous?] - but now that things are settling, what do we make of that mad rush?
Well, as I've said before and the above reiterates, the irrationality of emotion - these people hate their opponents - like all true believers they adore what they believe, they adore the self they see incarnate in those beliefs and therefore, with a need so great, can admit to no flaws, to no doubts - they are convinced they are right and become offended by anything that suggests otherwise - it's not just that Palin et al oppose them, it's that they're popular, are listened to, are taken seriously that galls them, infuriates them - that the electorate, which they praised not so long ago for being so wise as to crown Obama, and by so doing sanctifying them as well, or rather their beliefs, which amounts to the same thing - that this mob should turn on them this way after all they've done for them engenders a visceral humiliation that throws everything into doubt. So, the opportunity seems to magically arise that promises to undo all these wrongs, these insults, to set things right again - hardly surprising that they leapt on it like ravenous dogs.
And that Obama, their savior, the chosen one who promised to make whole what was broken, that he's seemingly turned his back on them as well has gotta hurt [although I highly suspect his turn is merely tactical and possibly lacking in sincerity - I imagine he's either got religion as they say ie has woken up to the grave responsibility of being president and realized that simply being a lefty ideologue won't cut it - or he's playing possum and hoping for a dramatic turnaround in 2012 - or he sees that his legacy as the first black president will be very much tainted if he's remembered as Jimmy Carter, part II, and is therefore going to try and pull out all the stops to keep that from happening, even if it means abandoning the people responsible for getting him elected].
At a certain point though early on this ideological rampage turned into something else - a deliberate campaign to change the narrative in the liberals favour. Possibly they started to undertand that they'd over reacted but recognized there was still a chance to maintain a narrative that depicted the right as intemperate and therefore bad, which would effectively chasten the opposition into silence and servility again. The left leaning MSM was happy to play along because they resent the fact they're no longer final arbiters of the publics' truth - the NY Times was especially venal in this matter, but of course they used to be the unquestioned gospel of all that's holy and therefore have lost the most as information has spun out from the center and into the hands of the barbarians.
Sadly for the intrepid ideologues, once it became clear the shooter was a raving lunatic without political motive or affiliation, this last desperate effort at deception and manipulation ran aground too - and now all the fallen are stumbling about, obsessing on 'blood libels' and trying to pretend like nothing happened: what, me engaged in a scurrilous calumny designed to curtail free speech? Certainly not, you must be mistaken. And that in the end is what may prove most striking about this episode: the way liberals were so ready and willing to throw their supposed principles aside to secure a highly dubious victory, a victory that would have been fatally flawed by irrationality since the desired outcome would have been to establish their point of view as the only credible point of view - in other words, they would do anything to remain convinced, if only in their own hearts - especially there, I imagine - that they and they alone are right.
