Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Friday, April 22, 2005
Dickheads, nutbags, 'bots, and the new menu at Wendy's
Presumably, Mr. McCarthy regards himself as a member of what he calls “the sane left.” I’m not sure, though, that his message is a persuasive demonstration of mental stability.
I’ll skip commenting on his abusive and overwrought words and focus just on one point he makes: “Everyone knew that Kerry was a warmonger and an idiot, but it was clear that he wasn’t a complete religious lunatic.”
So let’s see if I have this straight. Mr. McCarthy admits that Kerry is a warmonger. I’m not sure how that differentiates him from Bush.
Perhaps I’m missing something… Oh yes, that’s it! Bush is a religious lunatic. Ah, that makes all the difference in the world. Had Kerry won the election, Iraqis would be able to say, “How I resent this occupation and the hell my country has become, but, thank goodness, what a relief, at least the President of the U.S. doesn’t go overboard in his personal religious
beliefs.” Or, a survivor in some poor nation that Kerry decided to bomb might say, “Sure, a U.S. warplane bombed my house and killed my wife and children, but hey, look at the bright side. At least the man who ordered the war doesn’t have personal fundamentalist Christian beliefs.”
I think Mr. McCarthy is assuming that Bush’s motivations for going to war were grounded in personal religious belief rather than the geopolitical and economic interests that are always behind U.S. interventions.
And, oh yes, in regard to Zimbabwe. I must say that a considerable amount of nonsense is being peddled in regard to Zimbabwe, and unfortunately, too many on the Western left are swallowing the Bush-Blair line hook, line and sinker. I do wonder how one can be, quite properly, skeptical and aware of deliberate falsifications and distortions by Western leaders in regard to Iraq and Palestine, yet completely accept without question the pack of lies Western leaders dish out in regard to Zimbabwe. The goal in Zimbabwe is the same as in Iraq: regime change, and to build a public consensus, propaganda campaigns are whipped up.
That’s my message, as a member of the “insane left.”Posted by Gregory Elich on from Ohio 04/22 at 01:59 PM...And Mr. McCarthy skirts the fact that voting for Kerry would mean directly supporting the DEMOCRATIC war machine, which looks, smells and functions an awful lot like the dreaded Repugnican war machine. A dime may have two sides, but it’s still a dime and can never be anything else.
Posted by Rev Joe on from 04/22 at 02:37 PMMcCarthy isn’t using words to argue or dispute. He’s throwing out a carbon copy of the narrative the wingnut right uses to bludgeon liberals. He doesn’t actually engage anything. From here, it looks like yet another splenetic tirade. It’s not much different from the behavior of a kid who gets his ass kicked and then goes looking for a scapegoat.
I admire people who can continue to address people who pull that in a civil fashion, but I’m far too angry at them. My blog co-author, et alia, calls them the ideological border patrol.
That said. . . McCarthy has mistaken the sanctimonious platitudes of Bush for religious conviction. There’s a difference between the angry sense of entitlement Bush has and real religious fervor. The Democrats run a rhetorical game on their liberal supporters. Their disagreements with the Republicans are a matter of style, not substance. No sane member of the left should be forgetting how class interest evolves and works.
Posted by Harry on from 04/22 at 04:17 PMIf he voted for what he himself says was a “warmonger and an idiot,” then what does that tell you about the character of Mr Thomas? It speaks volumes to me. . .Remember that doing the right thing isn’t always the easiest nor the most popular thing. Keep up the great work!
Posted by Richard Moreno on from Los Angeles 04/22 at 05:25 PMI’ve had this debate so many times since 2000 that I could recite the entire plethora of arguments and counterarguments in my sleep. But I really don’t much energy for it anymore.
When people become so completely overwhelmed by paranoid, catastrophic fear, as the ABB crowd did in 2004, their field of vision narrows to microscopic proportions. They can longer perceive the long-term consequences of their actions, only the effect on the perceived immediate threat. And no amount of logic or reason is going to sway them.
Harry Truman was fond of asking people on the campaign trail, “How many times do you have to be hit on the head before you figure out who’s hitting you?” I guess “sane lefties” like Mr. McCarthy need a few more lumps…
Posted by Paladin on from Michigan, USA 04/22 at 07:44 PMMcCarthy’s arguments would make just as much sense turned around, why didn’t all those smart Democrats vote for Nader (the better guy)? Between their votes and us idiots, he would have won!
Posted by Peter (the other) on from California 04/22 at 08:04 PMFinally, someone with the courage to stand up for what they don’t believe in!
Like McCarthy, I too admit that John Kerry was a pro-war neoliberal who pandered shamelessly to the right, making him a clear choice over the warmongering, corporate fellator George W. Bush.
Kerry led the way in showing us what the true left should be about. He put aside his own petty ambitions and big-headed egotism, and generously supported most of his opponents’ stances. Adding only that he would do what Bush had done but more so!
It’s time to get off your high horse Mickey Z, if that really is your name, and start putting your mouth where your heart isn’t. Vote for the guy with the bluer tie. His contempt for you and your beliefs is, after all, only slightly less overstated than the other guy’s.
To ask for any more is to be, in the words of the great FDR if I remember right, a “real dickhead.”
Posted by Strangefate on from 04/23 at 01:04 AMMcCarthy chose not to comment here. Instead, he e-mailed me another charming note:
LoL, there are about 50 million people that agreed with me, and 7 or so that agree with you. You don’t even have a reasonable degree of cult following in your blog. Just remember, Mickey Mouse, you’ll always lose, regardless of whether or not Republicans/Democrats win. So I’ll always have something
to laugh about, picturing you slamming your monitor against a wall, screaming “Why won’t anyone listen to me! I’m the only real progressive! They’re not really on the left! I’m like… an intellectual!” Rofl. Look on the bright side, it’s looking a little stormy today, so you have an excuse for not coming up out of the basement today.Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 04/24 at 04:07 PMHe’s got those wingnut trolling points down pat, Mickey. The first is the majoritarian crowing, never mind the fact he and his fifty million were handed a humiliating defeat by the Chimp and his pseudoconservative movement.
The second is likening any group he despises to a cult following. The right wingnuts picked that one up sometime back in the seventies, but it’s never too late for Democrats.
His long distance pop psychology is the third. Wingnuts always lapse into mind reading when they run out of things they think might be effective in a discussion. Imputing a childish fit of temper to an interlocutor is an old Usenet tactic, tedious and silly the first time it was used and no better for being dragged out again.
What is it with the “LOL” and “ROFL”? These come from teen chat rooms where trolls waste time accusing each other of living in their mothers’ basements.
He may really be a Democrat and liberal. I don’t know the guy at all. What he is above all is a sorry excuse for an adult.
Posted by Harry on from 04/24 at 06:43 PMProfessor McCarthy is it?
How erudite!The problem with kerry AND Dubya is the same as I see it. Both of ‘em answer to and represent the corporate nations rather than the land based nation that is the USA.
When the Supremes made the spurious ruling [back in the late 1800s] that a corporation was the legal equivalent to an individual, it allowed for the creation of hydra headed monsters claiming to be a single entity.
Bravo for your courage to call something for what it is. Would that McCarthy and his syncophatic pals could do so.
Independent perspective is mighty hard to come by these days.
Posted by Will on from New England 04/25 at 06:10 AMIs this McCarthy guy for real? He sounds like he’s about twelve years old.
Or is this a late April Fools’ joke?
Posted by Paladin on from Michigan, USA 04/25 at 04:45 PM
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