Positivity
March 27, 2009
Sometimes, it just makes more sense to be pessimistic.
It would make me happy to be happy—to believe that the country’s move to the left is only temporary, and that somehow, by magic, Americans will wake up and become conservative once again. It would really be nice to believe that.
However, believing that would require an abundance of blind optimism—and I’m sorry, but my supply is low.
Years ago, I believed that the left’s victories were only temporary—just flukes, accidents of fate. Bill Clinton winning the Presidency was just happenstance, a hiccup, an error of existence. It didn’t represent a trend.
Yet it did represent a trend, a trend of the country moving away from conservatism and embracing a left-libertarian social model. The country changed—demographically, culturally, philosophically. These changes benefited the Democrats, and will continue to benefit that party. How can a thinking person deny this?
America is not the “traditionalist” country it once was, and it’s disgusting to see the American right bury its head in the sand rather than confront this reality and develop ways to advance conservatism despite cultural defeats. Why do conservatives assume the people will eventually rise up against President Obama’s agenda? If the economy recovers, the people won’t care about Obama’s efforts to alter the country.
It’s hard to be happy when everywhere you look, you see the conservative movement still holding on to the “silent majority” nonsense. You can’t turn on a major conservative talk radio show or log on to one of the right’s big-time blogs without reading some balderdash about how it’s still a “center-right” nation and how the “Obamunist” agenda will collapse upon itself. No new ideas, no new strategies—just sitting back in an easy chair and waiting for Obama to fail.
Here’s a scary thought for these folks: what if Obama doesn’t fail? What if the economy recuperates and Obama gets all the credit? What if the people turn a blind eye to the more unsavory elements of Obama’s agenda, just as they turned a blind eye to Clinton’s shenanigans a decade ago?
The conservative movement is attempting to throw a party in the middle of an earthquake. The American right is so close to self-destruction, and it doesn’t even seem to realize it.
I couldn’t care less about the polls allegedly showing a slight decline in Obama’s popularity. It’s not as though the people have forgiven the Republicans yet. Besides movement conservatives, do you hear anybody pining for George W. Bush to come back?
It’s hard to be happy when there’s so little to justify happiness. It’s hard to be happy when people I thought were smart are now acting stupid.
I thought the conservative movement was going to clean up its act after the defeats of 2006 and 2008. I thought the American right was finally going to figure out a way to bring Reagan’s principles into the 21st century.
I must have expected more from conservatives than I should have, because right now I just read Teleprompter jokes, not discussions about how to fix the problems that ail the right. I just see ridicule of Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, not serious efforts to replace all three with committed conservatives. I just hear cheerleading for Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, not a drive to get us out of the problems that we’re in.
How am I supposed to be happy, when the conservative movement has hit its nadir? How am I supposed to be happy when the right is more interested in infighting than innovation? Only a fool would be happy under these circumstances.
There was a time when the conservative movement had its stuff together. Conservatives understood that they were competitors in a dangerous game, and that they had to fight harder and with more skill than their progressive adversaries in order to win. Now, it seems that conservatives have lost the eye of the tiger—or, more precisely, they have allowed that eye to be plucked out.
It’s impossible to be happy when a cause one believes in has collapsed. Obsessed with ideological purges and apparently uninterested in fixing the movement’s flaws, the American right is now a toxic asset, almost wholly bereft of value or significance. Give the American left its due: domestic progressives were committed to changing the United States so that it would be more like the European countries that had, in their view, a fairer social and economic system. Unfortunately, by allowing itself to fall into disrepair, the American right ended up aiding the left in the achievement of this goal.
