Striving Against Opposition

Timmy G - A Case Study in How to Lose Any and All Credibility You Might Have Ever Amassed

I like to read some left wing blogs from time to time. Its good to expose yourself to what the other side of the spectrum is thinking and saying and avoid being in an ideological echo chamber. That being said I do tend to have a certain expectation for the lucidity of those whose blogs I read. Wild conjecture, and arguments which don't find themselves troubled by things like facts aren't terribly interesting to read.

However, I do always know that I shall never need a straw man for any argument as long as Robert McClelland , to offer up a take so ridiculous and absurd you'd swear that those on the right in the blogsphere invented him simply so as to have an object of ridicule.

Timmy the G, seems to have spent the weekend communing with Rick Salutin and Heather Mallick, or smoked copious amounts of newly decriminalized marijauna recently as he's now trying to insist that The Republican Party and "the Right" in the US is Fascist. He seems to have been inspired by a comment on another of his threads which stated that by American standards once you equate your opponent with Hitler your no longer taken seriously. Timmy seems to take this literally as he makes the argument "no no, their really more like Mussilini than Hitler".

I personally find this rather surprising as I've had a rather reasoned exchange with Timmy in the past on foreign policy. I like to think that right or left we may see things different but we can all have a civil and informed discussion. Although the patent arrogance on the left is readily available considering they are the self-annointed "reality based community" of foreign policy. Apparantly the more accurate label of the "Run, hide and hope nothing bad ever happens to us community" was considered too wordy. Unforunately for Timmy and others in the "fantasy based community" their notion of reality hasn't been going so well recently. There was a democratic election in Afghantistan which went surprisingly well. A democratic election in Palestine, and now a democratic election in Iraq where despite death threats voter turnout easily exceeded common levels in the Western world.

Arabs seem to be doing the unthinkable for Timmy and his ilk, illustrating that they prefer freedom and free markets to opressive dictators like Saddam Hussein. Just like Eastern Europe's suposed satisfaction with Communist rule was expressed by the recovered Marxist Theorist Lenoc Kolakowski (he was a Marxist, but he got better) when he responded to Western socialists by stating "give me some of that bourgoise freedom".

I can only supose Timmy is now lashing out at the American right for having been right, right about Afghanistan and about Iraq. Right about how the war could be won and democracy established, despite the left and its big media crony's pleas for a "Vietnam style quagmire".

Timmy tries to seriously assert that the right in America is "authoritarian and fascist". The basis he uses to put these propositions forward is so terribly strained that its quite honestly laughable. I would think it a joke if he wasn't so earnest about the authentisty of the endeavour and his defense of his analysis in his comment section.

Timmy believes that patriotism is a strong indicator of fascism, apparantly people are supposed to be indifferent to their country to be free by Timmy's logic. He doesn't seem to have considered that there could be things which people are justifiabily proud of about their country and that they have no problem expressing this pride. He also neglects to mention that America is at war which tends to lead to a rise in patriotism.

He then goes on to state that the glorification of war is occuring in America and that makes it fascist. He quotes someone saying that leave me alone style conservatives becoming big government conservatives is a strong indicator of fascism. He seems to ignore the driving force behind this conversion on the road to Damascus, 9/11 and the ensuing war on terror. Once war enters into the picture there has to be a role for the government, and that role is fighting the enemy. Its about the only good reason in existence for a big government.

Timmy goes on to say that the right uses threats of violence by quoting Anne Coulter saying something foolish. Timmy seems to take Anne Coulter for mainstream conservative opinion. He seems to fail to realize that Anne Coulter isn't a serious commentor she's a spectacle, she's a one woman circus devoted to mocking liberals. Reading Anne Coulter is like reading a slightly better written right wing version of Heather Mallick, and you have to be a fool to take either of them seriously or think them representative of mainstream opinion of any sort.

He blames big corporations for Bush's power and claims Bush stole the first election He fails to realize that The Republicans in the US and that Conservatives here as well are far more reliant on the donotations of individual citizens in small amounts, than their oponents who have the George Soros types. And that wretched Bush stole those first four years so that people were so infuriated that even more of them turned around and voted for him next time they were able.

Timmy then claims the right has a "cult of personality", he seems to neglect the love affair the Democratic Party had with Clinton, or the Liberals with Trudeau. The fact of the matter is once television was invented there has been much more focus on the leader as the face of the party. Television constantly goes to the leader as the embodiment of the party hence emphasizing their role. This alleged cult of personality exists in any country with leaders and teleivion.

Timmy claims there are "emotional" attacks by conservatives against Liberals and Communists ..which is fascist? He cites a few people like Limbaugh etc who of course say mean things about Democrats, on the other hand he seems to forget the very existance of Michael Moor and Maureen Dowd who screech just a shrilly in the other direction "emotionally" attacking all sort of "traditional institutions".

He refers to spreading democracy as some sort exhortation for people to rise up in a common mission. That's right its horrible for Americans to spreach freedom to other countries and let those Arabs go about make their own discisons. Making people free..yea that's reall fascist.

He also mentions Ronald Reagan's religious interpretation of the significance of American, and takes is as evidence to support Americans believing they have superior social organization? The leaps of logic involved in that conclusion are baffling.

Timmy also wants to claim that the right has no coherent political ideology and are simply doing whatever it takes to win. Well that's how many people describe the Liberal Party of Canada they must be fascist then too right?Of course the Bush administration did whatever it thought would get itself re-elected they had an ideologically driven war to go back to fighting remember? Anything which didn't seem conservative at first glance was just the candy coating for the war.

Now Timmy, I'm not going to go out of my way to produce links to a bunch of sites to prove this, refute that. Its not worth the time or effort which would be involved. All of the statement's I've made are readily provable because in many cases you've simply chosen to deliberately mislead readers of your post by stating the lunatic fringe as the average partisan among other things.

Quite frankly I'm dissapointed to see that you've embraced the "fantasy land community", please let us all known if and when you mean to return to at least attempting to blog seriously.

UPDATE: Timmy claims that he doesn't think the Republic party is fascist only trending that way and the US is governed by a cabal of big business leaders. Personally, I don't think qualifying one's statement with "well their only sort of fascist so far" and then indulging in Illuminati style conspiracy theory is any improvement.

posted by Chris @ 2/01/2005 11:54:00 p.m.