It isn’t surprising to see posts by conservative bloggers that go, “OMG, Obama won the election, this is the end of the world.” This is a normal reaction to losing an election, so nobody is surprised. What is a lot more curious is to see Liberal analysts break down hysterically for the same reason. Here is Ian Welsh throwing a hissy fit over Obama’s win:
The people who sadden me are left-wingers who carried Obama’s water, who I know know better. I know they know his record. I know they know where this is all leading. I know because I was a professional blogger for years. I’ve met these people in person, I have corresponded with them, and I have talked to many of them. I have worked with many of them.
They know what Obama is, and they lied about him.
Whenever I see such outbursts, I always know what is about to come. Scroll down Welsh’s long and boring post and you will see the following line (the emphasis is mine):
If society is to function again for the benefit of all a lot of things need to be done.
I really love this “again” bit. These over-entitled white boys are so predictable. It doesn’t matter whether they place themselves to the left or to the right of the political spectrum. Sooner or later their yearning for the good ole times when things were so much better, sugar so much sweeter and women so much more subservient will burst through. These mythical “all” for whose benefit society functioned so well in the past obviously do not include women, gay folks, or racial and ethnic minorities.
But what does the ultra-progressive Mr. Walsh care about these unimportant little categories of people? What does he care about the visible and dramatic improvements people who are not white and male might experience? He wants to go back to the past where things were good for him. And in his reality, his interests are the interests of all.
Clarissa's Blog 
Again? This had never happened before!
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Hey, thank you for defending me for my use of “retarded” and “faggot”. You understand clearly my point! 🙂
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I know you really well by now. 🙂
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This man is a selfish, entitled sissy. I’m surprised the left and the right don’t get along with each other much better because they both have these kinds of people abusing the philosophies both sides have to offer to benefit themselves. I suspect Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews, Cenk Uygur, and many other conservative and liberal pundits are like this so they can get their paycheck from Comcast, News Corp, General Electric, and ilk. They have no real opinions of their own that aren’t derived from some Democratic or Republican Party talking points. Just mere figureheads that would otherwise be unemployable if they weren’t working for these companies.
Check out these tweets comedian Jim Norton wrote about liberals and conservatives.
“I’m surprised conservatives and liberals don’t get along more; both are equally fraudulent when it comes to hearing things they don’t like.”
“When did liberals become so fast to ban and censor everything offensive? I WANT TO BE A LIBERAL. I really do. But LEAVE LANGUAGE ALONE.”
That summarizes my position on this kind of stuff really well.
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I accidentally linked to the wrong tweet on my initial reply. He was making fun of the whole conservative vs. liberal mindset in that third tweet and also posted a funny tweet about conservatives ruining the country. Ignore that one. I’m still new to this whole commenting thing on your blog.
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It’s ok, you leave good comments so please keep commenting. 🙂
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“This man is a selfish, entitled sissy. I’m surprised the left and the right don’t get along with each other much better because they both have these kinds of people abusing the philosophies both sides have to offer to benefit themselves. I suspect Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews, Cenk Uygur, and many other conservative and liberal pundits are like this so they can get their paycheck from Comcast, News Corp, General Electric, and ilk. ”
– I agree completely. MSNBC and NPR annoy me almost as much as Fox News. They always present the other side as being populated exclusively by devils incarnate and stupid idiots. Although it would be much more productive to see that either side has both idiots and quite reasonable people. Look at what NYTimes has turned into. Bleh.
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I think it’s sad how the mainstream media and news channels have degenerated into nothing but “newsertainment.” It’s a term I got from listening to Opie and Anthony, the comedy radio show that Bill Burr, one of the people that Captain Capitalism linked to on his “The Manosphere” post from May 30, 2012 makes guest appearances from time to time.
Jim Norton is the regular third host on that show and sometimes they get into political discussions where they call out the MSM on their BS. He leans more towards the right but doesn’t vote. Anthony is the hardcore, angry Republican NRA 2nd amendment character who is tired of being taxed to death while Opie leans left but also doesn’t vote. It’s sad how I’ve heard better political discussions from them than I’ve heard on most of the news channels that are out there now. Interesting thing about Anthony is that he’s an atheist that doesn’t care if gay marriage is legal or not and had the guts to speak out against the social conservatism garbage the Republicans promote these days. He also pointed out on one of the shows that Roe v. Wade has never been overturned despite the Republican presidents have been elected over the years.
Nowadays, I get most of my news from government databases, Reuters, and occasionally an alternative media source like RT. I’m an independent thinker that likes to make up my own mind and doesn’t fall into any specific philosophical political movement.
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“I think it’s sad how the mainstream media and news channels have degenerated into nothing but “newsertainment.” ”
– Oh, I agree. It’s all soundbites, scandal, gossip, and nothing else. I was sick and tired of hearing about how Romney transported his dog and about his wife’s horse. Who cares about all that shit when really important stuff is getting decided in the election?
“He also pointed out on one of the shows that Roe v. Wade has never been overturned despite the Republican presidents have been elected over the years.”
– I have a feeling they need Roe to exist because that is their main rallying point for the elections. The tax stuff is too complicated for most people to understand anyway.
“I’m an independent thinker that likes to make up my own mind and doesn’t fall into any specific philosophical political movement.”
– I have the same problem. 🙂 I don’t feel like I fully belong anywhere because I’m far more conservative on the economy than any liberal and far more progressive on the social issues than any conservative. 🙂
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Thank you, Clarissa. I will certainly keep commenting then. Adding to what I was saying, I like independents like Michael Savage who happen to be conservative because they aren’t afraid to call out the hypocrisy that comes from the current Republican (“Republicrat”) and Democratic (“Democan”) Parties. Nobody gets a free pass with people like him. He called Mitt Romney a “checked pants Rockefeller Republican” and a milquetoast like I was saying for many months and explained the reasons he lost the election on his show. Definitely worth a listen if you don’t want to hear boring GOP talking points.
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I’m always on the lookout for intelligent conservatives who have interesting things to say, so thank you for the recommendation.
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Is this the same Michael Savage who thinks that an autistic child is “a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out” who “do[es]n’t have a father around to tell them ‘Don’t act like a moron’…”
I realise, that someone who is a total jerk on one subject might have insightful things to about another, but I suspect that his total jerkitude on this particular subject may just put him beyond the pale.
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“an autistic child is “a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out” who “do[es]n’t have a father around to tell them ‘Don’t act like a moron’…”
– I know who is a moron in this statement and it’s definitely not an autistic child. Some people are such idiots, it hurts to contemplate their idiocy.
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Clarissa, do you read his blog? The most prominent complaints I have seen from him are on foreign policy and the lack of economic opportunity for the middle class and less wealthy. Obviously Welsh is not at risk of being killed in Pakistan via drone strikes. Do you think he is insincere about either of these issues? I don’t know about his economic status and how he has fared under Obama so I can’t say how self-interested that complaint is.
From Nov 3, for example. You can disagree with his sentiment, but it is has nothing to do with your blog entry.
http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-left-wing-case-against-obama-and-obamas-next-term/
“The key thing to realize is that Obama is the President who normalized Bush’s Republic. He normalized routine civil liberties violations, normalized anti-immigrant raids, normalized the eternal war on terror, pushed executive power even further than Bush with a unilateral war against the wishes of Congress in Libya and by arrogating for himself the right to kill any American.”
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I think Obama sucks beyond belief on foreign policy. But if we didn’t elect him, Romney would get elected. Does anybody think his foreign policy would be any better? The American public at large is not even remotely ready to move away from the idea of American exceptionalism and brutal foreign policy. That’s the reality. Let’s not turn into Republicans with their obstinate desire to avoid seeing facts.
There was no legitimate choice in terms of foreign policy in this election since both candidates ran on the same platform. However, on other issues, they differed radically and those other issues include women’s and gay rights. Rejecting Obama would have achieved nothing in terms of foreign policy but would have lost us all a lot on the other issues. Welsh, however, chooses to pretend that those other issues do not exist since they don’t influence him personally.
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“These over-entitled white boys are so predictable. It doesn’t matter whether they place themselves to the left or to the right of the political spectrum. Sooner or later their yearning for the good ole times when things were so much better, sugar so much sweeter and women so much more subservient will burst through. These mythical “all” for whose benefit society functioned so well in the past obviously do not include women, gay folks, or racial and ethnic minorities.”
In a follow-up post you summarise this as follows:
“Ian Welsh, a progressive blogger demonstrated that his fake Liberalism is based on a profoundly sexist worldview.”
Yet there is no indication of such a sexist worldview in the sentence you critique:
“If society is to function again for the benefit of all a lot of things need to be done.”
The problem lies with that “again”. Omit it, and he is guilty of no more than utopianism. Social activists, at least those of us grounded in reality, are not trying to create a perfect society, just a better one. With the “again” in place, the sentence implies that utopia once existed, and no longer does. If he genuinely believes that, then he’s delusional. But there’s nothing in his words to indicate that he’s yearning for an age where women were more subserviant. That came from you alone.
More likely, he doesn’t believe that there was ever a utopia, and his sentence was just a sloppily worded attempt to say that things have gotten worse in recent decades. That’s a dubious proposition: things have gotten worse in some respects, some of which he discusses in his post, and better in others; but it’s not a discernably sexist one.
A stronger case for sexism can be made about your response: “These mythical “all” for whose benefit society functioned so well in the past obviously do not include women, gay folks, or racial and ethnic minorities.” which implies that society did function for straight white men. That’s an insult to every straight white man injured or killed on a lonely battlefield in a war he did not choose, and every other straight white man who has been shafted by society in some other way.
That class of people to whose benefit society functions isn’t congruent to any single demographic classification, except perhaps “wealthy”. A person is unquestionably better off, indeed “privileged”, in the west if they are white, heterosexual, or both. But having these characteristics is not sufficient to ensure that society functions to your benefit. It’s not even clear that being male is overall a privilege, despite this being mainstream feminist dogma. The frustrating thing for me is that I’ve read enough of your blog to know that you haven’t bought into this dogma. So why this uncritical conflation of gender with race and sexual orientation?
There is sexism in Welsh’s post, but it lies in an entirely different paragraph:
“Bombing weddings and funerals and killing innocent civilians, including women and children, is not making America safe, it is doing the exact opposite.”
Whenever women and children are among the dead, it’s important to point this out. Because they’re the important victims compared to those less important others who aren’t women or children.
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“The problem lies with that “again”. Omit it, and he is guilty of no more than utopianism.”
– Yes, but he didn’t omit it. I’ve been blogging about this issue for as long as I have a blog. The absolute majority of Liberal men obstinately repeat this myth about some fictitious Golden Age of humanity they place in the past. What they forget is that this “wonderful” past was not so wonderful for women and racial minorities. I have more posts about this than fingers on my hands and feet.
““These mythical “all” for whose benefit society functioned so well in the past obviously do not include women, gay folks, or racial and ethnic minorities.” which implies that society did function for straight white men. That’s an insult to every straight white man injured or killed on a lonely battlefield in a war he did not choose, and every other straight white man who has been shafted by society in some other way.”
– This is not my conclusion. I just quote countless people like Welsh and, for instance, Michel Moore who keep harping about this mythical golden past. If they believe it was so amazing, that belief must come from some place. I agree it’s a place of delusion but they are entitled to their delusion.
“It’s not even clear that being male is overall a privilege, despite this being mainstream feminist dogma. ”
– This is not my feminist dogma and I wrote about this at length, too: https://clarissasblog.com/2011/10/01/why-male-privilege-list-is-garbage-part-ii/
“There is sexism in Welsh’s post, but it lies in an entirely different paragraph:
“Bombing weddings and funerals and killing innocent civilians, including women and children, is not making America safe, it is doing the exact opposite.”
Whenever women and children are among the dead, it’s important to point this out. Because they’re the important victims compared to those less important others who aren’t women or children.”
– I agree completely that this “women and children” is extremely sexist and annoying.
“But having these characteristics is not sufficient to ensure that society functions to your benefit. It’s not even clear that being male is overall a privilege, despite this being mainstream feminist dogma. The frustrating thing for me is that I’ve read enough of your blog to know that you haven’t bought into this dogma.”
– Because Welsh did not recognize that every day brings positive changes for women. For him, society used to be better “for all.” Women are obviously not part of those all. As for men, they can speak for themselves without me cannibalizing their voice.
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I just re-read Part I of the post on male privilege and it’s also very good: https://clarissasblog.com/2011/10/01/why-male-privilege-list-is-garbage-part-i/
I dig my own writing.
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