On Loathing Bush

It’s not about what he does.

Victor Davis Hanson provides this analysis of why the Angry Left hates George Bush as much as they do. There are a number of traditional reasons: Bush is from Texas, he doesn't care what the elites think; he speaks plainly and without "nuance"; he is a conservative who rejects the Northeastern Establishment. But there is one other reason for the volcanic hate and resentment of the Angry Left and the Democratic party I think. They know they are losing. In the long trend of history, the Marxist ideas which have been the base of the Democratic party and the Angry Left for generations have finally run their course. The Soviet Union has collapsed and countries around the globe have adopted more or less capitalist methods of economic and social organization. As an intellectual model, leftism is out of gas.

In the United States the left has been beaten back more and more so that today their power is at its weakest point in decades. They have lost the House, the Senate and the White House. They now control only a minority of state legislatures and have only a minority of state Governors. They can still make their voice heard through the courts, but without control of the other branches of government, that power will inevitability slip away as more and more judges are appointed by Republicans.

And even in areas of culture their message is being rejected by a population which, more and more, is able to get around the liberal bias in the media. The emergence of talk radio, FoxNews and the Internet have had a profound effect on the ability of the regular American public to gain access to information which they previously could not get. And this further pushes the ideas of conservatives and libertarians into the mainstream as more and more people get to hear them unfiltered by The Elite Media Monoculture. Americans can now go around the elite media and talk directly to each other on message boards, in chat rooms and on Internet blogs. The regular people can make their voice heard and they are doing just that. And the message they are sending is not one which The Angry Left or the elites want to hear. Rather, the silent majority is pushing back against the leftist agenda and pushing hard. The left knows this. And it is driving them mad. They are losing the intellectual battle bit by bit; inch by inch and they know it.

The long term trend of political philosophy in America is in the direction of freedom and liberty and away from the discredited ideas of leftism. Come what may, leftism is a dying ideology and The Angry Left is on the wrong side of history. And at some level they know this. And this knowledge is, I believe, at the root of their inchoate rage and anger. Their time is past and they are left standing at the station as the train of history pulls out of the station headed for the future. And they are shouting in rage in the vain attempt to hold it back as it leaves them forever behind.