PrintSeptember 11, 2007
Why the Left Must Deny 9/11
In the endless Summer of Love there is no 9/11. And to tens of millions of dreamy folk on the Left, the Summer of Love never stopped. For those people there is no dangerous Ahmadi-Nejad in Tehran, threatening a fiery new holocaust for Tel Aviv and Washington, DC. There is no nuclear proliferation by mad little mass-murdering Kim Jong Il. There is no Osama Bin Laden stirring up terror cells around the world -- just a poor, confused man somewhere in the mysterious, deeply spiritual East, whom we have offended in some terrible way.
For the Dreamy Left there is no history, and no fundamental human conflict. There was no Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor half a century ago -- except as a terrible misunderstanding, because our parents and grandparents were just so ignorant and racist in that benighted time. There was never a Cold War, there is no necessary war ever, there is no human value worth fighting for. We have transcended all that by our saintly morality and good will. History was mostly a big misunderstanding. Reality is only an agreement. Peace and Love are forever and ever, and nobody has to do anything to make it so, except to wish for it hard enough. If everybody wants it, it will be so.
For decades I've seen the bumper stickers: "Visualize World Peace," "If you think it, it will happen." What I never really grasped is that millions of reality-impaired people actually believe that. Last summer, the good people at "World Jump Day"
"plan to shift the orbit of planet Earth in order to 'stop global warming, extend daytime hours and create a more homogenous climate.' They were going to achieve this by having 600 million people jump up in the air at the same time."
I blush to say this, but I think I know those people. They're my liberal friends. They think wars happen because Americans are evil -- not because we were attacked by the Emperor cult of bushido Japan, or war was declared on us by the Hitler fanatics of Nazi Germany. Or, least of all, by Soviet imperialism, the greatest peace-loving movement on earth. Or by Osama Bin Laden. They are the people who are convinced today that if only the United States left Iraq, there would be peace, and that Saddam Hussein wasn't such a bad guy after all.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin got it exactly right: "The West are wishful thinkers. We will give them what they want to think." It worked like a charm for the Soviets for more than seven decades, in spite of all the known horrors. The Left simply extends an open invitation to con artists and sociopaths everywhere, and guess what? They come buzzing around like fat flies to horse droppings. Where are you, Charlie Trie, and Norman Hsu? Where are you Bill Clinton and the Reverend Jim Jones? Come and get it!
So when the world turns out to be different from dreamland and 9/11 happens in front of our eyes, somebody else has to be blamed. Because God is Love and Love is Love and Reality is Love. If that's not true, it's because of the evil people. (Like Republicans and neocons, and fat white middle-aged men with Southern accents and cruel faces, and mean people in military uniforms like in the Hollywood movies ... and you know what they're really like. Kluxers in sheets, every single one of 'em. You can tell just by looking at them.)
I've never understood why the Left hates Republican presidents so much, though I've heard them say it for decades. The Democrats didn't just oppose Eisenhower politically, they feverishly hated and despised him. The same for Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and so on until George W. Bush. (The next Republican president will also be hated and slandered. It's totally predictable.)
Oddly enough, LBJ was also fervently hated by the Left, even though he was a liberal Democrat who transformed the grief over Kennedy's assassination into the trillion-dollar War on Poverty. Yet he was still hated by the Left, with real, eye-popping, carpet-biting hatred.
I never understood it.
Until 9/11 happened -- and the Left went right along believing what they did before. Life changed right in front of all of our eyes, with the dark, smoking Twin Towers. And on the Left, nothing changed.
Then I think the saner folks in the country started to get it.
I had a dark, heavy-hearted feeling during the Clinton years that we were in for some terrible blow, because the country was pretending that the Summer of Love was back, Bill Clinton was President and nothing bad would ever, ever happen again. To me it looked like we were just asking for it.
When 9/11 happened, half the political world woke up. But not the other half, on the Left. The Left can't be wrong. If the facts on the ground contradict what's in their heads, the facts must be wrong.
That's not just true for the Mooney Left, but even for the Hard Noam Chomsky Left. Because the Chomsky Left is only the Mooney Left grown more verbose. Like Chomsky, the Hard Left believes that ordinary people are easily suckered by the Big War-Mongering Corporations, just like the ad campaigns for Coke and Pepsi. Chomsky calls it "manufactured consent". That just means that normal people can't be trusted to think for themselves. They are constantly suckered by the Big Evil Corps.
Reality is too painful for these folks. It's too scary. They protect themselves by a powerful, invisible shield of psychic Saran Wrap. It's just like the miracle of plastics.
I never really understood that, because, frankly, it would mean that half of my contemporaries were mad. Or -- let's use a nice word -- they are "in denial." But not just the normal, everyday denial, the kind that doctors see when their patients are dying in the hospital. Rather, the Left denies entire categories of shared physical danger that are plainly visible to all us, every single day. They just turn those facts upside-down, or shift the responsibility to the wrong side. In Winston Churchill's perspicacious phrase, they blame the fire brigade, not the fire.
It's like blocking out an oncoming ten-wheeler truck even as it bears down on you, hooting its ear-splitting powerhorn. What truck? I don't see any truck!
Well, get across the street, you fool, I feel like shouting. But of course that doesn't do any good either. They are shielded. They are impenetrable.
So why are plainly un-sane people allowed to vote? I think we need to give a reality test before anybody gets a vote in a democratic society. Just put every aspiring voter in front of a ten-wheeler, and slowly drive it toward them, honking the big horn, and giving them plenty of time to walk away. If they escape alive, they can vote. If not, well, tant pis, as the French would say. (That's not what you might think it means).
OK, that's not exactly right, but why should millions of plainly deluded folks be allowed to sink the civilized world, in the face of clear and present danger?
Well, we get to watch them again today. Just notice how they are in denial. As Ronald Reagan said on a memorable occasion debating Jimmy Carter, "There he goes again." On September 11, there they go again.
Don't get upset. Just watch them being themselves. And don't ever let them to cross a busy street without adult supervision.
James Lewis blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com/
