House of Eratosthenes

Betray Us MOVE ON DOT REALITY (n.): (1) An instance or collection of cognitive product, used by left-wing people not to embrace reality as we know it, but rather to ingratiate themselves with each other socially. Such stuff has an occasional collision with truth in the same way a busted clock tells the correct time twice a day.

(2) The otherworldly plane of virtual existence in which one lives when one nurtures a habit of intellectually promoting, and/or fixating on, such stuff.

This is how the “Betray Us” ad backfired this week. That the people we call “progressive” nowadays systematically denounce any and all facts they find to be politically inconvenient, is old news to people like me who lack the dignity to avoid arguing with them on the innernets. To “normal” people who do a much better job of engaging their daily lives and staying away from “all that politics stuff,” it’s still a somewhat shocking revelation. You know…the clock-in, clock-out, go-home, rent-videos, play-video-games crowd.

The people who decide elections.

To them, it’s not so much news that The Left would trash Gen. Petraeus, or that The Left would decide to trash him based on the things he had to say. That, arguably, is what politics is all about. Someone says what you like, the job is to sell everybody on his impeccable credentials. He says something you don’t like, you find some scandals and play them up, never mind that the dirt you dig up pales in comparison to the dirt the other guys could dig up on you. That’s why it’s such a dirty business, and that’s why “mainstream” America wants to have so little to do with it.

Rather, the story is in how quickly The Left decided to do this. General Petraeus isn’t, let’s say, a Jack Abramoff or a Marc Foley or a Larry Craig, someone whose name has been twisting away in an unflattering limelight like an earthworm lacking the stamina and moisture to make it into the grass on a hot summer day, drying out in agony. We haven’t had any months-long inquest in the court of public opinion, about whether Petraeus is inappropriately beholden to the White House’s take on things in the theater under his command. It’s just a tad bit awkward to get such a debate going now just because it’s politically expedient to get such a debate going. “Main Street” can smell those kinds of shenanigans…even on it’s way to the ice cream stand or to the coffee shop.

But the real damage is in the wording. “Betray Us.” It seems SO clever, you know. Petraeus…Betray Us…it rhymes! That means you have to gimme credit for it! This problem arises with the salient question, posed by Main Street USA to the “Move On From Some Things, Dwell Irrationally On Other Things Dot Org” people: What exactly do you mean by “Us”? Do you mean the General means to betray us, as in the country, or by “us” do you mean YOU?

Main Street USA — not anti-left bloggers like me, who lack the dignity to extricate ourselves from the argument on a daily basis, and therefore are numerically insignificant, but the BIG America — saw that the General’s loyalty was being questioned, according to an oath he himself NEVER took. And this shocked them. They saw a bunch of phony political obligations being imposed upon him, and they came to realize they were next. In short, with this silly ad, heartland Americans realized exactly how The Hard Left works nowadays.

The Left pretends to be engaged in reality…they pretend to have a monopoly in this…and none of the things they do, once you list those things and start inspecting them closely, have anything to do with this. Anything at all. Our leftist comedians and pundits want to seize control over what we all think about things, even incredibly important issues like Iraq, so they can take this control and turn it over to someone else. They want to bully and intimidate and coerce us into thinking what they want us to think. They want to blackmail us into helping them. Helping them do…well, nobody’s really sure what. They themselves aren’t really sure.

It’s got something to do with rolling back tax cuts, not fighting any wars, repeating slander about our President and our soldiers, and then bellyaching about how none of the other countries like us.

But as the non-blogger world is slowly finding out, facts have nothing to do with any of this…because on the way to getting it all done, “facts” are reduced to things coming out of the mouths and pens of people considered “loyal,” and loyalty is attached only to people who are observed saying the right “facts.” That’s where this alternative reality comes in. This is where all this nonsensical crap comes in, to consume us if we let it. Where, in all of human history, fire has never once melted steel. Where global warming caused Hurricane Katrina. And the collapse of the bridge in Minnesota was Karl Rove’s fault.

It has nothing to do with what you saw happening, or what you can confirm happened, or what you’d bet some money, happened or might have happened. It’s got to do with what will make you some new friends, if you’re seen mumbling something to the effect you believe it, exhorting others to believe it, or both.

Having waded into the muck some time ago, I’ve known about this for awhile: Thinking through our most critical and crucial problems, to far too many among us — to the loudest among us — is purely a social exercise and has little to do with what’s real, even less to do with solving problems for anybody. Thanks to “Move On From Some Things, Dwell Irrationally On Other Things Dot Org” and their ill-conceived newspaper ad, now the rest of the country is coming around to realizing this too. People who are less aware of what’s going on than I am, because they have more dignity.

This country has some heap-big problems. We can debate some other time whether or not they ALL started with George W. Bush; there are a lot of reasons to question even that. But when we’re deciding who’s going to shoulder the unenviable burden of solving them, we’d better keep the grown-ups in charge, and leave the kiddies at the kiddie table where they belong. I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank “Move On From What We Tell You To Move On From Dot Org” for getting that message out. I could never have done it quite as effectively as they managed to, without even trying.

Yeah, that ad (ptui!) was manna from heaven for conservatives, in a certain sense. Lord knows it sure got everyone’s attention, and that’s a mixed bag, at best. I’ll bet there’s been many more than few angst-ridden conversations in the no-longer-smoke-filled rooms of the Obama and Clinton campaigns…to the tune of “Do we disavow that ad? Or not?”

I don’t have much, if any, use for Edwards and his Mrs. But Mrs. Edwards did the right thing when it comes to the Petraeus ad, and good on her for that. In my mind this is more an issue of recognizing there IS a line in politics, however faint it may be, and not crossing said line.

OK, I’m naïve. Either that or I just lost my head when I wrote that…
- Buck | 09/15/2007 @ 13:53
Buck,

For the Rush 24/7 subscribers, on the first hour of Friday’s show The Godfather made an interesting point about this, drilling into some facts from history which I just barely scratched. Namely, how, when, and why Move On From Everything Except Things We Want Discussed Endlessly Dot Org got formed.

Rush reminded his audience that the whole reason for the group being, and the reason it calls itself “Move On Dot Org” which is strangely oppositional from what they want done, more often than not…is that it wanted the country to move on from the Clinton impeachment. It was then, and is now according to him, a mouthpiece for the Clintons. Rush’s argument is that the group is the Clintons. That is their function. There is no need to attach the two, it’s already done. One is an appendage, the other is the rest of the same flabby corpus dilecti.

I do not know if I’d go that far. But on the lessons from history, his facts are correct. And it’s certainly helpful to the country to understand the origins, and the real agendas, behind what may very well be the most obnoxious special-interest political organization that ever existed in this country since the day Washington was sworn in.
- mkfreeberg | 09/15/2007 @ 22:18
I agree with you that MoveOn and the Clinton apparatus are two entirely different entities. Rush gets that one wrong…
- Buck | 09/16/2007 @ 15:36
I wish I shared your confidence that the American People see the B.S. and will respond to it at the polls.

I used to have this kind of confidence. But as we continue to drift toward European Socialism and more and more people expect the government to just take care of them, I think they get cozier and cozier with the Left. And they have frighteningly short attention spans as they flick their attention from Survivor to Anna Nicole Smith to Paris Hilton and back to Dancing with the Stars.

This ad campaign from AARP bugs me. A lot.

http://www.youtube.com/v/zlAYwZ0YxYs

Especially (but not limited to) the very end where they say:

“It’s time for health care and financial security for all.”

Which sounds like a rah-rah socialism battlecry if I every heard one. Freedom and Justice for all, I can go for. But I don’t think any of our founding ideals or the pledges and songs we’ve traditionally used to pay them homage ever said anything about “health care and financial security for all.”

I’m afriad the motives of the Left will be forgotten or whitewashed and America will vote with them in the end. Unless someone can change the direction of the conversation.
- philmon | 09/17/2007 @ 10:37
[…] Obviously, this is all about equal-time, what with that stupid General Betray Us ad backfiring so impressively. You dare to make “Move On From Some Selected Things And Not Other Things Dot Org” regretful or embarrassed about their ad…which seemed like such a great idea to them at the time…why, they’ve got to be able to do the same thing to Limbaugh, right? They’re entitled to a “freebie,” right? […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 09/29/2007 @ 23:02

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

I Made a New Word VISaturday, September 15th, 2007

I Made a New Word VI
Saturday, September 15th, 2007