# The Decline of the Angry Left **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 3, 2008, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128 "2008-02-03T20:20:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/41 "2008-02-05T12:41:58Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > And if a Democrat wins, expect a large swath of Republicans to become equally unhinged. A large swath of Republicans is already unhinged. They’ve been unhinged since the days of Morton Downey and before. One of them just published a book on Liberal Fascism with a smiley face and Hitler moustache. Ann Coulter has been publishing unhinged books bought by unhinged people for years. It’s what they do. All the time. If you think that the contrast to that is a website dedicated to advancing a progressive agenda and discussing issues of the day, your sense of balance is also quite unhinged. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/42 "2008-02-05T15:31:15Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] Are you blind? In the VERY NEXT SENTENCE I said, Jesus. At least read my messages before you fly off the handle, will you? [/quote] No, I read it. The difference is, the Angry Right isn’t exactly in remission these days. It’s just that you’re not saying anything about the crazy stuff that everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Beck to the crazies at Free Republic and the like spout off, let alone, y’know, what actual GOP Congresscritters and Senators say. Nobody has to **wait** for the Angry Right. They may go even more apeshit if a Dem wins, but _right now_, they’re far angrier and unhinged, and those qualities are expressed through the words of more prominent persons, than can be said for the left anytime in the past 15 years. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/43 "2008-02-05T16:24:03Z")
Well, if there was ever a debate in this expression of opinions it was lost long ago and you guys have increased the vitriol to the point where I cannot send this to **IMHO** , so it’s off to the **Pit**. (Personally, I think everyone should just walk away from this thread, but you can each do what you need to do.) [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/44 "2008-02-05T17:12:53Z")
[QUOTE=elucidator] Bet on it, there’s going to be some very angry liberals. And also some very angry honest conservatives. Plus a few thoroughly pissed off libertarians, and surly anarcho-syndicalists. [/QUOTE] Hell, even the centrists will be steamed. ---
**Author:** ![Ponder\_Stibbons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponder_stibbons/32/343_2.png) [@Ponder\_Stibbons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponder_Stibbons)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/45 "2008-02-05T17:13:35Z")
[QUOTE=jayjay] You misspelled “truth”. [/QUOTE] You know, I don’t know shit about the Daily Kos, so I did a quick lookup on Wikipedia, which calls it, “an American political blog, publishing news and opinion from a liberal or progressive point of view.” Nothing wrong with that. But when someone calls someone’s political opinions – no matter how worthy – “the truth”, I get worried, because such a stance brooks no dissent. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/46 "2008-02-05T17:19:26Z")
[QUOTE=Ponder Stibbons] You know, I don’t know shit about the Daily Kos, so I did a quick lookup on Wikipedia, which calls it, “an American political blog, publishing news and opinion from a liberal or progressive point of view.” Nothing wrong with that. But when someone calls someone’s political opinions – no matter how worthy – “the truth”, I get worried, because such a stance brooks no dissent. [/QUOTE] Yeah, that was a little over the top. I was pushing back against someone actually calling a progressive blog a hatemonger, though, so a bit of irrational exuberance was called for. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/47 "2008-02-05T17:44:38Z")
Pardon me while I burst into giggles that a thread titled “The Decline of the Angry Left” gets sent to the Pit. I guess y’all aren’t declining as fast as one might hope. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/48 "2008-02-05T17:47:18Z")
Angry? We ain’t angry enough, we ain’t even \*half \* angry enough! Look what these assholes have done to the greatest hope in human history, I’m surprised the Statue of Liberty doesn’t lean out over the harbor and puke her guts out! ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/49 "2008-02-05T18:51:57Z")
[QUOTE=Shodan] Pardon me while I burst into giggles that a thread titled “The Decline of the Angry Left” gets sent to the Pit. I guess y’all aren’t declining as fast as one might hope. [/QUOTE] Well, that’s because we lefty Dopers are the perfect representative sample, and all that. What’s really fun is to watch McCain Derangement Syndrome overtake a good share of the wingnuts. I mean, St. John’s ‘maverick’ moments have been few and far between, and in recent years, they’ve been all talk and no votes. His voting record deviates only slightly from the party line. But Coulter and Rush and Malkin and Hewitt and all those other high-name-recognition crazies quite loudly hate his guts. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/50 "2008-02-05T19:19:14Z")
[QUOTE=Shodan] Pardon me while I burst into giggles that a thread titled “The Decline of the Angry Left” gets sent to the Pit. I guess y’all aren’t declining as fast as one might hope. Regards, Shodan [/QUOTE] Unfortunately, the cause for anger has not yet been removed and the bill paid. We have a long way to go before that occurs. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/51 "2008-02-05T19:20:57Z")
[QUOTE=Maeglin] Unfortunately, the cause for anger has not yet been removed and the bill paid. We have a long way to go before that occurs. [/QUOTE] Especially since only the Democrats are willing to actually pay it. The Republicans have been playing Dine & Ditch since Reagan. ---
**Author:** ![ArizonaTeach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/45deac/32.png) [@ArizonaTeach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArizonaTeach)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/52 "2008-02-05T19:46:38Z")
[QUOTE=jayjay] Especially since only the Democrats are willing to actually pay it. The Republicans have been playing Dine & Ditch since Reagan. [/QUOTE] Not true. The Democrats expect the rich to pay it. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/53 "2008-02-05T19:56:01Z")
[QUOTE=ArizonaTeach] Not true. The Democrats expect the rich to pay it. [/QUOTE] Sounds good to me. And I’d be saying that if I were rich, too, like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have been saying for a while now. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/54 "2008-02-05T20:20:09Z")
[QUOTE=ArizonaTeach] Not true. The Democrats expect the rich to pay it. [/QUOTE] Regardless of who you think should or shouldn’t pay for stuff, it’s pretty damned irresponsible to spend a bunch of money and have _no one_ pay for it. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/55 "2008-02-05T20:22:02Z")
[QUOTE=jayjay] Sounds good to me. [/QUOTE] I like the flat tax idea myself; a simple fee accessed to each Republican head of house and family member, regardless of wealth. If Republicans truly make up 35% of the populace, they could cover Bush’s debt with a contribution to Uncle Sam of only $48,000 apiece. Once that’s done, we could talk about their squandering of the Clinton surplus. ---
**Author:** ![vibrotronica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/a9a28c/32.png) [@vibrotronica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vibrotronica)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/56 "2008-02-05T20:22:57Z")
The Right: You’re a bunch of traitors. The Left: Fuck you! The Right: When will the left learn to get over their anger and just go along with everything we say? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/57 "2008-02-05T21:40:45Z")
According to this [editorial by Rick Perlstein,](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020102827_pf.html) we still haven’t “gotten past the '60s” and we won’t any time soon. > [@](#): > > The pictures people take and save, as opposed to the ones they never take or the ones they discard, say a lot about how they understand their own times. And in our archives as much as in our mind’s eye, we still record the '60s in hazy cliches – in the stereotype of the idealistic youngster who came through the counterculture and protest movements, then settled down to comfortable bourgeois domesticity. > > What’s missing? The other side in that civil war. The right-wing populist rage of 1968 third-party presidential candidate George Wallace, who, referring to an idealistic protester who had lain down in front of Johnson’s limousine, promised that if he were elected, “the first time they lie down in front of my limousine, it’ll be the last one they’ll ever lay down in front of because their day is over!” That kind of quip helped him rise to as much as 20 percent in the polls. > > It’s easy to find hundreds of pictures of the national student strike that followed Nixon’s announcement of the invasion of Cambodia in the spring of 1970. Plenty of pictures of the riots at Kent State that ended with four students shot dead by National Guardsmen. None I could find, however, of the counter-demonstrations by Kent, Ohio, townies – and even Kent State parents. Flashing four fingers and chanting “The score is four/And next time more,” they argued that the kids had it coming. > > The '60s were a trauma – two sets of contending Americans, each believing they were fighting for the future of civilization, but whose left- and right-wing visions of redemption were opposite and irreconcilable. They were a trauma the way the war of brother against brother between 1861 and 1865 was a trauma and the way the Great Depression was a trauma. Tens of millions of Americans hated tens of millions of other Americans, sometimes murderously so. The effects of such traumas linger in a society for generations. > > \ > > A President Obama could no more magically transcend America’s '60s-born divisions than McCarthy, Kennedy, Nixon or McGovern could, for the simple reason that our society is defined as much by its arguments as by its agreements. Over the meaning of “family,” on sexual morality, on questions of race and gender and war and peace and order and disorder and North and South and a dozen other areas, we remain divided in ways that first arose after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. What Andrew Sullivan dismisses as “the symbolic battles of the Boomer generation” do not separate us from our “actual problems”; they define us, as much as the Great War defined France in the 1920s, '30s, '40s and beyond. Pretending otherwise simply isn’t healthy. It’s repression – the kind of thing that shrinks say causes neurosis. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/58 "2008-02-05T22:15:18Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] Regardless of who you think should or shouldn’t pay for stuff, it’s pretty damned irresponsible to spend a bunch of money and have _no one_ pay for it. [/QUOTE] Oh, someone’s going to pay for it. Just like actual Dine & Ditch, it’s going to be future “customers”…the children and grandchildren of both the Republicans who so LOVE deficit spending and the Democrats who have actually proven to be able to reduce those deficits to almost nothing. ---
**Author:** ![JohnnieEnigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dfb087/32.png) [@JohnnieEnigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnnieEnigma)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/59 "2008-02-05T23:44:33Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] Well, if there was ever a debate in this expression of opinions it was lost long ago and you guys have increased the vitriol to the point where I cannot send this to **IMHO** , so it’s off to the **Pit**. (Personally, I think everyone should just walk away from this thread, but you can each do what you need to do.) [/Moderating] [/QUOTE] how did I end up in the pit? 😕 Didn’t you like the Wall Street Journal piece? I did. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2008, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128/60 "2008-02-05T23:48:08Z")
[QUOTE=JohnnieEnigma] how did I end up in the pit? 😕 Didn’t you like the Wall Street Journal piece? I did. [/QUOTE] It happens now and then. The OP can’t control how a thread goes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-the-angry-left/436128.md?page=4)