The Left-Wing Hate Fest

Marxist (really, he is) New York Times cartoonist Ted Rall explains part of the reason why he hates George Bush…

“First but not foremost, Bush’s detractors despise him viscerally, as a man. Where working-class populists see him as a smug, effeminate frat boy who wouldn’t recognize a hard day’s work if it kicked him in his self-satisfied ass, intellectuals see a simian-faced idiot unqualified to mow his own lawn, much less lead the free world. Another group, which includes me, is more patronizing than spiteful. I feel sorry for the dude; he looks so pathetic, so out of his depth, out there under the klieg lights, squinting, searching for nouns and verbs, looking like he’s been snatched from his bed and beamed in, and is still half asleep, not sure where he is. Each speech looks as if Bush had been beamed from his bed fast asleep. And he’s willfully ignorant. On Fox News, Bush admits that he doesn’t even read the newspaper: “I glance at the headlines just to kind of [sic] a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read [sic] the news themselves.” All these takes on Bush boil down to the same thing: The guy who holds the launch codes isn’t smart enough to know that’s he’s stupid. And that’s scary.”

Here’s more from Jonathan Chait, a senior editor at TNR…

“I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I’m tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility (disguised behind transparently false modesty) at having done so. His favorite answer to the question of nepotism–“I inherited half my father’s friends and all his enemies”–conveys the laughable implication that his birth bestowed more disadvantage than advantage. He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school–the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it. I hate the way he walks–shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks–blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing– a way to establish one’s social superiority beneath a veneer of chumminess (does anybody give their boss a nickname without his consent?). And, while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.

There seem to be quite a few of us Bush haters. I have friends who have a viscerally hostile reaction to the sound of his voice or describe his existence as a constant oppressive force in their daily psyche…”

That’s what the core of American liberalism boils down to in the year 2003 folks. A bunch of lefties who have been totally consumed by their own hatred. These people are so angry, so furious, so enraged at Bush that Chait doesn’t even feel out of place raging about how W.’s elbows look when he walks.

If you want to know why Howard Dean can become the hottest candidate in the primaries based on little more than attacking Bush, this is why. If you’re wondering why there seemed to be an undercurrent of schadenfreude from the left when there were perceived setbacks during the war in Iraq, this is why. If you get the impression that there are people on the left who are rooting for America to fail in Iraq, this is why. There are a lot of people who are so eaten up with hatred for Bush that they can’t help but be pleased when anything happens that might negatively impact him, no matter who else gets hurt in the process. That’s too bad, not only for the haters on the left, but for the country as a whole.

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