Premature anti-freakshow
by digby
I said this on twitter earlier, but realized I needed to provide some examples. Many of the mainstream pundits who eye-rolled and tut-tutted bloggers and activists for failing to understand the ways of the world are now commonly recycling ideas we were discussing half a decade ago.
Bill Keller:
What’s happening here ain’t exactly clear. But I have a notion: The Republicans are finally having their ’60s. Half a century after the American left experienced its days of rage, its repudiation of the political establishment, conservatives are having their own political catharsis. Ted Cruz is their spotlight-seeking Abbie Hoffman. (The Texas senator’s faux filibuster last week reminded me of Hoffman’s vow to “levitate” the Pentagon using psychic energy.) The Tea Party is their manifesto-brandishing Students for a Democratic Society. Threatening to blow up America’s credit rating is their version of civil disobedience. And Obamacare is their Vietnam.
You don't say.
Remember when they all had the vapors over Marcos calling his book American Taliban? Check out the Village Miss Manners Ruth Marcus calling the same folks "tiny terrorists"?
Ruth Marcus...
I won't even mention those who spilled gallons of ink deriding liberal bloggers for being radical partisans just a few years back who are now lauded as oracles for their columns writing exactly what those liberal radicals were writing at the time.
I guess this is one of those times to remind yourself that nobody is ever rewarded for being the first to be right. I certainly won't hold my breath waiting for an apology. In the end it's a good thing. Still you have to wonder what might have happened if the mainstream media and the liberal establishment had paid closer attention before it got to this point. We were running around with our hair on fire and they told us hippies to go take a shower and get a haircut.
If the Republicans are now having their version of the 60s, the Democratic Party and its spokespeople like Marcus ran from the real 60s long after it made any sense. And in doing so they ended up enabling this crazed right wing we see today. Every move they made to the right in fear of being labeled "radical" made the right move even farther. Look where we are now.
I tend to think "generations" is a pretty useless term, but in this one sense it's vitally important. The 60s marked everyone who lived through them and we've been living in reaction to them in one way or another ever since. When the late cohort of baby boomers like myself finally die out (it won't be that long ...) maybe the country can finally reset.
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