Let it go, E.J.

E.J. Dionne opens his column with, "Conservatives ... are facing the fact that we are by no means the most socially mobile country in the world."

Thereupon he offers irrefutable proof of that fact, from northern European countries cleaning our socioeconomic clocks to homespun webs of profound, structural disadvantages (such as labor's woes and finance's glorification).

Dionne closes, thus: "My challenge to conservatives worried about inequality is to follow the logic of their concern to what may be some uncomfortable conclusions, especially in an election year."

Quaint. Very quaint. And once?--even admirably quaint, not to mention customarily civil. As the 1970s' New Right--just to arbitrarily pick one of contemporary conservatism's corrosive forerunners--broadsided liberalism with every scurrilous accusation of unAmericanism it could imagine, liberals, such as Dionne, routinely responded with civilized calls for conservatives to "follow the logic" of their strategic hyperaggression and tactical skulduggery. Yet these civilized calls for conservative logic and Reason and Sunday-best behavior only inspired among conservatives new heights of nastiness and ill logic--the latter particularly in Reaganism, the former in Gingrichism.

From there conservatives "progressed" to a morbid, institutionalized maliciousness unwitnessed in American politics since the sectional crisis. Liberals continued pleading for greater civility. Conservatives delivered a grossly illegitimate impeachment; their own perfectly protected, "unitary executive"; vulgar Cheneyism; several more Congresses from Hell; then a seething, rabidly nihilistic tea party movement; all topped off by their presidential nomination of perhaps the least ethical, most fraudulent and monstrously spiteful man in America.

Let's see, some impeccably well-mannered liberals are now in their fourth decade of begging conservatives' indulgence of plain human decency; and the latter has got so barren that the few, authentic conservatives still out there--the Sullivans and Frums--have taken to railing against their former playmates with far, far less civility than the nation's liberal E.J. Dionnes. 

My point being, of course, that liberal calls for civility have become fantastically futile, prodigiously useless, and probably counterproductive. Even conservative intellectuals have given up, they've tossed in the towel, they now rage with polemical pens against what is in reality an ignorant, hateful, dangerous pseudoconservatism.

So while I still admire your gentlemanly pertinacity, E.J., I've got to say that your persevering crusade for civility is a waste of your time (and ours)--especially in an election year. The only honorable course left is to blast these pseudoconservative bastards with both contentious ink-barrels, and let God and the electorate sort them out.

Comments

[japa21]

Dionne's biggest mistake may be his apparent belief that there are really conservatives out there worried about inequality. My personal research tells me that that type of conservative is roughly as common as a unicorn.

[Peter G]

I suppose I could argue that these restrained calls for civility and thought are not any more useless than the elegance of Judo wherein one uses an opponent"s ferocity to undo them. But I won't because that is never the intent of a call for civility. At least from the left.
It cannot have escaped your notice that there is a form of political Darwinism at work here. And it is almost at the point of speciation. Every iteration of conservatism (and progressivism for that matter)fails to produce a promised land. People react in various ways, some with apathy and acceptance of the belief that nothing changes and their vote is useless and some with fanaticism that drives them ever further to extremes. Interesting times are ahead.

[Robert Lipscomb]

My study of American history is currently focused on the time leading up to the Civil War. Knowing how the story will end,makes it heart-rending to watch all manner of smart politicians of good intensions trying to find a way to end slavery without - well, ending slavery.

Sometimes in politics, one side must win and the opposing side must lose. That does not mean that "good" will triumph over "evil". It just means that the two political paradigms can no longer exist in peace.

Initially, the slave-holders seemed to undersstand that one day slavery must end. that morphed into protection of of the satus quo which evovled into promoting the extension of slavery ad infinitum.

Those currently in real coontrol of the GOP (such as the Koch brothers) will accept nothing less than a bone fide oligarchy. They can only be stopped by force, any more than slavery could be stopped. Hopefully political force will be enough to stop it this time.