Where is the hate?
Posted February 14, 2009, 12:02 ET
If conservatism is the politics of ridicule, liberalism has become the politics of hatred. That’s not a comment on Obama, or on Democratic politicians. Indeed, the election of Obama was importantly a repudiation of hatred and a healing of ancient animosities, and Obama went out of his way to chastise the angry netroots for their animosities. However, hatred was a most important animating sentiment amongst those who made the Obama victory possible–the netroots, the bipolar billionaires of the left, the angry liberal talk show hosts. At the Democratic convention, keynote speaker Mark Warner was kept off prime time because he sounded like, well, a Virginian; and audiences were offered red meat in his place.
Readers of Matt Bai’s Argument will come away with a sense that what mattered to all these people was their hatred of George Bush. That was the galvanizing force that brought all them together. Not ideas, not policies. Obama might adopt any one of Bush’s policies, and one would scarcely hear a peep from the left. It’s all right when we do it…
Politics has become like the two minutes of hate in Orwell’s 1984–except that the hatred goes on and on.
Last summer I lost interest in the campaign. I watched none of the debates. I didn’t follow Real Clear Politics. I gave up because I thought that 2008 would be one of the most inconsequential elections in American history. I still believe that.
America elected a black president? That’s a good thing. But not an important thing. It might have been important if America was a racist society. But it isn’t, and hasn’t been for some time, so far as I can tell. And hereafter race will no longer matter one way or the other. Been there, done that.
So where do the haters go now? Having satisifed their hunger, will they now be content? Having tasted the delicious bile, will they now want more? I am inclined to think that they’ll grow bored with hatred. They’ll grow up, get jobs, and if fate is kind find more rewarding personal experiences.
Perhaps that’s optimistic. Robert Frost was less sure, in Fire and Ice.
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