Why "leftists" get no respect — no political self-discipline — for example, Justin Raimondo attacked Caitlin Johnstone over BS

28 August 2018

Wonder why leftists are as politically ineffectual as they are?

Most "liberals" are too undisciplined to be effective movers and shakers.

Below is a telling example.

If you're a lefty, do you act similarly?

Causing silly fights

Anti-imperialist Justin Raimondo unnecessarily went after fellow anti-warmongerer Caitlin Johnstone because she was not polite enough for him.

In doing so, Raimondo hypocritically weakened their shared, anti-imperialistic point.

Bear with me.

You will see how representatively silly these left versus left fights usually are.

You may have heard of Caitlin Johnstone

She's got a (gollee-darn) straightforward mouth.

For example, she was recently mean to Senator John McCain. She tweeted:

Friendly public service reminder that John McCain has devoted his entire political career to slaughtering as many human beings as possible at every opportunity, and the world will be improved when he finally dies.

At its undiplomatically worst . . .

That's akin to saying that it would be good for humanity — if murderers, conquerors, Hitlerians and Stalinists all went away forever.

I cannot see anything substantively wrong with Johnstone's baldly delivered observation

What's obviously true is true. I spoke (only slightly more mildly) to the same McCain effect a while back.

But Johnstone's correctness on the primary "imperialism is bad" issue wasn't good enough for her fellow anti-imperialist, Justin Raimondo.

He said, without having the courage to name Johnstone:

I did not join in the rather ghoulish anticipation of John McCain’s death indulged in by some war opponents.

On Twitter, one aspiring attention-seeking pundit was suspended for her tasteless display of disdain for a dying man, and while there was an outcry (she was reinstated) I was not among the out-criers.

[A] little old-fashioned respect for the dying never hurt anyone. Far be it from me to cheer on the effects of cancer on a human being: I won’t do it, no matter who is involved.

This disrespectful rudeness was also indulged in by our President, another class act, who has more in common with his left-wing enemies than either is ready to acknowledge.

Say what?

We can infer from Mr. Raimondo's holier than thou reasoning that:

the hundreds of thousands of folk,

whom Senator McCain encouraged the United States to murder, maim and make homeless

— without so much as a smidgeon of legitimate national security justification —

do not amount to anything at all,

when it comes to morally outweighing the social requirement that we be polite toward dead or dying warmongers.

Raimondo overtly claims that respect for a dying man should take precedence over truth-telling. No matter what evils the expiring person has committed or contributed to.

That's a staggeringly questionable moral assertion.

Because Raimondo is not an idiot (by any means), I imagine that his own seriously failing health had something to do with his stated feeling.

I also suspect that Raimondo, in typical left-leaning fashion, was trying to cultivate favor with people characteristically given to hypocritically observing social norms. You know, the same people who directly create the misery that the Left opposes.

Sucking up to the enemy is a typical "modern liberal" trait.

My larger point is that Mr. Raimondo's health — as well as his self-vaunted levels of ineradicable politeness — should have nothing to do with a legitimate critique of Johnstone's statement.

His derogatory comment about her, seen amid the big picture, is trivially based.

It reeks of the petty divisiveness that "liberals" seem to generate, whenever they try to gather into more than groups of three.

Why was it even necessary to speak to Ms. Johnstone's (arguably) tone-offensive post?

Substantively, Raimondo was saying exactly what she had (about American imperialism's evil) — and in more detail than she went into:

No politician of equal stature and consistency is apt to take McCain’s place as the country’s leading warmonger for the simple reason that this kind of demagoguery has mostly gone out of style – except in the Green Rooms of the Sunday talk shows, where the war god reigns supreme.

Poor Lindsey Graham is going to be mighty isolated in the coming days, a lone laptop bombardier calling for wars from the Middle East to the Far East without the company of his co-pilot.

The voters and ordinary people in general don’t like this constant talk of war, be it “humanitarian” or otherwise, because they know the people agitating for it won’t be sending their children to die on any battlefield.

Many tributes to McCain in the media from his admirers come with the phrase “and we shall not see his like again.” To which one can only reply: and thank God for that.

"Liberals" can't unite — because they continually quarrel over idiotic minutiae

Leftist ranks never close enough to get anything done.

While fascists, Stalinists, and all manner of authoritarian plunderers discipline themselves to keep to the hoed row — lefties are out and about, pantywaisting over trivialities, as if those had some cosmic importance.

The moral? — Quarrelsome effetes are an unlikely source of world change

Political discipline matters.

To be effective in effectuating change, you don't get to go off on your own weird personal tangents at the group's expense.

We probably need a Marine Corps boot camp for lefties.

Wouldn't that be something? A contradiction in terms.

Maybe weak-kneed compassion is destined to be perennially crushed by disciplined barbarians.

PeteFree.com

Why "leftists" get no respect — no political self-discipline — for example, Justin Raimondo attacked Caitlin Johnstone over BS