I really tired of this idea that right and left are equally bad

[alarimer]

According to Andrew Sullivan, they are.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/15/andrew-sullivan-how-obama-s-long-game-will-outsmart-his-critics.html

He is mostly right in the sense that the right-wing has painted Obama as a socialist Muslim who will take your guns and ruin this country and that they are indisputably unhinged about this. But his attempt to paint the left as only slightly less unhinged is flagrantly incorrect as well. Liberals have been screaming at Obama and other politicians for years about the dangerous Tea Party movement and about how dangerous to this country the right really is. Yet Obama and others continue to treat John Boehner and Eric Cantor as reasonable people and other right-wingers as if their ideas were actually worth talking about.

No for years liberals have been the only people who have the guts to say out loud they things that really need to be said: that the right is a bunch of dangerous racist demagogues who will drag this country back into the dark ages. But people like Andrew Sullivan call us fifth columnists for daring to criticize Obama. We liberals are tired of being right so many times but NEVER being heeded. THAT is where the criticism comes from. Tired of being lied about and being lied to. I am tired also of this lazy idea in the media that the center is the right place to be, when in fact it is not. Jim Hightower said that the only thing in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos and he was right about that. Of course much of the blame actually goes to the media in equating left and right and politicians like Obama have merely bought into it. And now they are at least sounding a somewhat different tone in response to the Occupy protests and other movements.

Driftglass says this a lot better than I can:
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/01/with-all-penetrating-insight.html

As one of the millions of non-deluded Liberals who Andrew Sullivan simply refuses to believe actually exists, I am not pissed off because this Administration failed to live up to any "...absurd notions of what a president can actually do in a polarized country..." as I am well out of puberty and know better than to look for heroes and saviors in politics.

I am, on the other hand, very pissed off that this Administration has failed on its own terms. This Administration brushed past Liberal complaints by countering that the gravity of the times and circumstance require them to be hard-headed, real-world pragmatists, and yet during their first 2.5 years in office they have consistently and disastrously failed in the first duty of hard-headed, real-world pragmatism -- to accept and act on the irrefutable evidence which is pounding you over the head every fucking day.

The Obama Administration's signal failure was not how it handled single payer or Guantanamo Bay: its signal failure was its blithe obliviousness to just how bottomless the fanatical hatred of Right really was.

They failed because when faced with the reality of an intractable opposition of bleating, bloody-minded, knives-out lunatics, this Administration simply refused to believe that it could not charm or compromise or Centrism their way to victory. Instead of facing reality, they chose the siren's song of the Reasonable Centrist who told them that the one, sure-fire formula for success was to meet every obstacle by shoving the nearest Liberal principle out the airlock in the name of bipartisanship, taking whatever crumbs the Right might offer in return and declaring victory.

Now the Obama administration appears to have gotten the message and is certainly taking on the right more directly. For that I think the 99% movement is at least partially responsible. That is a very welcome change. The media (like David Brooks) seem to be having a hissy fit over it though.

[Stratetalker]

1. Right ON

David Brooks is a putz. He loves clutching his pearls over the slightest hint that the Republican Party has shit the bed. And we can all agree that Politifact has gone to the dark side in their pathetic stride to false equivilance as well. We need to grow up, put on our big boy Underoos, and start the pushback.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

2. THAT THEY ARE THE SAME IS THE LIE THE RIGHT HAS BEEN SCREAMING FOR DECADES

&feature=player_embedded MORE DISINFORMATION AND LIES

[ClassWarrior]

16. Yup. It's the last refuge of the criminal.

Accusing everyone of being as criminal as him or her.

NGU.

[xchrom]

3. Du rec. Nt

[DontTreadOnMe]

4. If they are NOT the same...

then explain to me JOE LIEBERMAN - enuf said.

All the politicians are bought and paid... and if you can't see that, then you are missing the bigger picture.

The "system" is rigged.. for the 1%. And the politicians are the in the 1%. They vote for their best interests, not yours.

For every bill that has passed in Washington that helps the 99%, I'll show you ten that favor the 1%.

[TheKentuckian]

6. No, he right wing writer is trying to flog the lie that the left and right rank and file

are the same, not the politicians or parties.

[2ndAmForComputers]

13. You're not seriously implying JOE FUCKING LIEBERMAN is a typical Democrat, are you?

[JohnnyRingo]

5. Even worse, they vilified the word "liberal" to the point it's a fighting word (in their eyes)

I remember when during a recent debate Gingrich called Romney a "moderate" with the same vengence one would use the word cocksucker.

During a spitited debate with a conservative friend, he finally got frustrated to the point that he spat out the word "liberal", then ducked like I might hit him.

[Romulox]

7. Andy Sullivan is exactly the kind of "ex-Republican" who is trying to claim the "centrist" mantle

and take over the Democratic Party.

It's disgusting because the thought used to be that the two Parties stood for nearly diametrically opposed sets of principles; that someone like Sullivan can hop between the two Parties so capriciously, demanding that each contort itself to his will, and that his ilk succeeds in getting their demands met so much of the time, exposes the true similarity of the two Parties.

[MisterP]

8. heck, just compare the far-left CPUSA and the far-right KKK in Alabama

the CPUSA and the Progressive Party in 1948 did unionization, sharecropper aid, a wave of African-American registration; the KKK killed scores and scores and terrorized the state (I recommend Robin Kelley's "Hammer and Hoe: Communists During the Great Depression&quot

another problem is that "left" and "right" are used as synonyms for Dem and Repub--so godawful actions by Dems are cited as "problems of the left"

[JitterbugPerfume]

9. K&R

I am sick of that lie too

[Starry Messenger]

10. k&r

[Louisiana1976]

11. Great post. K&R!

[mfcorey1]

12. MSM started that foolishness to try to make themselves seem non partisan as the rethugs continued to

deteriorate as a party. They avoided placing the blame where it belongs.

[donheld]

14. I could not agree more

They are not even close.

[Bonobo]

15. Perspective is everything. nt