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September 20, 2009

Reactionary Liberalism and the Peanut Narcissist

Ralph Alter
Reactionary: adjective

  1. Vehemently, often fanatically opposing progress or reform die-hard, mossbacked  See politics.
  2. Clinging to obsolete ideas:  backward, unprogressive.
The term reactionary is most often used to describe conservative politicians.  I have purposely omitted the terms "conservative" and "ultra-conservative" from the choice of synonyms provided above.  It seems that the modern liberal movement in American politics is the one "opposing progress or reform," especially regarding race relations.  The reactionary inclinaton is most visible in the fulminations of the legacy television network news divisions and the editorial policies of the New York Times, the Washington Post and their acolytes.

Despite the metamorphosis of American culture in the 20th century provided by civil rights law, integration, and Affirmative Action policies in business, education and government, reactionary liberals continue to pretend that the United States remains locked in a quasi-Jim Crow embrace.

To their detriment, the reactionary liberal media has elevated former (one is tempted to use the word disgraced or at least disgraceful) President Jimmy Carter as their figurehead.  The peanut narcissist's remarks reflect the refusal by reactionary liberals to accept that criticisms leveled against the policies of Barack Obama are substantive in nature:

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," Carter said in an NBC interview. "Racism ... still exists, and I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country." l

The refusal to accept objective criticism is just one of many traits shared by Carter and Obama.  An unfounded faith in one's own moral superiority based on intellectual vanity and narcissism are shared by both Democrats as well.  The circumstances leading to their unlikely elevation to the office of POTUS are quite similar too.  Like Barack Obama, Carter was elected in a flurry of reactionary liberalism whipped up by a complicit media.  While Obama floated in on a wave of Bush Derangement Syndrome, Jimmy Carter squeaked into office riding the lingering media feeding frenzy provided by the bloated corpse of the Watergated Nixon administration.  The woeful legacy of Carter's Presidency is beginning to look like a template for the abject failure of the Obama Presidency:

"The former President is not content having left office with high inflation, high interest rates and high unemployment. Nor is he content with having signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act -- strengthened by President Bill Clinton -- which played a major roll in the eventual housing market meltdown. Nor is he content with having cut the legs from under the Shah of Iran, which led to the establishment of the Islamic theocracy in Iran -- a state that pursues a nuclear weapon, funds the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and continues to undermine the fledgling democracy of Iraq. Nor is he content -- as ex-President -- with writing a book in which he likened the state of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians to South Africa under apartheid." (ibid)

No, Mr. Carter extends his moral opprobrium of criticisms of the Obama administration as a sort of smoke-screen to deflect fully legitimate questions about the honesty, integrity and ability of the sitting President and his assembled staff.  Is it racism to criticize the identical failings in Obama that we abhorred in the Carter administration?  The sitting President certainly has even higher unemployment than the Carter administration, while his monetary policies suggest that high inflation and higher interest rates are coming soon.  Obama's policies toward Iran and  the elimination of the missile shield for Eastern Europe couldn't be more simpatico with Carter's approach if Zbigniew Brzezinski were National Security Advisor again.

Carter and the reactionary liberal media that supports him clearly long for the days when the race card was trump.  Prior to the development of the blogosphere  and the creation of  Fox News,  media cries of racism or its doppelganger, McCarthyism, went unchallenged, or at least the challenges were unheard by most Americans.  The rise of the alternative media assures that those who attempt to end debate with the charge of racism may just be dealt out of the next hand.  Any chance of history casting a kinder, perhaps forgiving eye upon the miserable failure of the Jimmy Carter Presidency is gone.  The peanut narcissist should have "gone gently into the night" of history without the preening self-importance and smug moralizing demonstrated every time he sees a microphone or picks up a pen. 

With his strident assumption of moral superiority and defective judgment hogging national headlines, Mr. Carter has assured that he will be able to contemplate the derision he has earned before he shuffles off this mortal coil.  Once again the reactionary liberal movement has over-played its hand and thereby rendered itself and its useful idiot, Jimmy Carter, into laughing stocks.

Ralph Alter blogs at Right on Target

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