Topic: Liberal Fascism
Self-parody has been a characteristic of the Left since the Sixties at least and possibly earlier. In retrospect what could be funnier—and more revealing of their parking lot-puddle shallowness, than the rhetoric of Sixties radicals like the Weather Underground? That it was accompanied by a destructive nihilism only slightly mitigates the humor of the New Left’s rhetorical bleat, which may be sampled in the books and periodicals of the period.
And the more things change, the more they stay the same. So you really have to swing for the fences if you want to serve up a parody of contemporary progressivism. And it’s getting harder every day. Consider for example the Left’s reaction to the new Clint Eastwood film American Sniper, a biopic based on the life and death of legendary Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. It seems actually to have driven them insane. Michael Moore took to Twitter to denounce Kyle as a “coward.” Other comrades lambasted him as a psychopath, a racist, a serial killer—insults they would never think of hurling at an Islamofascist terrorist, by the way. There was much hand-wringing over the “simplistic” patriotism that inspired the bitter clingers and Tea Party fascists to admire Chris Kyle. And so on and so forth.
Now it’s understandable that the Left doesn’t like American Sniper—which, to the Left’s evident dismay, is shaping up to be a huge hit. Chris Kyle’s story is the negation of just about everything they say and believe about the war against Islamofascist terror, the US armed forces and America in general. One has only to recall the recent war movies that the Left does admire to see where these people are coming from: Stop-Loss, Green Zone, etc. (Not incidentally, these films were snoozers that bombed at the box office.) But their reaction to American Sniper…well, it’s beyond parody. Here we have blowhards like Moore and doofus heads like the actor Seth Rogen dumping on the memory of a guy whose jockstrap is several sizes too big for the likes of them. We can take it for granted that not one of American Sniper’s leftie critics would ever think of putting service before self, of laying it on the line for his beliefs, of giving his life that others might live. The brotherhood—nowadays the brotherhood and sisterhood—of arms is cultural territory utterly alien to progressives. It’s one aspect of their estrangement from the main currents of American thought and feeling. For the ordinary Americans who shelled out $105 million to see American Sniper on the weekend of its release do understand such things. They get it—either because they’ve worn the uniform themselves, they know someone who has or simply because they recognize patriotism, honor and courage when they see it. But progressives are no more capable of seeing such things than I am of receiving a radio transmission with bare ears alone.
But personally I can’t be outraged by all this. What could be funnier, after all, than the spectacle of Michael Moore, desecrating the grave of Chris Kyle? He does his little dance, kicks over the headstone—and when it’s all over Chris Kyle memory abides intact while Moore stands exposed as the small, tiny person that he truly is: a petty con artist with a head full of leftie platitudes and the soul of a rat.
