the mistakes of the right, the mistakes of the left

At one time in history, liberals thought they were unfallable.

They simply didn't take conservatives seriously. We thought that their agenda was universally hated; we thought their ideas were considered universally regressive, and therefore, universally considered bad. We thought that the momentum was ours, always would be ours, no matter who took office of the presidency or how long conservatives took ahold of one or both of the chambers of congress. We didn't think we'd ever be in the position we are today.

As David Brock writes in his book, "The Republican Noise Machine," we always assumed Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter, and so on, were all self-discrediting. Not worthy of anyone's time, and therefore, irrelevant. We thought people just listened to them for amusement, and to have a good chuckle at what those defenders of the old and the ridiculous seemed to believe was relevant about the world.

We thought the conservatives were primative knuckledraggers that couldn't build a movement to save their lives, let alone their ideology. We didn't think anyone could ever take these old men in their surrogate youngster bodies seriously. And as it turns out, we were wrong.

What we once took for granted is now the subject of fierce interrogation. We assumed science would always be one the most important voices in our assessment of the world; now there is cases of creationism dressed up in a suit as "intelligent design" cropping up in schools across America. We thought there would always be a desire to move more ideas about life and culture and ways of living into the mainstream; instead we're seeing so much progress pulled backwards, like how gays are being chastized for wanting to marry, and white supremecy groups are taking a peek at the world again.

Let's just be honest, folks.

We fucking dropped the ball.

But the interesting thing we're seeing is that the right hasn't learned from this lesson of the left. They're still thinking the left is just a bunch of know nothing hippies who are too stoned out of their minds to ever pose a threat to them.

You're seeing this thinking all across the board, and the parallels are startling.

You have conservatives refusing to take liberal talk shows seriously. Air America Radio is just something to laugh at to them, just like how Limbaugh was just something for liberals to laugh at fifteen years ago.

You have them assuming, as I've already said, that we're just fools with liberal arts degrees, all of us. They're assuming we're just know-nothing dreamers that really don't have any ideas and really don't have any plans.

You have them scoffing at science just as we once humored religion about the seperation of church and state, and how such a wall could never be eroded. Just point to a single one of the literally dozens of conclusive studies that say global warming is real and humans are, in part, causing it, and you'll see a conservative gut laughing at the prospect.

And finally, you see a ridiculous oversimplification of our position on President Bush. I've literally seen people in #politics, a chat room that I consider to be a perfect example of extreme right-wing views, saying that liberals just hate President Bush simply because we're sore losers from 2000 and 2004, and that we just hate him because of his "last name" or because we think he "stole an election" or two. Compare this to how the left used to always assume the right was just a bunch of meatheads throwing stones at the unfallable ideas that made up liberalism.

They're not taking us seriously.

This is the time in history where the left has to have its rebirth. The old hippie style of fighting (or, more specifically, thier style of not fighting) is being abandoned. The left is waking up from thirty years in a drug-enduced slumber from the sixties, and we're putting the pieces of our ideology back together.

So here's some advice, conservatives. You should probably take us progressives seriously. If you want to hang onto this little backlash movement of yours, you'd better stop assuming your opposition is composed of a bunch of fools.

But, as my first two posts pointed out, this isn't your strong point, conservatism. You're making the same mistakes liberals made decades ago; you assume that your backlash on its own will carry on no matter what. You assume your enemies simply won't show thier heads, or aren't smart enough to get around your methods, yet you expect to win in spite of this.

Good luck with that plan. Be sure to post me a comment about how I should "keep dreaming," or how us "poor liberals" will "never learn."

Looking at the history of how an ideology can fall, it seems that conservatives are the ones that haven't learned anything.