Daily Kos boss Markos Moulitsas thinks that conservatives typically come off as angry and resentful, and in a Monday post he argued that's because culturally, economically, and politically, the world "has left them behind...[T]hey've created an entire alternate media world in which to cocoon themselves. But they know they've lost."
Kos warned liberals not to celebrate just yet: "[P]ower isn't just about ideas. It's about wrestling the institutional levers of government from the retrogrades. Those entrenched economic and conservative interests wield power via the Supreme Court, through gross gerrymandering, through voter suppression efforts. So we've got a lot of work ahead of us."
From Kos's post (emphasis added):
...[L]iberals have won the culture war...
Liberal social values are deeply embedded in our culture, from pretty much everything on TV outside the Christian channels at the fringe of the channel lineup, to any movie of note. In that Breitbart link above, Nick [sic! make that John] Nolte waxes about God's Not Dead, an indie Christian film that has grossed $41 million on a production budget of $2 million. Good job! Then again, it's a blip. Captain America has grossed nearly half a [b]illion in 10 days, with its overtly civil-libertarian and anti-neocon message. I mean, Captain America is saying that a fear-based (read: Republican) foreign policy is not the "American Way."
For a crowd that flinches at any notion of sex, it's gotta be impossible to escape sexual imagery...I flinched hearing my six-year-old daughter sing along with Flo Rida's "Whistle." She was too little to understand what that song was really about, but at some point, she will. I'm not the kind of parent overly concerned with "protecting" her from that sort of thing, but if you are, it's a tough world out there.
On economic matters, the pendulum is swinging hard against the financial elite. There's a reason we get regular installments of "billionaire calls economic populists Nazis." They were used to being paragons of society. Now they are the enemy. And with populism on the rise, and with talk of income inequality routine, Reaganesque "trickle down" theories are decidedly out of favor...
That's not to say that we've WON won. We certainly have won the battle of ideas. But power isn't just about ideas. It's about wrestling the institutional levers of government from the retrogrades. Those entrenched economic and conservative interests wield power via the Supreme Court, through gross gerrymandering, through voter suppression efforts. So we've got a lot of work ahead of us.
But if you wonder why conservatives seem to carry perpetual grievances, it's because they know they have lost. The entire world around them has left them behind. Heck, they've created an entire alternate media world in which to cocoon themselves. But they know they've lost. They may still alternate between the "denial" (Ted Cruz) and "anger" (Bill Donohue) phases of acceptance, but the only question left is how long will it be before our government truly represents the public will. And when that happens, we'll be truly able to ignore the perpetual tempter [sic] tantrum from the Right.
