As conservatives, we know what happens every time we criticize the policies of the liberal occupant of the White House: We're instantly branded as “racist” and “intolerant” while our views are quickly and summarily dismissed.
However, Kevin Drum, a political blogger for the liberal Mother Jones website, has received similar treatment as he learned that no matter which side of an issue he supports, his mailbox on the Twitter social media website quickly fills up with emails from people taking the opposite view.
If you express anything short of absolute condemnation of everything the NSA has done, your Twitter feed quickly fills up with hysterical proclamations from the emo-progs that you’re a right-wing shill, a government lackey, a useful idiot for the slave state, and an obvious fool.
“Conversely,” he noted, “if you criticize the NSA’s surveillance programs, your Twitter feed quickly fills up with equally hysterical proclamations from the O-bots that you hate Obama, you’ve always hated Obama, and you’re probably a racist swine who’s been waiting ever since 2009 for a chance to take down the nation’s first black president.”
“This happens with other subjects too, of course,” he said, but the classified files leaked by computer specialist Edward Snowden “have brought it out more than usual.”
Drum's comments drew a quick response from conservative blogger Charles C. W. Cooke of National Review Online, who stated:
Welcome to my world, Kevin. Just so you know, this rule goes also for ObamaCare, the economy, foreign policy, firearms law and absolutely every other area of public policy. I have been called a “racist” for so long now that I’m almost looking forward to a Hillary presidency so that I can be called a “sexist” instead.
The Mother Jones blogger then went on to discuss what some have called the “ObamaCult.”
I'll confess that although the leftier-than-thou types have always been around, I've long been skeptical of the idea that Obama has a core group of supporters from 2008 who really do consider him The One, a shining beacon of light who can do no wrong.
“But I'm the one who was wrong,” Drum admitted. “I don't know how many there are, but they're definitely out there.”
“Yes, they are,” Cooke agreed.
Conservative Ed Driscoll of the PJ Media site added some specific numbers regarding the group that described itself as the “Non-Official Campaign.”
“At a rock bottom minimum, there were least 400 members” in the group -- including Drum himself, who quoted a message from Atrios at the Eschaton blog site:
It's not that I think everyone to “the left” of me is a posing emo-prog and everyone to “the right” of me is a posing O-bot. There are people genuinely to the left and to the right of me on policy, people who have different ideas about what our goals should be and how best to achieve those goals.
“People disagree about stuff. People have different priorities. But there are also people who seem to enjoy judging your worth by how righteously you dislike or like the Obama administration,” Atrios stated. “It's annoying.”
“Annoying” is probably one of the mildest terms conservatives would use to describe the way liberals use the same method of judging our worth by how much we agree with the Democrat president.
Still, it's a good thing that bloggers whose support for Obama is fading to learn what it's like to be on the other side of the debate. It's very unlikely that they'll remember this the next time a Republican wins the White House, but even if this has only a minor impact on the way they discuss that GOP president, it will have been worthwhile.
