Personal Laughs

I just laughed for 5 minutes. The cause was a piece by Matt Taibbi, via AlterNet via Crooks & Liars. Mr. Taibbi is taking on that supreme wanker Joe Klein. Joe Klein is the stealth "I've always been against the war" pundit. He's a true dick. The article by Mr. Taibbi that caused me the great mirth &, BTW, I feel physically better, contained these jewels, first, what made me laugh:

Beyond that, what you say doesn't even make any sense. For most of us, if we thought there was any chance this thing could work, we'd have been for it, or at least not so violently against it. Instead, our opposition to the war was based on our absolute conviction that it would end in disaster -- which it incidentally has. But according to Klein, if we see a guy step off the top of the Empire State Building, we're supposed to root for him to nail the dismount. The whole issue is irrelevant and absurd. This is a catastrophe, not a baseball game. "Rooting" is a kid's word; grow the fuck up.
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I think they're all full of shit -- Klein, McCain, Kerry, all of them. But especially Klein. He is the living, breathing incarnation of American "conventional wisdom" -- and what American "conventional wisdom" is is a spineless, slavish, power-worshipping watcher of polls who has no problem whatsoever denying today what he said yesterday, and is mostly interested in making sure he still has invitations to the right Beltway parties.
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Let's get this straight: there are no "leftists" in modern-day America. Or, rather, there about ten of them, and you can find absolutely every single one of them at the next antiwar or anti-anything protest in Washington; they all fit in one section of the park behind the White House, where you can find pretty much all of them passing out small stacks of socialist fliers, mainly to each other. These socialists are committed, dedicated, utterly serious political activists, which makes them absolutely atypical Americans, which is why there are so few of them.

The rest of the people that the Kleins of the world are calling "leftists" are mostly cautious consumers who watch a lot of Netflix movies, have maybe read Love in the Time of Cholera once or twice, and whose most aggressive step in the direction of socialism is a vote in favor of increased school spending. They might drive a foreign car, or willingly see a movie with subtitles. If that makes them "leftists," what word are we going to use for real leftists?

Now I think Love in the Time of Cholera is a great novel & anyone who as read it once, much less twice, as potential. But it is also true that they have no understanding of what it means to be "left." What really does pass as socialism is voting for school spending. & that is too bad for America. Matt Taibbi is just a great writer. I think there are more than 10 leftists left in America, but his point is well taken. Go read the whole thing.