Is anyone else sick to death of the "Liberal Smugness" snarl that's going around lately?

[ancianita]

24. Re the first reading: I was a grown-ass reading, thinking, liberal feminist woman of the 90’s.

Last edited Thu May 12, 2016, 07:22 AM - Edit history (1)

I saw the political and corporate Right start its rhetorical and economic class war in the 80’s against all things liberal, including the word itself, which took decades – as did the Reagan era’s policy and politics – to factually challenge and disprove.

The real “liberal agenda” since then has been to fight this revisionist history along with the on-the-ground consequences of Reagan rule. The best argument against Clinton’s liberalism comes in the well-documented seminal history of two-party betrayal in Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow.” Liberals of the 80’s and 90’s remain appalled at Clinton’s great betrayal of the Democratic Party theretofore run by what is now labeled the “FDR wing.”

The smug liberal described here is embodied in Bill Clinton, whose Republican-lite racist policies continued those of Reagan and Bush. “Smug” liberals, led by Clinton, were all like ‘what he said.’ As Thomas Frank quotes Clinton: "...What are these people going to do? They got nowhere else to go...” …this philosophy of governing, slamming the people who just got you elected...

It has taken progressives and their liberal allies a long time to unravel the history of this Big Con. But now that we have, we can smell these corporate opinion hit pieces as they creep out of the anti-democratic tool box of fuckery.