Progressives in Retreat

View From the Ridge

The Hopium cloud has dissipated. Only the foul stench of overripe progressivism hangs in the air. Americans having caught pungent nosefuls and are recoiling in horror

Conservatives are now the single largest ideological group in America, according to Gallup.

The Wisconsin Democrats scampering across the state line to Illinois in a futile attempt to dodge reality turned out to be an apt metaphor of the state of American Progressivism. It is in collapse.  On the run.  Reviled, discredited, angry and sullen...

I get the impression that progressives really do believe we should all just fall in line and let the philosopher kings implement Plato's Republic.  I think ordinary Americans sense it as well, and they are repelled. I know I am.

Al Gore as Metaphor:  A Global Collapse

I think progressivism may be facing a global rejection as well. Oh, it will always be around, and could even achieve a new ascendancy thanks to unrepentant global financial predators, but for now it is facing a shameful repudiation, encapsulated nicely in the the discredited "Climate Change/Global Warming" movement.

Gore has the Midas touch in reverse; objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at his touch. (Walter Russell Mead)

Remember just a few short years ago, before the scandals and the lies, when serious people took the Global Elmer Gantry and his International Climate Change Road Show seriously...

Don't worry children! Reverend Al Gore of the International Church of Gaia will release his chakras! He will sell you carbon credit indulgences so that you may atone for your enviro sins. So throw your trillions and your economies into the volcano so that the earth's temperature will be juuuust riiiight!

The third world kleptocrats volunteering their oppressed masses to play the role of Lazarus in this opera of the absurd, begging for scraps at the table of the rich nations, in order to shame them out of their billions, was a nice filigree.

Here's a hint. Anyone or any organization employing the word "global" or "world" in a serious manner should be avoided. Categorically so when spinning fairy tales about the world being tooooo hot....

Especially when just 20 years ago the cognoscenti told us it was tooooooo cold!

Professor Walter Russell Mead sums up Gore's (and progressivism's) credibility problem:

But grave as that danger is, Al Gore can consume more carbon than whole villages in the developing world. He can consume more electricity than most African schools, incur more carbon debt with one trip in a private plane than most of the earth’s toiling billions will pile up in a lifetime — and he doesn’t worry.

A father of four, he can lecture the world on the perils of overpopulation. Surely, skeptics reason, if the peril were as great as he says and he cares about it as much as he claims, Gore’s sense of civic duty would call him to set an example of conspicuous non-consumption. This general sleeps in a mansion, and lectures the soldiers because they want tents. (The Failure of Al Gore)

Gore's Global theater of high drama has descended into farce, an emblem of the High Church of Progressivism, and Al Gore is its apotheosis.  

Walter Russell Mead - The Death of Global Warming

Walter Russell Mead - The Failure of Al Gore: Part 1

Walter Russell Mead - The Failure of Al Gore Part Deux

Global Progressives Ripe for Ridicule

Loony Left Lampooner

You don’t want to mess with sarcastomatic Brit James Delingpole. I mean, just look at him. You can tell he’s a smartass extraordinaire by his picture. But he’s our smartass, and boy does he whack those lefties good.

Don't let the snark fool you; he's also a serious reporter.  His short article at Breitbart's Big Government explains what really happened in Britain with the Rupert Murdoch empire's phone hacking scandal.  Bottom line:  Britain has no Rush Limbaugh or Fox News, and the lefty establishment was deathly afraid Murdoch would bring it. 

Delingpole goes after the climate change "warmists" with particular zeal:

They think that the naughty yellow pixies who pull the special, magic Climat-O-Levers which control the weather have been paid by evil capitalists with fat cigars in their mouth and $ signs on their pinstripe suits to make the world’s climate all horrid so that poor, underprivileged and disabled people and endangered creatures suffer – and that the reason we don’t know about it is because the media is run by evil Conservatives who want to keep this truth a secret. (The Science is Settled)

He gleefully reminds us what Michael Mann (of the "Hide the Decline" Mann-made crisis) and his ilk tried in vain to hide: There has been no global warming since 1998...

Why then am I mentioning it now? W-e-l-l, because just as ze war is to the Germans, Chappaquiddick is to the Kennedy family and that Portland masseuse incident to Al Gore, so the recent lack of warming is to the, er, Warmists.

They hate it. It’s an affront to everything they believe in. Damn it, if the world isn’t warming with the alacrity they’d prefer, how are they going to keep the funding gravy train going, and how are they going to persuade an increasingly sceptical populace that the “science” is “settled”, the debate over and the time for action is now?

That’s why they can’t be reminded of the truth often enough. It’s like salting the slugs that are ruining your garden: necessary, but also kind of fun too. ( Delingpole – No Global Warming)

Blogger buddy Mark Adams recently observed here that Alinsky rightly says that ridicule is the most potent weapon. There’s no defense against it and it enrages the target, making the fun even funner. Well, Delingpole’s incessant needling of the left is a beautiful and hilarious thing to behold.

You can stay plugged into his fact-filled snark and laugh uproariously at each punctured liberal balloon by visiting JamesDelingpole.com.