MSM can’t get enough of those angry tea partiers – signs, t-shirts, protests, jeers, and all. Apparently, the most aggrieved Americans ever. But have they missed an undertow of alienated progressives who have retreated into white-hot silence, no longer willing to engage with Fox-fueled friends and family?
I ask because my relationship with my fundamentalist, rightwing mom is distant and cooling. Some of my old-timey friendships are on hold.
My alienation started during the Clinton-bashing years, building steadily through GWB. Some of my progressive friends were slower to the boil - one friend delicately suggesting that pershaps a bit of family therapy would be helpful.
Now, many of these same progressive friends are confiding that they’ve cut themselves off from their Fox watching, Limbaugh admiring, Palin-lovin’ friends and family.
What puzzles me is that, in our private lives, we seem a whole lot madder at THEM than they do at us. I'm not sure they've even noticed how worked up we are. Their rage seems deflected onto government, Obama, and "cultural decay", while our anger is more personal. They become, I think, the proximate agents of distortion and greivance pushing our country toward a theocracy running on Ayn Rand fumes.
Now, I can't really defend my reaction as either rational or productive. But I don't think I'm unique. What's odd is that while the MSM, pundits, and bloggers (progressive or otherwise) obsess on the fury of the rightwing nutters, no one seems to have noticed the private undertow of rage in the lives of the left.
Is this your experience?