The continuation of a pissing match I got into with Sorn. Start here.
The shame here is that while I understand and mostly agree with your point, your initial setup is fallacious. You did, in fact, equate leftist rhetoric with rightist rhetoric. You did, in fact, create a strawman of "the left," and tried to use that strawman, unnecessarily, to prove a point. You are, in fact, engaging in high hypocrisy when you lecture people about the dangers of "moral superiority" while standing on a pedestal and being morally superior. Many political decisions have a moral component. Standing outside protesting tax cuts for millionaires is fine, until you realize that most of these protesters are the same people who got downright indignant when people protested the war in Iraq. So the same people who once said that it's unpatriotic to criticize the President, no matter the circumstance, now want to "Teabag Obama." It wasn't too long ago when the same people said that protesting the war emboldened the terrorists, and the protesters were traitors. Now, show me anybody on the left who says that the teabaggers are traitors, or the teabag protests are ruining the economy. Aside from some random DailyKos blogger, you probably won't find too many.
While you did not say "the left is no better than the right in terms of crazy rhetoric," you did say "The teabagging thing is outrageous, but then again so were the comparisons on the left of Bush to Hitler." If you're not shooting for equivalence, then why even go there? When you say "A did X, but B did Y," the automatic inference is that A = B, and X = Y. That's not me reading into it, or me misreading it. That's what it says.
Certainly, the same tendencies exist, but one group of people is far more affected by those tendencies than the other. One group of people has the crazy rhetoric as it's main platform, and has the crazy rhetoricians as it's main spokespeople. I'm not saying that liberals, leftists, and progressives are immune to such forces, but I would say that we're far less affeted, both on a per person basis and as a movement.
Take your example of Ann Coulter. What is her evidence of liberals being driven by Satan? What is her evidence of constant liberal lies? There is none, except to those who are already more than willing to believe crazy bullshit because that crazy bullshit confirms their pre-existing worldview. Who on the left serves as an analog to Coulter? Who spits out anywhere near as much venom or as many outright falsehoods? Ann didn't start out as some moderate and then go crazy. She started out crazy and never moderated. Her books include "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," "Guilty," and "Treason." All with some subtitle about the liberal threat to America. Again, find me someone just as nutty, influential, and respected on the left. If Ann was some exception, that would be one thing. But she's not. And it would take us all day to name all the batshit crazy "conservative" philosophers.
When I say the the GOP is the party of "xenophobic, homophobic, racist, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-intellectual, white, Christians," I have at least 30 years of actions committed by the GOP and its adherents to bolster my claim. It's not made up shit to satisfy my own confirmation bias, the record speaks for itself. Unlike Ms Coulter, I don't have to rely on quote mines or make things up out of whole cloth. Say what you will, that makes me morally superior. But you already knew that, as you yourself say "I don't vote Republican any more because of the degree to which the GOP has embraced what I consider to be crazy-talk." That's a moral position. One I consider to be superior. Obviously, you do as well, or you wouldn't care about the crazy-talk, and you would keep voting for policies that don't match the rhetoric.
Bigotry, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. I'm all for the concept of moral relativism, but my personal moral code is not relative. Selling people into slavery is wrong, as is molesting children, or killing indiscriminately. So I am bigoted against slavers, molesters, pirates, and serial killers. Does not wanting to "understand the the causal forces that generated such ideas" make me a nut-job?
Besides, I already know the causal forces which generate the ideas of today's "conservatism." And even though I understand, I still don't agree, and I still believe their position on many matters is morally wrong, and mostly because those positions aren't conservative. The information which would change their positions is out there, but they choose to ignore it, pretend it doesn't exist, or it's some sort of conspiracy against them.
In the 8 years where Bush sped up America's decline by a few generations, the activist left got it's shit together, the political left acquiesced to Bush's agenda, and those of who were left of center, but apolitical, began to make our voices heard.
In the 3 months which Obama's been President, the activist right has lost their damn minds, the political right has lost their damn minds, and the people who are right of center are being poorly served by elected and de facto leadership that has lost its damn mind.
You could "argue that feeling morally superior is the first step down the road that ends in nut-jobery," but I would argue that feeling morally superior and being morally superior are two wholly separate states. I'm sure BushCo felt morally superior when they were fashioning a noble lie to get us into Iraq. I'm sure Klansmen felt morally superior when they were protecting the virtues of white women. I'm sure the Irish Catholics felt morally superior to the Irish Protestants, and vice-versa. I'm sure many people from the beginning of human history felt morally superior to the people they were being immoral towards. But that doesn't mean that they actually were. I understand the distinction. The nut-jobbery comes when one doesn't understand said distinction, or when one has been right about so many things that they can't imagine an instance in which they'd be wrong.
When I say that the GOP is the party of xenophobic, homophobic, racist, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-intellectual, white, Christians, it's not about demonizing or denigrating the "Other." It's an opinion based on where the party is right now, and the course they've taken over the span of my life (though now moreso than ever), backed up by facts. They may not have been that way 50 years ago, and they may not be that way 50 years hence. If a few years from now the GOP has actually changed it's positions, and I'm still singing the same tune, feel free to call me a nut-job. Until then, I leave it to you to tell me why they aren't who I say they are, and if you can't, why my position is not morally superior.
