The Front

Prof. Blanchard notes the latest fumes emanating from the Brown County Democratic Party. I see his argument and raise him. What is with the left and their newfound hatred of the Soviet Union? The progeny of Henry Wallace now sound like born-again Cold Warriors in their invocation of the Evil Empire to scare folks away from conservative bloggers. Prof. Blanchard notes this passage:

South Dakota yearns for the nostalgic days of Larry Pressler. The difference is that the Bush Kremlin is supplying the words and the tactics.

And I would add this one for good measure.

Coporate [sic] America and its puppet government, the Bush administration, has other plans. It is working hard to reverse the headway made by labor, by conservationists, and by human rights advocates. If America is to be, people may well have to find another place for it. And if South Dakota with its level of poverty and its gulags is an indicator, that place won't be in America.

So South Dakota’s correctional facilities are likened to the Soviet gulag system. One never knows what to make of the Northern Valley Beacon as the first time we pointed out the shortcomings of the Bush Administration-Joseph Stalin analogy we were told that they were just joking, but the references keep coming up. I guess they NVB doesn’t know when to let a joke die. And now here is a passage from an editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which was noticed by Powerline:

In other words, Republicans for decades have wanted to control the press much as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler did, by attacking and attempting to discredit independent journalism, and for them blogs are just the latest tool in their war. That's definitely newsworthy, but outside of the blogosphere, few publications will dare state this.

What is it that has Stalin on the minds of the leftists? Should we look to Dr. Freud and diagnose a case of transference? I don’t know. Certainly the NVB needs a refresher in history. I suggest they look at Anne Applebaum’s Pulitzer Prize winning history of the gulag, just published two years ago. Does South Dakota round up people for their political beliefs? Do we ship them to prisons in cattle cars, giving them no food and no place to relieve themselves? Do we make them slave outdoors in sub-zero temperatures and make them suffer on below subsistence levels of daily caloric intake? Do we make them take cold showers in freezing temperatures? Is death of inmates a matter of course in South Dakota prisons? Because, my dear Brown Country Democrats, that is what happened in the real gulag.

Then you get this strange pathology of the Brown County Democrats where they believe that American politics, and certainly South Dakota politics, is unsalvageable, making resignation and surrender the best options. That’s an odd position for a political party hoping to win elections. When the Democratic Party was moribund in this state in the 1950s, I don’t recall George McGovern giving up and plying his wares elsewhere. He built a competitive party from the bottom up. He did this not by whining, but by going out and convincing people with solid arguments. I bet he never once compared his opponents to Hitler or Stalin. Because that would have been silly and counter-productive. But then you have the statement above (the one with the gulag reference) from the current Democrats that suggests that there is no justice in South Dakota and America, so decent people must look elsewhere for hope.

This leads me to my conclusion. What kind of party constantly exaggerates the claims about its opponents, referring to them in the vilest terms that can only alienate large sections of the electorate? What kind of party regularly insults the character of those who think differently, accusing them of harboring secret sympathies with the most murderous regimes in history? What kind of party then suggests that the battle for justice is lost and is not worth fighting any more? This would be a party that actively seeks to loose elections. It would be a party that does not want power. This would be a party that wants the other side to win. Thus I can only conclude that the Northern Valley Beacon and the Brown County Democrats are only clever fronts for the Brown County Republicans. Since most any South Dakotan reading the NVB would be shocked at the bile posted there, and no political party would be so foolish as to alienate virtually every voter in the state, it must be a devious plan by those conniving Republicans to pretend to be intemperate and defeatist Democrats, thus further tarnishing the name of a once great Democratic Party. Although I am not a registered Republican, I am a card-carrying member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (although I shouldn’t announce that conspiracy in public, perhaps), and so I have my sympathies with the Republicans. I can only say to them: Keep up the good work at the Northern Valley Beacon. Much more and soon they’ll all be voting Republican (at this point he cackles and twirls the end of his Snidely Whiplash mustache).