{"id":175,"date":"2015-02-19T18:03:36","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T23:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/?p=175"},"modified":"2015-02-19T18:47:28","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T23:47:28","slug":"political-fantasies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/?p=175","title":{"rendered":"Political Fantasies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Blues<\/a><\/p>\n

by Reid Fitzsimons<\/p>\n

During the 2012 Democratic convention a delegate from NY, Julia Rodriguez, fantasized in a video interview that she would like to kill Mitt Romney (\u201cIf I see him I would like to kill him\u201d). An internet search for this incident revealed minimal follow-up, mostly that a Secret Service representative said, \u201cWe are aware of it,\u201d and the agency is \u201ctaking the appropriate follow-up steps.\u201d Beyond this the internet trail went cold so presumably Delegate Rodriguez returned to the Bronx uneventfully and is not in a Federal slammer subsisting on multigrain bread and Evian bottled water (for disclosure purposes I should mention I worked in a Federal Prison from 1982-1986).<\/p>\n

Conservatives, and perhaps other sentient beings, hear of this type of thing and see a dichotomy. If a Republican delegate had said something similar of Obama, one could almost envision the climactic scene in The Blues Brothers as multiple SWAT teams converged on Jake and Elwood at the Cook County Assessor\u2019s Office (the above photo if you aren't familiar with the movie). In reality it is unlikely a conservative would think such a sentiment let alone say it- while we are certainly not free of emotions of the moment we are generally constrained by the tradition of civility in discourse and rationality of thought. There are plenty of things I would like to either ask or say to our president were I to see him, but murderous fantasy is more the domain of progressives.<\/p>\n

Fantasy and delusion have become so prevalent in the core of progressivism that it is largely a defining characteristic. This in more than the bizarre but partly affected fantasies we recall from the sexual swooning over Bill Clinton in the 1990s. This living in make-believe has infused the most serious of the progressive players. Elizabeth Warren is presumably a serious-minded leftist but her delusions of being a Native American were an integral part of her self-perception, or at least a means to advance her career. Hillary Clinton seemed to have Rambo-like fantasies during her 2008 campaign in her yarn about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, though to be fair she was probably consciously lying and just hoping she wouldn\u2019t be caught. I wonder if Joe Bidden fantasizes he\u2019s not a buffoon.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best portrayal of progressive fantasy in popular culture can be found in the Seinfeld episode featuring the hapless restaurateur Babu Bhatt.\u00a0 Babu is a Pakistani who opened a small caf\u00e9 in Seinfeld\u2019s neighborhood. He offers an eclectic menu, from ethnic options to franks and beans, but he can\u2019t attract customers. Seinfeld sees this and, despite having no knowledge or experience whatsoever in such matters, suggests Babu change to an all-Pakistani fare (\u201cHow bad can it be?\u201d he asks himself). Babu is taken in by the idea and tells Seinfeld he is a \u201cvery good man.\u201d Seinfeld reflects on this and satisfyingly thinks to himself, \u201cMy mother was right, I am a good person.\u201d Of course the change to all-Pakistani is a complete failure, Babu loses everything, and angrily scolds Seinfeld as a \u201cvery bad man.\u201d Seinfeld then asks himself, \u201cCould my mother have been wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike most progressives at least Seinfeld was loosely aware he didn\u2019t really know what he was talking about. In the real progressive world there is no such insight- simply the belief that they are \u201cgood\u201d provides a sufficient basis to make whatever demands they elect to make, always of others, never of themselves. Once the rule, action, law, policy, etc they demanded fails, they just blame someone else, pretend it was actually a success, or simply ignore the failure and drag us into the next abyss. The result is of no importance, leaving people damaged in the wake is of no significance. What matters is the comforting sense, no matter how transient or fantastic, that they are indeed good and righteous. Fantasies are not necessarily a bad way of psychologically defending one\u2019s self from the reality of personal impotence, inadequacies, etc, but they are better kept private and not forced upon society at large. Over 20 years later, I wonder if Bill Clinton still inspires sexual fantasies among progressive women; it was an unsettling image then and only more so now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Reid Fitzsimons During the 2012 Democratic convention a delegate from NY, Julia Rodriguez, fantasized in a video interview that she would like to kill Mitt Romney (\u201cIf I see him I would like to kill him\u201d). An internet search for this incident revealed minimal follow-up, mostly that a Secret Service representative said, \u201cWe are ...continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ynMC-2P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}