Other Worlds
I was emailing earlier this week with a conservative reader here who took issue with the SCHIP post. I stand by my main point: none of the attacks on 12 year old Graeme Frost or his family addressed the substance of their argument. They were nothing but cheap, ad hominem attacks. The same would have been true if the kid was a middle-aged man or a hottie in a bikini: attacking the messenger is a diversionary tactic, but this incident was made all the more shameful because the attack was carried out by adults with power against a little kid.
Anyway, in the course of our email, the reader raised a number of arguable points, but there was one concept that just baffled me: he referred a few times to the “Left” as an organized movement that wanted to foist socialized medicine on the US without debate and that stifled entrepreneurship. As you may imagine, I disagree with that notion.
I commented back that, in the US at least, the notion of a powerful Left… well, there just isn’t one! Imagine a powerful, organized movement Left in the US: we’d have health coverage by now; Bush and Cheney would be in the Hague; we’d be reducing emissions; and everyone would be singing Kumbaya and driving around in cars powered by rainbows and children’s laughter.
OK, that last part is a joke. But you know what’s a WORSE joke? Watching the Democrats, the so-called Party of the Left, racing all rumble-tumble to give retroactive immunity to companies that helped the President illegally tap our phones, 6 months or more before 9/11. Or watching them allow congressional subpoenas to go unanswered. Or failing to pass any kind of timetable on Iraq. Allowing the GOP to get away with filibustering anything and everything without consequence. Or turning around and taking official government action against a citizen’s advocacy group that represents 3,000,000 member of their base for political speech. A powerful Left driving US policies? You might as well believe in Santy Claus.
The idea that there is a powerful Left in the US does more than simply boggle my mind: it reminds me of a science fiction story I once read as a kid. It may have been turned into an episode of The Twilight Zone, I can’t recall. It involved a man who dialed a wrong number, and thinking the girl on the other end sounded cute initiated a conversation. This telephone flirtation went on for some weeks, and finally they decided to meet.
The man arrived at the appointed spot at the right time, but after an hour the girl never showed. He put a dime in the payphone (they still had those when the book was written), and called her at home. She was furious. “I waited for you for an hour,” she yelled.
“But that’s impossible,” the guy replies. “I’m right here waiting for you!” And then, through a chance description of where he waited, he realizes that the wire is crossed alright: into a different dimension where the Japanese won World War Two.
Reading an email from someone discussing the Left in America as some powerful force gave me the same feeling. Two very different worlds…
3 Responses to “Other Worlds”
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October 16th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Love that Twilight Zone.
I always wanted to write a sci-fi book were it became obvious as you read on that the protagonist was a very bad guy. Imagine a war story from the point of a German solider. He wouldn’t think he was a bad guy, he would know he was doing right no matter what. I thought it would make a very interesting story with lots of dramatic tension.
The other day I woke up an realized I was living in that story.
I busted my ass working to elect a Democratic Senator last year & my Daughter worked her first campaign that unseated an incumbent R congress slug with a Dem. They both voted with Boy Blunder on Iraq & FISA. There is no left in America.
October 16th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
I remember that story very well. I think the girls name was Patsy (or Nancy). She came over with the Japanese occupation force. They were goin to meet in front of Tiffanies I think, but in her world Tiffanies had moved from 57th steeet to another location because of the crater. I remember toward the end as the guy realizes what is going on, he calls into the phone, “Patsy, don’t hang up”, but I think at that point someone from the phone company breaks in and says there is “trouble on the line”, and the connection is lost forever. For some reason I have always been an absolute sucker for stories like this.
October 17th, 2007 at 9:26 am
So I was thinking about socialized….arghhhh! ‘Socialized’ RUN AWAY!!! They want to sleep with you daughters and make your sons gay! Socialized Mommy, I;m scared….that big nasty word….RUN AWAY RUN AWAY!
Asshats