There is a GREAT blogpost over at HuffPo today, on the Green page, written by David Roberts, called, "Quit Arguing with Douchebags that Everyone Hates."

And although his post is addressed to bloggers who primarily represent Green efforts, I thought it made some pretty damn outstanding points that happen to dovetail with something I've been wanting to say anyway.

Plus, the title is just too good not to co-opt, even though it should read, "Quit Arguing with Douchebags WHO Everyone Hates."  (Or is it "whom"?  But I digress.)

After explaining that he had been away for several weeks on vacation (lucky him), he spoke of getting caught up on e-mails and such and deciding that "progressive bloggers, journalists, and activists are wasting a lot of their time."

(Good on him for saying "a lot" instead of "alot," which the Washington Post did in an editorial on Sunday.  What's up with that?  Did they not take high school senior English?  But, again, I digress.)

He goes on to describe the diminishing Republican party, which is even more diminished than he may realize, since a recent ABC News poll shows that only 24% of Americans consider themselves Republicans.  That's actually down 3 points from a similar poll taken a whole year ago by Pew Research Center.  Perhaps even more revealing, a CBS/NYT poll shows that only 20% of Americans trust congressional Republicans to do a better job than Obama in repairing the catastrophes left behind by the Bush administration and years of Republican policies.

(That oughta take care of your poll-fix until the next election ha ha.)

Roberts describes the current state of the Republican Party:

"They are increasingly beholden to the hardcore, angry-white-man demographic, which is getting increasingly insular and wingnutty, screaming about socialism and handshakes with Chavez and one-world currency. Republicans in Congress have decided on a program of total obstruction.

"This shrinking minority and its representatives in Congress are unreachable and unreasonable. They speak only to one another and their shared mythology of victimization and looming threat is increasingly baroque and opaque to those outside. They are shrinking into themselves, drifting into the wilderness, becoming more and more cultish. There is, in short, no reason to pay much attention to them."

He goes on to say that truly serious debates are taking place among the sane members of our population--the nearly 80% who think Obama's doing a pretty good job--on how to deal with the ongoing challenges of the day, from ending the Iraq war to dealing with Afghanistan to overcoming an economic meltdown to coping with the torture memos to redesigning healthcare to Greening up America.

And he's right.

But.

When he scolds progressives for not acting like the winners they (we) are, he glosses over one very important point:

"The rational response to this landscape would be to spend time arguing -- and displaying real confidence -- that the transition will in fact be good for the entire country; that industrial states will benefit as well; that the nation will be stronger, safer, and more prosperous as a result of action. It is the waverers and nervous nellies who need attention and persuasion.

"Instead, progressive media types and activists spend a wildly disproportionate amount of time running around like their hair's on fire every time a wingnut goes on cable news or writes an op-ed saying ridiculous things. Every time Newt Gingrich or Marc Morano or Joe Barton says something stupid, green bloggers start holding strategy sessions and freaking out about how to pressure this or that media outlet to repudiate the comments. They write more about, and to, the 35% than they do the 65%.

"This makes them -- and the forces of climate action generally -- look defensive and brittle and jumpy. It gives the wingnuttery they're responding to more credibility and oxygen than it would otherwise have. After all, if the people who want action think these arguments are worth so much time ...

"Progressives need to get it through they're heads that they won. They're in charge; they hold the levers of power. They understand the nation's problems and are proposing credible solutions. They should feel a sense of momentum and optimism and confidence. That feeling is contagious. It's what draws people in and soothes "

Did you catch it?  Yeah, you're pretty smart.  I'll bet you did.

It's that part where he says, "every time a wingnut goes on cable news or writes an op-ed saying ridiculous things"...

See. That's the whole point.

I mean geez.  You got George Stephanopoulus constantly inviting on the likes of Newt Gingrich and his buddies like Lindsey Graham, you got Chris Matthews keeping on a dinosaur like Pat Buchanan as a paid spokesman, and every single news outlet known to God and man running screaming down the street every single time Dick Cheney farts--a man out of power with approval ratings in the teens.

The whole brouhaha over the Homeland Security warning on extremist groups and veterans is a case in point. 

Even my secret crush, Rachel Maddow, (yes, I've warned my husband of 35 years that I've fallen in love with a gay girl; he can handle it on account of that whole Tom Selleck thing from the 80's and 90's), joined the Knee-Jerk Brigade when, rather than spending 20 minutes on a Google search in order to illustrate the virulent anti-Obama hatred boiling in the right-wing cauldron in the form of websites, militia activities, viral e-mails and the like, she did what everybody else does:  showed a clip of Dick Cheney and then invited on people like Arianna Huffington to respond.  And even HUFFINGTON gave a pat answer straight out of a campaign talking-points playbook ("It's a sign of Republican desperation"), rather than addressing the VERY REAL THREAT that does exist out there, and has since the Secret Service began covering Obama in record time and doubled their coverage TWICE during his campaign.

In all the chaos and confusion of media political coverage these days, only one quiet voice--that of Iraq vet Jon Soltz, founder of VoteVets.org, took the time and trouble to point out--on a HuffPo blogpost--that it is STANDARD TRAINING provided by the U.S. army to its troops to be careful of right-wing extremist recruiters.

Nobody else ever mentioned it.  Not once.

I'm not trying to get off on the veterans/right wing extremist thing--my point is that the media is still stuck in the Reagan Revolution.

During the Clinton years, every damn thing the man had to do, he had to do it against the relentless echo-chamber of right-wingers, especially after they took over congress in 1994. 

They have dominated the media narrative for an entire generation.

Think about that, all you young readers.

Consequently, Democrats a long time ago assumed the defensive crouch position--fighting back against not just the onslaught of insults, but against lies which were routinely passed off as truth and repeated so many times in the talking-points handed down to congressional leaders and FOX news every morning that it somehow became truth.

Like, say, the Iraq war.

But I digress.

Yes, David Roberts is absolutely right that, not only are commentators and bloggers wasting a whole lot of time defending against right-wing attacks--as always--and that it is time we all started to act like winners and majority-rulers, and begin to set the agenda.

BUT.

As long as the bonehead Media Powers That Be continue to recylce tired old right-wing arguments through tired old losers like Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney, ad nauseum, thus setting up outrageous soundbites that are then crammed down the throats of any progressive spokespersons sharing airtime...Then it's going to be hard to set the agenda, isn't it?

The Washington echo-chamber is just that.  Echoes.

In spite of all the Obama adulation that infuriates those newly out of power, the fact remains that right-wingers still dominate the airwaves and op-ed pages, white hair and all.

The douchebags keep being treated as if what they say MATTERS, as if what they say HAS THE SLIGHTEST GRAIN OF TRUTH IN IT, as if what they say is somehow the truth against which the bright young newcomers must react.

And they wonder why their ratings and circulations are falling.

I do think, however, that Roberts is on to something when he says that progressives do need to start projecting an image of "momentum, and optimism and confidence."

The good news is that the standardbearer we have chose to lead us into the White House projects all those things.

Even better for him is his steadfast, calm, intelligent demeanor.  The louder the wingnuts scream "radical" and "socialist" and "fascist" and "Hitler," in response to every single little tiny thing he does, even as he continues to emerge onto the bully pulpit on a daily basis projecting his calm, quiet, humorous, take-charge manner--the more THEY look like radicals.

They spent an entire decade deliberately weeding out and ousting moderates from their own party.  Those moderates now call themselves Independents and they are listening to, and voting for, Democrats, at least for now.  

By embracing clowns and baffoons as their spokespersons, the right also set themselves up as clowns and baffoons.

I have several conservative friends who tell me that their party has abandoned them, that they don't recognize it anymore, and that they will stay home rather than vote--not counting the conservatives I know who actually DID support Obama and do so still.

So they've gotten so wingnutty that they are actually now running off THEIR OWN PEOPLE.

But as far as the chattering class is concerned, well, it ain't easy to turn around an ocean liner.

Obama is spinning the wheel like mad, but the ship is only responding slowly.  He is a visionary, playing chess strategy ten years down the road while the rest of the politicians are playing tic-tac-toe, and the media is still stuck in the old game.  ("Ha!  I put my X there! You can't move!")

Everybody needs to let go of old ways of thinking.  Transformation is just that--transformational--and it requires a whole new mindset.

But as long as media kings (and queens) keep clinging to the Talking Heads of Last Decade, forcing many of us to react and respond, it's going to be hard to transform our country.

Roberts is right, though, that it should begin with US.

Progressive guests on media programs should simply refuse to play the old game, virtually ignoring the provocations from the old right-wing lions of yesteryear, and insist that the narrative embrace the New World.

Progressive bloggers and commentators need to follow that lead or lead on their own by also refusing to give a flying damn WHAT Dick Cheney or Rush Limbaugh has to say, and move on to reporting truth, as Jon Soltz did so quietly and effectively when he pointed out a simple truth that might have been known of reporters, commentators, and right-wing warmongers had ever ACTUALLY SERVED IN THE MILITARY.

But since most of them never had, most of them did not know that the Homeland Security warning was actually pro forma for the army.

(In fact, Janet Napolitano's apology to veteran's groups should have included that fact, as well, but I doubt she ever served, either.  So, like the rest of us, she let the chickenhawks set the agenda.)

It's up to all of us not to take the douchebag bait.

Just stop arguing with them.

Roberts concludes his post by making an amusing point:  that the "popular crowd" in high school never bothered to argue with nerds.

They didn't need to.  They had the power.

They just ignored them.