When We Define Our Politics Primarily Through Loathing

This is mildly amusing. Jamie Kirchik:

Just when you thought Joe Lieberman couldn’t frustrate and perplex liberals any further, he is going off to become chief sponsor of the most significant piece of socially progressive legislation that Congress will deal with this year.

Myself, I don’t find it frustrating at all that Holy Joe has decided to sponsor DADT-killing legislation. Perplexing, yes; it’s bloody difficult, from day to day, to try to figure out precisely where Holy Joe’s Independent Moral Compass is going to lead him, but it’s generally sensible to bet on “evil.” In any case, however, I suspect that the central problem is that Jamie is mirror-imaging liberals. Jamie has made a career of anti-liberal contrarianism; he’s not terribly bright and doesn’t have any ideas of his own, but when he can manage to successfully figure out what progressives think, he astutely takes the opposite position. While this doesn’t differentiate him from most other contemporary conservative journalists, he is almost striking in his emptiness; there’s literally nothing there beyond the hatred for whatever he believes liberals want. As such, it’s very hard for Jamie to understand that anyone could be motivated by an actual policy concern. Most progressives, however can distinguish between a policy they like (ending DADT), and a politician they don’t like (Holy Joe Lieberman).

Conservatives…. not so much. Indeed, (and this is just a crazy thought experiment) I suspect that if liberals came out against something as nasty as, say, torture, that conservatives might even be for it…