Bizarre Conservative Obsessions

Above: Not a leftist goal

OK, most conservative obsessions are bizarre. But some of their attacks on the left just make no sense at all. The first one that comes to mind is Saul Alinsky, who has been an utterly irrelevant figure on the left for 25 years but who still freaks conservatives out like he was Leon Trotsky. Here’s another, from a fine Christmas conservative advice column on how to deal with liberal family members (yes, I got out of the boat):

You may have a relative who is a liberal drone, who worships at the altar of Obama, Hillary, global warming, deindustrialization, and whatever else they have been programmed to think. It can be unpleasant to hear them go on and on about how great Obama is and how evil the Republicans are, and you certainly can’t speak out because that will start a major battle. If your relative is a hardened leftist, nothing you can say would make any difference as well. So why should you love that?

Never mind the conflation between “mild liberal” and “hardened leftist.” Worships at the altar of deindustralization? While it’s certainly true that Obama and Bill Clinton have supported terrible trade deals that help lead to deindustrialization and the export of union jobs overseas, how is deindustralization a leftist policy as opposed to a rightist one? What are the conservative positions about reinvigorating Flint? Other than poisoning the city’s water supply, of course. And I guess I was unaware that Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or writers further to the left were hoping for the decimation of American industrial capacity and the destruction of unions that entails. That’s of course opposed to noted supporters of good jobs like Ted Cruz and Ben Carson.

Obviously there’s no answer to these questions because the fundamental premise is just stupid, from a line of thinking not worth interrogating. But I guess I would have expected such a column to rail against relatives who support other crazy leftist policies like women having a choice in their reproductive decisions, black people being allowed to vote, or gay people being allowed to have legal protections. Now those are some nutty leftist positions!