For some reason, CPAC held no interest for me this year. I think Josh Marshall hit on the reason when he wrote that “the contemporary Conservative Movement has become less a matter of ideology than a sort of performance art.” They act outrageously and we’re supposed to get all outraged. I don’t feel like playing that game. I’m happy to use their stupid antics against them, but I’m not going to be their monkey. I started to feel this way a couple of years ago, but up until this year I still wanted to point and laugh. Now I don’t even want to do that.
I stopped attending Netroots Nations events a few years ago, too. I might go again if one is held on the East Coast. While I grew a little disenchanted with where I saw progressives’ energy going during Obama’s first term, the qualitative difference between CPAC and Netroots Nation is staggering. The people who are invited to speak at Netroots Nation are serious people who don’t (often) treat their audiences like they are morons. With the exception of Alan Grayson, the speakers aren’t there to throw red meat and make a spectacle of themselves. Progressives like Sen. Jeff Merkley, Reps. Donna Edwards and Keith Ellison talk and sound like normal human beings who have not suffered any significant brain damage. That is not how Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter, or Ted Cruz talk and sound. What comes out their mouths is juvenile bullshit.
And if you look at the actual substance of the two conferences, the difference is almost as stark. Netroots Nation’s seminars are educational, run by professional people, and attended by people who are serious about the topics. CPAC seminars are exercises in mass self-delusion.
Here are some examples of actual CPAC 2014 seminars:
Fossil Fuels Improve the Planet
More Guns, Less Crime: How Law Enforcement is Beginning to Embrace a Well-Armed Civilian Population
Healthcare After ObamaCare: A Practical Guide for Living When No One Has Insurance and America Runs Out of Doctors
Okay? These fucking people are delivering crazy to the crazy. Even their useful seminars are poisoned with Stupid:
Tech Workshop: Beyond Politically Correct: How to Configure WordPress for Success
Can’t they just teach people how to use freaking WordPress without it having to be about black people and gays?
No, of course they can’t do that, because it’s not about ideology anymore. Its about performance art. And it’s tiresome. It’s not even that funny at this point.
Compare CPAC’s drivel to the 2013 Netroots Nation program and you can see that we’re dealing with two totally different animals.
One conference is incredibly focused on technology, innovation, and policy, and the other is just reinforcing ignorance and trying to get press coverage.
I’m at a loss. The Republican Party, fractured as it is, now has the meanest, most hateful following I’ve ever seen. They don’t even try to hide their racism, misogyny, bigotry and selfishness anymore. They heartily embrace the NRA, they revel in starving schoolchildren, they glorify pollution. If I didn’t see it on a daily basis, I wouldn’t believe it was possible.
I know that politics online becomes an echo chamber and we often see what we want to see, but for the love of all that’s good, those people, and the disgusting idiots who support and elect them, are a serious threat and we have to stop them. Not losing the Senate has got to be a priority. If we let these monsters take more control, we will see shit the likes of which we have never seen before.
It’s the economy. In the 30’s both the Communist Party AND the KKK gained members. Polarization is a symptom of widespread economic distress. People are congenial only during good times.
Tells you a lot about which movement has a future in this country. Deluding yourself is no way to gain power. It is a loser’s strategy.
Politics is about power. Elections are ways of canvassing the population to find out whom they want to stick it to for the next two, or four years. They’re not opportunities for swapping inspiring and interesting dreams.
If 51% of 35% of the population votes for you, and you run the country.
If you appeal, systematically, to the worst in people, and people, in the aggregate, are basically shits, then you begin every election cycle half-a-lap ahead. The GOP is good at that. The shits turn out, and the rest, appalled, tune out and stay home.
Tim Murphy had it right. When the Breitbart crowd is exiled to their own venue, CPAC has gotten soft.
On the other hand, where are red state post-teens still under their parents’ and pastors’ thumbs supposed to go for the big political convention?
The meeting I would like to see is the one at which the politicians in attendance did not speak but actually listened to the ideas of progressives. There would be a workshop that put together a database of the lobbying firms, clients, and affiliations that have been corrupting Congress and similar ones for states. And other practical political tasks. But that’s my own idiosyncrasy.
Big dreams. You can’t even get this online much.
Replace the word “conference” there with “political party” and you have exactly why the Democrats should be winning, but aren’t.
“Mole people” as Charles Pierce often mentions.
I think of them as the Morlocks from H.G. Wells.
Boo, I agree with you. They’re going to have to dress in Nazi regalia and hold human sacrifices for me to be shocked anymore.
After the 10th or 11th or 20th “Evil Clowns Convention”, they all start to blur and seem the same.
There needs to be a mass shooting at CPAC to pique interest, and they could TOTALLY do that!
They grow old, they grow old,
They shall wear the bottoms of their US flag boxer shorts rolled.
Actually, they shouldn’t.
That’s a very bad look.
Perhaps they should eat a GMO peach instead?
They have measured out their lives in tea spoons and have been found wanting.
Meanies, meanies, tickle a parson.
(I’m afraid they would. )
The CPAC ends not in a bang, but a simper.
One can only listen to a broken record for so long before you realize no one is going to move the needle over.
At this point, CPAC attendees are inbred thinkers.
HaHa, better not teach them Drupal, that’s a DEMOCRAT CMS, it even starts with a D! And it runs the White House website!