Liberals give Eastwood the Soviet treatment

Clint Eastwood’s remarkable and original take-down of Obama Thursday night seems to have the entire liberal system in a tizzy. They’ve gone Soviet on him—claiming, in a single, swelling voice heard throughout the media, that he’s nuts, senile, a crazy old coot, or, as the “conservative” New York Post has it on today’s front page, “Off His Rocker.”

Do readers know what I mean here by “Soviet”? In the old USSR, dissidents were officially classified as mentally ill. It is instructive to see the liberal system giving the same treatment to a celebrity—whom for the last 20 years they had lauded for his fashionably liberal, anti-American movies—solely because he has now expressed, in an extremely effective manner, the damaging truth about Obama.

I’ve been saying since last year that no leftward turn taken by America in the future would surprise me, including its turning into a Soviet-style tyranny. Not that I expect that to happen, but I no longer consider it impossible.

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David B. writes:

Yes, Eastwood is getting the Soviet treatment. The left has been doing this for a long time. At bottom, a leftist thinks a conservative is crazy or mentally ill to hold such views.

It has also occured to me that America might eventually become a Soviet-style dictatorship. So-called liberals are becoming more vicious every year in what they think of their opponents.

Clark Coleman writes:

Michael Savage wrote a book in 2005 called “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.” I realize that you have never condoned the excesses of Michael Savage and others like him in the conservative media, but it is sobering to contemplate that many conservatives feel justified in stooping to the level of leftists in their rhetoric. Doing so erases some important distinctions. It used to be that I could say that there was an asymmetry between left and right; the conservative considers the liberal to be naive in his utopianism, while the liberal cannot comprehend anyone whose thinking is not utopian, and concludes that conservatives don’t oppose utopian schemes because the conservative believes they won’t work, but because the conservative truly does not care about women, children, the elderly, etc. I was proud that we occupied the high ground. Now, I cannot say that conservatives as a group occupy the high ground, only that I try to do so personally.

Matt Bracken writes:

You wrote:

“I’ve been saying since last year that no leftward turn taken by America in the future would surprise me, including its turning into a Soviet-style tyranny. Not that I expect that to happen, but I no longer consider it impossible.”

That’s why my standard retort has become:

“Welcome to the USSA, comrades.”

Paul K. writes:

Michael Moore thought Eastwood’s presentation was self-evidently senile—in fact, one of the most bizarre “senior moments” in the history of the Republic:

The footage of Eastwood rambling and mumbling to his “Harvey”—President Obama—will be played to audiences a hundred years from now as the Most Bizarre Convention Moment Ever. The people of the future will know nothing about Dirty Harry or Josey Wales or Million Dollar Baby. They will know about the night a crazy old man hijacked a national party’s most important gathering so he could literally tell the president to go do something to himself (i.e. fuck himself). In those few moments (and these days, it only takes a few moments—see Anthony Weiner), he completely upended and redefined how he’ll be remembered by younger and future generations….

I finally watched it on-line today and agree with you that it was brilliant. Unlike the other speeches, full of meaningless boilerplate cliches, Eastwood spoke from the heart and made reasonable points, without ginned-up partisan rancor. I felt I was listening to a normal person discuss his concerns.

Alexis Zarkov writes:

I found Clint Eastwood’s little skit the most creative moment of the whole convention. Everything else I saw was scripted and stiff, although I didn’t watch the whole thing. The liberal world would have been effusive with praise for an actor poking fun at Romney. They would have excused any transgression of protocol under artistic license. Eastwood did seem somewhat frail, but hardly demented. Flinging a “senile” or “off-his-rocker” charge at Eastwood for his politics does indeed resemble Soviet methods of dealing with dissidents. State psychiatrists invented a whole new category of mental illness called “sluggish schizophrenia,” a medical diagnosis so vague it could apply to anyone.

We are coming dangerously close to the Soviets here. Recently the combined forces of the FBI, Secret Service, and the local police descended on former Marine Brendon Raub, dragging him off in handcuffs. No warrant, no charge, and no comment from the local police claiming there was no arrest. Two judges signed off on an involuntary incarceration in a mental institution. What provoked our security organs to target a decorated military veteran? Remarks on his private Facebook page. Fortunately for Raub the paperwork was sloppy and a circuit judge ordered him released. Raub has filed a civil action against the government. A citizen has much to fear from such an involuntary incarceration. While in custody, doctors can force atypical antipsychotic medications on you. In high enough doses, these medications can induce what looks like abnormal behavior making the incarceration seem justified. In some ways, a criminal prisoner has more rights. The security organs can do an end run around around your constitutional rights with the medical system. The linked-to story on the civil action has a video of an interview with Raub. VFR readers can judge Raub’s sanity for themselves.

LA writes:

On a side point, I’ve noticed people using the initials “RNC” for Republican National Convention. I’ve never seen this before, and I think it’s incorrect. RNC has always stood for Republican National Committee, just as DNC stands for Democratic National Committee. To apply those same initials to the respective party conventions is confusing and wrong.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 01, 2012 04:15 PM | Send