Have a ranting Christmas

Julian Sanchez proves my point, not his. But I'm not in a mood to argue at length, for to do so would be as foolishly wasteful as a New York Times op-ed columnist devoting 773 words to the theological implications of Avatar.

Merry Christmas, Julian. (And in case you didn't hear, the science is settled: Avatar sucks.)

More evidence (as if more were needed) that Conor Friedersdorf is a narcissist

Arguing with a narcissist is pointless, because the narcissist doesn't really care about the merits on either side of the argument. The ultimate point of the narcissist's argument is his own superiority (cf., Charles Johnson).

So it is with Conor Friedersdorf and the question of whether Sarah Palin's supporters are motivated by ressentiment. Julian Sanchez argued so last week, offering little more than a highhanded rehash of the ancient Adorno/Hofstadter psychoanalytic putdown of conservatism -- "status anxiety," blah, blah, blah -- which required in response that the knife be thrust to the hilt. ("When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way.")

It happened that Sanchez had linked Conor Friedersdorf's guest-blog at the Daily Dish, Palin-Hater HQ since the day she was announced as John McCain's running mate. And today Friedersdorf returned to the subject with the telling assertion that Sanchez's critics merely prove that he, Conor, was right:

When the Rebuttals Prove Your Point
In the last couple days, Julian Sanchez and I wrote posts arguing that a vocal group on the right are engaging in what Mr. Sanchez terms "the politics of ressentiment." . . .
It is noteworthy that both of us used the words "inferiority complex" in our posts . . .

(Is "noteworthy" a synonym for "tautological"?)

Indeed, explicit in our posts is the assumption that their "complex" is irrational. "Mark Levin, a man intelligent enough that he needn't have an inferiority complex," I wrote, "for some reason adopts the rhetorical style of the classic insecure bully -- juvenile name calling, constant self-aggrandizement, vituperative outbursts." . . .

Read the whole thing, or don't, if you wish to avoid the annoyance. In his first two paragraphs, Friedersdorf employs six first-person singular pronouns, a giveaway of his narcissistic purpose, his objective being to demonstrate his own superiority to . . . well, everyone, really.

Conor is engaged in the politics of aspiration, aiming to win acceptance by the elite as a certified intellectual, a pundit. This requires that he shoulder the heavy burden of fiercely defending his own reputation. It won't do to allow Sanchez to one-up him and steal his thunder. Therefore "I . . . I . . . I . . . I . . . my . . . I."

Sanchez's argument was wrong, but it was at least interesting and eloquent in its wrongness -- a lively read, no matter how infuriatingly smug its underlying assumptions. By contrast, the writing in Conor's posts (both the original and its sequel) is lifelessly leaden, weighed down by a stultifying self-seriousness.

Conor's arguments aren't actually about Sarah Palin or her supporters (or Matt Continetti's defense of Palin). Conor is arguing on behalf of Conor: Take Me Seriously, Dammit!

Good luck with that.

UPDATE: Via Instapundit, we find Ann Althouse engaged with another Daily Dish problem: Is you is or is you ain't Sully? Under fire from Lachlan Markay of Newsbusters, the former pseudo-Sully Patrick Appel responds:

Lachlan Markay pretends that my doing research for Andrew is the same as Lynn Vincent writing Sarah Palin's book.

Well, don't that beat all? There was never any deception involved in Lynn's collaboration with Palin, and it is the question of deception -- How much surreptitious work did others do under Sully's byline? -- that is at issue here. Ah, remember those halcyon days when Sully excoriated Rick Bragg for employing uncredited stringers?

Rick Bragg's self-righteous and self-pitying defense of his dubious journalistic methods appears to have been the last straw for some others at the NYT.

"Dubious journalistic methods," said Sully, who now employs ghostbloggers to perform mere punditry -- and then goes on vacation, leaving his erstwhile alter-ego to defend the practice!

Glenn Greenwald's sockpuppets must be laughing themselves silly over this . . .

Julian Sanchez is neither a.) conservative nor b.) correct

Therefore, he misses on either definition of "right":

Conservatism is a political philosophy; the farce currently performing under that marquee is an inferiority complex in political philosophy drag.

Well, thanks for your assertion, Julian. Thanks also to Theodor Adorno, Richard Hofstadter and every other practicioner of the Psychoanalytic School of political theory that inevitably views popular opposition to liberalism in such terms.

From the psychoanalytic perspective, there can be no rational objection to, inter alia, EFCA, the Waxman-Markey bill, or the health-care legislation passed by the House and now pending in the Senate. Nor for that matter could any reasonable person object to the sharp turn toward Keynesianism -- massive deficit spending for bailouts and "stimulus" -- that began in the final year of the Bush administration.

Turning Sarah Palin (or Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc.) into a symbol, and then analyzing reactions to that symbol from a perspective of cultural criticism, is a sort of avoidance strategy.

In the real world of politics, Obama and his supporters are desperately attempting to pass a health-care bill -- any health-care bill -- just so they can claim to have accomplished something useful since his inauguration. Every new poll shows a new low in Obama's popularity, and Democrats are beginning to fret about a massive electoral backlash next November.

Shorter Sancher:

"Hey, let's change the subject and talk about what a bunch of yahoos those Republicans are!"

If you do not like Palin, it is not surprising that you also do not like her supporters. Nor is it surprising that if you are a clever writer, as Julian is, you will be able to compose an essay justifying your dislikes. But this merely proves you're a clever writer, doesn't it? If Julian Sanchez does not like Budweiser beer, his argument against Budweiser will be persuasive, but we ought not confuse his skill in argument with the merits of the beer. To wit:

The secret shame of the conservative base is that they've internalized the enemy's secular cosmopolitan value set and status hierarchy -- hence this obsession with the idea that somewhere, someone who went to Harvard might be snickering at them.

An eloquent sentence. Yet it strains the imagination to conjure up an engagement between (a) "the conservative base" and (b) their "secular cosmopolitan" antagonists, in which Julian Sanchez would declare at the end that the conservatives had deservedly routed their foe. He despises all provincialisms -- except his own, and certainly the provincialism of Alaska's former governor is not of the Sanchezian sort.

Sanchez is entitled to his class prejudices, but we are not required to share them, no matter how much he ridicules us --- really, Julian, our "secret shame"? -- with criticism that treats political disagreement as a form of neurosis.