Divide and Conquer, Monster Making 101

by: Rob Kailey

Thu Jul 07, 2011 at 17:55:53 PM MST

Here is Deschamps' letter.

There was some discussion at the MCBlog about how Deschamps may regret the timing of his letter given the oil spill.  He must be an idiot not to see how that would play in the popular will.  Further, he must be an idiot to suggest that Exxon would be better served by hauling their own gas for the mega-rigs, given that the rigs hauling the gas would also need gas.  And I speak with a bit of inside knowledge when I tell you driving further for motel rooms in the Summer travel season is a fool's quest.  Deschamps call for Exxon to f**k Missoula is pretty idiotic, except that Deschamps isn't an idiot.

The Cowgirl Blog, as did the Montana Democratic party jumped Dennis Rehberg as an accomplice to this heinous tantrum from the Montana GOP.  I suggest that the heinous tantrum was precisely the point.  The post at the Montana Cowgirl Blog writes:

Rehberg's campaign manager has been going on the radio to say Republicans are going after Missoula voters.  Too bad now we know how Rehberg's party really feels about jobs in Missoula

That was the point of Deschamps' letter.  He wants to separate the rest of the state from the very identity that Missoula holds dear.  Missoula is a bastion of liberalism, the bastion of liberalism, and don't any dare to appeal to those false wizards for help because they don't care for you.  He's not terribly wrong in pointing that out, just terribly wrong in the implication of it.

If one needs more evidence that this is a concerted attack, then I give you Rob Natelson.  He is rather clumsy about his effort, and writes too close to the truth.  The GOP doesn't want people to disagree with Missoula.  They want people to think that Missoulians are "weird".  They want them punished.  They want others like-minded to be wary, or distrustful (frankly something that the vocal in Missoula make very easy.)  More than anything, they desire the Missoula voice to have little impact in the elections of 2012.  If they convince Missoulians what those folk already are desperate to believe, that they are an island in a sea of nasty conservatism, then the GOP's job is already half done.  I ask the readers here to keep that in mind.        

More Shameless Scolds - We Had It Comin' Edition

by: Rob Kailey

Tue Jul 05, 2011 at 17:55:33 PM MST

Crooks and Liars is probably one of the finest, information rich, broad-spectrum progressive blogs out there. I was an occasional reader until David Neiwert became a regular poster there. Now I read it almost daily.  David had a post up yestereve about the Exxon oil spill in the Yellowstone river.  You've certainly read about that by now, on Twitter, the newspapers, blogs local and otherwise.  In other words, you know about it if you haven't been holed up in a cabin near Lincoln for 5 days.  jhwygirl has been blogging her heart out about it, and kudos to her.  So, let's just take it as wrote that you know that a broken Exxon pipeline has spilled an as yet undetermined amount of crude oil into the Yellowstone river, with as yet undetermined environmental and economic impact.

David Neiwert, himself a son of the mountain west, shared this story with the readers at Crooks and Liars.  His post:

Oh, those annoying peasants: Montanans outraged by Exxon/Mobil's tepid response to Yellowstone River oil spill

The post is very similar to what jhwygirl has been sharing with us.  What slapped me back were the comments, and if'n you have the urge you probably ought to read them.  If you don't, let me share the basic tenor of them here:  "Serves you right, you red state assholes!"  No concern or commentary about the environmental impact to the region.  No exposure of Exxon's duplicity, beyond the all-knowing smugness.  No discussion of possible future economic impact in a recessed economy.  Nope, just a whole lot of ignorant triumphalism based on the color of our state's outline on the CNN electoral maps.

My personal favorite comments were the one that claims no one in Montana cared about the Gulf oil spill (not even remotely true), so we deserve to suffer, and the one that castigated us all for having voted for Dick Cheney.  Montana, Wyoming, all the same when you establish your progressive cred by dissing a red state you know nothing about.  There was no mention of Jon Tester and his attempt to get rid of oil and gas subsidies or his attempts to better regulate the petroleum industry.  No mention at all of Dennis Rehberg and his eternal support of petroleum subsidies or his donations from that industry.  The message in those comments is fairly clear.  We're a bunch of rednecks who deserve to have one of the nation's premier rivers choked with oil because John McCain beat Barack Obama here by a whopping 2.4%.  Suck on that, red-staters.

There's a few takeaways here for me.  One is that blog commenters don't tend to think about what they write any more at large blogs than at small ones. Two, anger at 'the other' trumps rational thought just as much among progressives as any other grouping, and it's seemingly terribly delicious to put that anger on display.  There's a passel more thoughts but the reader can decide what they will.