Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

While I'm talking about current political memes, there's another one floating around the right-side of the politico-verse that's starting to really bug me: it's the idea that those of us on the left, failing to be properly impressed with the way things are going, are not seeing what's obviously, objectively, and rationally true, but are instead actively hoping for bad things to happen because we think it will help us get Democrats elected next time out.

This is stupid, asinine, and obnoxious hogwash.

My belief that President Bush's economic policies are not doing much to alleviate problems in the economy right now, and that they are further likely to cause some serious problems down the road, does not mean that I'm hoping the American economy stays in the toilet. (Yeah, I know, the recession has been declared "officially over" as of eighteen months or so ago. I don't care. As long as the GDP grows but my own wallet shrinks, my own counsel will I keep on the state of the economy, to paraphrase Yoda.) Believe me, I'll be happy as a pig in a dunghill if the economy generates nine million new jobs between today and next November.

And ditto on the war. I'm tired of seeing people who don't think that things are going just swimmingly in Iraq being portrayed as irrational boobs. (SDB is getting pretty obnoxious on this front.) I'm not hoping that this war turns out to be a disaster, and I'm tired of seeing people I agree with being called "irrational", "illogical", "out to lunch", or whatever other euphemism for "stupid" you can think of just because we happen to think that the WMD-rationale, and the lack of actual weapons, is important after all; that the looting of the Iraqi National Museum really did happen; that the continued guerilla actions constitute both a continuation of hostilities (despite what the President may have said in his Busby Berkeley-style photo op two months ago) and and indicative of a curious lack of planning on the part of the people in charge.

Just because I see plenty of potential for bad news does not imply that I want to see bad news, and I'd like it if conservatives would stop acting as though I (and people on my side of the fence) do.