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Instead of Understanding, Liberals Feel

-By Warner Todd Huston

My recent flap with the extreme leftists in the comics community brought home once again the simple fact that liberals don’t understand the definitions of words, cannot think logically, and don’t have the tiniest ability to understand complex concepts. Despite their mental incapacities, though, they are sure they are smarter, more civilized, and more tolerant than those they hate and all this they assume while they name-call everyone that disagrees with them. To top it all off there is a surfeit of self-esteem, no doubt instilled in them boy our liberal, and failed, public school system.

Last week I wrote a critical analysis of a Marvel Comics comic book that sent these unhinged lefties off the deep end. The criticism thrown at me by these poor, Peter Pan Syndrome suffering folks is, however, a great object lesson in how badly educated, how illogical, and how distempered the left truly is.

These emails and replies to my comic book analysis really brought it home that to be a liberal you must make assumptions of your enemy so that they fit neatly into your preconceived notions of the world and you must never try to ask them any questions to determine if they really do fit into the box you’ve constructed for them. You must assume you are more grown up than those you attack. You must assume that you are more intelligent. You also must assume that people that like the same sort of things that you like must think just like you do. In other words, to be a liberal you must begin every discussion, every consideration of ideological premises, with the base assumption that all good people are just like you. Everyone else is venal, mean, stupid or low. Not just wrong, but evil.

I should start this discussion by saying that there isn’t anything wrong with enjoying comic books, even as an adult. They can be fun, for sure. But to imagine that comic books offer anything other than lowgrade entertainment is laughable. Comics are not high art (in fact, most of them are horrible even as graphic art) and they most certainly do not equal anything of the sort of deep, consequential literature. Comics are a childish, formulaic, lowest common denominator form of entertainment. It doesn’t make them evil or useless or bad necessarily. It just makes them low-end, fun. They are nothing to be taken seriously. If you are someone that lives for your next comic, or you want to claim that comic books are “art” worthy of serious consideration… you need to get out of your parent’s basement a little more often. Still, they can be fun if treated as the mindless entertainment that they are. Call it a guilty pleasure, something that for a few hours or so might help you take your mind off the harsh glare of reality.

Now that said, let’s review some of the vitriol and venom unleashed by these poor, deluded individuals as a result of my criticism of their funny book.

Of course, I cannot go into the dozens of misspelled, grammatically challenged, half-literate emails I got from comics lovers across the country as it would be just too much to try and distill. But there is one source, a single webpage that serves as the perfect vehicle to showcase all the worst embodied in the American left.

The page in question is billed as an “Open Letter to Warner Todd Huston,” and is hosted by the Comic Book Resources website. This letter is a perfect example of the arrogance inherent in the left. But the comments are even better as classic leftist, self-congratulatory vitriol, hatred and self-delusion.

The “letter” was written by one Carla Hoffman and is replete with uninformed assumptions, hackneyed pop psychology, all wrapped up in a total failure to observe the first tenet in journalism: contact your subject before you write anything.

Young Miss Hoffman begins her piece assuming that the specific comic I criticized (Captain America #602) was the first comic book I’d ever seen in my life. She begins her snarky, self-satisfied piece by “welcoming” me to the world of comics and hoping I “stay around.” Should she have observed the first tenet of the journalist’s trade and tried to contact me she’d have learned that I’d been collecting comics since before she was born. At one time I had 5,000 titles in my collection. So her “welcome” to me came some 35 years or so too late. She’d have known that if she made even the slightest attempt to contact me. Ah. but let’s not let facts get in the way of some good lefty hatred, shall we?

As it happens, the left leaning of comics made me tire of them and I stopped collecting heavily around the same time that the left-wing comic book series called “Watchmen” came out in 1986. (Here is a thorough review of that work that I wrote a decade ago.)

Of course, this uninformed assumption shows her arrogance. You see, because I criticized the comic book she assumed that I couldn’t possibly have ever liked comics. After all, she disagrees with me and she likes comics. In her liberal’s warped mind, I couldn’t possibly like something she likes simply because I do not slavishly agree with her every thought. It just couldn’t be that I’d like comics, too. Therefore, she has to assume that I’d never seen one in my life. Were I to be ignorant of the comics industry, why then she could dismiss my opinion because, to her, it would be uninformed. But were I to like comics, then she’d be faced with the realization that someone that likes something she likes has a different opinion than she does. It is a breach of a liberal mindset for her to imagine that there could possibly be such diversity in the world. So, for her it was “obvious” that I must never have known the world of comics. Anything else is a mind-shattering paradigm for her, one she could not emotionally face.

Then there was the accidental irony she indulged. Unintentionally funny was her prosaic proclamation that the Internet spawns “strong opinion” as if my piece was merely that, yet her’s isn’t. Naturally, right after that she indulges her own strong opinion. This shows that there is no such thing as introspection for the wacko left.

Next she revealed her complete lack of any understanding of contemporary politics. Catch this ignorance:

“What you can only describe as a Tea Party protest, I can see as a pro-Bush rally.”

Apparently someone forgot to alert little Miss Hoffman that there haven’t been any “Pro-Bush rallies” since about 2003 when he last ran for president. Further, Miss Hoffman obviously has no clue that the Tea Party movement is just as mad at Bush as they are Clinton and Obama. If she thinks that Tea Party rallies were “pro-Bush” then she is ignorant of today’s political reality. So, no little lady, the protests in discussion could not possibly be seen as “pro-Bush” rallies.

She also reveals her fanboy (or fangirl, if you will) disconnect with reality with this:

“If you replaced Sam Wilson (that’s the Falcon, the black character you mention in your report’s real name)…”

Uh, no. Sam Wilson is not his “real name.” Sam Wilson is a character’s name. It isn’t a real person we’re talking about here. This poor young lady cannot tell reality from fiction, apparently.

Anyway, there’s an awful lot more in this poor girl’s “open letter” that puts her in a pretty bad light for logic, intelligence, and delusion. Since right after her letter to me I replied. (You can see my reply here, too), let’s get to the unhinged, hatemongers that chose to reply to my posting after Hoffman’s.

Here’s the first notable one: “Wow. What a … completely unbiased response from Mr. Huston.”

This poor fellow doesn’t seem to be educated enough to know what the word “unbiased” means. Both Miss Hoffman’s “open letter” and my original piece were opinions. By the very nature of an opinion one must assume we are dealing with bias. How I could have replied to Miss Hoffman in an “unbiased” way when the whole subject at hand was my own opinion is a stumper, indeed. This fellow’s education sorely failed him.

Like Miss Hoffman’s, this first reply is filled with non sequiturs, illogic and self-delusion… oh, but there is a surfeit of self-esteem.

There were, of course, all sorts of distempered name calling and obscene language, the sort we’ve come to expect from the left. There was the ever common “asshole,” the varied spellings of “douche bag,” an occasional “jerk,” and “Nazi.” Even at least one “fucking clown” was thrown in for good measure. But remember, each and every one of these poor youngsters assumed that they were more open minded, nicer, more tolerant than that mean old Warner Todd Huston.

One guy with the oddly spelled name of “Skott” amused me by making fun of me for using all three of my names, yet saw his way clear to being mad at me for being amused that he spelled his name with a “k” instead of the more common “c.” Once again a lack of introspection reigns.

Here was a great left-wing non sequitur form some half-wit named Sean T. Collins: “Wow, Carla is both younger than this guy and in possession of a vagina. Argument over! “ What does this mean? Not a thing, but it sure sounds good, eh? Naturally I never made any gender based arguments. I never said anything about her age other than to note that I was probably collecting before she was born and I didn’t say a word about “vaginas.” On second thought this whole things does make me wonder why the comic book industry has drawn so many pussies to it.

There was one fellow that came to my aid. One. My guess is he is shunned by the rest of the more “open-minded” folks at the CBR website, though. He was responding to the misquotes posted by one poster that came from a one-time Wikipedia page that was posted about me a year or so ago. The Wiki page had so many lies in it that Wikipedia was forced to take it down. But, as in many things, leftist lies never die.

Another by the name of Blade X also agreed that Marvel was, indeed, putting its own anti-tea party opinions in Captain America #602. Naturally no one replied to these folks that were sort of sticking up for me because to do so would destroy their faux solidarity.

Then there’s the penchant to wacky conspiracy theories that so many way-out-lefties so commonly fall into. One amusing little fellow named “Brother Justin Crowe” advanced the odd theory that I spend my days keying in fake comments on my own website to make it seem happenin,’ apparently. That one made me laugh.

Yes, there was the claim that I am being schooled, that these folks are “calling me out,” and that the whole comic book community was on to me. I am shaking in my boots. I have more readers on a daily basis than some of these comic books have sales, so their opprobrium doesn’t leave me too worried.

In the final analysis, this abstruse, ill-tempered, profane display of ignorance and foolish, deluded behavior is very typical of the poor education that our state sponsored schools doles out turning so many of our young Americans into such poorly trained citizens. No wonder they like comics so much. They haven’t the capacity to grasp anything of greater depth.

Still, I do want to thank all these venomous little whelps. Their hatred does a great job in showing how far the American left has fallen. Thanks guys. It’s been fun while it lasted. Now I have more important things to write about, so I hope you don’t get too upset that I am moving on from you?

But, I do have one bit of advice. Put down the funny books and pick up a real book once in a while, will you? It might broaden your perspective a tad. Ta ta, fellas.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.

He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston

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