I remember talking to Jishman over IM a month or two ago about how conservatives are always placing themselves in the role of victim, always imagining people are out to get them. Their narrative is always about being under seige even as they wield the levers of power they control. It’s a political narrative meant to turn out the vote and rabble rouse. Liberals want to make your child gay. Liberals are fascists trying to take away our rights. It’s a pretty pathetic yet pervasive narrative on the right. It’s so pervasive that it’s reaching absolutely idiotic proportions. Atrios posted this fundraising email from the Republican community site, RedState.com. Get a load of why they need funds:
The good news first: RedState.com is about to embark on a major upgrade of our website that will make it easier, more informative, and just plain more fun for you to visit.
The bad news: our liberal “friends” – you know, the ones who believe so strongly in free speech and open debate – have done what they can to prevent us from making these improvements, so that our influence will be minimized just as we head into the 2008 presidential primary season.
No, our Blue State buddies haven’t succeeded in stopping us from improving our website. But they’ve made it more difficult and more expensive – which is why I’m coming to you for help.
Let me explain …
You see, when we started RedState in May of 2004, we used a website program called Scoop — the same program a lot of similar sites on the left used. But, as the number of visitors to our site grew, Scoop kept crashing on us.
If we’d been a liberal website, we would have been able to fix the problem quickly and relatively cheaply. The online left loves Scoop. Unfortunately, there weren’t really any conservative Scoop developers out there to help us. We kept crashing and were out of money. We had to close down or take drastic action.
Yes, you read that right. Because they’re too inept to keep their servers running and can’t find any developers willing to donate time to support RedState.com, it’s the liberals’ fault. Uh, riiiiight.
There’s a deeper point here about how the victimization complex is an essential ingredient to Republican success. By embracing that narrative, they are able to control who their voters see as the aggressors. Coincidently, the evil other is never part of the Republican party. Hell, I’m not even convinced the evil others, this caricature of “liberals” actually even exists outside their mind.
The sad reality for them is that technology folks tend to have libertarian and liberal leanings, especially those who work on community and open source software. That whole warrantless wiretapping thing, NSA surveillance, Internet censorship, and IP policies that favor big corporations over startups and innovators… all these things don’t really line up with those of us whose entire livelihood depends on openness, innovation, and a reasonably level marketplace. The modern Republican party isn’t about any of those things. So, why should we donate time to help them?
Update: If it wasn’t obvious, I’m not saying that no developers exist that could help them… in fact, I know a few that still might want to help a Republican site out. But, this demagoguery is, as one RedState commenter put it, “so high school.”