This will be a brief meta diary. Today I have had the pleasure of reading two diaries with Palin's name in the title, both of which were well argued, about what the best strategy for Progressives is dealing with the Obama administration.
Then I had the displeasure of reading the news from Hungary:
Fidesz's landslide victory had been expected by pollsters and its result of 52.8 percent in the first round translated into 206 seats for now in the 386-seat legislature.
The governing Socialists, whom many Hungarians blame for their dismal economy, were far behind with 19.3 percent and 28 seats, followed closely by the far-right, anti-Gypsy Jobbik with 26 seats and 16.7 percent — over three times as much as any other far-right party since the country's return to democracy from communism in 1990.....
To varying degrees, Jews and Gypsies have traditionally served as scapegoats in Eastern Europe for resident majorities during hard times. Jobbik has been able to inflate the traditional, relatively small base of extreme nationalist and anti-Semitic supporters with voters from Hungary's struggling country villages where the lack of jobs and poverty-related thievery has exacerbated tensions with Gypsies, or Roma, as they are also called.
This is the kind of thing that has been happening all across Europe, a trend that began in the 1990s and has accelerated since, whether the BNP in Britain, the PVV in the Netherlands, Berlusconi in Italy, the National Front in France, the FPO in Austria, the underground fascist movement in Russia, or this recent result in Hungary. The uniformity of the far right rise across European countries with vastly disparate histories (except for those with particularly damning histories of fascism, such as Germany and Spain) is deeply disturbing.
Even more so when paired with the slightly more benign American version is the extreme right would be the tea party, which makes Newt Gingrich, once the boogey man of the right, look moderate and reasonable. Who in turn makes Barry Goldwater look liberal. Who in turn makes Richard Nixon look liberal. And so on.
Either it stops at some point, or it doesn't.
Folks, it is no longer about Progressives versus Moderates. Or Republicans versus Democrats. Or even Progressives versus Conservatives.
It is now about reasonable people versus nuts. That is what it is about-- reasonable conservatives, all moderates, and all Progressives on one side, and the nuts on the other side. If it is not yet there today, it will be in the future given our present direction. So all your infighting is of limited, tactical consequence only. That is the broader context. Sooner or later, you will be forced, even if dragged kicking and screaming, together out of the need to face a common enemy.
And to be honest, between the latter group-- reasonable conservatives, all moderates, and all Progressives, much less between different factions of the Daily Kos, I don't give a sh_t who wins, compared to the battle between the reasonable people and the nuts.