Orwell indelibly created the image of the quacking, semi-conscious human automaton whose reality had finally been subsumed by a purely impulse-driven language (Newspeak). We know this exists in the real world because we're constantly assaulted by the psychotic behavior and inverse-logic of Republicans, but unfortunately it's a phenomenon that's independent of medium or motive: Just because you begin from a reaction against the consequences of such madness doesn't mean you won't end up more or less resembling it, and being at best a burden and at worst an active enemy to your own alleged causes. And so we find ourselves contending with people who literally believe that words like "cave," or phrases like "throw under the bus" are arguments unto themselves, if not magic talismans that make whatever they have to say instantly and unassailably credible.
Examined from a position of consciousness, the kind of gibberish and selective stenography of rumors that results - regardless of its alleged motives (it never actually means anything beyond expressing an emotional state) - is more or less a kind of Tourette's Syndrome characterized by compulsive rhetorical tics the author is seemingly helpless to avoid or even elaborate upon.
Far from being capable of taking responsibility for their environment, we find the people engaged in this sort of behavior not even able to control themselves, and instead masking infantile cries for attention under a flimsy patina of language. They take no thought for how to influence people in the directions they wish, it's just pure reaction: "Change how I feel NOW, or I'll call you names!" Even the repeated, oft-demonstrated, and borderline obvious fact that their behavior doesn't bring the results they allegedly want never changes how they respond. There is no agenda on the part of people like Jane Hamsher and Cenk Uygur, however much their actions resemble one actively hostile to the issues they claim to support. The very concept of an agenda is hostile to the state they are in - it would entail recognizing a higher priority than expressing their emotional state.
Well, there is no higher priority for them. Not their fellow activists, not the Democratic Party, not liberalism, not their country, not their world, and not even their own long-term mental health. That doesn't have to be a character judgment, just an honest assessment of where they are. In their world, asking them to hold something more important than reflexive ejaculations of hate when hate is in their hearts would be a form of tyranny, and by their perverted logic an example of something contrary to progressive values. Near-constant, omni-directed accusations that others are trying to "silence" them by merely upholding basic standards of fact and responsibility are a direct consequence of this solipsism. If a lie would better express the hate they feel than the truth, then demanding they not lie - or even demonstrating that they are lying - would be an immoral and aggressive act, from where they stand.
They've been behaving this way, and using the exact same word-salad of totemic expressions (cave, under the bus, etc.) with respect to Barack Obama since the 2008 presidential primaries, and it never changes or even evolves - they simply fill in the template with different nouns. And if my knowledge of history is any guide, this subset of left-wing politics has always existed - people who are more concerned with removing irritations to their sensibilities than they are with building a healthier community, country, and world. But there never seems to be any kind of educational process going on with them - failure does not cause self-examination, it just causes them to be even more bitterly determined to take zero responsibility and hold themselves perpetual victims of betrayal by impure others.
No lesson was learned from the 1968 Democratic primary - people who ditched Hubert Humphrey for George McGovern utterly refuse to acknowledge that Richard Nixon was the result of their choice. They blame LBJ, blame Hubert Humphrey, blame Nixon for winning, and blame the American people for not voting how they should have, but they don't ever question their own decision and what came of it. They don't question what their attempt to primary Jimmy Carter did to his 1980 candidacy, just blame Reagan for winning and the American people for not voting how they should. They don't question having supported Ralph Nader and/or verbally undermining Gore in 2000, and take no responsibility for what followed.
Even if the blame they assign to others is 100% justified, their own choices are never part of the assessment - that is something they simply will not examine: Their own words and actions are unquestionable, absolute, and not open for debate, and if you treat them as such - if you treat them as if they are adults who made decisions and should take responsibility for them, then you are The Enemy. You are Blaming The Victim by asking them to acknowledge they are not helpless, and that their actions have consequences that may adversely affect other people who do not deserve it. So it isn't surprising that a lot of how they think and talk resembles what we see from libertarians and teabaggers, another form of solipsist who considers the real-world application of equality and accountability to be some kind of oppression.
The resemblance doesn't end there: The frequent issuing of mutually exclusive demands (Lead, but Do Exactly What I Say), the obsession with betrayal and victimhood, the complete inability to comprehend a universe where their emotional impulses are not the standard of morality and intelligence, the application of directly opposite standards to themselves and to other people, uncritical if not beloved paranoia, unbounded reality-free rumor-mongering...the list doesn't really end. It's basically a case of convergent evolution: Two sets of people with very different alleged political values converging on the same attitudes and behavior because their actual values are identical - themselves uber alles. Pretending to defend some helpless other (e.g., fetuses in the case of religious wingnuts) is just a convenient totem in both cases - but you know a person's underlying motives by seeing how they behave systemically, across all issues.
Ask a "pro-Life" anti-abortionist, and most likely they love guns, war, executions, and are utterly opposed to providing free neo-natal care to indigent mothers. Ask a Nader/Hamsherite if they would support a bill increasing the budget of a social program by x dollars, and most likely they will oppose it on the grounds that it's not x+1 - to gain their rhetorical support, you would first have to convince them that it has little chance of passing. And if, after they expressed support for it, it began to seem like it might pass, then they would withdraw their support and claim they were deceived into "accepting a raw deal." You see, the only conscionable action from their standpoint is that which the status quo will not permit - if it can be done, then it's already "corrupted" by definition, and the people advancing it are some kind of traitors trying to sell the people a lemon.
The few among them even willing to justify themselves beyond attacking the person asking them might say this is some kind of rational way to continuously advance the progressive agenda, but they can't answer for the historical reality that it's usually had the opposite effect. They don't want to admit that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush were made possible by their own unwillingness to live in reality and work as a team with other human beings to make this a better country and world.
Now, I don't want it to seem like I'm saying there is something extraordinary in this: Quite the contrary. A self-defeating, cannibalistic arm of the left is a normal development of mature politics: We see it throughout the democratic world in systems with more than two parties, where there are invariably left-wing parties that never accomplish anything or achieve any significant degree of influence, but pride themselves on how much they theoretically care about the poor and otherwise underprivileged.
But we in this country don't have that luxury, because the money that rules the other side of the aisle is never going to be divided amongst itself - the ideology-driven splits we see in the GOP right now are opportune, but they are not decisive and will not last unless we choose not to mimic them. Money will always be in control on the right, even if it is temporarily weakened by its own ideological zoo running amuck from time to time, and money is never confused about how to serve itself. We can debate how to proceed on our agenda, but the only way to advance it is to be united, and the few who are completely irreconcilable to that can simply be left to go their own way and not given undue attention. They do not need our help to make things up, spew hate at Democrats, be rumor stenographers, and equate themselves with Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. because their bald-faced lying and psychotic demonization of President Obama and the vast majority of Americans who've ever lived gets HR'd.
Some people just do not want to be in control, but at the same time cannot tear their eyes away from politics. The result is an abject hypocrisy of wanting nothing more than for someone else to make all their decisions for them, but at the same time refusing to accept anything less than this other person being a doting servant of their emotional needs. They want Mommy. Well, I'm sorry - the world is bigger than you. People who actually care about this stuff do work to make it happen, they don't spend their time screaming at and lying about political leaders like a bunch of deranged tabloid gossip columnists. I'm a naturally optimistic person, so I'm never going to stop offering these people opportunities to step up to the plate and be adults, but at the same time I'm never going to be surprised when they decline the offer and stay true to form.