It's whatever, dude. The problem is you can't start a convivial discussion with "Your attitude is exactly what the author talks about" no matter how "respectful" you think you're being... and when your every point is answered and refuted, the "respectful" thing to do is acknowledge it.

As far as "smugness" - when the people who disapprove of your lifestyle, your music, your hair, your friends, your clothing, the car you drive, the job you hold, the bar you attend, the beer you drink, the parties you throw, the food you eat, the teams you cheer, the church you attend and the way you vote are proven, time and time and time again, to be having their prejudices stoked and their best interests obfuscated, what the fuck are you supposed to be? Because aside from "freedom to carry a gun around" the conservative movement is all about restricting individual rights. Even if the average liberal reaction was pure magnanimous beatitude, shitfucks like Emmett Rensin would still call us out for condescension or some shit.

This little twiddlefuck was fourteen in 2004. He boiled "the world's greatest books" down to 2800 characters but castigating liberals for being self-congratulatory? 7200 words.

This is not a call for civility. Manners are not enough. The smug style did not arise by accident, and it cannot be abolished with a little self-reproach. So long as liberals cannot find common cause with the larger section of the American working class, they will search for reasons to justify that failure. They will resent them. They will find, over and over, how easy it is to justify abandoning them further. They will choose the smug style.

Maybe the cycle is too deeply set already. Perhaps the divide, the disdain, the whole crack-up are inevitable. But if liberal good intentions are to make a play for a better future, they cannot merely recognize the ways they've come to hate their former allies. They must begin to mend the ways they lost them in the first place.

I have shoes older than you, bitch, and The Southern Strategy was old enough to vote itself BEFORE YOU WERE EVEN BORN. So let's not talk too much about "cycles" and "intentions" when you've only been able to vote for president three times.... at least, if you're going to pretend that history doesn't exist.