That's Some Malady You Got There
From
Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone:
...The problem not only with fundamentalist Christians but with Republicans in general is not that they act on blind faith, without thinking. The problem is that they are incorrigible doubters with an insatiable appetite for Evidence. What they get off on is not Believing, but in having their beliefs tested. That's why their conversations and their media are so completely dominated by implacable bogeymen: marrying gays, liberals, the ACLU, Sean Penn, Europeans and so on. Their faith both in God and in their political convictions is too weak to survive without an unceasing string of real and imaginary confrontations with those people -- and for those confrontations, they are constantly assembling evidence and facts to make their case. But here's the twist. They are not looking for facts with which to defeat opponents. They are looking for facts that ensure them an ever-expanding roster of opponents. They can be correct facts, incorrect facts, irrelevant facts, it doesn't matter. The point is not to win the argument, the point is to make sure the argument never stops. Permanent war isn't a policy imposed from above; it's an emotional imperative that rises from the bottom. In a way, it actually helps if the fact is dubious or untrue (like the Swift-boat business), because that guarantees an argument. You're arguing the particulars, where you're right, while they're arguing the underlying generalities, where they are.
And from
Billmon, in regard to the whole mini-kerfluffle about Comedy Central deciding not to air a cartoon image of the Prophet Mohammed on South Park:
(What is it with fanatics and cartoons lately? If one group isn't going bat shit over the ones they consider sacrilegious, the other group is going bat shit over the absence of the ones the first group considers sacrilegious.)
Porky Pig: Can't we all just get along?
This isn't just crazy, it's clinically complusive – as in wash your hands 50 times a day and ALWAYS arrange your lima beans in a straight line before you eat them compulsive. And whereas the enraged cartoon protestors of the Islamic world are moved by an ancient belief system that predates modern rationality, our fanatics are supposed to be members of an enlightened Western culture that is far above such primitive behavior – or at least, so they keep telling us.
Instead, the conservative movement – particularly its "social conservative" wing – is starting to resemble the thumbnail definition of monomania: i.e. the process of thinking more and more about less and less. [emphasis mine]
I'm almost tempted to say the movement is displaying some of the classic symptoms of autism, but that would be a grave insult to autistic people, who after all are often extremely intelligent and capable of doing amazing mathematical calculations in their heads, making it possible for them to win large sums of money at blackjack. Whereas the average conservative these days seems to have trouble understanding that 2+2 does not, in fact, equal 5.
Let's go back to
Matt for a minute:
Once you grasp this fact, you're a long way to understanding what the Hannitys and Limbaughs figured out long ago: These people will swallow anything you feed them, so long as it leaves them with a demon to wrestle with in their dreams.
It sure explains quite a bit, doesn't it? I would quickly add to that list media people like Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Michelle Malkin. The people that swallow the messages they receive from hucksters like these even have a name these days:
Authortarian Cultists. That label rightfully applies to the whiners that deliver the message as well. Thomas Frank -- in his amazing book,
What's the Matter with Kansas -- has coined the term Plen-T-Plaint, referring to how these media types
never stop complaining. The moniker being bandied about in Left Blogostan these days is Whiney Ass Titty Babies.
This kind of societal weirdness is a of sort I never thought would inhabit the American psyche, but there it is. It seems to go something like this: we're from the Right, and we're the only ones that know how to protect this country properly, but if you dare criticize us, we'll move all our shit into the basement and howl at the drain pipes until you stop, but that's because we're so scared, but you Lefties and Democrats certainly aren't the ones who can protect us.
Here what I'll call it: Vengeful Lunacy.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road
I'm going to get all self-referential on you and remind you that I wrote
this almost a year ago:
I'm often frustrated by how willfully ignorant the American public is of current affairs, especially of items that directly effect their safety and well being, but I also recognize that social currents work at their own pace. That may be another way of saying way too slowly for me, but hey, people have lots of things to worry about and deal with. What gives me hope is the enduring American tradition of being able to stroll by a pile of poopy, one of the things we deal with here at MC, and say, "wow, that really smells like crap".
(
editors note: I hate those "I told you so" things, but, onward anyway.)
Apparently, the American public has gotten a really, nice whiff:
(You can go
here to see the full image.)
You don't need to click on the enlarged image to see this:
- The massive first spike was after September, 11th, 2001.
- The second one came after Bush claimed: Mission Accomplished.
- The third one came after Saddam was plucked from his "rathole".
- The fourth short rise came after elections were held in Iraq.
As you can also see, he's headed for toilet country (they offer brush-cutting classes there I hear). The only way for him to get these numbers to rise is to attack another country, or to fail to prevent another attack on the U.S.
A couple of other points. The president's poll ratings are almost completely reflective of his stewardship of
foreign policy. You may remember that, throughout his life, he never had much interest in foreign affairs in the first place. That now looks to be his presidential albatross. Let's flip our worldview around and imagine if Al Gore was appointed to the Presidency, and that 9/11 happened anyway. Can we rightfully portend that the foaming Right wing
Noise Machine, led by mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, would not be calling for not only Gore's censure, but his impeachment and hanging on charges of treason? You're well told they would, but nobody's ever bothered to ask them. Instead, to them, and many others in our media, the worst attacks on the U.S. were George W. Bush's greatest moment. Look at it; it's right up there in the graph.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that, yes, we were all in shock after those attacks. The country was looking for guidance and leadership in those crazy moments, and a nationalistic sentiment seemed soothing to all.
As for me, Bush's bullhorn-standing-on-the-rubble moment, and his "go out and shop" advice had the stench of fraud all over it. I guess everyone's on the same page now.
The Good Professor Alterman
points us to these comments by one of our nation's most revered political writer, Arthur Schlesinger:
Sometimes, when I am particularly depressed, I ascribe our behavior to stupidity—the stupidity of our leadership, the stupidity of our culture. Thirty years ago we suffered military defeat—fighting an unwinnable war against a country about which we knew nothing and in which we had no vital interests at stake. Vietnam was bad enough, but to repeat the same experiment thirty years later in Iraq is a strong argument for a case of national stupidity.
History, even short history, is nothing more than a widening lens. I guess we all get the full picture in time, sadly when it's often too late.
Leak Firestorm
From
Josh Marshall, and now a million other places, we're told that I. Lewis Libby has testified under oath that he was given the green light from the president to leak classified information to bolster the administration's phony case for war:
A former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case.
The court papers from the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, do not suggest that Mr. Bush violated any law or rule. However, the new disclosure could be awkward for the president because it places him, for the first time, directly in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was provided to a reporter.
The original story comes from the
New York Sun.
What a shock. The president may have been involved in a politcal hit job. When is everyone going to wake up and realize that he's nothing more than a Republican monkey wrench born from the school of hacks like Lee Atwater and the College Republicans? End of story.
Frankly, this is getting old. We can
all dive into the
minutia and discuss whether this is legal or not, but for fuck's sake, don't we already have a pretty clear picture of the whole deal here?
As for me, this is becoming a fucking bore. Here's the unspoken truth: President George W. Bush is a fraud and a criminal. Anyone have any questions ?
Update: [04/06/2006 11:18:OO PM]Don't take my word for it, go read Molly Ivins' account, from 2003:
The Uncompassionate Conservative
Is This America's Foreign Policy?
This Iraq War? It's a good question. I've long thought that America's foreign policy has been led astray by the political influence emanating from Israel. This
piece by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that appeared in the London Review of Books spells out the history, the trends, and the consequences of the United States' unquestioned support of Israel over the last three decades.
For a
condensed version, you can go over to the ever-indispensable James Wolcott's site. He breaks it down very nicely.
It's a long piece, but I highly recommend it in its full form.
Now, am I an anti-Semite? Absolutely not. Go read the article; it addresses those charges head on in a way I concur with wholeheartedly. Those kinds of charges get hurled around by
prominent national columnists whenever anyone looks for the roots of this failed policy, and just whom might have had any real influence in getting us into this seemingly endless war.
I can feel the tug of nationalism when reading articles like these, and that's because my family has been in this country since 1604 (I'm not boasting, it's just a fact). We, as Americans, need to take a really close look at the people, and more importantly, the
money, that are influencing the foreign policy decisions that will effect us for decades.
Update: [4/05/2006: 09:25:00 PM] Ooo, Backlash. The AP put out this
piece tonight. That link will be dead soon, so let's get some quotes from the article. Here's the first sentence and quote from the article:
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke calls their work "A Modern American Declaration of Independence!"
This really sets the tone for the whole AP article: a famous rascist loves it, so in turn, that means it's nothing but a nasty hit-job; a device to attack Jews:
Since "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" was published as a "working paper" on the John F. Kennedy School of Government Web site late last month, accusations from shoddy scholarship to outright bigotry have been leveled at the academics. Walt is the Kennedy school's academic dean.
If you read the
whole piece, the authors saw this coming, and they addressed it right here:
No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism. Anyone who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy – an influence AIPAC celebrates – stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby’. In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It’s a very effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be accused of.
As expected, we get this:
"A classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis invoking the canards of Jewish power and Jewish control," was the Anti-Defamation League's assessment.
"It's David Duke with footnotes," said Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz.
I call Shenanigans: Back it up Alan, or fling your dung elsewhere. Oh, there's more:
The paper describes what it says is "unwavering" support by the U.S. for Israel, economically and militarily, and rejects the moral or strategic cases for such backing.
The authors contend that a powerful "Israel Lobby" — a loose coalition of groups, including Christian evangelicals, pro-Israel lobbyists and mainstream media — pressures lawmakers and opinion makers to adopt policies that help Israel, but often hurt U.S. interests.
Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for instance, the paper says, "Thanks to the Lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians."
The authors also write: "The U.S. has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around."
The quote I've highlighted there is the ugly truth that the American political establishment will not even entertain.
To be fair, we need to excerpt this part of the article where Derschowitz responds:
Dershowitz said the paper's claims are "recycled garbage" that have been forwarded by hate groups for years. A paper he wrote to expose what he said are the paper's numerous factual and logical errors was posted Wednesday on the Kennedy school's Web site.
Nowhere, in the entire AP article, is there any solid evidence that refutes the argument put forth by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt? It's all name-calling.
I realize that the AP churns this shit out at a furious rate, so maybe we can cut Jay Lindsay some slack, but do some ground work, you asswipe. To Jay's credit, he gets one thing right: Duke and Dershowitz are both intolerable, fucking rascists. Paint their stripes whichever way you want.
(Name-calling's fun, eh?)
