Lukewarm Broth
by digby
Yesterday I wrote about Applebee’s America, Gerald Ford and the beltway’s desperate desire to keep the dirty hippies from running amock. The new mantra is that just as we needed to “heal” by forgiving Nixon after he raped the nation, today we must likewise “heal” by forgiving and forgetting the utter hell the Republicans just put this country through for the last twelve years of trumped up scandal, impeachments, stolen elections, bankrupting the treasury, illegal warrs, and constitution shredding. Kumbay-frigging-yah.
Today, more proof of my thesis. Here’s that fabulous new online “entity” called Hotsoup, whose editor in chief is none other than Ron Fournier, one of the authors of the aforementioned “Applebee’s America”:
We’ve had a HOTSOUP debate over whether Ford’s pardon helped heal a divided country. To those who say nobody’s mind is ever changed in these debates, I’ll prove you wrong – I’ve been convinced here that Ford’s pardon was a huge sacrifice to pull our partisan nation back together. And now, by the most amazing coincidence, we’re all talking about his sacrifices at a time when our country is again dangerously divided. Ford’s passing away has put the importance of reunification back in the public focus. Ultimately, that may have been what Ford wanted. Can we put this reunifying idea back in the government’s focus? By ‘we’, I don’t mean the general public. I mean us folks on HOTSOUP. We’ve got a good cross-section of politically-minded people here. Maybe we can get some action going? What’s say we try to get the 110th congress to pledge this year’s session to the memory of Gerald Ford by working to reunify the country even at the cost of hard work and self-sacrifice. Here is the “Ford Pledge”:
“In honor of Gerald Ford, his decency, and the tremendous sacrifices he made to heal this country at a time of division, I pledge to spend 2007 working towards a similar depolarization – by cooperating with peers from opposing camps, by putting my countrymen’s needs before my party’s, and by making sacrifices if necessary. We stand stronger when united, and I pledge to lead my country by good example, just as I have been led by Gerald Ford’s good example. I pledge to spend 2007 working towards that strong unity, and I dedicate that work to Gerald Ford’s memory.”
Please do two things with this pledge:
1.) Mail it to your congressman. Request that they read it publicly. Please also send a link to this page, so they’ll know that this is a rather large grassroots movement. You can find the congressional web pages at http://www.house.gov/.
Gerald Ford made tremendous sacrifices? Because he had to give up the White House? Please.
The country was plenty polarized after Ford took office and it has remained so, to one degree or another ever since. I’m sure the Republicans are aware that something quite significant happened after Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon:
The U.S. House election, 1974 was an election for the United States House of Representatives in 1974 that occurred in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which had forced President Richard M. Nixon to resign in favor of Gerald Ford. This scandal allowed the Democratic Party to make large gains in the House election, taking 49 seats from the Republican Party and increasing their majority above the two-thirds mark
Reagan later created a large majority that didn’t last beyond his own brand of personality politics but the country has pretty much remained polarized ever since then. If these people want to end polarization, the way to do it is to have the reckoning that’s overdue by about 30 years.
But ending polarization isn’t what these guys care about at all. The beltway is filled with rich, indulgent parents who refuse to be responsible adults and force these miscreants to change their behavior, so they start screaming for mercy for the Republicans everytime they screw up. They are afraid of the deafening howls of outrage and threatened retribution from these GOP bullies when they are held accountable for what they’ve done. (They also find it unseemly that such people would be answerable to hoi polloi. Best for everyone to simply sweep it under the rug.)
If America wants more Nixons and more George W. Bushes they will drink the lukewarm beltway kool-aid and do what these people want them to do. If they want their country back they will put an end to this cycle right now. Once all the secrecy and lies and thievery have been exposed and examined, then maybe we can work on reconciliation. Until then, this is just beltway cowards’ appeasing the wingnut lunatics.
Update: Here’s a delicious screed riffing on the same theme: the beltway’s irrational fear of hippies.
Beware the dirty hippies. They’re immature and irresponsible. They’re utopians and dreamers. They meddle with lives and hate Christian values and blame America first and root for terrorists. They want free sex and legalized drugs and mandatory abortion. They want to eat your babies. They heart Satan.
This enormous backlash against revolutionary leftism continued growing and gaining strength long after revolutionary leftism petered out as a political force of any real influence. The narratives and habits of mind bequeathed us by the culture war are with us still, despite the long-ago disappearance of one combatant. It’s shadowboxing on a nationwide scale, and it shows no signs of abating.
Any number of examples could be cited. The same dynamic plays out on virtually every issue: there’s the virulent far-right position, funded by deep-pocketed reactionaries and pushed by talk radio, an enormous network of mutually reinforcing conservative pundits in every major media outlet, an entire cable news network (three now, really), and numerous powerful politicians in leadership positions in every branch of government. Then there’s the avowedly liberal position, represented by some obscure professor or a guy in the comment section of a blog or a random placard at a protest. Then there’s the “centrist” position, which is the far-right position with the edges rubbed off.
How does one establish oneself as a “centrist”? Why, by bashing the dirty hippies. After all, if you bash the virulent reactionaries, you’re criticizing “real Americans” and the heartland and the baby Jesus. Everybody positions themselves by way of their distance from the — at this point largely mythical — dirty hippie. There’s no faster route to media exposure for someone on the left that to spend every minute of the day criticizing other people on the left. Mickey Kaus. Joe Klein. Richard Cohen. Joe Lieberman. The list goes on and on.
Or in the words of Joe Klein:
Oh, Ana, I disagree–and my disagreement is about substance rather than positioning…
Liberals were “right” about Vietnam, but they have paid a price ever since because they were so obnoxious about their correctness. The leftier liberals proceeded to see Vietnam in every American military initiative–the placement of Pershing missiles in Europe, Star Wars, the removal of Noriega, the first Gulf War–and they suffered as a result. Just because they’re right about Iraq, and about this escalation, it doesn’t mean they won’t be blamed by the public if the result of an American withdrawal is lethal chaos in the region and $200 per barrel oil. All I’m saying is that those who oppose the war now have a responsibility to (a) oppose it judiciously, without hateful or extreme rhetoric and (b) start thinking very hard–and in a very detailed way–about how we begin to recover from this mess.
Lots and lots of substance in that line of thinking. Liberals may be right but they are so totally icky and, like, nobody totally kewl likes them.
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