Tribal Ethics

by digby

Lil’ Benji strikes back and unwittingly reveals the working ethos of the modern Republican party:

Asked about the voluminous amount of documentation cited by left-wing bloggers and some conservatives’ decision to believe it, Domenech said: “In a lot of this stuff, it’s based on who you believe. And if you believe the lefties are right or if you believe someone who you know and who you’ve worked with is right, I guess the thing I would point out is that I’ve done my best to never do anything to raise any kind of question about this sort of thing. And if you look at the overwhelming bulk of everything I’ve written, you’ll find there is no question about it. The questions are about small things, a lot of them easily explainable, especially the things that come after college.”

Domenech believes in epistemic relativism (as well as moral relativism.) He thinks that truth is contingent upon who is delivering it. And he’s right as far as the right is concerned. They have proved that they will believe anything if it emanates from the tribe.

President Bush believes this. For instance, inspectors and Iraq. You can choose to believe him or you can choose to believe what you saw and heard and remember in acute detail, which was that inspectors were in Iraq before the invasion and found nothing at which point Bush pulled them out and invaded — an act he now says was precipitated by Saddam’s refusal to accept inspections. Anyone who sees this differently is a partisan leftist. As Rob Corddry sagely observed, “the facts are biased.”

Iraq is full of good news! The economy is great! George W. Bush is a brilliant leader on the scale of Winston Churchill and Alexander the Great! Who’re you gonna believe, the Republicans or your lyin’ eyes?

Lil’ Benji never studied much it appears. He was engaged in GOP partisan politics from about the age of 15. Apparently, he didn’t even have time to see the movies and listen to the CD’s he was assigned to review. All he knows is modern Republican ethics:

“While I appreciated the opportunity to go and join the Washington Post,” Domenech said, “if they didn’t expect the leftists were going to come after me with their sharpened knives, then they were fools.”

That’s true enough. They were fools for not expecting the left blogosphere to find out that Domenech was a phony and a plagiarist. And they were fools for assuming that the blogger from the racist RedState blog, the editor for the sleazy Regnery publishing, and the speechwriter for the unprincipled John Cornyn was anything but an unethical GOP operative. When will they ever learn?

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