I guess there was a big confab of the War Council yesterday about what to do in Afghanistan, and clearly the team has split over a counter-insurgency or a counter-terrorism strategy. Now, in many ways that’s two sides of the same coin, just a matter of how to explain the killing of foreigners. And I don’t know if either strategy gets us closer to an exit – we’re not going to kill every terrorist, as surely as we’re not going to convert every Afghani into a tribune of democracy. But I do think it’s clear that shifting away from a COIN strategy at least offers the possibility of getting us out of the region in a shorter period of time, and hopefully with less blood on our hands. So I’m rooting for the Biden faction. It appears that Bob Gates is the key swing vote here.
That said, the next War Council meeting could maybe have a representative of the people from the country whose destiny is being decided by men in suits half a world away.
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan – Take advice from locals instead of trying to impose your own ideas on a tribal society. Invite the Taliban to the negotiating table. Use traditional governing structures rather than reinventing the wheel. And spend a lot more money on plowshares than on swords […]
Afghans interviewed in their shops and on the streets have plenty of advice for the U.S. president and his allies: Don’t necessarily leave, but for your sake and for ours, you’d better get a lot smarter about what you do here.
Several said they welcomed the presence of U.S. and NATO troops, whom they view as far more benign than the Soviets who occupied the country in the 1980s. They fear that a rapid withdrawal of foreign forces could throw the country into another civil war.
But they don’t necessarily think a foreign military buildup is the answer.
“I’m afraid the Taliban will only get stronger,” said Obiadullah Zahir, 30, a dress merchant, standing beside a row of attired mannequins with broken noses and missing arms. “I’m afraid America will leave and war return.” […]
Either you try to get the Taliban to buy in, said Amin Khatir, 24, a student in the capital, or you face an enemy that is increasingly entrenched, organized and more broadly distributed. That’s a big problem, no matter how many pieces of fancy equipment foreign armies may wield.
“The Americans only want to deal with those they meet with, who speak English, not the ones farther away,” Khatir said. “An election can’t solve more than 1% of our problems. We must find a new way, and the main issue is security.” […]
Rather than sanction some minimally acceptable election, he said, Afghanistan should convene a traditional loya jirga, or meeting of power brokers from around the country, as it did after the Taliban was ousted.
“If you pile more bricks onto an unstable house, the whole thing will collapse,” he said.
Are any of these sentiments making it into the War Council?
Mr. President, you’re being very deliberative about this process. Be sure to get some local perspectives, too. It’s your bombs, but it’s their county, after all.
The Politico has written a somewhat unenlightening article about Alan Grayson’s floor speech, but I can’t help but be a little bit tickled by a quote of his, which is also used in the headline of the piece. He said:
“We cannot run this institution on the basis of Republican hissy fits.
The title is “The pros and cons of hissy fits.”
I’m please by this because I think I may be the one who coined that particular phrase, or at the very least popularized it. In any case, I have characterized these phony Republican outrage fests that way for many years on this blog and wrote a piece explaining it called “the Art of the Hissy Fit” for Campaign for America’s Future blog, (reprinted here by Alternet)
The Art of the Hissy Fit
By Digby , TomPaine.com Posted on October 25, 2007, Printed on October 1, 2009
I first noticed the right’s successful use of phony sanctimony and faux outrage back in the 90’s when well-known conservative players like Gingrich and Livingston pretended to be offended at the president’s extramarital affair and were repeatedly and tiresomely “upset” about fund-raising practices they all practiced themselves. The idea of these powerful and corrupt adulterers being personally upset by White House coffees and naughty sexual behavior was laughable.
But they did it, oh how they did it, and it often succeeded in changing the dialogue and titillating the media into a frenzy of breathless tabloid coverage.
In fact, they became so good at the tactic that they now rely on it as their first choice to control the political dialogue when it becomes uncomfortable and put the Democrats on the defensive whenever they are winning the day. Perhaps the best example during the Bush years would be the completely cynical and over-the-top reaction to Senator Paul Wellstone’s memorial rally in 2002 in the last couple of weeks leading up to the election.
With the exception of the bizarre Jesse Ventura, those in attendance, including the Republicans, were non-plussed by the nature of the event at the time. It was not, as the chatterers insisted, a funeral, but rather more like an Irish wake for Wellstone supporters — a celebration of Wellstone’s life, which included, naturally, politics. (He died campaigning, after all.) But Vin Weber, one of the Republican party’s most sophisticated operatives, immediately saw the opportunity for a faux outrage fest that was more successful than even he could have ever dreamed.
By the time they were through, the Democrats were prostrating themselves at the feet of anyone who would listen, begging for forgiveness for something they didn’t do, just to stop the shrieking. The Republicans could barely keep the smirks off their faces as they sternly lectured the Democrats on how to properly honor the dead — the same Republicans who had relentlessly tortured poor Vince Foster’s family for years.
It’s an excellent technique and one they continue to employ with great success, most recently with the entirely fake Move-On and Pete Stark “controversies.” (The Democrats try their own versions but rarely achieve the kind of full blown hissy fit the Republicans can conjure with a mere blast fax to Drudge and their talk radio minions.)
But it’s about more than simple political distraction or savvy public relations. It’s actually a very well developed form of social control called Ritual Defamation (or Ritual Humiliation) as this well trafficked internet article defines it:
Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. For the purposes of this essay, the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and “insensitivity” or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.
The article goes on to lay out several defining characteristics of ritual defamation such as “the method of attack in a ritual defamation is to assail the character of the victim, and never to offer more than a perfunctory challenge to the particular attitudes, opinions or beliefs expressed or implied. Character assassination is its primary tool.” Perhaps its most intriguing insight is this:
The power of ritual defamation lies entirely in its capacity to intimidate and terrorize. It embraces some elements of primitive superstitious belief, as in a “curse” or “hex.” It plays into the subconscious fear most people have of being abandoned or rejected by the tribe or by society and being cut off from social and psychological support systems.
In a political context this translates to a fear by liberal politicians that they will be rejected by the American people — and a subconscious dulling of passion and inspiration in the mistaken belief that they can spare themselves further humiliation if only they control their rhetoric. The social order these fearsome conservative rituals pretend to “protect,” however, are not those of the nation at large, but rather the conservative political establishment which is perhaps best exemplified by this famous article about how Washington perceived the Lewinsky scandal. The “scandal” is moved into the national conversation through the political media which has its own uses for such entertaining spectacles and expends a great deal of energy promoting these shaming exercises for commercial purposes.
The political cost to progressives and liberals for their inability to properly deal with this tactic is greater than they realize. Just as Newt Gingrich was not truly offended by Bill Clinton’s behavior (which mirrored his own) neither were conservative congressmen and Rush Limbaugh truly upset by the Move On ad — and everyone knew it, which was the point. It is a potent demonstration of pure power to force others to insincerely condemn or apologize for something, particularly when the person who is forcing it is also insincerely outraged. For a political party that suffers from a reputation for weakness, it is extremely damaging to be so publicly cowed over and over again. It separates them from their most ardent supporters and makes them appear guilty and unprincipled to the public at large.
Ritual defamation and humiliation are designed to make the group feel contempt for the victim and over time it’s extremely hard to resist feeling it when the victims fail to stand up for themselves.
There is the possibility that the Republicans will overplay this particular gambit. Their exposure over the past few years for incompetence, immorality and corruption, both personal and institutional, makes them extremely imperfect messengers for sanctimony, faux or otherwise. But they are still effectively wielding the flag, (or at least the Democratic congress is allowing them to) and until liberals and progressives find a way to thwart this successful tactic, it will continue. At this point the conservatives have little else.
What do you suppose today’s enforcers of proper decorum would say to this?
Americans too often teach their children to despise those who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place – the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. — Mark Twain
At the time I wrote it, I had little hope that we would ever be able to end this silly practice because the Democrats both capitulated to the GOP’s smug sanctimonious caterwauling and refused to turn the practice back on them. But I think Grayson may have shown the way. It takes guts and it takes being willing to have Gloria “Cokie” Borger tut-tut you like you are an errant child, but if you are willing to go right at them and then refuse to back down, the Republican propensity to call for the smelling salts whenever the Democrats do the same things the Republicans do might just die out. It’s the first sign I’ve seen that it might happen.
I couldn’t be prouder that Alan Grayson used the term, which I think is appropriately disdainful of the practice. If he is showing Democrats how to beat back these destructive faux outrage fests, he will have done a service that is as significant as anything else they’ve done:
Nancy Pelosi is shrugging off GOP calls for a mea culpa from Alan “they want you to die quickly’ Grayson.
“We have to have a debate that is not distracted from… Apparently Republicans are holding Democrats to a higher level than they are holding their own members,” she said, referring to floor comments by some Republicans who have said Democratic health care reforms would lead to higher deaths among seniors.
“There’s no more reason for Mr. Grayson to apologize… If anybody’s going to apologize everybody should apologize,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference.
If you haven’t thanked him yet, you can click the thermometer above and send him a little token of your gratitude. As you can see, those tokens are adding up.
Update: To be clear, I didn’t mean to suggest that I invested the actual phrase “hissy fit.” Obviously, I didn’t. I know many of you think I am mentally deficient bordering on catatonically dumb, but really, I’m not quite that vacant.
My point was that I thought I had coined the phrase for the particular form of faux outrage and phony indignation that’s been routinely practiced by the Republican Party of the past few years, in which they pretend to be upset by blowjobs, insults to military commanders etc., all things theyroutinely practice themselves. It’s also called political hypocrisy, but has a very specific character and forms in a very specific way.
When I use the phrase “Republican Hissy Fit” I’m referring to a particular political tactic that was not invented by them, to be sure, but was perfected during the past couple of decades. I don’t think I’d ever heard that phrase used before in that context, but if there are references to “republican hissy fits” to describe this tactic that pre-dates the blogosphere I’m happy to apologize for taking credit for populoarizing it.
I see that the insurance executives are quite happy with health care reform, which is unsurprising since they will get a whole bunch of new customers. But it turns out they are even sanguine about surviving if they have to compete with a public plan:
“I believe the private system is important because it brings innovation, it brings energy, it brings change, it brings ideas that are often used in the public sector system as well,” said Richard Collins, senior vice president for underwriting, pricing and health care economics at UnitedHealthcare. “I think we can have both a public and private system.”
From time to time, we’re reminded of the fact that members of Congress — many of whom are fighting to kill health care reform — give themselves pretty good coverage. Several weeks ago, the LA Times reported on the taxpayer-subsidized insurance federal lawmakers currently enjoy. The piece noted that, while most Americans have to go with whatever their employer offers, members have a choice of 10 plans that offer access to a national network of doctors. “Lawmakers also get special treatment at Washington’s federal medical facilities and, for a few hundred dollars a month, access to their own pharmacy and doctors, nurses and medical technicians standing by in an office conveniently located between the House and Senate chambers,” the article added. ABC News explores this conveniently located facility in more detail today. It sounds like a pretty sweet deal for lawmakers.
This fall while members of Congress toil in the U.S. Capitol, working to decide how or even whether to reform the country’s health care system, one floor below them an elaborate Navy medical clinic — described by those who have seen it as something akin to a modern community hospital — will be standing by, on-call and ready to provide Congress with some of the country’s best and most efficient government-run health care. Formally called the Office of the Attending Physician, the clinic — and at least six satellite offices — bills its mission as one of emergency preparedness and public health. Each day, it stands ready to handle medical emergencies, biological attacks and the occasional fainting tourist visiting Capitol Hill.
Please read on to see what excellent facilities are available to our elites as they argue that the rest of us should ask our neighbors for charity or just get a job working for a big employer if our current one doesn’t offer health insurance.
Republicans seriously don’t know who they’re dealing with when it comes to Alan Grayson.
This just does not compute for Republicans, who are supposed to wail and moan and collect their scalp for their hissy fit. They don’t understand a Democrat taking ownership of his actions and throwing it right back at them. Incidentally, most of the Democrats I’ve seen today, including members of Congress, haven’t backed away from his remarks even a little bit.
Teaching Democrats how to neutralize a hissy fit is all the more reason to support Alan Grayson.
…by the way, media idiots, he didn’t compare health care death to the Holocaust, he compared it to a holocaust. That’s the definition of the word – “an act of mass destruction and loss of life.” What else would you call the needless deaths of 45,000 Americans every year due to lack of health insurance, while political leaders stand mute? I call it “an accurate description.”
Last night, Blanche Lincoln and Kent Conrad, who like to fancy themselves fiscal conservatives and whose entire rhetoric about health care has concerned “bending the cost curve” and reducing the price tag in the bill, joined with Republicans to hand up to $250 million dollars to states to teach children that sex is icky.
The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday night approved an amendment providing tens of millions of dollars to fund abstinence education programs for teens.
The proposal, offered by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), would provide $50 million per year through 2014 exclusively for abstinence education programs. The measure would effectively reinstate the controversial Title V program, which offered $50 million per year to states for abstinence education, but prohibited them from tapping the funds for other sex-ed subjects like contraception. The same prohibition would accompany the Hatch amendment. “Abstinence education works,” the Utah Republican said.
The vote was 12 to 11, with Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Kent Conrad (N.D.) voting with every Republican to secure passage of the measure.
Abstinence education doesn’t work, this California Democrat says, backed up by every study ever done on the subject, including a 6-year study authorized by Congress that published in 2007. Even Max frickin’ Baucus agrees, and his competing amendment on comprehensive sex ed, which also passed, wouldn’t fund programs that were in his words “ineffective.” Suzy Khimm has more on this.
I’m sure that giving in to Republican fears about liberated women, whether through this measure or trying to gut reproductive coverage in private insurance plans (thankfully, that amendment did fail in the Finance Committee today), will cause members of the party who don’t think women should have the right to vote to flip on the bill and offer their support, right? We’re just so close to consensus, and if we can just add to that 80% agreement with selling out women and futilely indoctrinating children to abstinence, we can all sing kumbaya and have a bill everyone can support, right?
Wrong. Republicans like Orrin Hatch will ask for concession after concession and offer nothing themselves. That’s because they know that stooges like Blanche Lincoln and Kent Conrad will end up agreeing with them anyway, so there’s no need to take ownership of the bill when you can own it by proxy.
A federal judge approved a civil-court settlement requiring the Social Security Administration to repay $500 million to 80,000 recipients whose benefits it suspended after deeming them fugitives.
The supposed fugitives include a disabled widow with a previously suspended driver’s license, a quadriplegic man in a nursing home and a Nevada grandmother mistaken for a rapist.
They were among at least 200,000 elderly and disabled people who lost their benefits in recent years under what the agency called the “Fugitive Felon” program. Launched in 1996 and extended to Social Security disability and old-age benefits in 2005, the program aimed to save taxpayers money by barring the payment of Social Security benefits to people “fleeing to avoid prosecution.”
But some federal courts in recent years have concluded that most people the agency identified as fleeing felons were neither fleeing nor felons. The problem: Social Security employees relied on an operations manual stating that anyone with a warrant outstanding is a fugitive felon, whether the person is actually fleeing or attempting to avoid being captured.
In 2005, the Bush administration decided that all those alleged ancient felons on Social Security needed to be “brought to justice.” Meanwhile, Wall street was going completely unchecked. And they got it wrong on top of that.
Maybe this is something the Democratic congress and the Obama Administration could look into and correct? Seriously, they don’t have to cover up all the Bush era obscenities.
Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post is a fairly good gauge of where the village conventional wisdom is at any given point. And here’s what he had to say on David Shuster today:
Shuster: If the Democrats said it was wrong for Joe Wilson to say “you lie” on the House floor, shouldn’t they also be condemning Grayson for suggesting the Republican plan is “die quickly?”
Capehart: No. These are two different things. Joe Wilson shouted at the President of the United States during a joint session of congress which is a clear violation of House rules. Representative Grayson was speaking on the House floor to his collegues. Sure it’s hyperbolic language about policy but it was not a personal insult to anyone in the room.
And hey, if he has to apologize for “die quickly” whoever came up with “death panels” and “drop dead” and “pull the plu oon grandma” has to apologize too. This is ridiculous.
Yes, it certainly is. But all hissy fits are ridiculous. This one is particularly stupid because of the “death panel” stuff the Republicans have been flogging all summer, but the hissy fit is always made more potent the more stupid and hypocritical it is. This one may not end up with an apology, but it will probably be successful in creating a false equivalence between the two parties which is about the best they can do at the moment.
In case anyone still wonders if the Republican health care plan really is “don’t get sick and if you do, die quickly” read this essay about what the Republican plans really would do if implemented:
Mitch Berger, a Washington-based lawyer, has a rare, incurable and very expensive-to-treat cancer. He is not fond of insurance companies. As Democrats scramble to assemble a health care reform package that a majority of the party can support, Republicans have agreed on what they claim is a quick and easy way to reduce health insurance costs. In delivering the Republican reply to the President’s recent joint-session speech, Charles Boustany of Louisiana offered the GOP plan, saying “Let’s also talk about letting families and businesses buy insurance across state lines. I and many other Republicans believe that that will provide real choice and competition to lower the cost of health insurance.” It’s an approach conservatives have been talking up for a while. Probably its most vocal proponent is Representative John Shadegg of Arizona, who introduced the idea formally this July with “The Health Care Choice Act of 2009.” But a closer examination shows that it’s the “Drill baby Drill” of health care reform–a cynical slogan masquerading as a serious public policy solution. The basis for this approach is the work of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI). CAHI describes itself as “a research and advocacy association of insurance carriers”–in other words, the insurance industry. Its position? That state insurance benefit mandates “increase the cost of basic health coverage from a little less than 20% to perhaps 50%“. Based on this assumption, Republicans argue: To lower insurance costs dramatically, all you have to do is get rid of or drastically reduce benefit mandates.
See, the real problem is that the state governments have been passing laws that require insurance companies to offer coverage. That’s a problem because is order to have your profits rise 28% over seven years, they need to take your money and give you nothing in return. So, it’s a problem. The Republicans say over and over again that the worst possible thing that could happen is these insurance companies facing competition from the government. They seem to think they are doing a great job and that costs would go down if only they could allow the insurance companies to stop covering sick people. Therefore, their plan is, as Alan Grayson pithily stated, “don’t get sick and if you do get sick, die quickly.”If you’d like to Get Grayson’s Back, you can donate here. .
So, let me get this straight: the same party that’s been saying the Democrats are planning to pull the plug on Grandma for months is having an epic fit of the vapors because Alan Grayson said that the Republican Health Care plan is “Don’t get sick and if you do get sick, die quickly?” Really? How do they live with this much gall?
Apparently, they are going to introduce a privileged resolution to sanction Grayson today. And Stephanopopulos says they deserve an apology. Seriously.
So this is a-ok:
But this isn’t:
Really?
Today is the last day of the quarter. I expect that Grayson could use a little boost so feel free to donate to him here; at our new page Getting Grayson’s Back. I hear the Democrats are pretty angry at the Republicans for this hissy fit, so if you feel like sending them a little token or giving a call to their offices to tell them that you appreciate them having Grayson’s back, that would be helpful too.
This is crazy time. You have the main Republican Senate negotiator saying publicly that the Democrats are trying to pull the plug on grandma, and Grayson is beyond the pale for saying the truth? Because the fact is that is you support the status quo, as they do, you are supporting the insurance company model which is based upon only insuring people who aren’t sick and not paying for their care if they get that way. That’s how they make their money. It is essentially: don’t get sick and die quickly. What he said is really not controversial at all.
