Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

“Conservatives” Will Benefit If Democrats Win The House

by tristero

Yes, and I hope they keep benefitting by losing the Senate. It builds character, trust me. In fact, “conservatives” will surely benefit from, I dunno, 100 years or so of losing. That’s a bare minimum, if you want my considered opinion, before the benefits of losing will kick in.

Dig what Ponnuru, the author of the thoughtful, learned, and ever so civil, “The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life” is saying and see if you don’t agree.

He’s saying that congressional Republicans are hopelessly corrupt. In the spirit of comity I’m sure he will appreciate, I’d like to state categorically that I completely agree with him. He’s also saying that Republicans aren’t conservative enough. Now about that, Mr. Ponnuru, and with all due respect, your dishonest rhetorical scam exposes you as a thoroughly reprehensible conniving sleazebag.

Colin Powell is a conservative, Mr. Ponnuru. Christie Whitman is a conservative. Joe Lieberman is a conservative. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, Bill Frist, Tom Coburn, and their ilk are NOT conservatives. They are rightwing extremists. In the sixties, I would have called them Birchers, not having the knowledge of the far right back then to distinguish amongst different flavors of rightwing lunacy.*

Conservatives don’t look at videos of a brain-dead woman twitching and drooling, declare her conscious and then pass a law that eviscerates a 200 plus year old history of jurisprudence in order to deny her a dignified death. And conservatives don’t call out state agents, as Jeb Bush did, to to kidnap the woman from her bed in defiance of federal and state laws, not to mention reality-based common-sense. Conservatives don’t stand for “unitary executive” or have any interest at all in restricting science, let alone teaching our children lies about science. And conservatives don’t neglect to protect their country’s shores, or lead their country’s soldiers into war based on a cynical marketing campaign of lies and distortions.

I don’t like conservatives like Powell, Mr. Ponnuru. I don’t like them one bit. They are biased against working people and favor solutions that benefit managment, and that’s a gross understatement. Their international diplomacy is dangerously shallow because they hold to a foolishly narcissistic exceptionalism that holds American values as the standard by which to measure the rest of the world. Historically, and today, conservatives minimize or ignore potentially serious problems (eg global climate change) until they are so serious that it is nearly impossible to do much good about them. And they are so adverse to government solutions – unless it props up monopolies and other practices benefitting business management – that they fail to understand that failure-of-government-to-act is quite often the problem.

No, conservatives aren’t terribly competent or effective politicians. But they aren’t raving mad like you and your pals.

Note to commenters: Yes, I entertained the thought that it might be useful to encourage Republicans to adopt Ponnuru’s arguments and get in even closer touch with their inner stormtrooper (or Salem judge). The arguments in favor of doing so being:

1. The sooner They take over completely, the sooner The People will realize the depths of their oppression and revolt.

2. If the American people see the full face of Ponnuru’s pals’ radicalism, they will be so nauseated, they won’t elect another Republican for X years.

But then I thought better about it. Why? Because I’m a liberal, that’s why. And liberals hate radical solutions and revolutions, especially if they increase suffering. And liberals don’t believe anyone who tells them that short-term suffering caused by increased oppression will lead to long-term benefits for the people suffering the most. It never has. It never will.

*The Birchers can be recognized because they not only have screwy ideas and a screwy metaphysics but their metaphysics is utterly paranoid, rather than almost entirely so. Clear? For example:

Cheney thinks the world is out to shoot him in the face at any moment and so feels he must shoot first. A Bircher thinks the world’s been plotting to shoot him in the face ever since the Templars were formed. And so feels he must shoot first.

Or something like that. I’m sure you folks can come up with far more precise analogies. And far funnier, so have at it, make it so, make it work, whatever.

And They Lied Shamefully About Bush, Too

by tristero

And the lies made Bush look much worse than Clinton. Much, much worse.

Ha, ha. Just kidding.

Pimping the Greatest Generation

by digby

The president seemed a little confused last night. For the last two weeks he’s been evoking images of WWII, talking about islamic fascists and the like. Last night he seemed to be adding the Cold War into the mix. Apparently, he wants people to believe that al Qaeda is more threatening than the Nazis and the communists combined:

The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation.

Our nation is being tested in a way that we have not been since the start of the Cold War.

And then:

Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?

[…]

Across the broader Middle East, the extremists are fighting to prevent such a future. Yet America has confronted evil before, and we have defeated it; sometimes at the cost of thousands of good men in a single battle.

When Franklin Roosevelt vowed to defeat two enemies across two oceans, he could not have foreseen D-Day and Iwo Jima, but he would not have been surprised at the outcome.

When Harry Truman promised American support for free peoples resisting Soviet aggression, he could not have foreseen the rise of the Berlin Wall, but he would not have been surprised to see it brought down.

This is actually about something more than his War On Terror. Bush is speaking to a deep yearning among some Americans that was apparent before 9/11. Chris Hayes has a wonderful new piece this week in “In These Times” that explains:

On September 11, 2001, George W. Bush wrote the following impression in his diary: “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today.” He wasn’t alone in this assessment. In the days after the attacks, editorialists, pundits and citizens reached with impressive unanimity for this single historical precedent. The Sept. 12 New York Times alone contained 13 articles mentioning Pearl Harbor.

Five years after 9/11 we are still living with the legacy of this hastily drawn analogy. Whatever the natural similarities between December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, the association of the two has led us to convert—first in rhetoric, later in fact—a battle against a small band of clever, murderous fundamentalists into a worldwide war of epic scale.

[…]

How did we get here?

The best place to look for the answer is not in the days after the attacks, but in the years before. Examining the cultural mood of the late ’90s allows us to separate the natural reaction to a national trauma from any underlying predispositions. During that period, the country was in the grip of a strange, prolonged obsession with World War II and the generation that had fought it.

The pining for the glory days of the Good War has now been largely forgotten, but to sift through the cultural detritus of that era is to discover a deep longing for the kind of epic struggle the War on Terror would later provide. The standard view of 9/11 is that it “changed everything.” But in its rhetoric and symbolism, the WWII nostalgia laid the conceptual groundwork for what was to come—the strange brew of nationalism, militarism and maudlin sentimentality that constitutes post-9/11 culture.

To fully understand what has gone wrong since 9/11, it is necessary to rewind the tape to that moment just before.

I don’t think younger people can understand the depth of the generation gap between the baby boomers and their parents, the Greatest Generation. It was a chasm and it turned families inside out for many years. But by the 90’s our parents were starting to get very old and for many of us, the fetishizing of the Greatest Generation was a form of generational rapprochement.

For conservative baby boomers, however, it had much more resonance. Vietnam was their war, of course, the most lethal, meaningful hot war of the Cold War, but they had largely avoided it like most of their age group, even as they extolled the warrior virtues and supported the policy. (This led to cognitive dissonance that never left them.) They also sat out or opposed the successful, defining social movements of their generation — civil rights and women’s rights — and were looking back at a life made up of nothing more than petty culture war resentment. By the time they came into power even the Cold War was over — resolved by the last presidents of the Greatest Generation. It looked as if the conservative baby boomers were going to be left without any meaningful legacy at all. You could feel their emptiness.

Karl Rove and other rightwing operatives saw a way to feed that gaping void with WWII kitch while furthering their long standing narrative. As Hayes also makes clear in his article, the entire Greatest Generation campaign was partially designed to further the conservative culture war by evoking that epic generation gap and portraying the WWII parents as the proper role models.

He writes:

Even before 9/11, Karl Rove understood this all too well. In his essay “Operation Enduring Analogy: World War II, the War on Terror and the Uses of Historical Memory,” David Hoogland Noon, a history professor at the University of Alaska, Southeast, writes that even in his first campaign George W. Bush “consistently referenced World War II not simply to justify his own policy aims, but more importantly as a cultural project as well as an ongoing gesture of self-making,” positioning himself as “an heir to the reputed greatest generation of American leaders.”

“In the world of our fathers, we have seen how America should conduct itself,” Bush said in a 1999 speech at the Citadel. Now, the moment had come “to show that a new generation can renew America’s purpose.” Throughout both his campaigns, Bush would go out of his way to criticize the dominant ethos of “If it feels good, do it,” instead calling for a “culture in which each of us understands we’re responsible for the decisions we make.”

Bush’s allusions to the Greatest Generation were so persistent that the press came to see him—a Boomer child of privilege known for his youthful carousing—as a kind of throwback. Reporting on Bush’s first inaugural address, Newsweek’s Evan Thomas wrote that “Bush wants the White House to recover some of its dignity, to rise above baby-boomer self-indulgence and aspire to the order and self-discipline prized by the Greatest Generation.”

Yes, the press veritably quivered with excitement that the “grown-ups” were back in charge. The aburdity of it all was staggering, of course — the boomer man-child who never had a real job and drank himself into oblivion until he was 40 representing the Greatest Generation — but there it was. When 9/11 hit shortly after he took office it was a seamless transition. (They even put him in a flightsuit and tried to pass him off as a heroic WWII pilot.) This yearning for “grown-ups” to take charge is a conservative boomer psychological condition. They and the political class are the only ones who are still fixated on the 1960’s; the rest of us moved on sometime back.

One big problem for the Republicans is that a majority in this country now are too young to give a damn about any of this. Rove might be able to tap in to the yearning of middle aged rightwingers to be involved in an epic struggle that competes with their parents’ greater accomplishments, but the young conservatives who are required to sustain this endless war don’t have the same psychic needs. They didn’t grow up in the shadow of a generation who fought and won two existential battles; their boomer parents either failed to rise to the occasion (in opposition or battle) when they had the chance or rejected the whole war fetish all together. These young conservatives’idea of glory is winning a fast paced video game. If 9/11 had even had a modicum of the same sense of threat as Pearl Harbor, we would have seen a similar rush on the recruiting centers and we didn’t. In fact, the strongest youthful supporters of the war, the College Republicans, commonly say things like this:

“The people opposed to the war aren’t putting their asses on the line,” Bray boomed from beside the bar. Then why isn’t he putting his ass on the line? “I’m not putting my ass on the line because I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country,” he declared, his voice rising in defensive anger, “and I wasn’t going to pass that up.”

That’s quite a stirring call to arms isn’t it?

This rhetoric of epic struggle that rivals WWII and The Cold War serves the simple political purpose of rallying the conservative base so that the Republicans can maintain power. It is guided by the deep psychological need for conservative baby boomers to find some meaning in their pathetic lives and a cynical attempt to co-opt some sunny, simple vision of the Greatest Generation — who would be the last people to claim the depression and the wars of their lifetimes were either sunny or simple. The younger conservative generation sees it as a cynical political game, which it is.

The entire campaign is built on a Disneyfied version of WWII and boomer childhood nightmare cartoons of The Cold War. They trying to squeeze all the boogeymen of the 20th century into Osama bin Laden’s turban in the hope that they can cop a little bit of that Hollywood heroism themselves. (After all, their hero Ronald Reagan didn’t actually fight in any real war either — he just remembered the movies he was in and thought he had.) It is deeply, deeply unserious.

I had to laugh last night when I heard George W. Bush say this:

Osama bin Laden calls this fight “The Third World War,” and he says that victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America’s defeat and disgrace forever.

Well, he’s not the only one who calls it that, is he?

Mr Bush told the CNBC television network the revolt of passengers on the hijacked flight 93 on September 11, 2001, was the “first counter-attack to World War III”.

He said he agreed with the description by David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month the act was “our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war – World War III”.

Mr Bush said: “I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III.

It would appear that bin Laden and Bush have a meeting of the minds on this. They and their followers apparently need to see this as a “world war” but I think it would be very, very unwise to allow them to have their way. These things have a tendency to get out of hand.

Update: Attytood makes an important observation about our new “world war”

slightly modified to make sense.

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Dancing With The Idiots

by digby

I just heard Tucker Carlson casually say that he told his “lesbian leftist friend” (probably Rachel Maddow), “when al Qaeda takes over you’ll be the first one hung up by your thumbs.”

I would really love to hear by what scenario these piddling chickenhawks see al Qaeda “taking over” the United States of America. Super secret laser beams from Mars? How?

What children these people are.

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A Speech Too Far

by digby

I am seeing some Bush skepticism today on the news as CNN sends Anderson Cooper (looking fabulous in prada, as always) to Afghanistan under the heading “The Forgotten War.” They are talking a lot about the resurgence of The Taliban. Most interestingly, the news today is all about how the president exploited 9/11 politically. I think it’s far batter to have the press discussing that than drooling over the Codpiece as they have in the past.

The crawl on CNN says:

Dems: Pres. used 9/11 to defend Iraq war, score political points
Republicans fire back: Accuse Dems of being soft on terror

Normally I would see that as a win for the Republicans, but the media is having none of it today. Here is how the story is encapsulated on CNN right now:

• Democrats say President Bush used 9/11 address for political attacks
• White House says speech was not meant to be partisan
• House GOP leader questions Democrats’ interest in fighting terrorism
• With elections near, both parties try to gain upper hand on terrorism issue

Pelosi deftly pivoted from criticism of exploiting 9/11 to Iraq:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, also denounced Bush’s speech, citing a Senate Intelligence Committee report released last week that said that the CIA had dismissed ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

“In fact, the war in Iraq has made our effort to defeat terrorism and terrorists more difficult,” Pelosi said in a written statement. “Last night’s speech demonstrated that the president will go to any lengths to distract attention from his failures in Iraq, which have diverted focus from the war on terrorism.”

Wolf Blitzer just did his lead-in with “more on the presidents speech and the political fallout.”

Media Matters points out that the Washington Post and the NY Times both initially portrayed this as Democrats stoking partisanship. But watching television today, that interpretation doesn’t seem to have taken. The cable news outlets are talking about whether the president is too partisan.

I would rather we be talking about Bush’s failures, but considering the fact that Bush just had the microphone for a solid week, this isn’t a bad transition into the campaign. The wingnuts are sounding more than a little bit shrill:

When asked about the Democrat’s response to the president’s speech, House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said “if you listen to the Democrats, [you] have to wonder if they’re more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people.

Here’s how the press reacted to that in this morning’s press conference with Tony Snow:

QUESTION: Last night, the president asked Democrats and Republicans to put aside differences in the war on terrorism, and I wanted to see how you think that’s going a day later when…

(LAUGHTER)

… Harry Reid accuses the president of playing election year politics and House Majority Leader Boehner says of Democrats, “I wonder if they’re more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people. They certainly don’t want to take the terrorists on and defeat them.”

SNOW: Apparently there are differing points of view.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: Do you leave at that? You don’t think it’s anything more?

So did the president fail in this mission?

SNOW: No, I don’t think so, because on broader — it’s interesting. We’re going to have a lot of political conflict this year. Perfectly understandable, acceptable, predictable. That’s the way it works.

But yesterday gave the American people a chance to reflect on September 11th and how it froze us in an instant … [blah, blah, blah]

So, no, I think Americans are united on the important things. And they also understand that in politics there will be a vigorous debate about how best to pursue the goal.

But I don’t think there’s any disagreement that ultimately our freedoms are precious and that this country is an extraordinary place that remains not only the beacon of the world but the envy of many, and that it is our responsibility to preserve that for this and every future generation.

And Americans also understand political seasons.

QUESTION: Do you think both sides, Democrats and Republicans, want to defeat the terrorists?

SNOW: I do. I mean, I think — I don’t think…

(CROSSTALK)

SNOW: I’m not going to get in a debate over statements that I haven’t seen.

I think that there are going to be plenty of debates about who’s going to be more effective in waging that battle. But, you know, I’ll let John Boehner and Harry Reid duke it out on their own. I’ll speak for the president.

QUESTION: As you well know, this is not a campaign season about whether America is a great place or not, right? I mean, it’s a lot more substantive than that and it has to do with the path that this president took the country after 9/11.

Now, when a Republican leader of Congress says, “I wonder if Democrats are more interested in protecting terrorists than they are in protecting the American people,” as a spokesman for the president, do you think it’s your duty to say that that’s out of bounds or not?

SNOW: Frankly, again, this is one of these things — I haven’t even seen the Boehner statement. But let me make a larger point. When people call the president a liar or a loser, that happens. There have been all sorts of names and smears aimed at the president. And he understands that he’s a big enough boy to deal with that.

The other thing is that in this present political season, unfortunately, there will be a lot of — there will be some name calling.

You know what? I think you and I agree. Let’s figure out what the substantive issues are, let’s get past the name calling and let’s get down to it and let’s talk about it.

QUESTION: This is important because, as a matter of fact, the vice president said over the weekend to Tim Russert that, “The sort of debate we’re having in this country about withdrawing troops from Iraq emboldens the terrorists.” Now you have a Republican leader of Congress saying the Democrats may be “more interested in protecting terrorists than the American people.”

Does the president agree with that?

SNOW: The president — what you’ve done is you’ve taken two things. Let’s focus on what the vice president said, which is that withdrawal from Iraq would embolden the terrorists.

I think it’s true. Osama bin Laden has made it clear. And one of the things he says is if the United States is pushed from Iraq, it will be to the eternal humiliation of the United States.

So it is clear that from the standpoint of bin Laden, who, in the past — and you quite kindly corrected me on the misstatement back in August when I got it wrong — bin Laden drew the conclusion when we left Somalia that the Americans didn’t have what it took to stick it out.

See, that’s the way the enemy’s looking at this.

Now, so, as an objective statement about the way in which bin Laden views the United States, that is a true statement.

I’m not going to get into trying to characterize what John Boehner said.

QUESTION: You certainly would get into, if someone accused the president of being a liar, do you want to let a statement like this stand from a Republican leader?.

SNOW: Like I said, you’re presenting me with a statement I haven’t seen. I’ll tell you what, I’ll get back to you on it.

QUESTION: It’s been out there for a couple of hours. I think you had ample time to see it.

Let me ask you this final point. Can you describe how it’s possible to oppose the president on the war on Iraq without emboldening the terrorists?

SNOW: There are probably — yes, absolutely, there are ways to do it. But also, if you say, “We need to leave right now with no preconditions” — and I’m not sure anybody says that, but I’ll give you a hypothetical — that would embolden the terrorists.

If the end result was that we left Iraq and we did not have an Iraq that was able to sustain itself, govern itself and defend itself, that would embolden the terrorists.

If the terrorists have the ability — if the terrorists draw the conclusion that they can use political means — because they can’t defeat us militarily, so it has to be a political battle — if they can use political means to drive us from Iraq and make Iraq a place from which, like Afghanistan before, they can mount terrorist attacks and set up their own headquarters and this time have in addition oil as a weapon, then that, in fact, is the kind of situation that we can’t let stand.

But there are ways — you can disagree over a lot of things. If you share the objective of having an Iraq — and this is what’s, kind of, interesting about the debate last night, because if you look at the president’s speech, he talks about an Iraq that’s going to be able to be democratic — I don’t know that that’s controversial with anybody — an Iraq where Iraqi forces are going to be able to defend Iraqi ground — I don’t know that that’s controversial. I think those are the things.

So to answer your question — and I’ll let you get back to this — to answer your question, it is possible to disagree. But on the other hand, if you were proposing a position that says to bin Laden, in effect, “Iraq is yours,” then that is not the kind of thing that I think is going to lead to victory.

QUESTION: Do Democrats want to protect terrorists more than the American people? What do you think?

SNOW: Again, you know, I know you think that in the last hour — I had an hour to prepare, because we had long meetings…

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) question. Forget about what John Boehner said. I’m putting the proposition to you. Do you have an opinion on that topic?

SNOW: Do I think — no, I think…

QUESTION: Democrats are more interested in protecting terrorists than the American people?

SNOW: No.

Big of him, don’t you think?

I think Bush’s speech is blowing back on him.

Update: I see Josh Marshall thinks this is a Democratic screw-up. Normally I might agree. But this time the white house made the mistake of selling that speech as being non-partisan to the press and the press is (surprisingly)leaping on it. The Dems are using this controversy about abusing the sacred 9/11 to pivot to Iraq. This is one case where I think phony sanctimony may have worked to change the subject and the Republicans overreacted.

One thing we know for sure: the 9/11 pageant is over.

Update II: Newsweek puts it this way:

Sept. 12, 2006 – The White House promised a non-political speech. Bush’s aides said the president’s address to the nation would exploit no partisan differences, and issue no calls to Congress. In technical terms, they were right. To all intents and purposes, they were wrong.

Sure, President Bush avoided the words Democrat and Republican. And there were no exhortations for legislation. But if that’s the definition of political, then there’s little that qualifies outside a 30-second TV ad and a State of the Union speech. Instead, the 9-11 anniversary speech carried all the hallmarks of politics as honed and polished by President Bush in the 12 years he has held public office.

The most important hallmark is a passive-aggressive strategy-to land a punch without looking like you’re in a fight. So Bush took the high road of patriotism, as he called for Democrats to stop opposing his policies in Iraq and elsewhere. “Winning this war will require the determined efforts of a unified country,” Bush said, “and we must put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us.”

Nothing in his speech, and nothing outside it, suggests that President Bush is ready to meet his critics half-way in setting aside their differences. In the president’s view, the people playing politics-and dividing the nation-are those who oppose his approach. That may not be explicitly partisan politics, but it is political debate dressed up in patriotic clothes.

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Vested Bedfellows

by poputonian

Here’s what’s wrong with the American Boardroom:

October 12, 2005

Apple cuts the TV out of TV programming
“This is a first giant step,” said Disney Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger, who appeared on stage with Jobs to tout the new offering. “It is the future, as far as we are concerned.”

Today

Apple Launches Online Movie Service

The iTunes Music Store, however, will initially carry movies only from The Walt Disney Co. studios, where Apple CEO Steve Jobs is a board member. By contrast, Amazon.com Inc.’s movie service launched last week with distribution deals with seven studios — but not Disney.

I don’t see how Jobs can fulfill his obligations as Disney Director (regarding potentially libelous TV movies) when he has a stake in keeping his mouth shut.Conflict of Interest (from wikipedia)

A conflict of interest is a situation in which someone in a position of trust, such as a lawyer, a politician, or an executive or director of a corporation, has competing professional or personal interests. Such competing interests can make it difficult to fulfill his or her duties impartially. Even if there is no evidence of improper actions, a conflict of interest can create an appearance of impropriety that can undermine confidence in the ability of that person to act properly in his/her position.

Letter From Clinton’s Office

by tristero

[Note: All emphases were in the text sent to me.]

September 10, 2006
Dear Bob,

We are deeply disappointed that ABC and the Disney Corporation chose to air “The Path to 9/11.” The final product was fraught with error and contained contrived scenes that are directly contradicted by the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report. The film has undoubtedly cemented in millions of viewers’ minds a false impression of critical historical events.

While there is not enough room here to fully document the fiction in your film, attached to this letter is a detailed fact sheet listing the numerous inaccuracies in the film according to the 9/11 Commission.

Nine days ago, we wrote to you asking simply that the miniseries tell the truth, as researched extensively and definitively by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. We asked that your network not present outright fiction as historical fact to the American public. In fact, we took pains to detail sequences in the movie that were plainly invented, based upon the version of the film that was shown to television critics and distributed to many conservative commentators. During our two recent conversations, you assured us that you were personally taking the responsibility to ensure that appropriate edits to the film would be made. Publicly, ABC said that the editing process was ongoing and that it was irresponsible” to condemn the film before seeing the finished product.

Having now seen the first night of this fiction, it is clear that the edits made to the film did not address the factual errors that we brought to your attention. “The Path to 9/11” flagrantly ignored the facts as reported by the 9/11 Commission and invented its own version of history. The result, in our judgment, is irreparable damage to the Commission’s work. More importantly, it is a disservice to the American people.

That the film directly contradicts the findings of the 9/11 Commission is troubling. That it defames dedicated public officials is tragic. But the fact that it misleads millions of people about the most tragic and consequential event in recent history is disgraceful.

Sincerely,

Bruce R. Lindsey
Chief Executive Officer
William J. Clinton Foundation

Douglas J. Band
Counselor to President Clinton
Office of William Jefferson Clinton

“Projecting Fascism”

by tristero

Dave Neiwert has, as he has so often, an extremely intelligent post entitled, you guessed it, “Projecting Fascism:”

[John] Dean has hit on exactly what we’ve been observing about movement conservatives and their increasingly ugly tone in recent: it is part of a sometimes conscious strategy to project their own ambitions onto their opponents:

In other words, for a number of the right’s leading rhetoricians, the projection appears to be perfectly conscious: it is a strategy, designed to marginalize their opposition and open the field to nearly any behavior it chooses.

And it is extraordinarily successful precisely because projection, as a trait, is so deeply woven into the right-wing psyche. Those who engage in it consciously set off waves of sympathetic response from their audiences because it hits their buttons in exactly the right spot.

The deep-seatedness of this trait can make it diffidcult, at times, to discern whether the behavior is conscious or not. But it also lends to a certain predictability: One of the best indicators of where the right is heading, I’ve noted previously, can be found in the very things of which it accuses the left.

So when it starts to accuse its opponents of coddling fascism, you can rest assured that the American right is embarking on precisely that path itself. And considering what we know about fascism historically, this shouldn’t be a surprise.

Yep. In the jargon of psychotherapy, projection is a primitive defense mechanism for eliminating anxiety about one’s own self-worth. Let me try to illustrate with an example.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you are President of the United States. Picking a name out of a hat, I’ll call you George W. Bush. All your life you’ve avoided serious danger, both physically (going AWOL, perhaps from a National Guard Unit) and psychologically (maybe you are a one-time heavy boozer who has replaced cocktails with sycophants instructed to keep all criticism away from you). You have started a war in a Middle Eastern country – any one, but let’s just say it was Iraq – and it’s going badly. You’re afraid to withdraw the troops because you think everyone will learn that you are what you know yourself to be: a deeply terrified coward.

The thought is unbearable and you must get rid of it. But how? You simply “project” those thoughts onto a hated enemy. You deny them in yourself by accusing your political enemies of the failure to commit and focus that, you fear, you yourself, for your entire life, are guilty of.

You may also try to project some of your overwhelming guilt into very revealing jokes. Suppose, for example, you can’t abide people doing things you don’t like. But you know that those who seek to control others are often given the most odious labels your culture can bestow. It makes you uncomfortable because you’re afraid you’re one of those people. So, to relieve the psychic tension, you quip, “It’s a heck of a lot easier being a dictator, as long as I’m the dictator,” just a good natured chuckle that hopefully makes you look like a powerful, responsible person that can laugh at the burdens of power, rather than covet more. Never mind that the grammatical lapses (the tenses) might expose more lust for power than you might like; no one listens that closely anyway to off the cuff laffs, so you’re safe.

Now all this is hypothetically speaking, of course. No one, not even Charles Krauthammer, should try to psychoanalyze anyone by long distance. But while my little crude example may be inapt, it is quite appropriate to note the conscious use of projection as part of the rhetorical strategy of the right. And it is, as Neiwert implies, quite conscious.

The right knows exactly who are behaving like fascists – who are, in fact, fascists: themselves.

Olbermann

by tristero

Digby mentioned this at the end of a post below, but let me highlight Keith Olbermann’s history-making condemnation of Bush’s response to 9/11, which comes close to Edward R. Murrow’s level of eloquence.

Don’t miss it.

Why Haven’t We Been Attacked Again?

by tristero

Of course, we’ve been attacked, again and again. No, I’m not talking about the anthrax attacks. Or the assault on July 4, 2002 at LA airport, an incident that was relabeled possible terrorism when no one was looking. I’m talking Spain and Britain and Indonesia and Jordan and so on, so on.

Y’know the fake term “Islamo-fascism” used to justify the invasion of Iraq for an attack perpetrated primarily by Saudis? Guess what? Al Qaeda thinks the same way about “the Jews and the Crusaders.” New York, Madrid, London – they’re all in it together, if we attack Indonesia we send a message to Paris not to fuck with us. America’s support for Israel, Western-style nightclubs in Bali – it’s transnational, an ideology of hate. These are people who simply want to destroy us. The West – we’re all the same to al-Zawahiri, all responsible. The US bombs us? Hit Spain.

The awful tragedy of this time, and what makes it radically different than Lincoln’s or FDR’s, is that Osama is facing an enemy even more ignorant. narcissistic, and insecure than he is. Ignorant armies clashing by night, indeed.

Susan Sontag got a lot of flack when she wrote, a short time after 9/11/01 that everyone knows the US is strong, the question is whether we can be smart. Sontag was no fool. She knew there was no doubt about it, not with these clowns in charge.