Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Statue of Liberty Play

by digby

There’s much to say about the Hamdan decision and I’ll leave it to the legal experts to parse the decision for it’s implications. According to the pundits and insiders, the politics of the decision are quite simple:

Republicans yesterday looked to wrest a political victory from a legal defeat in the Supreme Court, serving notice to Democrats that they must back President Bush on how to try suspects at Guantanamo Bay or risk being branded as weak on terrorism.

In striking down the military commissions Bush sought for trials of suspected members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the high court Thursday invited Congress to establish new rules and put the issue prominently before the public four months before the midterm elections. As the White House and lawmakers weighed next steps, House GOP leaders signaled they are ready to use this week’s turn of events as a political weapon.

John Boehner has already framed the issue by saying that giving suspected terrorists any form of due process as provided by our treaty obligations and Uniform Code of Military Justice is giving them “special rights.” (I love that one — it’s brilliant. Now the terrorists have successfully been conflated with gays!)

Here’s the thing. This is just more trash talk. The WaPo article I excerpted above goes on to say this:

A Washington Post-ABC poll this week suggested that while Americans continue to favor holding suspects at the U.S. military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they are leery of an administration policy that has resulted in almost all of the 450 detainees being held without charges. Of those polled, 71 percent said the detainees should be either given POW status or charged with a crime.

Call me naive, but it sounds to me as if the Supreme Court, the Democrats and the American people are all in agreement. It’s the Republicans who want to continue this fiction that the government should be able to hold these presumed terrorists in limbo forever.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the issue is still being debated internally, seemed to hint at the potential political implications in Congress. “Members of both parties will have to decide whether terrorists who cherish the killing of innocents deserve the same protections as our men and women who wear the uniform,” this official said.

The assumption, again, being that these people are all guilty when everyone knows for a fact that many of them are not. That means that this administration just doesn’t give a shit if innocent people are held prisoner forever. I suppose that there are people who think that’s just the price that must be paid (by someone else) for our “freedom,” but moral people cannot believe this.

On a practical political level, you can see by the way the WaPo article is written that the narrative frame for the debate is going to be the same as all the other war debates: will the weak, ineffectual Democrats be able to resist the strong, aggressive Republicans this time or will they give in once again to the presidents’ bold, controversial plans out of fear of being seen as soft on national security?

Can we all see the problems with that?

Let’s hope that the Democrats are smart enough to start reading polls and stop listening to beltway pundits and journalists. They have the support of the people. All they have to do is speak out and say it, in the same terms as that poll question:

“We need to either give the Guantanamo suspects POW status or charge them with a crime. We have rules and laws on the books that have served us well for centuries and it’s time we used them. This isn’t a movie or a TV show. This is about our national security and our place in the world. It’s time to stop all this nonsense and start behaving like the United States of America again.”

I’m sure that Rush would pop a Viagra over that one, but who cares? The majority of American people are on our side on this.

This is what the Republicans are getting ready to run on:

“It will be worse for the Democrats to be seen as favoring the terrorists than favoring the New York Times,” Liddy said.

That’s what it’s come down to. I desperately hope the Dems will not take the bait. That is a base turnout message, not a message to broader America and it certainly will not help the Democrats get their base out if they fall for it.

One final little note. The LA Times/Bloomberg poll showed Bush improving his standing a bit. But there was also this:

The survey’s results suggested that an old challenge — the gender gap — could pose a renewed threat to the Republican hold on Congress. Although men split about evenly when asked which party they planned to back for Congress in November, women preferred Democrats by nearly 2 to 1.

Doubts about Iraq appeared to be a powerful contributor to that trend. In the survey, women were much less likely than men to say the war had been worth the cost.

“As far as the war goes, we never should have gone in there without United Nations backing,” said respondent Kathy Bocklage, a registered Republican from Wayland, N.Y., who said she was planning to support Democrats this fall. “Why [Bush] thought the U.S. could finance this alone — it’s ludicrous.”

However, beneath the large Democrat lead on the November ballot test, the poll offered potential warnings for the party.

On a variety of questions — including satisfaction with Bush’s handling of terrorism and the likelihood of progress in Iraq — it showed modest but perceptible movement in the president’s direction since the last Times/Bloomberg survey, in April. Also, the share of Americans who viewed the Democratic Party favorably declined.

There’s a lot to chew on there. But I would suggest that instead of reacting to the macho posturing bullshit this time, the Democrats look to where their voters are and figure out what they need to do to get these women to the polls. And keep in mind that it isn’t “girly domestic” issues that have motivated this change. It’s Iraq. Being less likely to be impressed by all this macho posturing in the first place, after watching it play out over five long years it’s quite likely they’ve just had enough.

Instead of trying to appease to the 25% of overgrown boys (including the media) who continue respond favorably to this GOP foolishness, maybe the Dems should take a look at the other 75% of the population and fashion a message for them. As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I see some ominous signs in the fact that in this political environment, Democrats are being viewed less favorably lately. That translates at least partially to disillusionment among the base and that spells trouble.

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Clap Louder

by digby

Time Magazine web site today:

Poll: Good News Fails to Boost Bush’s Job Approval
In a new TIME survey, Americans say the President is performing poorly and that the country is increasingly on the wrong track

Joe Klein: Why Bush is Still Winning the War at Home

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American Hero

by digby

Every once in a while you read about or get to meet someone who displays by his or her actions one of those wonderful fundamental lessons in personal integrity, intellectual consistency and common decency that makes you think this species might not be doomed after all. Here’s one:

The U.S. Navy lawyer who challenged the Bush administration’s efforts to try terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, walked a professional tightrope between fellow officers trying to gain speedy convictions and what he considered a moral imperative to buck the chain of command and vigorously defend his client.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift could have taken the easy route of arranging a plea bargain for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the Yemeni alleged to have worked as a driver and bodyguard for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

But fearful of the dangerous precedent that could be set by denying international standards of justice to those swept up in the war on terrorism, Swift battled to get the rights and protections of the Geneva Convention for his client.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush had overstepped his war powers in sending Hamdan and nine others to face military tribunals, America’s first since World War II.

“I feel like we all won, that the rule of law won, and that is essentially what we are all about,” Swift said of the high court’s validation of his three-year campaign on behalf of his 36-year-old client.

Swift was assigned to defend Hamdan by the Pentagon in November 2003 and initially was ordered by a superior officer to secure a plea bargain so there would be a timely conviction.

“I had the unenviable task of going down to this guy from Yemen in the uniform of people who had been treating him badly and saying, ‘If you don’t make a deal you may never see me again,’ ” Swift recalled of his first meeting at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo with Hamdan and his decision to fight a process stacked against the defendant.

Swift was allowed a rare phone call to the Guantanamo prison Thursday to give Hamdan the news of their legal victory. He described the prisoner as “humble, not jubilant, and very, very thankful.”

“It was gratifying to hear the belief in his voice, the recognition that mighty people don’t always get to do what they want,” Swift said of Hamdan, who, he added, understands that his case is far from over.

After more than 100 meetings at the remote U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba, Swift said, he and Hamdan have developed a trusting relationship, and he would gladly represent the Yemeni in any future trial, military or civilian.

Colleagues attributed the high court ruling to what they considered to be Swift’s determination to protect the integrity of U.S. jurisprudence against a Pentagon bent on retribution for terrorism attacks on U.S. forces.

“It took exceptional courage. He had to risk himself being alienated from the larger military establishment,” said David Scheffer, law professor and director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University. “He must have known when he took this on that he was risking his career, and sadly he may have done that within the U.S. Navy.”

Though Swift’s successful challenge of the tribunal’s legitimacy will probably open doors in the private sector and academia for the Navy lawyer, Scheffer said, Swift has reportedly been passed over for promotion.

“It was a gutsy move, and he did it with complete dedication and devotion to the cause,” Benjamin Sharp of the Washington office of Perkins Coie said of Swift, with whom the Seattle-based law firm collaborated in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld.

Sharp speculated that Swift’s military career was probably damaged by his defense of Hamdan, a possibility the naval lawyer also alluded to.

“I love the military. I love my career and I’m proud of it,” Swift said, noting he would be eligible for early retirement in nine months and would leave the Navy unless he was promoted. “One thing that has been a great revelation for me is that you may love the military, but it doesn’t necessarily love you.”

The military has many men and women of great physical courage. That’s the point, after all. But it takes a person of exceptional character to be willing to take on the military hierarchy from within in order to preserve our fundamental principles. I’m skeptical that the threat of Islamic terrorism can be properly categorized as a war but if it is, one of the big battles being fought is for the integrity of the American system, and the battle is internal, not external. In that battle, this guy is a hero.

Swift appeared briefly on Hardball yesterday and had to endure an unbearably puerile interview from Chris Matthews, but he said a couple of things that I think are so simple and yet so important that it always boggles my mind that they get lost in the argument:

MATTHEWS: What about the charge made recently, just a couple minutes ago by Kate O‘Beirne of the “National Review,” that people who fight us who are not in uniform, who do not represent countries who are party to the Geneva Convention shouldn‘t be free riders? They shouldn‘t get Geneva Convention treatment. They should be treated like thugs.

SWIFT: Well, you know, if you‘re looking at it from that way, we have a lot of criminals here in this country. And to prejudge anyone that we capture outside the country as a thug, why are we having a trial in the first place? We‘ve already decided they were guilty.

What the Supreme Court said is you have the trial first, you use the procedures that are set up under international law, and then you decide whether they‘re a thug. You don‘t make the thug determination going in.

Why is this so hard to understand? We already know they picked up a whole lot of innocent and low level nobodies in Afghanistan and shipped them off to Gitmo. In the early days, the US was paying the Northern Alliance $5,000 per head and the NA was handing over their tribal rivals and anybody else they wanted to get rid of. I’m sure Kato and her barely repressed racist allies on the right don’t think it matters if some poor innocent wog gets tortured and locked up forever, but civilized people have come to recognise that show trials, kangaroo courts and lynching are immoral — and counterproductive. If you want to stress liberal values, the rule of law and democracy as the way forward in these fundamentalist religious cultures, you can’t behave this way. It doesn’t make you look tough or strong; it makes you look like you don’t believe in your own system — and that makes you weak.

Bin Laden and his ilk are much more sophisticated than are Cheney and Rummy and the starry eyed neocons. He gets that our soft underbelly is our leadership’s cowardly willingness to use him for political purposes. It’s lucky for this country that we have people like Lt Commander Swift and many others who didn’t buy into the argument that this country was so threatened by this loose band of religious psychopaths that it had to discard everything it believed in. That’s the real strength of America and the slim reed we all hang onto: individual citizens who are willing to stand up for principle (and a system that’s strong enough (so far) to support them) even as they suffer personally for it.

I thank Lt Commander Swift and all the others in the military justice system who managed to fight off the temptation to give in to the ridiculous GWOT juggernaut to take this all the way to the Supreme Court. It won’t solve the numerous problems of this ridiculous “war” or this dangerous administration, but it goes some way in beginning to restore my faith in the institutions of the courts and the military. (Our democratic political institutions, on the other hand, seem on the verge of self-destruction.)

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Death Of A Martian by poputonian
With all this talk about the cosmos, it raises the inevitable question, what would a flea name its dog? The answer, obviously, is Martian. (More on this in a few minutes.)But first there is a need to address more earthly concerns — mainstream kind of concerns — and once again, Susan Jacoby is doing the heavy lifting. Here she leads into a quotation made by Robert Green Ingersoll on July 4, 1876, the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

Those who cherish secular values have too often allowed conservatives to frame public policy debates as conflicts between “value-free” secularists and religious representatives of supposedly unchanging moral principles. But secularists are not value-free; their values are simply grounded in earthly concerns rather than in anticipation of heavenly rewards or fear of infernal punishments. No one in public life today upholds secularism and humanism in the uncompromising terms used by Ingersoll more than 125 years ago.

“Secularism teaches us to be good here and now. I know nothing better than goodness. Secularism teaches us to be just here and now. It is impossible to be juster than just. Secularism has no ‘castles in Spain.’ It has no glorified fog. It depends upon realities, upon demonstrations; and its end is to make this world better every day — to do away with poverty and crime, and to cover the world with happy and contented homes.”

These values belong at the center, not in the margins, of the public square. It is past time to restore secularism, and its noble and essential contributions at every stage of the American experiment, to its proper place in our nation’s historical memory and vision of the future.

Yesterday, Pach caught Barack Obama marginalizing the left for not courting evangelicals with enough fervor, but a greater concern to me was BOs outright acquiescence on matters of religious indoctrination via government sponsored rituals:

“It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase `under God,'” [Obama] said.

One hundred eighty days of school … twelve years. Sure. They won’t feel a thing.

The flea who named its dog Martian was this Flea, the bass guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It seems that Martian passed away during the recording of their latest album, Stadium Arcadium. Martian was a fixture and a source of companionship for the band during the recording of their two prior hit albums, Californication (1999) and By The Way (2002). The latest work is comprised of two CDs, one called Jupiter and the other Mars, which suggests the album has something to do with the Universe. But front man Anthony Kiedis tells Rolling Stone magazine that “love and women, pregnancies and marriages, relationship struggles — those are real and profound influences on this record.” If that’s the case, why did they close out with a beautiful song called Death of a Martian?By the way, have you ever noticed that cats are like conservatives — narcissistic, self-serving, aloof, and pissy — while dogs are like liberals — loyal, engaging, altruistic, and eager to please? Just askin’.

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Whatever

by digby

Glenn Greenwald has a nice primer posted about the Supreme Court decision on Gitmo and executive power. He optimistically concludes:

…opponents of monarchical power should celebrate this decision. It has been some time since real limits were placed on the Bush administration in the area of national security. The rejection of the President’s claims to unlimited authority with regard to how Al Qaeda prisoners are treated is extraordinary and encouraging by any measure. The decision is an important step towards re-establishing the principle that there are three co-equal branches of government and that the threat of terrorism does not justify radical departures from the principles of government on which our country was founded

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Isn’t it pretty to think so? Certainly some of the legal questions about presidential wartime powers seem to have been answered. But from a political standpoint, I’m with Atrios about the practical effect of this ruling:

My quick take is that it’s certainly an important symbolic victory, but this administration’s contempt for the law, the constitution, and the balance/separation of powers that our system rests on isn’t going to be very affected by what 5 people in black robes say. They’ve ignored Congress and they’ll ignore the Court too, leaving our mainstream media with more time to deal with the impending threat of blogofascism.

This decision will ultimately feed into conservative boogeyman number 438: judicial activism. Look for Justice Sunday IV: Vengeance is Mine Sayeth Delay. And expect many more calls to spike John Paul Stevens’ pudding with arsenic. This is the beauty of the conservo-machine. When your primary political tools are both intimidation and victimization, you can spin anything to your advantage.

Here’s Trent Lott doing a triple axel:

LOTT: I think some people are probably laughing at us. This is ridiculous and outrageous. Now in legal speak, let me say, I have not read the entire opinion, nor the dissents. But preliminarily my opinion is they probably didn’t even have jurisdiction. They shouldn’t have ruled the way they did. This is not a bunch of pussycats we’re talking about here. These are people that have made it clear in many instances that they would kill Americans if they got out. This is Osama bin Laden’s driver. And this is one other example of why the American people have lost faith in so much of our federal judiciary. This is a very bad decision in my opinion.

Tonya Harding never sounded this nuts.

I think this could be used to the Democrats’ advantage if they were willing to risk changing the terms of the debate for this midterm election and aggressively confront Karl Rove’s “you talkin’ to me?” trash talk campaign. The Supremes have provided a basis from which to assert congressional perogatives and a hook on which to hang the discussion. Perhaps they will. I hope so, because I am getting a terrible feeling that a lot of rank and file Democrats are going to take a pass on voting this time; no matter how much they dislike Bush and disapprove of his policies, it’s very hard to see at this point what difference it will make if the congress changes hands.

Unless the Dems start making the case that Democrats will confront the president if they take power, it’s hard to see why turnout will be high enough to offset the Karl Rove red-meat-travelling-salvation-show. He has made a fetish out of exciting his base for the past two elections and at this point it’s all he’s got. Unfortunately, the Democratic response, just as it has been since the early 90’s, is to run from its base and play to swing voters. This hasn’t been working out very well for them and it seems remarkably counterintuitive this time out.

I watched the last big change midterm in 1994 with keen interest and I don’t recall the Republicans pulling their punches out of fear of upsetting the swing voters in potential pick-up districts. At least they didn’t do it on a national level — they spent months utterly destroying Bill Clinton and tying every Democrat to his “failures.” (I recall being completely exhausted defending the president to a brainwashed wingnut boss who demanded that I “explain” my position to him over and over again.) They made the calculation that they could create a strong enough appetite for blood that their base would turn out in large numbers and the Democrats would be disillusioned and stay home.

In much the same way, I think Democrats desperately need to see their leaders take it to this president. He’s dramatically unpopular, his war is considered an abject failure by a large majority and he’s obsessed with secrecy and power. I think the concept of presidential overreach, with its echoes of Nixon, are issues that speak to the rank and file and would give the base the assurance that if the Democrats take control of the congress, the congress will take back it’s constitutional perogatives and provide oversight.

I doubt this will happen. Apparently a president mired in the mid-30’s with a GOP Eunuch Caucus that has enthusiastically signed off on every crackpot policy he’s put forth can still say boo! and the Dems will still believe it’s in their best interest to be measured and moderate. What a shame.

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Conservative Manifestos For Idiots

by digby

Kevin Drum linked to an article by Michelle Cottle in an obscure, subscription-only, outmoded journal in which she discusses the latest rightwing punlishing phenom, the child brainwashing author named Katharine DeBrecht who wrote the alleged runaway best-seller called “Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!”

I hadn’t heard of this children’s book, but apparently Limbaugh is rivaling Oprah these days and managed to get 30,000 of them sold after mentioning it on his show. Debrecht now has a contract for several more books, the announced titles of which include:

“Help! Mom! Hollywood’s in My Hamper!”
“Help! Mom! The Ninth Circuit Nabbed the Nativity!”
“Help! Mom! There Are Lawyers in My Lunchbox!”

I’m not kidding.

But, let’s be honest about this. These children’s books aren’t actually aimed at children. They can’t be. Kids won’t read books about the Ninth Circuit. These books are cheap propaganda items aimed at the neanderthal base of the Republican Party, for whom Ann Coulter’s screeds are over their heads. There are millions of them. They’ll buyt them “for the children” but they’ll read them outloud to the poor tykes over and over again for their own education.

It reminds me of the theory we’ve all seen circulated about why Bush always sounds like he’s lecturing to five year olds when he has one of these town meetings. (“See, social security should make you feel secure. That’s why the word security is in the name, see…”) The only reasonable explanation for this infantile rhetoric is that he’s regurgitating these explanations as they were explained to him.

These “Help Mom!” books will come in very handy as debate prep for George Allen, Junior’s intellectual heir. And they will undoubtedly become the “Conscience of a Conservative” of this new Pantload era of the conservative movement. That’s how low conservative philosophy has sunk.

Update: I greatly enjoyed Kevin’s commenters’ suggestions for further books. Here are just a few of the gems:

Help! Mom! There’s a Homosexual in My Closet!(…hmmm, not quite right. Too many hidden meanings.)

Help! Mom! There’s a Catholic Priest in the Rectory!(…again, no. People could read something into that.)

Help Mom! There are DEA Agents in my Viagra stash!

Help! Mom! A village in Texas lost its idiot!

Help! Mom! There’s a Doughnut Hole in Grandpa’s Prescription Drug Coverage!

Help Mom! I can’t remember the Ten Commandments!

Help! Mom! The Religious Right Won’t Stop Sniffing My Panties!

Help! Mom! I’ve got two moms!

Mainstream Beliefs

by digby

Atrios mentions this kerfluffle about Jerome Armstrong being a believer in astrology and how it’s scandalized certain elements of the wingnutosphere (and the left blogosphere, too.) His point is that a belief in astrology is no less mainstream than many of the religious beliefs people hold — beliefs which we secular liberals must be very, very careful not to disparage or be accused of ruining everything for the Democrats.

Let me tell you, it is as big a faux pas to disparage astrology or any of the new age or non-traditional spiritual belief system as it is to put down mainstream religion. I found this out the hard way when I wrote a very snarky and admittedly insulting post one day and got more angry feedback than any post I’ve ever done. These beliefs in the aggregate may be as widely held as a belief in God and it cuts across all political and cultural lines. Call it kooky if you will, but those who think secular liberals should STFU about traditional religion would be well advised to STFU about this too.

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Rush’s Law

by digby

I know that a good establishment liberal would refrain from even discussing the fact that Rush Limbaugh likes to go to one of the underage sex capitals of the world with a bottle of Viagra in one hand and God knows what in the other. Lee Siegel would find it wholly imappropriate of me to even bring it up. After all, Rush and his allies may have spent years harrassing Democrats for sexual indiscretions, but it’s beneath the blogs to sink to his level and make a big deal out of this.

But I just can’t help myself.

Nonetheless, one thing I have learned is that it is useless to call Republicans hypocrites. The word has no meaning anymore and we should just retire the concept. Instead, I would propose that we use these many occasions in which wingnuts are revealed for the degenerate phonies they are as “Oprah moments.”

Rush should be the poster boy for a new movement. It isn’t right that he is the only man in America who can get his Daddy’s Little Helpers prescribed in his doctor’s name instead of his own. Many men, I’m sure, would be grateful not to have to deal with the embarrassment of a pharmacist knowing about his need for Viagra and now that he’s known as a user, the least Rush can do is promote the right for all Americans to carry them without a prescription in their names, as he does.

Rush should be urged to share his story with America. Here’s he is, an impotent, thrice divorced, ex-drug addict, conservative, parolee who went on a sex tour in the Caribbean and found himself rudely embarrassed for carrying recreational prescription drugs in his doctor’s name. Who can’t relate to that? This is a man who has been run through the mud and I think we would benefit from a thorough national conversation to try to understand Rush’s urgent need for sex in one of the most poverty stricken countries in the world. Wouldn’t he feel unburdened if he could share his thoughts with some of his staunch allies like James Dobson or Pat Robertson? Surely they’d be willing to hear his testimony.

And from the conservo-libertarian standpoint, I frankly think anonymous Viagra for every American male should be a right, not a privilege. The jack-booted customs agents should not be able to roust good taxpaying citizens who just need a little discrete help when they go on vacation and want to score a couple of underage sex slaves. It’s unamerican. Perhaps some legislation is in order. We could call it Rush’s Law.

The main thing is that we shouldn’t condemn Rush for his hypocrisy. We should extend an understanding hand and help him come to terms with his problems. He’s just another flawed, dysfunctional, rich, celebrity Republican drug addict with a taste for kinky sex. Doesn’t he deserve our compassion? I think perhaps we need to ask our Republican representatives to step up and show their support for this flawed, but human, leader of their movement. After all, forgiveness is the Christian thing to do.

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Bob Herbert’s Question

by tristero

Bob Herbert poses a question which deserves some thought, because although the immediate answer is obvious, it leads to one of the great question marks of the 21st century:

I wonder whether Americans will ever become fed up with the loathsome politicking, the fear-mongering, the dissembling and the gruesome incompetence of this crowd.

Well, in fact, polls say that some two-thirds of Americans *are* fed up. So maybe Herbert means something about the public expression of outrage, something like, “Where are the legions of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, lovers, and friends of the soldiers dying for Bush’s stupidity? Why haven’t we heard from them? Where, after Katrina, are the Kings, the Malcolms, the Stokelys? Where are the Berrigans? The Dillingers? Where are the Edward R. Murrows, the Oppenheimers, the Ellsbergs, the McGoverns, the McCarthys?”

The thing is. there are many of these, too. Including, off the top of my head, Cindy Sheehan, Brady Kiesling, Colleen Rowley, Richard Clarke, Bob Herbert himself, Amy Goodman, James Hansen, Al Gore, Howard Dean, John Murtha, Paul Krugman, Barbara Ehrenreich. All very different people with very different concerns and, to be sure, very different politics. But all share a deep level of competence, intelligence, and public commitment to the notion of a small “d” democratic America.

So in thinking about it, Herbert’s question surely isn’t about the dearth of protest and dissent. As for positive alternatives to Bushism, Herbert knows as well as the rest of us that plenty of those exist. What Herbert is getting at is that all that protest, all those proposals are happening in an organizational void. His question really is,

“When will America again have two national political parties?”

I honestly wish I could say 2006. There are some positive signs that a second party could emerge, in the face of major attempts to suppress it, from what’s left of the Democratic Party. It certainly would save a lot of time. Building a second party from scratch will be no picnic.

But let’s not kid outselves. A political party that announces “A New Direction” which scrupulously avoids Iraq, Katrina, and the fundamental issue of competence in government… That’s not a political party with national influence as a goal.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the time is ripe – overripe – for a new generation of intelligent, hard-nosed, passionate, and responsible political organizers to create a truly mainstream political party that could easily route the Bushists. ‘Cause what’s goin’ on is just plain ridiculous and everyone knows it.

Premature Anti-Blogofascism

by digby

It is with great regret that I must resign from the vast left wing blogospheric conspiracy today. The time has come to choose one’s allegiances, and mine must lie with my liege lords, the journalistic and political leadership who have brought us where we are today. I can no longer be associated with the barbaric, illiterate jacknapes who presume to call their betters’ judgment into question.

You see, I’ve come to realize that this business of “punditry” and “politics” is not something anyone can just “do.” It is what one is born to, what one is meant to do, what one is. Some people are simply designed to have superior opinions. And those people are well known by others who have superior opinions. It is outside the natural order of things for unwashed, unknown rabble like me to set forth my ideas in the same public arena as someone like The New Republic’s Lee Siegel — and certainly not an intellectual adventurer such as David Brooks, who wrote the most important sociological work of our time, “On Paradise Drive.” (Only a man of great courage could have forced himself to enter a Red Lobster and mingle with the lower ranks and we must all be grateful for those dispatches from the wild. It is from first rate observers such as he that we rustics out in Real America can better understand our own shortcomings — as well as our delightful simple charm, of course.)

You see, the skills required to opine on political, cultural and current events are very, very special. They cannot be acquired by simply observing or reading or thinking. And writing about such topics cannot be considered useful merely because hundreds of thousands of people read your words. If anything, the opposite is true. Any circulation over 70,000 — or outside the elite capitals — must, by definition, be low-brow, cultural detritus and simply not worth our time. (I won’t even mention the horror of the rampant solecisms and bad grammar. My God, the grammar!) One must consider this burgeoning “medium,” if that is what it is, as just another vehicle for the lowest common denominator (as is that similarly destructive invention, television.) One is best served by simply not participating in it and shunning those who do. Only the wrong people are involved and I’m afraid that tears it for me, gentlemen.

I now regret very much having participated in this ignoble discourse over the past four years. When I read Mr Siegel’s claim that I was a “blogofascist” I nearly fainted dead away, the pain to my conscience was so sharp. What could be worse, I asked myself, than having the “culture blogger” of The New Republic disdain my work? What could be worse? He might as well have taken a knife and chopped off my middle finger.

Here is a man of high distinction who is clearly a knight among knaves and whose only mission in life is to educate and elucidate for the plebeian masses what they should enjoy. (His review of the Tom Cruise masterpiece “Eyes Wide Shut” alone is a education in superior taste and insight.) Yet from this lofty cliff he boldly stepped off and entered the battle with a couple of blog posts (ah, irony!) so profound and so cutting that he may well have changed the course of history:

It’s a bizarre phenomenon, the blogosphere. It radiates democracy’s dream of full participation but practices democracy’s nightmare of populist crudity, character-assassination, and emotional stupefaction. It’s hard fascism with a Microsoft face. It puts some people, like me, in the equally bizarre position of wanting desperately for Joe Lieberman to lose the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont so that true liberal values might, maybe, possibly prevail, yet at the same time wanting Lamont, the hero of the blogosphere, to lose so that the fascistic forces ranged against Lieberman might be defeated. (Every critical event in democracy is symbolic of the problem with democracy.)

Yes. One does wonder about its utility at times like these, doesn’t one?

The next day he further expounded on his important new thesis:

I am overwhelmed by the intolerance and rage in the blogosphere. Conscientiously criticize, in the form of a real argument, blogospheric favorites like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and the response isn’t similar criticism, done conscientiously and in the form of an argument, but insults, personal attacks, and even threats. This truly is the stuff of thuggery and fascism.

Dear me!

Mr Siegel knew that the blogofascists would mercilessly attack him with shocking epithets like “asshole” and “wanker” and even threats yet he forged on, unconcerned with his own safety, fearlessly determined to change hearts and minds with his unique professional gifts of subtle argumentation and gentle persuasion. The time had come to draw a line in the sand. My god, what an inspiration this man is.

I shall not let him down. That column changed my life. Even as I knew it had the ring of truth, I tried to resist, telling myself that he couldn’t be talking about me — not me. How can I be a flip-flopping cowardly America-hater while at the same time a fascist? A bleeding heart, terrorist coddler while also a brownshit? How does this work? I was finally persuaded by his preturnaturally sagacious observation that the man I looked up to as a father figure (indeed, a demi-God of sorts) Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, is actually a rootless former soldier looking for meaning in a stark post-modern landscape of internet cafes and shiny espresso carts. This is the man who is leading his listserve army of angry, middle aged, liberal professionals into blind blogofascism. The writing is on the wall, my friends:

Two other traits of fascism are its hatred of the processes of politics, and the knockabout origins of its adherents. Communism was hatched by elites. Fascism was born along the drifting paths of rootless men, often ex-soldiers who had fought in the First World War and been demobilized. They turned European politics into a madhouse of deracinated ambition.

In a 2004 article in The San Francisco Chronicle, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga told a reporter that he moved to El Salvador in the late 1970s with his family–one of his parents is Salvadoran–who apparently had financial interests there. The article relates:

“I believe in government. I was in El Salvador in the late ’70s during the civil war and I saw government as a life-and-death situation,” he said. “There was no one to root for. The government was a corrupt plutocracy and the rebels were Maoists. The concept of government is important.”

He remembers bullets flying in the marketplace and watching on television as government soldiers executed guerrillas. He also remembers watching footage of the Solidarity movement in Poland.

He was 9, and he asked his father what that was all about. His father, a furniture salesman, said, “It’s just politics.”

The future blogger said, “Tell me all about it.”

So he loves government, but hates politics. There’s something chilling about that.

It makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck doesn’t it? Is Siegel the only man in America who can see the threat? Can he be the only man in America who is willing to stand up and speak the words “Never Again?”

No he is not. Today, I have joined the resistance and say goodbye to all that. I’ve been called up by my new leader, Lee Siegel, defender of intellectual rigor in our national discourse. The Great Lee Siegel who wrote this:

You’d think that staring into the mirror and repeating your name over and over would have the opposite effect of helping you get out of yourself, but that’s not the case. The idea is to find a place so deep inside yourself that, with intense concentration, you look to yourself like a stranger. Your very name becomes an alien phrase. Physically, you start to seem imaginary. Spiritually, you start to seem more real. Hoffenshtoffen suggests keeping a packed suitcase standing in the middle of your apartment as a symbolic reminder of that magical fulfillmentÂ?self-surrenderÂ?when you leave yourself utterly and travel in a trancelike state to pure objective reception of the outer world.

Sounds silly and pretentiously spirituel, I know. But extricating oneself from oneself is the great problem of human life. Buddha’s name for the smothering, clamoring self was “desire”; Plato’s was “appetite”; Rousseau’s was “reason.” (The translations are Sylvester Cointreau’s.) William James, my favorite American writer, wearily wrote to a friend toward the end of his life that the human ego had begun to repel him. I sort of feel like that sometimes. That’s why, more and more, I love the sound of laughter. Not withering, or cruel, or exclusive, knowing laughter. I mean ego-bursting laughter that is like wisdom speaking in slang.

So who is this person staring back at me from the mirror in my bathroom? My lips are small and thin; Maya likes the way the upper lip protrudes slightly over the lower one. Carmencita likes the lower lipÂ?but she also wants me to wear cologne. A certain roundness and softness to my face always bothered me. I wanted to look hard and lean and chiseled, just as I wanted to have that invincible steel will of Central European intellectuals like Arthur Koestler, and not all that moist, tremulous high (and low) feeling I’ve inherited from my Russian-Jewish forebears. Everyone in my family is vibrato; there is not a note blanche to be found in our entire genetic pool. Weeping was a form of communication. One sob meant hello, two sobs meant good-bye, three sobs meant “There’s a call for you,” and so forth. Hoffenshtoffen, who gets bored by lachrymosity, says that I was born with a silver violin in my mouth.

That’s what the smart people call “insight,” my friends, something the narcissistic blogofascists like Markos Moulitsas Zuniga with his puerile nickname “DailyKos” know nothing of. This is how Lee Siegel and his sinecured cadre of noble elite scribblers will lead us simple progressive peasants from the wilderness.

Before you make a decision about whether to join our small resistance movement, I would ask you to think about something — something important. Have the liberal establishment elites of the past quarter century let us down yet?

Update: I see that “Neville” Wolcott is trying to appease the blogofascists.

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