Via Armando over at Kos I see this statement from Tom Vilsack today:
Gov. Tom Vilsack said Monday that Democrats risk political backlash if they object to the Bush administration’s wiretapping but cannot show that Americans’ civil liberties are at risk.
The Democratic governor, who is weighing a 2008 presidential bid, said the party will suffer if it continues to be perceived as weaker than Republicans on national security.
. . . “If the president broke the law, that’s unacceptable. But I think it’s debateable whether he did,” Vilsack told Des Moines Register editors and reporters. “And I think Democrats are falling into a very, very large political trap,” he said. “Democrats are not going to win elections until they can reassure people they are going to keep them safe.”
There are many things about this statement that are bullshit. I don’t have to lay them all out for you. But I would like to expound on one aspect of this statement that drives me crazy: it’s a process answer.
A process answer is saying what “we should say” instead of just saying it. Nothing drives me more nuts than a politician who talks process instead of engaging voters directly. In this instance it’s a backstab equal to anything one of those run-at-the-mouth strategists says to the NY Times to boost his cool factor among the mediatarts. He’s positioning hemself as a “reasonable” centrist on national security, but he clearly has nothing to offer on the subject at hand so he just talks about what “we should be doing.”
A lot of politicians do this, in different ways. Even Howard Dean used to do it when he said “we should be appealing to those guys with the confederate flags on their pick ups — they don’t have health care either.” I wanted to shout “Great! Do it. What’s the pitch?” The pitch never came. That’s the rub with these process discussions. Just saying that we should do something or we need to do something is not the same as doing it. And it’s a big reason why people are confused about what we stand for.
If they think that we should be tougher on national security, they shouldn’t say “we can’t win elections until we reassure people that we can keep them safe.” They should say, “here’s how we’ll keep you safe…” If Vilsack really thinks that Democrats will lose if we don’t support unconstitutional domestic spying programs then he should just say, “I think the program is probably legal and I support it.” A winning message is a winning messsage, right? Why all the navel gazing?
I suspect that he knows most Democrats don’t support his stance. But then perhaps he ought to think about how to convince us that we are wrong on the substance of this argument instead of appealing to us on this issue of “winning.” Maybe we can be convinced. Or if he doesn’t actually believe that the program should be supported but thinks he has to go along with it or Democrats will lose, then he could try persuading Republicans that the program is wrong. Either way, he will have given a clear message instead of trying to signal some sort of defeatist “this is the only way we can win” argument to the base while sounding like a half baked philosopher to the opposition. It’s this meaningless “we must convince people” process mush that will ensure that nobody knows what in the hell he actually believes. And that’s the biggest problem most Democratic politicians face.
Crooks and Liars has a clip from Glenn Greenwald’s appearance this morning on Washington Journal in which he mentions that many conservatives are concerned about this. He brought up super conservative Bruce Fein’s opinion that this could be an impeachable offense.
But he didn’t have time to mention a couple of things that I think are worth looking at in this vein. The first is this group that calls itself Patriots To Restore Checks and Balances who have formed an alliance with the following groups to protest the government’s increasing encroachment on Americans’ civil liberties:
“When the Patriot Act was passed shortly after 9-11, the federal government was granted expanded access to Americans’ private information,” said Barr. “However, federal law still clearly states that intelligence agents must have a court order to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans on these shores. Yet the federal government overstepped the protections of the Constitution and the plain language of FISA to eavesdrop on Americans’ private communication without any judicial checks and without proof that they are involved in terrorism.”
Where are these guys today? Shouldn’t they be called to testify before this committee and give their views? Are these “hard-core, doctrinaire” conservatives (as Greenwald elegantly calls them) just another branch of the Karl Rove Eunuch Society? I thought they always considered themselves to be something more than party hacks and second rate cronies but perhaps I was wrong.
Grover Norquist, as I have pointed out before, should be concerned about this for more than theoretical reasons. Perhaps he thinks he’s safe because he is the ultimate insider. But he should ask himself whether the fact that other insiders consider him a security threat might just put him in the crosshairs.
Grover Norquist has for some years now been promoting Islamist organizations, including even the Council on American-Islamic Relations; for example, he spoke at CAIR’s conference, “A Better America in a Better World” on October 5, 2004. Frank Gaffney has researched Norquist’s ties to Islamists in his exhaustive, careful, and convincing study, “Agent of Influence” and concludes that he is enabling “a political influence operation to advance the causes of radical Islamists, and targeted most particularly at the Bush Administration.”
But if Grover Norquist is indeed a convert to Islam, it could be that he is not just enabling the Islamist causes but is himself an Islamist. (April 14, 2005)
Grover looks like just the sort of guy they’d be likely to tap, don’t you think?
This really isn’t a partisan issue. Any American could fall under this illegal spying scheme and there is no oversight by anyone to determine whether it’s legal, necessary or useful to national security. It could be political enemies… and it could be political friends who some believe have suspicious ties to “the enemy.” You just don’t know. That’s the problem.
And knowing how these people operate — as Grover surely does, having been a part of the dirty tricks apparatus for more than 20 years — you can bet they are doing whatever they think is advantageous to their cause. I would think that keeping an eye on “unreliables” like Grover with his Muslim wife and libertarian leanings could be seen by the administration as important.
And as I noted in this earlier post, they don’t just spy on their enemies; they spy on their friends too. To make sure they don’t stray … if you know what I mean.
I believe that the Judiciary Committee will find, if it is willing to persist, that within the large pointless program there exists a small, sharply focused program that delivers something the White House really wants.
The oceans no longer protect us. The terrorists are coming over any minute to kill us all in our beds. They are a ruthless enemy who hide in caves until they suddenly decide to strike without mercy. But they have an achilles heel. They are all suffering from serious memory problems. Unless they see it in the paper they forget that we are tapping telephones. Then they slap themselves in the forehead and say “Oh no! I’ve been calling my friend Mohammed in LA planning that awesome terrorist attack and like, totally fergot that the infidels are listening in. Fuck. Man, Zawahiri is gonna to be so pissed.”
This is why it was so horrible that that the NY Times revealed the program. It jogged the terrorists’ memories and now they won’t use their phone and e-mail accounts anymore. Until they forget again, that is. So, shhhh. Loose lips sink ships.
Note: I’m not sure the following is entirely cooked. Consider this three quarters baked. Or less.
Mahablog has a bunch of links to opinions about the cartoon riots. And links to some opinions about the opinions.
In a different post, Barbara links to Juan Cole’s comments on the matter and as always they are interesting. Juan believes, among other things, that there something akin to an economic thing at work here. That’s ’cause Muslims, many if not most, live in Third World countries and communities. In short, in part it’s the rich and well off ridiculing the poor.
Maybe.
But as I recall, during the Satanic Verses flap (which in many important ways, I think, the cartoon riots do NOT resemble), Khomeini was in the midst of some serious domestic problems – bad economy in Iran, enormous number of deaths in a futile war with Iraq. Rushdie’s book was the perfect deflection. Similarly, Saudi Arabia had some very good reasons to stoke the controversy. During the recent haj, some 350 Muslims died. Now if the cartoons were published in September, why in late Jan/early Feb is there suddenly such shock, shock? In short, the cartoon riots are part of a Wag The Camel strategy.
Maybe.
And maybe Atrios is ultimately right, that the right to ridicule Muhammed must be defended, but the decision to do so is open to serious question. Especially given how tense things are presumed to be between the West and Islam.
But while Atrios’ take is as close to mine as I’ve read, what seems behind all the craziness is pretty deep stuff, deeper than a first glance might seem. I’m gonna go through my steps in coming to my own somewhat different conclusion, complementary to Duncan’s.
I must confess my Inner Contrarian was the first to react. No, not less but even more offensive cartoons! The world needs more mockery of Muhammed and Islam, I thought. The more they’re mocked, the less power the mockery has and that’s good for everyone. The more it’s mocked, the less sensitive Muslims will become to every slight. The worst thing to do in this situation is to declare ridicule off limits. It makes Islam above human reach, like the acts of Zgriertwrw (the substitute word for the name of the US president, whose name has become too holy to be uttered by non-Republicans).
But then I thought more about Art and Morality. Soundbite version: It simply isn’t art’s job to teach anyone a lesson.
True, it’s not art’s job to be polite. If it was, there wouldn’t be Michelangelo’s David, let alone the poems of Baudelaire, or the late recordings and performances of John Coltrane. And it is certainly not art’s job to make a culture less sensitive and passionate.
But then I flipped that all around and a glimpse of a personal opinion on this mess started to occur to me. If it is not art’s job deliberately to console, it also is not art’s job intentionally to piss anyone off. The dissonances in Monteverdi’s madrigals were not deliberate provocations, as many thought. It’s simply what he heard. Stravinksy wasn’t trying to cause a riot with Le Sacre. He was furious, not happy for the publicity. An artist, if s/he’s really an accomplished artist, doesn’t seek to anger. What a monumentally trivial objective!
In the case of the cartoons, it seems as if they were commissioned for moral reasons, to illustrate a point of view, propagate an ideology – freedom of speech impinged upon by Muslim objections. Their existence was not drawn from some internal kind of inner aesthetic impulse (people have argued for hundreds of years what’s meant by that kind of a drive and I’m not gonna go any further now to define what I mean) but from without.
In short, the cartoons are art to teach a lesson. But while the artist can control his/her brushstrokes, the reaction to art cannot be controlled. In moral art, the reactions are often far from ones the artists desire. Put another way most of us who’ve read the Inferno stop right there. I’m sure the good parts are wonderful, but I think I’ve already read the really good – ie, lurid- parts.
And that’s sort of like the problem with my initial impulse. I, too, wanted to teach those sumbitches a lesson – who, exactly? I dunno, those sumbitches. And that’s just like the newspaper that originally published the toons. But, as I thought through what I was saying, I realized it’s not my business to teach anyone a lesson and that thinking it was is nuts. Gut feelings are very often not good.
Now, perhaps a bit of a digression but it really isn’t. A bit of detail on the use of moral themes in art.
Some great artists have conciously worked with moral themes in art today, to try to come to terms with it. One of the greatest masters of the trend is – irony of ironies – the Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. His masterpiece, “Breaking the Waves,” (don’t rent it, see it in a theater where you can’t escape) is both a deeply moving affirmation of Catholic faith and a harrowing, pornographic rant against the superhuman sacrifices required to live a life truly in imitation of Christ. You can easily conclude that art as the mediator of morality has not been deconstructed but eviscerated in von Trier’s work. But you can just as easily see in the fate of Emily Watson’s character the redemptive, sacrificing love of Christ and the good that can flow from it. And that’s just for starters in trying to approach this amazing, impossibly aggravating film.
Von Trier’s film is shattering, insane, magnificent, fiercely ambiguous, sublime. By intent, Lars makes you seek your own sense of morality within the structure and actions of the film. And just as intentionally, you are doomed to fail. This isn’t a paen to relativism or amorality. Rather, for von Trier, it’s something like the point of the Book of Job: the moral compass of humans is too puny to grasp God’s greatness and thoughts. But while you’re on this doomed journey of moral discovery, you just might think to wonder how your sense of good and evil gets shifted and twisted and turned inside itself. And if there is a “good” in the film, it’s that sense of wonder. An aesthetic sense. The sense of art. It’s an exhausting experience to watch Breaking the Waves. And unforgettable.
By contrast, the Muhammed cartoons are, morally dull, even by their own admittedly less high-falutin’ standards. And the reason is obvious after a bit of thought. The intention behind them is not to work out some kinky artistic/personal problems. No, the intentions behind the cartoons were those of the self-righteous Western mediocrity and they couldn’t be clearer – let’s show Them free speech is a good thing.
Wow, that’s taking a controversial position! But much to the amazement of the Danes, they found that it actually was. And this is what makes the cartoons indefensibly awful, even stupid. Unlike Stravinsky, for whom teaching moral lessons was the last thing on his mind; unlike von Trier, whose control is simply awesome over fiendishly complicated moral themes; the cartoonists and their editors set out, like the naive, idealistic Kevin Costner in the Untouchables, to do good. They got their asses handed to them.
So here’s the point of this long digression into von Trier, aesthetics, et al.
Why do the cartoon riots remind me of Paul Wolfowitz and George Packer, who seemed to have nothing to do with it? For a very simple reason. The same perverse sense of entitlement and exceptionalism underlies the anti-aesthetic impulse of the editors: Let’s do some good! This is not to argue for a crude Scowcroftian realism, but rather to protest, strongly, against the insanity of making simplistic moral/political statements either in art or in foreign policy. A lot of the time, they just make things worse. A lot worse.
So to sum up. Yes, on the level that most often should be addressed – the practical level – Atrios is right and that’s as far as anyone needs to go. Of course, the rioters are, at best, grossly overreacting and at worst, have been driven insane by those that provoked them to overreact. Of course, free speech needs defense, and of course commonsense propriety was in short supply in the newspaper’s newsroom. But underneath these self-evident truisms lies a sad truth that bears some thinking about. The events of the cartoon riots, in all their mad senselessness and fatal tragedy, reflect – epitomize – some of the worst but most virulently widespread presumptions of our time: the arrogance and shallowness of white boy moralizing; the maniacal self-destructive sense of sheer helplessness that descends into pointless murder, destruction, and horror.
As I see it, both the decision to commission and publish the cartoons and the riots that followed simply defy comprehension not because one couldn’t predict the consequences but because one could, with depressing ease. Unless they come to their senses, the white do-gooders are gonna get us all killed in their crusades. And the recipients of all this do-gooding are gonna do the exact same thing when their fury at the do-gooders is cynically stoked and channelled into senseless destructiveness and murder.
In short, no more cartoon riots. No more cartoon editors. No more cartoon evil cavemen. And no more cartoon American administrations. It’s time not to listen to what our gut says, it’s time to give it some alka-seltzer and get it to shut up so we can think.
I’m beginning to wonder if the Democrats might not have some information that the administration has done domestic surveillance without a warrant. They keep asking. Pointedly. And Gonzales keeps saying that he isn’t “comfortable” acknowledging the question.
Therefore, it is entirely reasonable to suspect that this administration would use this illegal surveillance program for purposes other than that to which they have admitted, particularly since they consider political dissent to be bordering on treason. This is, remember, an administration that has made a fetish of the politics of personal destruction. The gathering of “oppo research” is the life’s blood of their political strategy and it goes all the way back to the Big Kahuna.
At a seminar in Lexington, Kentucky, in August 1972, Rove and Robinson recounted the Dixon episode with considerable delight. They talked about campaign espionage, about digging through an opponent’s garbage for intelligence — then using it against them. Robinson recounted how the technique had worked well for him in the 1968 governor’s race in Illinois when he “struck gold” in a search of an opponent’s garbage. He found evidence that a supporter had given checks to both sides in the race, but more to the Democrat, Sam Shapiro.
“So one of our finance guys calls the guy up the next day and told him there was a vicious rumor going around,” Robinson said, according to a tape recording of a seminar. “The guy got all embarrassed and flew to Chicago that day with a check for $2,000 to make up the difference,” he said.
This was the summer of the Watergate break-in, with the first revelations of a scandal that unraveled the Nixon presidency.The Watergate burglars broke in to the Democratic National Committee offices on June 17 and the whole business of political dirty tricks was rapidly becoming a very sensitive subject. Both Rove and Robinson recognized that. They even specifically mentioned the Watergate break-in at the seminars, not as a reason to avoid campaign espionage, but as a reason to keep it secret.
“While this is all well and good as fun and games, you’ve really got to use your head about who knows about this kind of thing.” Robinson warned.
“Again in those things, if it’s used sureptitiously in a campaign, it’s better off if you don’t get caught. You know, those people who were caught by Larry O’Brien’s troops in Washinngton are a serious verification of the fact that you don’t get caught.”
Remember: Watergate was about bugging the Democratic National Committee. The “3rd rate burglary” was to replace an illegal bug that had been planted on the telephones of prominent Democrats.
The lesson of Watergate for the chagrined Republicans was that they needed to be more forceful in assuming executive power and they needed to be more sophisticated about their campaign espionage. This is what they’ve done.
Anybody who even dreams that these guys are not using all their government power to spy on political enemies is being willfully naive. It is what they do. It is the essence of their political style. This is Nixon’s Republican party and they have finally achieved a perfect ability to carry out his vision of political governance: L’etat C’est Moi. If the president does it that means it’s not illegal.
I’ve been digesting this morning’s hearings and I am dumbstruck by the totality of the Republicans’ abdication of their duty. These men who spent years running on Madisonian principles (“The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse”) now argue without any sense of irony or embarrassment that Republican Senators are nothing more than eunuchs in President Bush’s political harem. They have voluntarily rendered the congress of the United States impotent to his power.
I’ve watched this invertebrate GOP caucus since 2000 as they submitted themselves to this lawless administration again and again, shredding every bit of self respect, every figment of institutional pride, every duty to the constitution. The look in their eyes, which is somehow interpreted as strong and defiant by the equally servile media, is actually a window to empty little men who have given up their manhood to oblige their master. The only reward they seek is unfettered access to the taxpayers money for their own use.
We are looking at fifty-five of the most powerful people in the country. Collectively the Republican Senators represent almost a hundred and fifty million citizens. And they have allowed a callow little boy like George W. Bush along with his grey eminineces Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to strip them of their consciences, their principles and their constitutional obligations. What sad little creatures, cowardly and subservient, unctuously bowing and scraping before Karl Rove the man who holds their (purse) strings and dances them around the halls of congress singing tributes to their own irrelevance at the top of their lungs. How pathetic they are.
Barry Goldwater is rolling over in his grave.
Update: Oh, and don’t get excited about Huckleberry Graham’s “tough” questions. This is his schtick. Going all the way back to the impeachment hearings, he has done this. He hems and haws in his cornpone way how he’s “troubled” by one thing or another until he finally “decides” after much “deliberation” that the Republican line is correct after all and he has no choice but to endorse it.
Update II:Matt Yglesias notices the same thing and wonders why the senators don’t have a hunger for pwoer. I say it’s because they are craven, bedwetting cowards who are afraid of Karl Rove and addicted to stealing from the American people.
I’m watching the NSA hearings and it occurred to me: did the UK and Spain “declare war” on terrorism or al Qaeda? After all, they have been attacked as well and I wonder if they are operating under wartime conditions or wartime laws. Dores anyone know whether we are the only country in the world that considers itself “at war” with terrorism in the literal sense of the word?
One who attended was George Terwilliger, a deputy attorney general in Mr. Bush’s father’s administration, who said that questions over the spy program were “not so much a debate about the law as about the tactics that are necessary to combat the type of violent enemy we’ve never confronted before.”
He added, “I hope the A.G. will make that point very strongly, that there is no precedent for what we’re dealing with here.”
I’m hearing everywhere that the Democrats are skittish about pursuing the NSA scandal due to the GOP’s aggressive framing of the program as necessary to protect the American people. It is indisputable that Republicans have been very successful at portraying themselves as strong and Democrats as weak on national security for more than 40 years and have used this issue aggressively in the last two elections. Indeed, the only time we won the presidency since 1964 was during times when national security was not on the agenda (or their president was forced to resign in disgrace.) They have appropriated certain master narratives about heroism and courage to define Republican leadership which they sell as necessary when the country is under threat — a threat which they also insist upon defining as existential (communism and terrorism) and which always requires brute force rather than strategic cunning or intelligent maneuvering. (Remember that at the country’s most dangerous moment in the last 50 years — the Cuban Missile crisis — the hawks insisted that the only answer was to launch a pre-emptive strike while cooler heads insisted on trying to figure out a way to step back from the brink.)
So, knowing this and knowing the Rove has been telegraphing that they plan to pull out their wellworn playbook once again, I’m throwing this out to you readers today to mull over and discuss. Since the Republicans have been successful in winning elections on national security, how should Democrats deal with it?
Normally, in articles like this one, another dispatch from the front lines of the extreme right’s War On Brains. a quote packed with the usual lies of the extreme right is reproduced without context or fact checking. This gives the reader the impression that the facts are basically right and therefore what the fanatic is saying may be a reasonable, even if unusual, opinion to hold:
“I got tired of people calling me and saying, ‘Why is my kid coming home from high school and saying his biology teacher told him he evolved from a chimpanzee?’ ” Mr. Buttars said.
This time around, however, the reporter, Kirk Johnson, was permitted to be a genuine reporter and report the whole truth, not just be a quote puppet. The very next paragraph reads:
Evolutionary theory does not say that humans evolved from chimpanzees or from any existing species, but rather that common ancestors gave rise to multiple species and that natural selection — in which the creatures best adapted to an environment pass their genes to the next generation — was the means by which divergence occurred over time. All modern biology is based on the theory, and within the scientific community, at least, there is no controversy about it.
Yes, exactly. The only thing that’s remarkable about this is that this kind of apropriately critical attitude is rare. The lies that the extreme right and radical christianists spew out as a matter of course can only be stopped from polluting the discourse if they are met immediately and head on.
This article has the right idea. Someone might wanna inform their colleagues at the Book Review that reviewers and essayists, too, are obligated to know enough about their subjects to separate fact from fiction and not be seduced into a bogus equivalence of value by rightwing lies no matter how confidently asserted.