Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

They Don’t Like Democracy

Charles Pierce gets to the nub of the argument:

There really is only one issue in this election. Since the Extended Florida Unpleasantness, this has been an Adminstration utterly unconcerned with any restraints, constitutional or otherwise, on its power. It has been contemptuous of the idea of self-government, and particularly of the notion that an informed populace is necessary to that idea. It recognizes neither parliamentary rules nor constitutional barriers. (Just for fun, imagine that the Senate had not authorized force in Iraq. Do you think for one moment that C-Plus Augustus wouldn’t have launched the war anyway, and on some pretext that we’d only now be discovering was counterfeit?) It does not accept the concept of principled opposition, either inside the administration or outside of it. It refuses to be bound by anything more than its political appetites. It wants what it wants, and it does what it wants. It is, at its heart, and in the strictest definition of the word, lawless. It has the perfect front men: a president unable to admit a mistake because he’s spent his entire life being insulated from even the most minor of consequences, and a vice-president who is viscerally furious at the notion that he is accountable to anyone at all. They are abetted by a congressional majority in which all of these un-American traits are amplified to an overwhelming din.

So, now we are faced with the question: Do you want to live in a country where these people no longer feel even the vaporous restraints of having another election to win?

BUSH-CHENEY UNLEASHED. Up or down? Yes or no?

There you have it.

Jon Chait in TNR amplifies this theme:

Here we have a sample of the style of governance that has prevailed under Bush’s presidency. It’s not the sort of thing you would find in a civics textbook. Bush and his allies have been described as partisan or bare-knuckled, but the problem is more fundamental than that. They have routinely violated norms of political conduct, smothered information necessary for informed public debate, and illegitimately exploited government power to perpetuate their rule. These habits are not just mean and nasty. They’re undemocratic.

What does it mean to call the president “undemocratic”? It does not mean Bush is an aspiring dictator. Despite descending from a former president and telling confidants that God chose him to lead the country, he does not claim divine right of rule. He is not going to cancel the election or rig it with faulty ballots. (Well, almost certainly not.) But democracy can be a matter of degree. Russia and the United States are both democracies, but the United States is more democratic than Russia. The proper indictment of the Bush administration is, therefore, not that he’s abandoning American democracy, but that he’s weakening it. This administration is, in fact, the least democratic in the modern history of the presidency.

I think it’s very important to note that this is not something that’s confined to the Bush administration alone as if they are some sort of GOP anomalies. The fact is that this is an ongoing, serious problem of the modern Republican Party in general. They are congenitally opposed to compromise which leads inevitably to rule by force.

Chait argues that the Bush administration is not destroying democracy but rather weakening it. I would suggest that that adds up to the same thing. They are unlikely, except in a desperate situation, to attempt a military coup or do something dramatically attention grabbing like cancel the election. They aren’t that stupid. They can attain everything they want over time by simply eroding democracy to the point at which it has all of the trappings and none of the substance. That process has been going on for some time now and escalating gradually to the point at which we now find ourselves with a presidency (which has always been the repository of Republican ruling fantasies)that quite blatently declares that it has no responsibility to uphold the laws if it deems them an impediment to national security.

But it’s not the Bushies, it’s the party. Removing Bush will not solve this problem. Indeed, I’m sure the GOP congress would love to get back into action and resume its natural investigative role which they have been shut out of while Republicans are in the white house. Their egos demand a little bit of the spotlight.

I’m sure there are many Republicans who simply don’t see what is happening and would be horrified if they did. Not even the Democrats who have been on the receiving end of these undemocratic power plays seem to have been aware until recently of what has been going on.

I have been repeating this “undemocratic” mantra since the mid 1990’s. (You can google this blog for the word and you’ll see that I’ve done my best to bore everyone to tears with it.) It is a huge threat to this country — one that has been magnified a hundred fold by the events if 9/11. It’s not tin-foil kookiness and it’s not partisan angst. It’s real. And while I have little doubt that many reasonable sorts (which, by the way, I am also) will shake their heads sadly once again at my shrillness and hysteria for taking this view, I’ll continue to do it. The Emperor has no clothes. I see what I see. I’m glad to have some company.

TBogg Madness

Kevin at Catch interviews the King of Snark. How come the funniest guys are always merchandise managers?

Funk Soul Brother To The Rescue?

Check it out now.

The Agonist has posted this Stratfor report:

Moscow and Washington are quietly negotiating a request by the Bush administration to send Russian troops to Iraq or Afghanistan this fall, Russian government sources tell Stratfor. The talks are intense, our contacts close to the U.S. State Department say, and the timing is not insignificant. A Russian troop lift to either country before the U.S. presidential election would give U.S. President George W. Bush a powerful boost in the campaign.

More at the link.

The U.S. inviting the Russians into Afghanistan to help us fight the Mujahadeen is so incredibly ironic I can’t even go there. A KGB agent rescuing the neocons is simply hysterical.

What do you suppose Pooty-poot will want in return?

The Natives Are Restless

Following up my post from yesterday:

More than half the Republicans in the House have signed a formal complaint to President Bush about the failure to give prominent conservative, pro-life party members even one prime-time speaking role at the Republican National Convention.

[…]

The pre-convention rebellion by so many conservative House members is driven by re-election concerns and frustration over policy differences with the White House in the past 31/2 years, Capitol Hill Republicans said privately.

Public revolt is the last thing the Bush campaign wants to see, after the Senate Republican leaders failed Wednesday to get even 50 votes to back a constitutional amendment against homosexual “marriages.”

Last month, Republican convention planners announced a prime-time speakers’ list, which was approved by chief Bush strategist Karl Rove.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York Gov. George E. Pataki, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani — all of whom are pro-choice — are lined up for evening speeches.

[…]

“The most conservative speaker right now is John McCain, who is truly a fiscal conservative. But a lot of conservatives believe the conservative movement that got us here is being ignored at the convention,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican.

[…]

Mr. Pence said signers of his letter agreed that “millions of voters will be tuning into the convention to hear someone give voice to the traditional moral values that brought them to the Republican Party in 1980.”

“The strength of the Republican majority in America is not in the California governor’s office or in the moderate politics of George Pataki,” Mr. Pence said. “It’s in the millions of pro-family voters who will campaign for our candidates and turn out on Election Day.”

This controversy just guaranteed that Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer will bring up the fact that Rove tried to keep the real conservatives off the podium at the one event at which they really wanted to appear moderate and mainstream. The bad news is that nobody’s going to watch the conventions who isn’t already decided. Still, it doesn’t hurt and it’s illustrative of the problem the administration is having with its base.

The Grown-ups

Karl Rove, special advisor to President Bush saying that Sen. John Kerry thumbed his nose to U.S. troops in Iraq at a political rally in Irvine, Calif., on Thursday, July 15, 2004.

Expert Witnesses

“Human life is the gift of our creator, and it should never be for sale,” Bush said. “It takes a special kind of depravity to exploit and hurt the most vulnerable members of society. Human traffickers rob children of their innocence, they expose them to the worst of life before they have seen much of life. Traffickers tear families apart. They treat their victims as nothing more than goods and commodities for sale to the highest bidder.”

The president gave his brother, Florida’s governor, a verbal pat on the back, observing that Jeb Bush had signed a state law making such trafficking a felony.

The president then turned to his other brother Neil who testified:

Bush: “I had sexual intercourse with perhaps three or four, I don’t remember the exact number, women, at different times. In Thailand once, I have a pretty clear recollection that there was one time in Thailand and in Hong Kong.”

Brown: “And you were married to Mrs. Bush?”

Bush: “Yes.”

Brown: “Is that where you caught the venereal diseases?”

Bush: “No.”

Brown: ‘Where did you catch those?’

Bush: “Diseases plural? I didn’t catch…”

Brown: “Well, I’m sorry. How … how many venereal diseases do you suffer from?”

Bush: “I’ve had one venereal disease.”

Brown: “Which was?”

Bush: “Herpes.”

Those Crude Democrats

I just heard that Don Imus referred to Senator Clinton as a “fat buck-toothed crook introducing her rapist husband….” at the convention. (I don’t have a link, so it may be wrong.)

When asked to respond, Steve Schmidt of the Bush campaign said, “… there was a great deal of extreme venom and vitriol that spewed forth.”

Oh wait. That was about Whoopie Goldberg at a private fundraiser. This Imus comment only went out to tens of millions of people both on radio and television. It was just entertainment for the folks. Whoopie, on the other hand, made a lewd joke in front of Democratic partisans about Bush’s name (which, by the way, was hardly original — I had a bumper sticker that said “lick Bush in 88”)

Now, both Kerry and Edwards appeared on Imus yesterday, apparently. But then, they don’t tend to go around snuffling and whining every time somebody says something rude. That’s the specialty of little old lady quilting circle of the Bush administration.

One Simply Doesn’t, Darling

I was so relieved to see another card carrying liberal standing up for what’s right against all this unseemly politicking by those nasty Democrats. And how very clever he is to use someone who isn’t actually a Democrat to do it. 

Ron Reagan also proceeds as something of a medium, channeling his father’s unknowable views on such matters as Bush’s very public religiosity. At Reagan’s interment in Simi Valley, Calif., for instance, he said, “Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man, but he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians — wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage.”

Let’s leave aside the implied accusation that Bush is publicly religious not out of conviction but “to gain political advantage” and question the appropriateness of the statement — at the burial and citing the dead Reagan. And let us also concede that if Ron Reagan were not his father’s son, not only would he not have been at that funeral — by virtue of what achievement? — but no one would have paid him any attention. He had, as he well knew, expropriated his father’s fame and stature for his own purposes.

It is the same with stem cell research. Once again, Ron Reagan will be speaking solely because of his name and because, by implication, he is articulating his dead father’s convictions. Maybe he is — I would like to think so — but there is no way of knowing where Ronald Reagan would have stood on stem cell research. He was not, to say the least, a rigorous thinker and might well have wound up in Bush’s corner. Who knows? “

Thank goodness, we have good, right thinking liberals out there who are willing to defend Crusader Codpiece’s religiosity as true and authentic, publicly opine that President Reagan would likely have backed Bush’s stem cell plan, call the anti-Bush son of the GOP icon a phony and a grave robber and generously compile a handy list of talking points that John Moody can simply xerox and pass out to the press.(“Even the radical leftist Richard Cohen said….”) And how terribly clever of him to criticize this “Jr” for shamefully appropriating his father’s name.  Ooooh, the Bushies must have gotten quite a giggle out of that one.

Left leaning pundits simply must carry water for Republicans whenever they can because  otherwise rude people would call into question their  superiority as individuals and we simply can’t have that. The rule is that you may be critical of Republicans one out of every three columns, but if you do more than that, people will begin to suspect your gentlemanly credentials. Why, how ever would one hold one’s head up over the vichyssoise at Sally’s if one could not believably titter condescendingly about the hapless Democrats?

I’m telling you, the Democrats’ worst enemies are the liberal punditocrisy. They are useful idiots at best and consciously social climbing at worst. They either don’t understand the game the GOP is playing or they are too self-absorbed to see it. Either way, their total co-option by the Mighty Wurlitzer agenda is truly impressive.

That Reagan Jr fellow has very bad manners. Just like the Democrats who are giving him a platform for his depraved body snatching speech. He may be right on the issue, but it’s so ill-bred for him to bring it up. I don’t want anyone to think that I don’t notice that. I simply must call things as I see them. That’s why I’m superior to the partisan rabble. Uhm, Sally this potage is just delicious. As are you, my dear.

Go Fukuyama Yourself:

Famous academic Francis Fukuyama, one of the founding fathers of the neo-conservative movement that underlies the policies of US President George W. Bush’s administration, said on July 13 that he would not vote for the incumbent in the November 2 US Presidential election.

In addition to distancing himself from the current administration, Fukuyama told TIME magazine that his old friend, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, should resign.

In other news, Dick Cheney admitted he’s always known that deep down he is really a woman and hell reported hail and freezing rain.

Thanks to Kevin at Catch

Wingnut Victimology

 

Thomas Frank’s op-ed in the NY Times:

 

Of course, as everyone pointed out, the whole enterprise was doomed to failure from the start. It didn’t have to be that way; conservatives could have chosen any number of more promising avenues to challenge or limit the Massachusetts ruling. Instead they went with a constitutional amendment, the one method where failure was absolutely guaranteed — along with front-page coverage.

Then again, what culture war offensive isn’t doomed to failure from the start? Indeed, the inevitability of defeat seems to be a critical element of the melodrama, on issues from school prayer to evolution and even abortion.

Failure on the cultural front serves to magnify the outrage felt by conservative true believers; it mobilizes the base. Failure sharpens the distinctions between conservatives and liberals. Failure allows for endless grandstanding without any real-world consequences that might upset more moderate Republicans or the party’s all-important corporate wing. You might even say that grand and garish defeat — especially if accompanied by the ridicule of the sophisticated — is the culture warrior’s very object.

The issue is all-important; the issue is incapable of being won. Only when the battle is defined this way can it achieve the desired results, have its magical polarizing effect. Only with a proposed constitutional amendment could the legalistic, cavilling Democrats be counted on to vote “no,” and only with an offensive so blunt and so sweeping could the universal hostility of the press be secured.

Losing is prima facie evidence that the basic conservative claim is true: that the country is run by liberals; that the world is unfair; that the majority is persecuted by a sinister elite. And that therefore you, my red-state friend, had better get out there and vote as if your civilization depended on it.

 

This really hits the nail on the head. The right’s sense of victimization is absolutely necessary to rally their faithful.  It’s the same thing, by the way, that fuels the islamic fundamentalists. Perceived humiliation. In her new book about terrorism, Jessica Stern writes:

 

To understand this, it is worth considering the causes of terrorism. Several possible root causes have been identified, including, among others, poverty, lack of education, abrogation of human rights, the perception that the enemy is weak-willed. I’ve been interviewing terrorists around the world over the past five years. Those I interviewed cite many reasons for choosing a life of holy war, and I came to despair of identifying a single root cause of terrorism. But the variable that came up most frequently was not poverty or human-rights abuses, but perceived humiliation. Humiliation emerged at every level of the terrorist groups I studied — leaders and followers.

The “New World Order” is a source of humiliation for Muslims. And for the youth of Islam, it is better to carry arms and defend their religion with pride and dignity than to submit to this humiliation. Part of the mission of jihad is to restore Muslims’ pride in the face of humiliation. Violence, in other words, restores the dignity of humiliated youth. Its target audience is not necessarily the victims and their sympathizers, but the perpetrators and their sympathizers. Violence is a way to strengthen support for the organization and the movement it represents.

The word humiliation, alas, is now coming up in Iraq as well. Baghdad is of profound symbolic importance to Muslims because it was the capital of the Islamic world during the golden age of Islamic civilization. Televised pictures of American soldiers and their tanks in Baghdad are a “deeply humiliating scene to Muslims,” explains Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih, who calls the war in Iraq a “gift” to Osama bin Laden.

 

The GOP and its corporate masters have successfully used this perceived humiliation of the “salt of the earth” red staters for cynical, manipulative reasons for decades.  It has consolidated the power of the real elites by scapegoating “cosmopolitans” and modernity as the cause of the average Joe’s problems.  But, just like their counterparts in places like Saudi Arabia, in this process they have found it useful and necessary to empower racists, paranoids and religious fundamentalists, some of whom have violent tendencies.

 

This scheme is about to blow up the House of Saud to its own detriment and everybody elses. We’ve got to  short circuit it here. That means that the humiliation factor has to be neutralized.