Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Holding Out For A Hero To Emerge

I got a lot of mail this morning from people criticizing my alleged fickelness for writing positive posts about Clark, Dean and Edwards.

Just so you know, I may very likely write positive articles about every other candidate, as well. In this election I’m not going to bash any Democrats (unless they do something really egregious.) I’m not interested, at this point, in any more hand-wringing about the Party and I don’t feel like indulging in self-flaggelation. Winners aren’t self-loathing.

We Democrats don’t annoint our candidates in the smoke filled boardroom of the Carlyle Group the way the Republicans do. Our primaries are real. They are an open field for every candidate to make his or her case. It’s rough and tumble and often self-defeating, but at least it’s democratic. Normally, I’m up for the fight, but this time I’m looking at it differently.

I have, in years gone by, worked for candidates in the primaries. I was a big supporter of Hart in both 84 and 88. And, I liked Clinton early, too. I was never entirely focused on the general election in those cases. Instead I was focused on the candidate himself, the direction of the party, laying the groundwork for the future and developing an overall political strategy. In other words, I was being a good citizen, involved in civic affairs and voting my conscience. I cared about winning, but I never saw politics in solely those terms. I was in it for the long haul.

But, that was then and this is now.

We are in the midst of a radical experiment in both domestic and foreign policy — all of the institutional safeguards are dysfunctional and the people are overwhelmed with an unprecedented barrage of soothing images, cognitive dissonance and white noise. The power to conduct this radical experiment was attained by undemocratic means and is being consolidated with the same underhanded processes. The potential ramifications of this political revolution are as serious as anything we’ve experienced in the history of this country. This is no drill. They will continue to push the edge of the envelope until they are stopped. They have no self-governance.

So, I don’t care about anything this time but winning the presidential election. The Republican Party has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to hold this much power and the presidency is the quickest, most efficient way for us to check it. I will vote for any breathing Democrat (and maybe even one who’s not) running against Bush.

But, I can’t tell the future and neither can anyone else. Because my calculation is based solely upon who can beat Bush, I can’t choose a candidate based on a combination of where I would like to see the country go and the practical notion of electability, as it should be, but rather solely on who can win in the political environment of the fall of 2004. (It’s cynical, I know, but I don’t feel very idealistic. It’s a war of survival at this point.) It’s simply too early to tell

So, for now, I will continue to highlight the strengths of each candidate and try to analyze what all of them bring to the party that could be useful in defeating Bush. And, I refuse to give the Wurlitzer any extra notes to play. They – and the servile jades of the press – used Bradley to beat Gore over the head mercilessly and in a close election (which this is likely to be) these things count.

I’ve concluded, with great distress, that this media age has had the effect of trivializing politics and blurring the distinction between fantasy and reality to such an extent that, in this instance anyway, we must capitulate to that and learn to exploit it. So, considering how high the stakes are, my prime interest in a Democratic candidate is in how he can be marketed rather than whether his ideas are the right ones. Sadly, I don’t think ideas in and of themselves are particularly relevant at the moment — it’s what they symbolize, how they affect the competition’s game plan and how well they are framed in the mind of the public. The single most important thing has nothing to do with policy or philosophy. It is the likeability of the man himself, what heroic “type” he represents, and the “feeling” he engenders in the public.

However, we must also take into account the fact that the electorate is closely divided and turn-out is going to be essential. This requires that candidates also inspire our ideological base in an environment where many are paralysed and hopeless at the sight of a Republican onslaught so shockingly aggressive that it seems that the entire nation is dealing with it by putting its fingers in its ears and singing “lalalalalalalal.” The candidate has to make Democrats believe that he has the balls to take the punches and come up fighting. Otherwise, it’s very tempting to make the choice to see this whole thing as a reality game show that you can tune out until next week when you like the story line better. (That’s one of the effects of the non-stop shoutfests. Their omnipresence and constantly high decible level, no matter whether it’s Laci, Clinton’s cock or nuclear war, has created the impression that it’s all posturing. This makes it easy for people to simply switch the channel and pretend that Bush is no worse than anybody else.)

It would be pretty to think that the Green delusion is true — that there exists a great untapped liberal constituency in the non-voting public, but there is little evidence to suggest that’s true. So, in addition to rousing the grassroots (which I believe is best done through rhetoric, not emphasis on policy) the candidate will also have to be prepared to reach out to the swing voters who are too dumb to see that the difference between the two parties in this era is so great that if you don’t know which you are then you shouldn’t vote. (While I generally consider the political press to be part of the hostile beltway establishment, I think they are really just stupid swing voters. They’ll go with the sexy candidate — or at least allow themselves to be sufficiently seduced by him to neutralize their establishment bias.)

So, basically we are on two tracks. One is to inspire the base and fight back. And, the other is to field a candidate who knows how to swim in the post modernist media muck and who can be explained to a confused and disengaged electorate in symbolic heroic terms. The person who will win must do both. That’s who I’m looking for and only through the trial by fire of a real campaign can this man emerge.

None of this is to say that Democrats shouldn’t pick a candidate early and work in the primaries for them. Indeed, it is a necessity if we hope to get the best person nominated. But, it’s not going to be me. I just can’t see this election in those terms and I wouldn’t be a very good partisan for any particular candidate at this point.

Right now, I’m a supporter of all and a denigrator of none. Perhaps in 6 months time, it will have all become clear. If the race remains close then and I think I’ve found the guy, then I’ll probably write about why I think that’s the case.

Until then, godspeed all you Dean, Kerry, Edwards etc supporters. I love ’em all. And whoever wins, I’m behind him 100% percent.

“Equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none.”

I just read something that blew the top of my head off and has me reeling with appreciation and awe. Maybe everybody in Blogovia has already discussed John Edwards speech of last week, but I just got to it.

This is the single most creative re- framing of issues I’ve seen in many a year. In fact, it is so audacious, it might just work.

Do you want to see a wing nut’s head spin around like Linda Blair’s in the Exorcist? Try comparing Bush’s economic policies to socialism:

This is the most radical and dangerous economic theory to hit our shores since socialism a century ago. Like socialism, it corrupts the very nature of our democracy and our free enterprise tradition. It is not a plan to grow the American economy. It is a plan to corrupt the American economy.”

Damn. That is just beautiful.

Edwards gets it. It’s about changing the Left/Right paradigm and putting the Republicans off balance, without moving further to the right. This is new and it has the potential to seriously shake up the dynamic, particularly if the economy continues to sputter. This is just great — a truly new way of coming at the Republicans, using all of their patented propaganda tags against them. It’s awfully smart and I would hope that every Dem candidate keeps this in the back of his mind.

I’m not signing on to any particular campaign this early in the race. But, I think the Democratic candidates are all good people and I wouldn’t be unhappy with any of them (although Lieberman, with his moralizing and religiosity, would be very hard to take.) I am partial to Clark because I think he neutralizes a potent issue for the GOP, has a great Q rating and it would be nice to catch a fucking break like that for once. Earlier, I mentioned that Dean has a fiesty attitude that I find refreshing and inspirational and John Kerry is a good man with a fine mind and a lifetime of experience to prepare him for the job.

But, Edwards is the natural of the bunch. He’s the one who has the talent to really communicate with average Americans and get them to recognize that the Republican Party does not have their best interest at heart. Like Clinton, he is very, very good at explaining complicated issues in understandable terms without being condescending. 20 years as a litigator will do that, and from all reports he was an extremely effective advocate before a jury.

Our economy, our people, and our nation have been undermined by the crony capitalists who believe that success is all about working the angles, working the phones, and rigging the game, instead of hard work, innovation and frugality.

And these manipulators find comfort in an Administration which, through its own example, seems to embrace that ethic.

We will never turn this country around until we put our economy and our government back in line with our values.”

[…]

It’s time for a new approach that trusts people to make the most of their own lives and gives them the chance to do so. It’s time to stop emboldening entrenched interests and start empowering regular people. Above all, it’s time to end the failed conservative experiment and return to the idea that made this country great: Instead of helping wealthy people protect their wealth, we should help working people build their wealth.”

The President and I agree on one thing: this campaign should be a debate about values. We need to have that debate, because the values of this president and this administration are not the values of mainstream America, the values all of us grew up with – opportunity, responsibility, hard work.

There’s a fundamental difference between his vision and mine. I believe America should value work. He only values wealth. He wants the people who own the most to get more. I want to make sure everybody has the chance to be an owner.

That is progressivism turned inside out. PoMo populism. As with the flag and God, the smart Democrat (and the one who will beat Bush) will take those “bedrock American” advertising symbols and use the patented GOP rhetorical stylebook to his own purposes, because whether we like it or not, that stylebook defines political speech in this era so we’d better start finding ways to use it to our own ends.

(And, through this whole speech he very subtly digs at Bush’s pedigreed sense of privilege. Junior is a spoiled little fucker and although nobody wants to admit it, it’s something everybody knows. Maybe in 2000 when everybody asumed that they too were going to be rich and privileged, it didn’t matter so much. It could have a little more relevence this time around.)

Look at the choices they make: They have driven up the share of the tax burden for most working people, and driven down the burden on the richest few. They got rid of even the smallest tax on even the largest inheritances on earth. This past month, in a $350 billion bonanza of tax cuts on wealth, they couldn’t find $3.5 billion to give the child tax credit to poor people who work. Listen to this: They refused to cut taxes for the children of 250,000 American soldiers who are risking their lives for us in Iraq, so they could cut dividend and capital gains taxes for millionaires who were selling stocks short until the war was over.

[…]

It is wrong to reward those who don’t have to work at the expense of those who do. If we want America to be a growing, thriving democracy, with the greatest work ethic and the strongest middle class on earth, we must choose a different path.

If Junior ever had to debate a trial lawyer like John Edwards, he wouldn’t stand a chance trying to defend himself against a charge like that. What in the hell can any Republican say to that argument? They’ll scream class warfare, but in light of the charges it starts to sound like sniveling defensiveness. They really have gone to far and all it will take is for somebody to find the right way to educate the American people about what has been done to them.

Third, I will cut taxes to encourage savings and wealth creation for the middle class and working poor, not take away their tax cuts. I believe ordinary Americans are taxed too much, not too little. As a direct result of this President’s policies, all across this country people are seeing their property taxes, their sales taxes, their state and local income taxes, and their college tuition bills go up. Now some in my party want to take away their federal income tax cuts, too. That’s wrong. The answer to Republicans who have made middle-class incomes and nest eggs go down should not be Democrats who make middle-class taxes go up.

I know this President wants to make the next election about taxes. That’s why I’m going to tell America the whole story: “This president is the reason your taxes are going up. I’m going to cut them.”

Woah Nelly. Walter Mondale, take a look in the funhouse mirror. He’s saying that Bush is making taxes go UP for ordinary Americans. That is brilliant. Paula Zahn will pop a vein trying to wrap her mind around that concept. It’s also true, of course, but rather than get into some long winded discussion of tax rates and the state budget crisis’ Edwards just says bluntly, “Bush is making your taxes go up. I’m going to cut them.”

Eat shit Grover.

I care deeply about this, because it’s the reason I’m standing here. My dad worked his whole life in the mill. When I was young, my mom folded sheets on the second shift. Both my parents started out with nothing, except a blessing that was worth more than diamonds and gold – the chance to live in a country whose dream belongs to anyone willing to work for it.

A country where the sweat and toil of mill workers can give a boy the chance to one day run for President is a far different place than a country that says how you’re born, not how hard your work, is all that matters. I owe everything I am to the America I grew up in. I hope you’ll join with me and fight with all we’ve got to save it.

The fucking American dream, baby. The immigrant, the working stiff, the self-made man putting in the hours and sweating the blood so that his kids can have a better life. Being the first in your family to go to college and going on to become one of the most successful lawyers in the country, a US Senator and a presidential candidate. It’s not quite as inspiring as a rich, alcoholic playboy sobering up at 40 and allowing his daddy’s rich friends to buy him a codpiece so he can eliminate the inheritance tax for himself, but it might have a chance.

This is a very interesting direction that Edwards is going. There is some salience to the shame factor among the rich, as well. I happened to listen to a group of Republican ladies discussing politics the other day (don’t ask), and they were quite uncomfortable with the idea that their leaders were saying that poor people shouldn’t get tax cuts and particularly the fact that some were left out of the recent tax cut bill. One of the gals said, “That’s really not right. It makes me feel embarrassed.”

I wish that we didn’t have to use rhetoric of religion, values and tax cuts. It’s tiring to hear it. But, we do. It’s what people’s ears are trained to hear in this era. And, there is no use pretending that reversing Bush’s tax cuts is going to be a simple matter even if we win the presidency. It makes sense to begin laying the groundwork, however, for reversing the outrageous tax cuts on the rich, which will have to be done. This is a very effective way of beginning to make that case.

And, Edwards is using some language that I think has been too long neglected by Democrats and speaks to something that is an undercurrent of discomfort amongst average Americans who don’t follow politics in great detail — the oddly unamerican nature of our current leaders relationship to wealth and power.

“Here in Washington, we like to think we’re important. But what’s great about America is that whether you’re a senator or a bus driver doesn’t make you a better person. You just have different jobs. America is not a nation of kings and commoners, masters and servants. We’re a nation where every person has equal value, every dream deserves an equal chance, and every soul should be as equal in the law of the land as it is in the eyes of God.”

That’s a Democrat talking, there, and everybody knows it.

Bush can spout bullshit like “soft bigotry of low expectations” and “I care about the working people”, but every poll shows that most most Americans do not believe he cares about or understands people like them. There’s power in this message. It’s worth keeping an eye on.

CheezeNip Bobo in Paradise

You just have to read this perfect post on Bobo Brooks’s latest from SullyWatch. It hits so many fine points about the current political scene that I urge you to read the whole thing. (If the first link is bloggered go to the second.)

Bobo is one pundit who drives me particularly crazy. Yeah, yeah, I know he’s more “reasonable” and less “shrill” than your average wing nut, but the reason he drives me crazy is that he writes about American culture as if he’s from Mars. This bothers me because the Republicans are winning the Po-Mo political PR contest and it’s only because the Democrats aren’t even trying. This guy is typically clueless.

Recently, he wrote an op-ed in the NY Times using WalMart and Trader Joe’s as symbols of American political philosophy.

Trader Joe’s, as you may know, is the grocery store for people who wouldn’t dream of buying free-range chicken broth from a company that didn’t take a position against offshore oil drilling. Trader Joe’s is so painfully socially conscious that it has to go through back flips just to find some snack food it can approve of. If you tried to smuggle a bag of Cheese Nips into the store, a half-dozen ethics alarms would probably go off. Instead the store stocks baked pea-pod chips and Veggie Booty with kale, for kids who come home from school screaming, ”Mom, I want a snack that will prevent colon-rectal cancer!”

Yes, this is terribly cute (especially coming from a guy whom you just know lives on moon pies and yoohoo) but as usual, he completely missed the point. Yes. Trader Joe’s stocks health foods. But the most important thing that distinguishes Trader Joe’s is the fact that it sells all of these items CHEAP, (just like the WalMart where Brooks buys his Velveeta and Wonder bread.) The difference is that Trader Joes has taken the capitalistic road of providing a small number of niche market goods at reasonable prices while Walmart has taken the road of selling a huge number of mass market goods at reasonable prices. But, essentially, these two successful enterprises are the same. They keep their overhead low, buy goods in large lots and pass on the price break to the customer.

Trader Joe’s sprang up in Los Angeles, a place where there are many, many grocery stores that will sell you every partially hydrogenated, mass produced, empty calorie CheezeNip you could ever want. They made the decision to provide unusual goods at a reasonable price in a market glutted with predictable mass market goods. They should be ashamed of themselves, the socialist bastards.

And predictably, Brooks overlooks the single biggest item that Trader Joe’s sells and one which brings in plenty of God-fearing, ESPN watching, GOP regular guys like himself: cheap booze. Trader Joe’s is as much a discount liquor store as a grocery store and if Brooks is going to make a case that it’s somehow an effete, liberal institution that is out of step with Real Muricans like him, then he needs to lay off the Spaghettios and krispy cremes for awhile and check out who actually shops there and for what.

He might just be interested to know that the largest group of people who shop at Trader Joe’s for food aren’t white wine swilling liberal brie and cheezers. But, they might be worried about chole-rectal cancer, to be sure. It’s senior citizens. And, they shop there because the stores are in their neighborhood and the prices are low.

What In God’s Name Could He Have Been Thinking?

I’ve noticed that a lot of people are still surprised that Saddam behaved as he did before the war in the face of the fact that he was not as imminently dangerous as we portrayed him to be. Kevin Drum says today, “David is right to say that Saddam’s non-cooperation remains a mystery if he really didn’t have any WMD…”

I can think of several reasonable explanations.

First, Saddam was a strongman dictator who maintained his power, both within the country and in the region, through fear and violence. Kowtowing to the UN and especially to the US would have substantially weakened his reputation as a ruthless tyrant who was willing to do anything to stay in power. If a totalitarian shows weakness, the whole house of cards can come tumbling down. It’s possible that he felt he had to bluff or lose his grip on power from within.

And perhaps he simply made the logical calculation that, as the North Korea situation has shown, the US will not unilaterally invade a nuclear power and will hesitate to put large numbers of troops in the way of lethal unconventional weapons. Anyone in his shoes might have felt it was in his best interests to keep the world guessing about his WMD capabilities and willingness to use them. When it became clear last fall that the US was going to call his bluff, it appears to me that instead of preparing a traditional defense and going down in a blaze of glory, he made plans to go underground or escape (and perhaps live to fight another day.) I doubt very seriously that even crazy Saddam ever entertained the illusion that his army could defeat the US military in a straight up fight. Once that was inevitable, he went to plan B. Plan A was to keep the world guessing as long as he could about what he was really capable of .

On a sidenote, the mere fact that we called his bluff in defiance of the whole world indicated at the time that Bush knew Saddam didn’t really have a large stockpile of unconventional weapons. Would he have staged a long public buildup if he really thought there was a chance that tens of thousands of US troops stationed on the Kuwait border could be killed in their sleep while awaiting the published invasion date of the middle of March? I don’t think so. They knew it would be a cakewalk. They said so. And Saddam, of course, knew this better than anyone.

It was the main reason many people logically didn’t buy the argument for preemption. As with Korea, we would have tried a lot harder to talk him down if we thought he really had the capability of killing large numbers of American boys and girls in one fell swoop. (That much death and carnage for a controversial war of choice would have been terrible politics and Uncle Karl wouldn’t have stood for it.) Those of us who were paying attention knew this when Uncle Dick blew the pooch with his August speech saying that we were goin’ in come hell or high water. The whole UN inspections/cooperation charade was staged for the single purpose of buying time to get the troops in place and to try to get some financial backing from rich countries.

On the other hand, I find it quite interesting that many of the people who claimed Saddam was an irrational actor who blithely dismissed the clear fact that his country would be decimated if he actually launched a WMD at anybody, now seem surprised that he might have acted irrationally in this particular way. Apparently, it hasn’t occurred to them that crazy people could manifest their craziness in any way other than waging a suicidal war with unconventional weapons against innocent people. Who would have ever dreamed that a crazy, megalomaniac would bluster and lie in the face of certain defeat? Nobody’s that crazy, right?

I have no idea whether Saddam had any WMD. If he didn’t, I’m sure he wished he did. But it is quite clear that the US and British governments felt confident that if he had anything it wasn’t catastrophically dangerous. They also knew that, as a hated and brutal tyrant, he was not in a position to become a good and wholesome global citizen by allowing the US and the UN to dictate matters of Iraqi sovereignty. Totalitarian dictators don’t stay in power long if they show that kind of weakness.

Both Bush and Blair made it quite clear that nothing Saddam could have done, short of killing his sons and then blowing his brains out on national television, could have kept the US and UK from invading and overthrowing him once the decision was made. There was obviously no amount of “cooperation” that could have saved him and I don’t imagine that was lost on him. That’s the kind of thinking a guy like him could really appreciate.

Saddam surely knew by August of 2002 that we knew he didn’t have large stockpiles of WMD and that we didn’t care. He was dead meat from that point on. He just hung on as long as he could until the day of reckoning.

Attitude Adjustment

Fine blogs everywhere, these days. Mark Singer of this new (to me, anyway) group blog, Not Geniuses, writes about the MoveOn primary:

Alright, if you’re one of those folks who has actually been writing blog-posts on why MoveOn is unnecessary, I recommend you read this post, ’cause, folks, MoveOn is clutch.

I’m not sure I agree that this primary is an absolutely essential win, but I do think that MoveOn is significant and should be closely watched by all the candidates.

It’s a mistake to tag MoveOn as a particularly “liberal” organization and I hope that the Party doesn’t make the mistake of dividing itself on this. MoveOn is a partisan organization — it’s really not all that ideological. It was formed to try to put a stop to the impeachment charade and its focus is still on stopping the undemocratic power grab of a Republican Party that has become dangerously radical, increasingly unaccountable and verging on open corruption.

This is the reason that Dean is a favorite of rank and file Democrats and is likely to win the MoveOn primary. He’s not really all that liberal, either, but he is a partisan. He’s actually an iconoclastic Democratic centrist who takes some pretty bold stands outside party orthodoxy on both the left and the right. (I don’t think that is a bad idea at all because Democrats are presently such ciphers in the media that any change in predictable storylines is a good thing.) His rivals of both parties want to paint him as a wacked-out hippy Governor Moonbeam, but that’s just politics. And, it’s actually a good test to see how he holds up. Any serious Democrat has to show he can take a punch because if he has the personal misfortune to actually beat President Asterisk, the right wing is going to go completely apeshit. These guys aren’t the first to play dirty politics, but they are the first to privatize and then turn a profit at it.

More pertinently, Dean just doesn’t look like a wacked out liberal when you watch him. He comes off like a slightly cranky, straight talking, no bullshit, common sense, grown-up guy guy. Think Truman, Perot, Bogart, McCain, Sinatra — he’s hot not cool. This is a good American archetype. (Or, using the Lakoff paradigm, he’s one of the strong father types who could make Junior’s inchoate, brittle gibberish look gawky and adolescent by comparison.)

I can’t think of a more conventional strategy than running to the left in the primary, yet everybody’s acting like that is some sort of bizarre, unprecedented move. And, he’s energizing the base which also seems to be interpreted as a grave tactical error, for some reason. You would think that after ’00 and ’02, where only a handful of votes changed the course of history, it would be obvious that motivating every single member to vote would be at the very top of the Democratic Party’s priority list. And, the rallying cry for Democrats is not going to be any particular plan or program, it’s going to be passionate, engaging partisan rhetoric. This is a red meat era and sober moderate statesmanship will be overwhelmed by a shitstorm of right wing fire breathing — and that’s if the torpid infotainers bother to cover them at all.

I don’t think the powers that be are aware of how hopeless many Democrats feel as they watch Junior get away with murder over and over again, particularly after the 8 solid years of brutal partisan attacks on Clinton. I get very worried that enough Democrats are going to succumb to the Rove juggernaut strategy to hand him the election with a low Dem turnout. If you get your news from television it’s very easy to believe that Bush is inevitable, even if you think he’s a menace, if only because the Democrats are almost invisible.

That’s why I think the grassroots are responding to Dean for reasons unrelated to ideology. (And, I think most liberal Dems concur with Jeanne D’Arc on this.) It’s a visceral reaction to somebody who seems willing to take on the Republicans and a belief that it will take somebody with balls, like him, to rouse the somnambulant electorate.

The vein of enthusiasm into which Dean has tapped is Democratic partisanship. I’m sorry if that word is considered unseemly on our side, but it’s pretty obvious that the other side doesn’t have any problem with it. It’s a shame we all can’t get along, but we can’t. Grassroots groups like MoveOn know this is a fight.

I’m not committed to Dean, but I’ve gotta say, I like his attitude.

My Tennessee Doppelganger

The Rush Limbaugh Show is like VIDEODROME or The RING once you are exposed enough there is a point of no return like a bad trip on LSD – you believe in your paranoid delusion that you have come down and re-entered reality, but in matter of fact you are sitting in a padded room in a straight jacket in a mental institution.

This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Thanks to South Knox Bubba for the introduction.

Counterfeit Warhol

Reader Kathryn Zalewski forwarded this to me some time ago. I had planned to post it and then the war happened.

This is what Rove understands about America and the Democrats don’t:

They call my President a “cowboy”?

It used to tick me off when the liberals called our President a

cowboy, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.

When I was a kid, cowboys were heroes. You know, the ones in the

white hats, not the black hats. There was Tom Mix, Buck Jones,

Johnny Mack Brown, Hopalong Cassidy, Red Ryder, Gene Autry, Roy

Rogers, then later Marshall Matt Dillon. Personally, I think Gene

Autry could whip em all, and then sing a song to his girl friend. He

was my favorite.

What were common attributes of these legendary cowboys? Here are a

few:

1. They never looked for trouble.

2. When it came, they faced it with courage.

3. They were always on the side of right.

4. They defended good people against bad people.

5. They had high morals.

6. They had good manners.

7. They were honest.

8. They spoke their minds and they spoke the truth, regardless of

what people thought or “political correctness,” which no one had

ever heard of back then.

9. They were a beacon of integrity in the

wild, wild west.

10. They were respected. When they walked into a

saloon (where they usually drank only sarsaparilla), the place

became quiet, and the bad guys kept their distance.

11. If in a gunfight, they could outdraw anyone. If in a fistfight,

they could whip anyone.

12. They always won. They always got their man. In victory, they

rode off into the sunset.

Those were the days when there was such a thing as right and wrong,

something blurred in our modern world, and denied by many. Those

were the days when women were respected and treated as ladies,

because they acted like ladies.

They represent something good, something pure that America has been missing.

Ronald Reagan was a cowboy. I like Ronald Reagan, he was brave,

positive, and he gave us hope. He wore a white hat. To the

consternation of his liberal critics, he had the courage to call a

spade a spade and call the former Soviet Union what it was — the

evil empire. Liberals hated Ronald Reagan.

They also hate President Bush because he distinguishes between good

and evil He calls a spade a spade, and after 9-11 called evil

“evil,” without mincing any words, to the shock of the liberal

establishment. That’s what cowboys do, you know. He also told the

French to “put their cards on the table” (old west talk), which they

did, exposing their cowardice and greed.

The Arabs are wrong. In the old West, might did not make right.

Right made right. Cowboys in white hats were always on the side of

right, and that was their might.

I am glad my President is a cowboy. He will get his man. Cowboys do,

you know.

OK. Obviously we are dealing with someone who is on serious medication. But, this is actually pretty representative of the kind of feeling that Junior engenders in a good portion of the citizenry. Sure, some of it’s just team loyalty, but there are a number of people who think he’s a straight shooter, an everyman of simple values and authentic virtues, masculine, good hearted and tough.

Needless to say, those paying attention to even the most obvious biographical details know that none of this is true. He’s a spoiled, rich, playboy who fell into politics by trading on his father’s name and contacts. He’s a failed businessman and ex-alcoholic who’s masculine virtues are defined by bullying towel snapping and homoerotic hazing rituals. He’s stupid, thin skinned and easily rattled. He consistently shafts the weak in favor of the powerful and he has a callous bloodthirsty streak.

In Bush’s Brain, How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential the authors quote Rove as saying that most Americans understand politics as “watching TV with the sound turned off.” The thing with Bush is that he looks right in his costumes, whether codpiece or chaps, and his 10 second soundbites are well crafted and effective. And, it’s not because people are dupes or morons that they buy this nonsense, it’s simply because they understand everything in their lives through simplistic TV images.

The poor lady who wrote this surreal tribute to the code of the west doesn’t even know that she was actually writing a paeon to a bunch of smart Jewish immigrants who took the cheap fiction of dimestore novels and created a picture of the American West for the sole purpose of appealing to masses of uneducated urban factory workers. She’s so unaware that she doesn’t seem to recognise that she’s talking about movie actors.

Ronald Reagan wasn’t a cowboy. He was a guy who played a cowboy who later became president. George W. Bush is a guy playing Ronald Reagan playing a cowboy who later became president. And it doesn’t make any difference. Karl Rove, like Michael Deaver before him, realizes that most Americans see life through a media prism that’s now completely self-referential.

It has always been true that politicians and leaders evoked archetypal images for political purposes– Lincoln the rail splitter, TR the virile “mans man.” But, starting with Reagan, we saw for the first time a circular reference between the mythmaker and the image itself. He was a professional actor engaged in making a myth that later became the image for his Presidency.

Junior is like a second generation copy of that same image, slightly off center and lacking clarity. He’s a counterfeit Warhol, an ironic image of an image, made valuable only by the wilfull acquiesence of a lazy media that depends upon the Republican establishment to write its scripts and fill its yawning, greedy mouth. (It is no accident that the Bush team has planted the meme of John Kerry as “Thurston Howell III.” That’s the kind of image the American people understand instantly. According to Salon Kerry’s spokesman, David Wade, suggested the GOP “should lay off the ‘Gilligan’s Island’ imagery before we cast George W. Bush as Gilligan in the remake.” Oh how perfect that would be…)

The Democrats can do better than President Blurry with almost any candidate in the race if they will just feed the beast what it needs to live (a good story) and recognize that the American people don’t care anymore about what a president actually says but only that he is “presidential,” however that image is defined by the current zeitgeist.

We must, of course, give them the subtance this country so desperately needs, but we must realize that that substance is relevant only to the 22 bloggers and 367 activists who give a damn. To win, our candidate must be a first generation copy of an image that the entertainment media have taught the American people to love.

That’s what we’ve come to folks. But then, when you read the kind of drivel that this poor misguided “liberal” hater believes, it’s pretty obvious that there is no turning back.

Clarification: Kathryn Zalewski did not personally write the cowboy nonsense. It was sent to her and she merely forwarded it to me. You can understand why she would not want anyone to be even slightly confused on that issue. Sorry Kathryn.

Total Recall

Can I just say that Democrats really, really need to take some political Viagra, and I mean by the fistfull?

I live in Santa Monica, California fondly known as Soviet Monica. Tom “SDS” Hayden was my state senator for many years, for gawd’s sake. Yet, the anti-recall {of Gov. Davis) signature gatherers in this town are trying to get people to sign the petition by telling them it’s a proposal to “help teachers.” I read the thing and when I realized it was about the recall, I asked the guy why he didn’t say it upfront, the pro-recall people certainly aren’t shy. He said that being pro-teacher is always better than being anti-Republican.

I’m not kidding.

If Democrats cannot get Santa Monicans to sign a petition against an undemocratic, dishonest, power grab funded by a fat cat GOP scumbag for his own purposes, by honestly saying, “please sign a petition against the wasteful Republican recall campaign to unseat the Governor who was just elected last November,” then we really are screwed. People may hate Davis but even William Kristol admits that one of the things that distinguishes us from a banana republic is the fact the we hold the concept of regularly scheduled elections to be fairly sacred.

As Inspector Clousseau says, “naht innymoore!”

Democrats have to learn to face down wing nuts. As long as they are the only ones willing to get in the opposition’s face, then we will lose. This was simply pathetic. And 80% of the people were just walking on by.

As far as I’m concerned the anti-recall petitioners could win just by saying, “please sign this petition to deny the man who made millions ruining your sleep with those infernal car alarms from buying the governorship.” Even Republicans would sign it.

The Forgetful Private, the Missing WMD and The Band of Liars who tie it all together :

I saw the BBC documentary and pretty much thought it was bullshit and here’s why. The rescue sounded pretty pro forma to me. Even if Special Forces knew that the Iraqi bad guys had moved off they would have entered the same way. It was a war zone. They can’t and don’t fuck around. They make a lot of noise for a reason — to scare the enemy.

The problem wasn’t ever Pvt. Lynch or her rescuers. They were all brave people. The problem was always the Bush administration marketing executives who turned it into the embarrassing made-for-television soap opera it became. Who wants to bet me 5 bucks that the guys who wrote the embarrassing little script that is only now being sorta, kinda explored by the stenographers of the media brothel are these fellows, who not so coincidentally include our newest candidate for biggest liar on the face of the planet, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s prevaricating “dodgy dossier” spinmeister, Alistair Campbell?”

The above linked article, dated 11/17/02, contains a piece of information that should be just a little bit interesting to the braindead, botoxed press corp if they ever actually left their dressing rooms — that is that it’s these ratfuckers who were writing the “papers” that supposedly proved that Iraq was crawling with germs, chem and nukes:

It was Wilkinson who spearheaded the successful Afghan women’s campaign last year. A Naval Reserve officer, Wilkinson got his start working with Bush ally Texas Rep. Dick Armey. He’s the go-to guy when the White House needs information against its enemies.

In the last few weeks, he and his underlings have weeded through hundreds of pages of news clippings, U.N. resolutions and State Department reports to compile an arsenal of documents against Saddam Hussein. They released the first round last week: “Decade of Defiance and Deception” (a broken-U.N.-resolutions hit parade).

Then there’s Tucker Eskew, 41, a savvy South Carolinian, who will soon be named the director of the new Office of Global Communications, which will be formally launched this fall. Neither a Texan nor a lifelong Bushie, he earned his stripes during the Florida election mess by becoming the campaign’s tropical smooth-talker.

During the Afghan conflict, the White House sent Eskew to London, where he worked with British spin master Alastair Campbell on setting up the first version of an actual war “war room.” Campbell was an inspiration for Bill Clinton’s 24/7 rapid-response communications team.

Now Campbell is also a member of the Band and is working in tandem with the White House. When Prime Minister Tony Blair meets with Parliament next week, for example, he will release a “white paper”—the detailed argument—that backs up George W. Bush.

Yesterday, Eskew tested the rapid-response skill that he honed working with Campbell. He responded to Iraq’s offer to accept inspectors “without conditions” with a document itemizing every time Iraq agreed to “unconditional” inspections only to go back on his word.

It was Bartlett, Bush’s right-hand man and the 31-year-old leader of the Band, who has insisted that this and all documents be sourced. Wilkinson spent hours footnoting the 22-page “Decade of Defiance” document released last week, for example. “We compiled every single possible bit of research we could find and then set out to verify, verify, verify,” Wilkinson explains.

Wow. Big of them to insist on sourcing. And Wilkinson spent hours verifying the information. I wonder what went wrong?

Apparently it is considered normal in DC for the Bush administration to use dirty tricksters and spin doctors to make the case for war. At least nobody thought it was wierd at the time this perky little item was written. But, you would think that with all the hoopla that’s been raised in recent weeks about why the hell we haven’t found any evidence of the WMD that somebody in Washington would be asking why the White House felt it needed a campaign “war room” full of political operatives to sell the war.

And just so you know the caliber of the people that our Dear Leader put in charge of “spinning” the case for overthrow, I wrote about “GI Jim” Wilkinson back in April when he was threatening Michael Wolfe with bodily harm. (If he didn’t feed Steno Sue that “Rambo” version of Lynch’s humvee accident, I’d be very surprised. The guy has a seriously sickening smarmy streak.) But, Tucker Eskew is a real peach in his own right. Just ask John McCain. Eskew was the guy who ran “communications” for the Bush primary campaign in South Carolina and took his “rough play” style to the Florida recount.. He’s been very richly rewarded for his classy work on both campaigns:

”The McCain campaign is squawking because we hit them where they hurt,” Eskew said. ”McCain and the media created a myth of the military monolith, and we exploded that. We challenged him on his greatest point of pride, and they stomped their feet, pointed fingers, and whined.”

Jim Hightower, unsurprisingly was on to this some time ago.

Digby Phone Home

Reports of my death, deportation, incarceration (and sex change operation…?) are highly exaggerated. My apologies for not leaving word and heartfelt thanks to those of you who wrote e-mails and comments.

In fact, I am alive and well and returned from a journey into the heart of darkness of George W. Bush’s America. Eschewing my pansy-assed effete internet habit for a time, I stupidly got myself hooked on the hard stuff and ended up ripped out of my mind on Rush’s AM Ecstasy. Living on burnt meat and raw porn, Fox news and liberal bashing, my mind devolved into an altered state of consciousness, awash in arrogance and testosterone, transformed into the hostile fugue state of the talk radio junkie.

After the first couple of days of painful cognitive dissonance, the sheer confidence and daring of Right wing propaganda started to work on my subconscious. And, I tell you, it was a relief, a fucking holiday from the frustration, confusion and lightheadedness I associate with trying to limn “reality” these days, just letting my id take over. Critical thinking is for losers. See, RushBillSavageSean remove doubt and free your mind. All you have to do is join the team, and suddenly everything makes sense again.

This drug is potent. A quick hit of Rush in the morning and you’re sure of yourself and the world around you. You feel strong. You look like a winner. You are on top.

In this era of post modern politics and surreal media tidal waves, this is a drug that brings clarity to a confusing world. It’s intoxicating in its simplicity. Unlike the faggoty “nuanced” Democrats, the Republicans (or Real Americans) are providing a road map through the maze of conflicting quick-cut images and babbling 10 second soundbites that pass for “news.” If you listen to AM talkradio or watch FoxNews the strange feeling of living in an alternate reality melts away. They have the answers.

And like a thunderbolt from on high, you quickly realize that the single most important truth in life is that the Democratic Party is the only thing standing between you and perfect All-American happiness. Democrats are weak yet powerful, evil yet impotent, stupid yet cunning, useless, dangerous and insane all at once. Liberal Democrats (which they all are — liberal, that is) aka “the Left”, “Hollywood,” “elitists,” “homosexuals,” “feminists,” “environmentalists,” “ PC Police” etc. are, quite simply, tools of Satan.

If you listen to Rush and his Boyz in the (wrinkle-free, 250 thread count percale) Hood, over time you will come to realize that there is no problem that will not instantly be solved on the day the last Democrat in America cries uncle and the Party ceases to exist. Only then will there be the Republican utopia of gun-toting, Gawd fearing millionaires, no taxes and a big, huge, gas hogging Hummer (you know what I’m talkin’ about, now) in every garage.

But, until the joyous day of the Democratic Party’s Gotterdamerung, Real Americans must remain vigilant and ever ready to smite the unbelievers one by one, using any means necessary. Liberals are the sick and depraved virus that keep REAL MEN —and the women who crochet their codpieces — from becoming the rich and powerful Masters of the Universe that Jesus has anointed them to be.

Yup, there is some powerful mojo out there in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Alls ya gots ta do to get in on the party is listen up. The Mighty Wurlitzer’s got talent on loan from G-O-D.

And, the beautiful thing is that you can feed your monkey anywhere at any time of the day just by turning that radio dial. Even down at the Goodyear tire store or the DMV or the pharmacy or the car pool on the way to work, you can be assured that your RushSeanSavageBillNeal fix is right there if you only perk up your ears. It’s the jungle drum of middle America, relentless and ever present. The good stuff is on tap and free to all takers and once you get a little taste it’s pretty sure you’re going to come back for more. It feels so good to be suuure and strong and IN CONTROL.

I’m only back from the brink because I went online looking for the recipe of a drink called a “Down the (Orrin) Hatch” I had at the Jenna Bush wet t-shirt Sunday school fundraiser on Father’s Day. (It’s two parts ephedra to one part caffeine free-diet coke, by the way.) Anyway, I happened upon this site and suddenly my system was flooded with adrenaline, my mind filled with fragmented memories of a time before when I questioned the holy goodness of My Dear Leader.

I broke out in a cold sweat as I started madly clicking through the blogroll like a crazy person. I went here, and here and here and here— places where people were criticizing my Commander in Chief – in fact he’s considered a virtual idiot by most! There were places where Republicans weren’t thought infallible, places where people were bemused and didn’t understand why 40% of Americans believe that the military had found WMD in Iraq … (“My God,” I thought, “who the hell has them, then?”)

I got dizzy and fell to my knees. I crawled across the floor, desperate to turn on the radio and I couldn’t… quite…reach… it…

When I awoke, several hours or several days later, (I still don’t know how long I was out) I was safely in the bosom of my people – detoxed, cleansed in body, mind and spirit. I am back to my old self – raging at the television, compulsively reading foreign newspapers searching for information rather than entertainment and yes, using ever more foul language to describe the supine sword swallowing circus freaks we call “journalists.” I’m confused again, worried about a country that will, apparently, believe anything if it makes them feel good for the moment, wondering if we are actually, finally, rejecting modernism and the Enlightenment in favor of a po-mo, faith-based, fragmented, focus-group distorted mirror of reality. I’m moody, befuddled and mad.

In other words, I’m back. Blogovia saved me. Thanks, guys.