Reason number 1 for saying "yes": There's a totally skewed sense of proportion. Bush did in fact start 2 wars in which thousands of people have died. Opinions can differ on whether that makes him a mass murderer, but there's no question that the topic is extreme violence. The argument over health care isn't really about death panels; it's about policy and the role of the state.
Reason number 2: Signs and speeches calling for torturing Bush, Cheney et al. were specifically about how they had decided to define torture. I think that's obviously different and has a different effect on an audience than suggesting waterboarding any politician someone doesn't like.
I can't really imagine someone on the left carrying a sign about waterboarding Joe Wilson, no matter how loathsome they find him.
Reason number 3 for saying "yes": They're the ones with the guns, right? The folks getting riled up on the left are aging hippies whose most ferocious attack would be to come to your house and smell bad. The days of the Weathermen et al are long gone. On the right, on the other hand, we have people with weapons and a history of violence. People making and endorsing claims like those in the post are playing with fire.
to come to your house and smell bad.
Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it smells bad.
This is a really interesting thread and I'm peeved that lunch is over. I hope this thread is still percolating tonight at 10:30 p.m. EST when I have time to join in.
Where I come from, intentionally staining a flag with tea is an act of desecration. Odd that its now a sign of uber-patriotism.
Will they stop bitching about flag burning now?
Reason number 4: The left tends to operate off actual facts rather than to make shit up to scare people into compliance. Half of what we were trying to do during the Bush administration (and before and after) was to dispel myths like Iraq's alleged connection to 9/11.
The crazies like the 9/11 conspiracy theorists were appropriately marginalized, not given national platforms (though A.N.S.W.E.R was allowed far too much prominence).
2: And anyway, wasn't that more of a rhetorical suggestion rather than a threatening one? "Oh, so waterboarding is not torture? Then when don't we do it to you!" Obviously, the aging stinky hippies opposing waterboarding weren't actually hoping to engage in it.
5: Patchouli is illegal? If only.
I look forward to a discussion of rightist threats of violence on Talk of the Nation, when it will be determined that the Left does it too, so shut up.
Sir Kraab,
When you ask "much responsibility does the right bear", it's not clear exactly what you're asking. Are you asking the practical cause-and-effect question--how much has the hysteria they're promoting contributed to the uptick in right-wing violence? My answer would be that we haven't really seen an uptick in violence that I'm aware of (poor census man notwithstanding), but if we do see one, it's very likely the manufactured hysteria would be at least partly to blame.
If by "responsibility" you mean something of legal consequence, I'd probably be uncomfortable with that. Unless incitements to violence have been more explicit than I realize.
Or are you just asking whether the people manufacturing hysteria on the right should be ashamed of themselves? The answer is of course they should. And if you're asking if they ought to be more ashamed than people on the left who called Bush a fascist and a mass murderer, the answer is still: of course they should.
7: I know. It kills me.
And exactly what message does flying the Betsy Ross 13-star flag send? That we should keep the effete liberal states like Massachusetts and New York give Texas back to Mexico?
The left tends to operate off actual facts
The forgeries that ended Dan Rather's career are a counterexample. Doesn't take away from the larger point about casual threats of violence by US citizens against government people. The left has a less violence-obsessed constituency, and had a criminally incompetent executive branch for a foe. I don't think this translates into much of a moral high ground, myself.
I was personally surprised at finding this story in a tiny column in the WaPo, who ran a generalized smear against South Carolina on the front page a day or two ago.
In Kentucky? Sigh.
I don't really see any basis for a left/right analogy here. The number of crazies and magnitude of the crazy just aren't comparable. But: Bush killed hundreds of thousands of people, and I want him to suffer, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Would be nice if the courts could make it happen. Sigh, again.
5: No, not that. That smells good. I'm talking about the hippies themselves. We say "DFH" for a reason, after all, and it's not because their first and middle names are "David Foster."
14: I don't entirely hate patchouli, and would probably like it more if I hadn't been subjected to heavy doses of it in close quarters. To be fair, I feel the same way about anything that offends my delicate olfactory sense.
I'd like someone to write a paragraph by David Foster Hippie, please.
This thread will be very boring unless we have some concern trolling.
6: Wow, that's a long day. Or did your shift start after lunch or something?
Hmm. I guess you can't answer this in a timely fashion, can you?
11: I'm definitely not talking about legal responsibility, but moral, ethical, political, causal. If Obama were assassinated, Glenn Beck would have blood on his hands as far as I'm concerned. (I initially typed that in the future tense but it freaked me out a little.) I'm less sure about Bill Sparkman's (the census worker) death if it turns out to be an anti-government act.
we haven't really seen an uptick in violence that I'm aware of (poor census man notwithstanding)
I'm not aware of a measurable uptick either, but bringing an assault rifle to a presidential speech is definitely a threat of violence, one that I don't think would have happened without the escalating verbal attacks -- encouraged by Fox et al. -- at town hall meetings (which Chuck Norris refers to as "'tea parties' [that] have transformed into town hall revolts").
Three such incidents (that I'm aware of) aren't much of an uptick numerically, but the difference between 0 and 1 incidents with almost no reaction is much bigger than the difference between 1 and 10. (I don't have a Ph.D, so I can't follow all of heebie's fancy math talk, but I think that might be what they call a logarithm.)
The response was so mild that I have to ask what happens when 50 people show up with guns? 100 people? The entire Idaho citizens militia? Do the Republicans ever object?
(Where are the Black Panthers when you need them? I'm kidding. Mostly.)
So, Brock, my answers are the same as yours in general, but I'm not sure about specific acts. My gut says yes but I don't know how far I would go to defend it intellectually.
Where's helpy-chalk when you need him?
My answer would be that we haven't really seen an uptick in violence that I'm aware of
The cop-killer in Pittsburgh in April (explicitly motivated by fear that Obama would take his guns), Dr. Teller's murderer, and this. That seems like a lot in less than half a year, and only 8 months of Obama presidency.
The response was so mild that I have to ask what happens when 50 people show up with guns? 100 people? The entire Idaho citizens militia? Do the Republicans ever object?
This is one of the verses to Alice's Militia.
in the future tense
By which I mean I wrote, "If Obama is assassinated, Beck will have blood..." not "When...."
Where's helpy-chalk when you need him?
Hanging with the Black Panthers, presumably.
22: Tiller's murder I absolutely attribute to the anti-choice movement, but I don't think the teabagger wing had anything to do with it, nor Obama's election. So, different piece of the Right than I was thinking of.
24: I was pretty sure that I was missing at least 1.
AFAIC, Beck does have blood on his hands for the cop-killer. The "Obama will take your guns" thing is utterly baseless, yet was promulgated by Beck himself. Poplawski didn't come up with it on his own, as a result of reading BHO's campaign site. He was told it by demagogues who were trying to drum up fear and hatred.
It says a lot about where we are as a country that my position is basically unrepresented in the national conversation (it was discussed locally, even in the business-friendly local daily).
Okay, so there seems to be consensus around the view that there is ethical responsibility but no legal responsibility. Why should that be? Is it just a matter of burdens of proof? I love the First Amendment as much as the next guy, but (as far as I recall) it doesn't protect incitements to violence, if the incitement is deliberate and also likely to produce results. Those things are hard to prove, of course, but aren't we pretty sure about them if we're prepared to assign ethical responsibility? Or is the ethical responsibility based on recklessness? And if that's true, should legal responsibility follow?
For purposes of this discussion let's say we're talking about civil liability in a wrongful death suit instead of criminal charges leading to jail time, just to avoid the whole "beyond a reasonable doubt" thing.
27: I think that the timing is significant - that the Radical Right as a whole has been agitated, and thus events like Tiller's murder are more likely, even if specific incitement - as with Poplawski - has been absent.
t doesn't protect incitements to violence, if the incitement is deliberate and also likely to produce results.
Likely means "really really immediately likely" -- whipping a present crowd into a frenzy in real time, not saying stuff that contributes to a climate of opinion. Think of the difficulty in pointing out exactly what speech you were talking about: any given radio show isn't all that harmful in itself, it's the composite effect of all of them.
My third-hand impression of Glenn Beck and the like is that they're ghastly, but I'd be really opposed to stretching the limits of legal liability to get them.
Someone made a good point at TPM the other day about the false equivalence of 9/11 conspiracy theorists and the anti-Obama arms-bearing lunatic fringe, the point being that conspiracy theories naturally arise in times of national trauma (9/11, the Kennedy assassination), but there's no trauma here except, apparently for some people, that of having a nonwhite democrat in the White House.
It also deserves mentioning that the second amendment issue is utter horseshit. Gun control is not on the table, and hasn't been in any serious sense for some time. Bring back the Black Panthers.
Gun control is not on the table, and hasn't been in any serious sense for some time. Bring back the Black Panthers.
Bringing back the Black Panthers would be an effective way to put gun control back on the table, I suspect.
Imagine if someone had taken an assault rifle to the miles-away "free speech zone" set up for a Bush speech and stood inside it with a sign that said the tree of liberty was thirsty. They would have been dog-piled by Secret Service, paraded through the streets and highways all the way to Miami and drop-kicked straight across the water and into a waterboarding room at Gitmo and Fox would run live play-by-play. Yes, they have blood on their hands. I would go so far as to say that even if the "feds" written on the census worker turns out to have been a red herring, Beck and his ilk bear at least a little sin for having created an atmosphere in which someone could use that for cover. Even if it turns out not to be true and that "feds" was not written on the guy's corpse, they created an environment in which that would be believable and that alone is condemnable.
Note: I got a C in the one philosophy class I took.
31: Maybe. As I know you know, there has been horrendous violence against clinics and providers for years, including arson, bombings, and murder, and previous attempts on Tiller's life (and attempts that were likely thwarted only by the amount of protection he was forced to have).
I would argue that legalization of gay marriage and other social changes were probably more significant in the timing. But plenty of -- most? -- teabaggers associate gay marriage with creeping socialism, though the spotlight has been on the latter lately, so there's plenty of room for overlap.
Even if it turns out not to be true and that "feds" was not written on the guy's corpse, they created an environment in which that would be believable and that alone is condemnable.
Actually, there are lots of dead people without "feds" written on their corpses. I even blame Beck for that.
34: Exactly. Walk your talk, NRA/teabaggers.
associate gay marriage with creeping socialism
Which is so loony, that removing restrictions and allowing greater freedom of marriage is lumped in with the encroaching government and fascist-melded-with-socialism that they profess to fear.
I think the only relevant reasons for the difference relate to the immediate context and content of the statements. Saying "don't mind us, we are all peace loving smelly hippies" is question begging. You are saying "we aren't promoting violence because we aren't violent people" which is exactly what many on the right doubt.
If you want to say that the teabag right is more responsible for violence than the giant puppet left, you need to focus on the way the threats were made. These are people who are not only talking about violence, but bringing guns to presidential speeches.
Oh wait, Kraab said she needed me. Must go back and read thread.
It hasn't been proven that the census worker was murdered by a teabagger or other anti-governmentist.
Apparently it hasn't been proven it was murder at all. Shouldn't you wait until suicide is ruled out before trying to draw broad conclusions?
As for moral responsibility, the primary responsibility as usual would be with the killer. In my view the incitement would have to be really specifc (eg census workers are spreading plague in Kentucky) and have motivated the crime before there was much secondary responsibility.
Violence is the refuge of the inarticulate.
The folks hereabout probably believe in the value of discourse; believe that talking and thinking and reading can lead to understanding, and then to action to produce good.
But a lot of americans are inarticulate. Poorly educated, with only a narrow range of rhetorical tools to hand and a limited range of concepts for building understanding. They can't argue, they can't discuss, they can't participate in the fundamental basic activity of democracy.
They end up loving Sarah Palin and listening to Limbaugh and Beck, people who reinforce their beliefs rather than challenging them to think and understand more deeply. They've got no way to make a political statement, except through shouting and other violent activity.
I don't know what this has to do with the post, but I wanted to say it.
Crap. My compute ate my idenity. 44, c'est moi.
Shouldn't you wait until suicide is ruled out before trying to draw broad conclusions
I thought it was really weird that suicide was listed as a possibility. Who would scratch a word in their own chest before killing themselves? And a word that doesn't apriori connect with much anguish, without an obvious connection? Suicidal people aren't nonsensical. I mean they can be, but this seems unlikely.
32: That's true, that the current state of the law requires something like whipping a crowd into a frenzy. But now the crowd is several million listeners strong, nationwide, and they're being whipped into a frenzy 24/7 (or at least, there's a constant drumbeat, with occasional spikes), right?
41: I disagree. The people on the left whom I'm absolving of responsibility aren't the hippies themselves, but the media types who might be accused of fomenting violence. The fact that lefty footsoldiers tend to be loopy pacifists and right footsoldiers tend to be unhinged militiamen means that lefty commanders are less culpable.
Tiller's murder I absolutely attribute to the anti-choice movement, but I don't think the teabagger wing had anything to do with it, nor Obama's election.
I don't think there were any murders of abortion providers during the Bush administration. There were several during Clinton's administration. I don't think this is a coincidence.
46
... Who would scratch a word in their own chest before killing themselves? ...
To make it look like murder and make themselves into a martyr.
Just going by the story there are some indications of suicide. I think hangings are usually suicide. His truck was found nearby. By the other link he may have had health problems.
Apparently the body had been there for some time which may make the investigation difficult.
48: Indeed. And I think one can find that case made in persuasive detail in many posts at Orcinus.
Well, if the target are media commentators, then the argument is easy, because there simply is no one on the left side of the media with ties, even rhetorical ties, to left wing violence. You don't see Rachel Maddow telling people to throw garbage cans through Starbucks windows at G20 demonstrations. No one on NPR expresses sympathy for the Anarchist black block that shows up at Republican national conventions.
Also, left wing activists haven't been linked to anything more violent than vandalism in 30 years. The only exception might be ALF/ELF types, but they are somewhat isolated from the rest of the left.
Just going by the story there are some indications of suicide.
Wait, wait, wait - I think I saw this episode of Myth Busters.
ELF types are linked to things more violent than vandalism? I thought they were just considered terrorists because US law values SUVs more than people.
51: Indeed, there exists a media structure on the right that doesn't exist on the left, and has never existed before (including when our standards for first amendment protection of incitements to violence were formulated). All the more reason to say that this particular environment calls for the rules to be reexamined.
53: I was thinking about arson at animal laboratories, mostly. It is still damage to property, but it is bigger than vandalism.
51: Weren't the SHAC 7 convicted of federal terrorism charges just for linking from their webpage to a webpage with instructions for making molotov cocktails? You don't even need to actually do any vandalism.
Also, left wing activists haven't been linked to anything more violent than vandalism in 30 years.
Oh yeah? I'll have you know that Obama is practically best friends with William Ayers. The dangerous William Ayers.
Has anyone proven that Obama himself is not a terrorist? No. But the liberal media won't report it.
I am torn. I hate political violence and those who appeal to it, whether they are (i) gun-show malcontents who vaguely, nervously recognize that without their firearms and occasionally threatening actions, the uneducated whites of the Meth States would be of even less consequence to the dominant culture than poor urban black people or (ii) ugly, smug demagogues. On the other hand, it occurs to me from time to time that by 2009 liberals ought to have come up with effective responses to charlatans like Glenn Beck and his listeners.
liberals ought to have come up with effective responses to charlatans like Glenn Beck and his listeners
We just can't get past the idea that telling people the truth isn't an effective response.
I'm inclined to put Glen Beck in the "genuinely crazy" category, rather than the "charlatan" category. Has anyone been reading the Salon stories about his drug-fueled days as a "morning zoo" DJ?
We just can't get past the idea that telling people the truth isn't an effective response.
Permit me to violate the analogy ban, in this case:
Telling somebody you love them isn't an effective way to make them love you back.
I don't think that violates the ban, because I don't think it's a workable analogy.
I'm not sure heebie understands why analogies are banned.
65: Because Ogged said they were, right?
Tea is immoral: there is no ethical way to pick those tiny little leaves way up high, incl. if you have thee nice leetle monkeys do it. On the other hand, Asians drink it all the time -- on the other other hand, the incipient *Amerikaner* wouldna prefer it to *pipage*.
65: heebie understands why analogies are banned like a fish understands a bicycle.
I don't entirely hate patchouli, and would probably like it more if I hadn't been subjected to heavy doses of it in close quarters.
Ah, so drama kids wear tight quarters, and hippie ones wear close quarters? Presumably the latter are a more free, flowing form of youth sexypants?
Telling somebody you love them isn't an effective way to make them love you back.
I don't care whether they tell me the truth back. I just want them to know and believe the truth.
Apparently it hasn't been proven it was murder at all. Shouldn't you wait until suicide is ruled out before trying to draw broad conclusions?
It hasn't been proven that Michelle Bachmann didn't hang him her own self, either, and right now she's pretty much the only person I know of who has a motive.
Wasn't that Census worker found in the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky? That's a notoriously lawless area with all these marijuana patches and so forth -- maybe he walked up and tried to census-ize someone's drug operation?
and if it's connected to marijuana growers I suppose it's the dirty hippies fault after all.
77/78: you're right about the location, but in the event it wasn't anti-federal terrorism, I'd say it's much more likely to have been meth than marijuana.
I guess it's better than fisting bush.
Meth-fueled anti-fed terrorism!
84: I love it when a plan comes together.
74: Strangely enough, some of my experiences with patchouli were in Japanese trains. It was not uncommon among the poorer class of salarymen.
Where are the Black Panthers when you need them? I'm kidding. Mostly
I'm not. I think more liberals should learn how to handle guns, specifically because there is a significant fraction of the right that only understands hatred and fear, is incapable of grasping any dynamic other than dominate/submit, and is heavily armed. Those motherfuckers need to be clear that the 'other side' not only can and will shoot back, but will actually hit what they are shooting at. As long as they think they can swagger in and "water the tree of liberty" without potentially lethal personal consequences they will be far more likely to commit acts of violence.
Liberals, especially centrist liberals, often fail to grasp the fact that for a substantial and growing chunk of the right reason has completely evaporated as a motivation. All they have is lizard brain emotion, and their primary driver for any action is fear. If Obama was willing to threaten to lay some serious pain on selected GOP congressmen he could sway them on health care. They are kept in line by fear of their own party's leadership, but Obama has more power, therefore more carrot and more stick. Hurt them and they will love you. Treat them as equals and they will view you as weak, the ultimate insult for an authoritarian. To a liberal weakness evokes compassion. To a conservative it evokes contempt and hostility.
We just can't get past the idea that telling people the truth isn't an effective response.
Exactly. But if you aren't talking to someone who believes that truth is found through discourse and rational thought, but is found through faith or revelation or common sense or some other such way, you might as well be a fish on a bicycle talking about HG's bust. Or something. It's all about epistemology, or culture, or fish.
a fish on a bicycle talking about HG's bustass.
I suppose that it's possible that a side effect of childbirth has been an inversion of the natural order of HG's traits, but let's stick with received wisdom.
Red state fish drive SUVs, not bicycles.
I think more liberals should learn how to handle guns, specifically because there is a significant fraction of the right that only understands hatred and fear, is incapable of grasping any dynamic other than dominate/submit, and is heavily armed. Those motherfuckers need to be clear that the 'other side' not only can and will shoot back, but will actually hit what they are shooting at. As long as they think they can swagger in and "water the tree of liberty" without potentially lethal personal consequences they will be far more likely to commit acts of violence.
Every word of this is wrong, including "and" and "the," not least because the right-wing violence enthusiasts most likely to sympathize with Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols already believe that liberals have secret legions of heavily-armed Gurkhas and UN black helicopters at their command. "[O]nly understands hatred and fear" is the sort of cliché that condemns itself.
lready believe that liberals have secret legions of heavily-armed Gurkhas and UN black helicopters at their command.
They do???
Current right-wing hysteria is making me consider that the founding fathers might have been, in part, a bunch of dicks.
92: Yeah, it's over the top, deliberately so. I'm just sick to death of the kumbaya approach that has created a situation which rewards right wing extremism.
As to "only understands hatred and fear" - Do you have another explanation for the behavior of the authoritarian right?
Do you have another explanation for the behavior of the authoritarian right?
I'll ride my theorizing-about-conservatives'-motivations hobbyhorses as hard as the next guilty white liberal (see 59, above: "without their firearms and occasionally threatening actions, the uneducated whites of the Meth States would be of even less consequence to the dominant culture than poor urban black people"), but no, I don't. I suspect that the right wing is probably no more or less crass and kaleidoscopic a coalition than the left, though history has blessed them with the unifying enemy-totem of a black president with a funny name.
So here's a question I've been turning over and over lately: will the Democratic Party soon face a day of reckoning, not because the Republicans will make a big comeback*, but because the precarious Democratic coalition will fracture over the question of how to cope with an increasingly disloyal opposition acting in increasingly bad faith? In other words, even in the wake of the fall of the New Deal consensus, it remained possible to keep progressive, moderate, and conservative Democrats if not united at least in the same tent. But now I'm starting to wonder if the question of what to do about the Republican Party isn't going to be the straw that breaks the Democrats' back. Which is to say, so-called centrist Democrats seem intent on treating Republicans like they're just the right-wing of the rational political spectrum. But lots of progressives, it seems, increasingly believe that many Republican elected officials aren't part of the spectrum at all.
I know this makes almost no sense. Sorry. I haven't slept in days.
* Though gains in the midterms seem like a foregone conclusion, which, in itself, is an indictment of participatory democracy.
On the subject abortion clinic attacks, someone here (I think?) recently linked to some numbers showing a spike during Democratic presidencies and a drop-off during Republican ones. Was it an Orcinus post? I can't turn it up.
The language of 87 sounds alarmingly like the language governments use about the enemy when they are trying to drum up support for a war.
I'm wondering if the country, rather than the Democratic party, "will fracture over the question of how to cope with an increasingly disloyal opposition acting in increasingly bad faith?"
The country is held together by a set of shared beliefs and attitudes. One of those beliefs is in the fundamental importance of discourse as a method of settling differences (see, e.g., 'congress shall make no law ...').
That belief has held the democratic party together, and resulted in continuing discussion and analyses and platform fights and appeals to conscience and shared values. It's always been generally accepted that the way to settle the differences is to stay together for the sake of the kids party.
Now, however, that belief is breaking down in the face of a substantial (40%?) of the country that thinks rational argument is for sissies, and the only thing that counts is winning, getting more for me. That's a whole other belief system, and it has support among economists and foreign policy people and business. It's the group that says "we are constructing our own reality, screw you".
If we get to the point where that proportion is higher - 60%? - it's all over. The culture will tip, like a scientific revolution, and it will splinter.
I don't think we've had the procedural liberalism debate often enough.
the founding fathers might have been, in part, a bunch of dicks
If only Chuck Norris and his pals understood that the founding fathers were, in part, a bunch of irreligious, elitist, effete intellectuals.
103: I think you and I are just going to have to learn to agree to disagree about that issue.
The country is held together by a set of shared beliefs and attitudes.
I think the country is held together by more than just that. But still, I guess your comment speaks to some of what I've been thinking about. That said, my supposition is that we'll have a political realignment before we'll see the country descend into civil war or ascend into a state of perfectly frictionless libertarian utopia.
/me swats Stanley with the Evenhand of Timburke
That's a whole other belief system, and it has support among economists and foreign policy people and business.
This is an important point.
Dog-walking season has begun, so I am now very often absent or tired & mellow from communing with mosquitoes nature, but I just wanted to drop in and give a fistpump for togolosh's 87. It may have been a fantasy and morally wrong, but it felt good for a little while.
(Spent last night studying Soviet history. Beria & Trotsky in particular)
We are not like them, and cannot really fight them. I think our job is to push & pull the center, to carrot & stick the moderates so that then they, the moderates, will use the weapons and tools that moderates or the bourgeois will always have to make the right impotent and irrelevant.
Glenn Beck and Edward Prescott may be my enemies, but Obama and Brad De Long are my targets. If I can turn Thoma and Krugman and BdL into Post-Keynesians, well, they talk to Christy Romer. I am always looking to my immediate right or just a step further. I have no enemies to my left ( or there aren't enough left to worry about) and the far right is out of sight and understanding.
And when the shooting starts, and the center makes its choice, we'll find out if we have done our job.
The right has their guns and crazy, the left has their words and compassion. The center has the fucking banks and armies.
I'm not sure the center really has that firm a hold on the armies.
I'm not sure the center really has that firm a hold on the armies.
A couple of weeks ago I got into a discussion with the woman managing the store where I was buying shoes. She identified herself as military, married to military, from a military family. She asserted that she had seen the videotape where Obama said that military personnel should have to pay for all their own health care, whether the need for care was service related or not.
She saw it, she believed it, that was that. It's a whole 'nother reality.
Beck responsible? Of course; Radio Milles Collines was responsible.
Glenn Beck and Edward Prescott may be my enemies, but Obama and Brad De Long are my targets.
This is a useful formulation (whether one agrees with those particular names).
101: Indeed. And one of the reasons progressives are so goddamn ineffective is that we worry about using language that in a completely different context might mean something potentially quite bad, when we should be worrying about destroying our goddamn enemies. Appropriating their fetish objects might not destroy them, but it'll keep them confused for a little while longer.
I'm being over the top here, but I am deeply angry that Obama is fucking up the best chance at health care reform I'll see in my lifetime, and it's all because of the pantywaisted striving for bipartisanship with people who are dishonest, manipulative assholes. Time was, liberals knew how to throw a punch.
Time was, liberals knew how to throw a punch.
It was a very short time, I'm afraid: between 1932 and 1968. And even then, it was only a very few liberals and a very few punches.
Put another way, this country has, except for a very brief span of time, always sucked. Unless, that is, you were or are a wealthy white man, in which case, what a great place this was and still is!
It's not all that bad for wealthy white women either. Or for any other wealthy people, in point of fact.
That's true now. But it didn't used to be. The moral of my comment: I should stick with history and cede current events to the economists.
||There is a young bloodhound girliedog at our local animal shelter. She was apparently dumped there by some kind of backyard breeder -- I guess they think she's had way too many litters. CA and I are very, very close to taking her home. We can get her a deerstalker cap! Hmm. |>
117 gets it right. (As long as "white" is defined to mean "not Jewish".)
Bloodhounds, as you probably know, are incredibly stubborn, grow to be huge, drool like teething babies, and bray at the sound of mice tiptoeing three doors down. But their ears! Soooo velvety.
The moral of my comment: I should stick with history and cede current events to the economists.
It's as if Emerson has taught you nothing.
121: Jews only became white very recently. And in large parts of the country, albeit lightly populated parts, they still aren't.
Shouldn't you wait until suicide is ruled out before trying to draw broad conclusions?
As it turns out, he wasn't found hanging, but on the ground, asphyxiated. But sure, I'm willing to wait till it's ruled a homicide before hounding Bachmann from office, why not?
You know, if the rabid right got slightly saner, they could actually do much more damage. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise that they are total lunatics.
You know what? I'm going to threadjack briefly to say that I am tired of hippies. Not hippies as we mean them here, with their puppets and their sincerity. But the goddamn crusty-punk traveler drug-user kids who have been hanging around the store all fucking summer making no end of trouble, leaving needles out back and generally abusing our hospitality. I am tired of them not because they are fucked up and on drugs and jerky but because they run their mouths all the damn time and are entitled and fill up the store with their middle/upper-middle faux-poor whining, like the two nattering away in the computer lab right now. Also, they have the worst of that generation awesome "I can have anything I want whenever I want it just cause" thing going on--the tall rich tattooed dude who demanded that the back door be unlocked so that he could go smoke in the back garden, frex. Asshole.
You want to know what's wrong with America? It's that people don't think they're entitled to healthcare or a place to sleep but they do think they're entitled to treat anyone at all like their personal servants.
Thank you.
my supposition is that we'll have a political realignment ...
Yes, but behind what principles?
I see an alignment that puts two wholly incompatible ideals together in one ugly mish-mash: authoritarianism and anti-government resentment. We've always had a strong authoritarian streak - the Palmer raids, Joe McCarthy, the silent majority; we've also had a strong anti-government streak - speakeasies, moonshiners, hippies, libertarians.
Aomehow these two ideas hae gotten together, and we're seeing the birth of a nation dedicated to the idea that the only legitmate function of government is to impose one group's ideas of propriety on everyone. That socialized health care is the end of liberty, but criminalizing abortion and torturing people without charge or trial is necessary to preserve liberty.
It scares me, and I don't think that being well off - as opposed to being super-rich - is any protection.
As Apo's 108 points out, Michael H. Schneider's sentiments at 102 are more relevant to the problem, though I'm not sure if he's talking about portions of the Democratic party waffling due to electoral pressure from the 40% of the public (Republicans are meant, I assume) possessed of an "I got mine, or I will get it, damn you" mentality.
The Democratic party is just as complicit here. No one in the Democratic party (besides Kucinich, maybe) is going to break out of an ultimate dedication to control of the world through control of resources, financial and otherwise. Democrats aren't a bunch of DFHs.
129: I'm almost always trapped by my own status as a Civil War historian, so forgive the myopia, but I see what you describe here as very much the issue facing the country from the end of the US-Mexican War through the beginning of the War of Northern Aggression. And in that instance, we saw the collapse of the Whigs and the emergence the Republican Party. Then we saw a war in which millions of Northerners fought for the idea of Union, a Union that would have the ability to limit unfettered private-property rights. Now, it's entirely possible that things have changed. But my contention, or question, upthread was whether the intransigence and bad faith of the Republican Party will lead to the dissolution of the Democratic Party, as a new coalition will be needed to beat back the ravaging legacy of movement conservatism.
128: Not hippies as we mean them here, with their puppets and their sincerity. But the goddamn crusty-punk traveler drug-user kids
Well, yeah. But those aren't really hippies. They've appropriated the name, apparently, and that is annoying.
You want to know what's wrong with America? It's that people don't think they're entitled to healthcare or a place to sleep but they do think they're entitled to treat anyone at all like their personal servants.
Classic example of the difference between "Freedom to..." [Capitalism! Libertartianism!] and "Freedom from..." [Busy-state nanny-bodies! Slippery slope to Stalinism!]
parsimon, are you familiar with this book? As I read it to my younger boy yesterday, I realized that I was picturing you as the female protagonist, even though I know you're a cat person.
Now someone is talking about how the cops have moved him on from panhandling. He's trying to get my attention to validate him and I'm irritated that I find him irritating enough that I don't want to talk to him, tired of being an ear because I'm female and also think that he has a point because apparently it's legal to beg but illegal to beg near almost anything--you could probably panhandle in the middle of a vacant lot, maybe. Also he has one of those self-righteous vaguely aspie voices for which I am an absolute sucker, but I'm too tired to deal with anyone right now.
Could we just please have the revolution already so that all these people will be taken care of and I neither have to listen to them nor feel bad about myself for not listening? Also, dude left his fancy touchscreen phone here to charge! Which is trusting.
134: Me too. The only thing I like more are female black and tan coonhounds. And female huskies. And female black and white border collies. Still, female bloodhounds are awesomely eartastic.
I am deeply angry that Obama is fucking up the best chance at health care reform I'll see in my lifetime, and it's all because of the pantywaisted striving for bipartisanship with people who are dishonest, manipulative assholes.
I really don't think this is why healthcare reform is being held up. It's because of conservative Democrats and the influence that the insurance lobby has on them. Obama could choose whatever rhetoric you like and it wouldn't have made a difference.
The Democratic party is just as complicit here.
true. I think of Lieberman and the dems controllled by big banking and big health care, and I weep. There's a point where the new paradigm for everyine is Semper Fi - roughly translated (to steal your words) as "I got mine, or I will get it, damn you".
131: forgive my ignorance. I never could make heads no tails of history when I was in school, and it's been a slow slog to learn it in the decades since. I am still ignorant.
Union that would have the ability to limit unfettered private-property rights.
I'm probably wrong, but I don't see this as having been settled by the civil war.
Sure, you had some movement towards conttrolling the malefactors such as the Sherman Anti-Trust act (1890?) and the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906?) and other such things. Also the reformers in NY in the early 20th C.
But then you also had Hoover and Lochner and the legalism of the early 20th C Supreme Court, trying to make sure that social theories weren't read into the constitution.
You have the same fight going with Reagan in the 80s, with deregulation and the idea that all government is bad, Grover Norquist et al.
In the past there have been really big crises to prompt push-back: the great depression, the gilded age. WWII. We're havin a great crisis now, but apparently it's not big enough to realign the paradigm: witness DeLong's list of prominent economists who still believe in the ideal of free market efficiency. Look at the nearly 50% who voted for McCain-Palin
Or maybe I'm just incoherent, as usual
138
... Obama could choose whatever rhetoric you like and it wouldn't have made a difference.
I agree with this, if you don't have the votes you don't have the votes.
Just be glad I don't post pictures of my new standard poodle, born 7/8/09. Brought back from San Rafael CA last week. I waved as I passed Berkeley and somewhere near Davis (Woodland? Is that where I was?). She's working on her Kong right now.
135: No, I am not, ari. I don't preside over an open shop, so casting me as protagonist would be wrong-headed; there is no open shop.
131: But my contention, or question, upthread was whether the intransigence and bad faith of the Republican Party will lead to the dissolution of the Democratic Party, as a new coalition will be needed to beat back the ravaging legacy of movement conservatism.
This is good and interesting. A couple of things: it's only been, what, 8 months? I don't know about you, but it's entirely unclear to me how health care/insurance reform is going to pan out. Baucus's committee seems to be rather in upheaval, and no longer seems to be exactly holding the floor.
More interestingly, though: well, are you talking about the inevitable emergence of a third party? I hear that Emerson's talking about that a lot over at Open Left. I haven't followed it (kind of busy, otherwise I would).
People have been pointing toward a third party for some time: the strong libertarian strains emergent on both right and left are weird. They seem to meld the authoritarian and the civil liberties aspects of right and left, respectively, and you see people on both sides confessing to a soft spot for them.
You're a Civil War historian, ari, and should be able to speak to how much of this is regional. We all know the shifting political allegiances in the south have a great deal to do with what's going on.
I don't think there's a better American majority just waiting for some hypothetical virtuous Democrats to call it out. The politics we see is an accurate representation of where the country is, and the Dems are deeply implicated in the current system.
Health reform is better than the left gives it credit for.
I wish the stimulus had been bigger and more focused on real public investment and job creation. If this economy doesn't turn around within two years shit is going to get really ugly.
In the past there have been really big crises to prompt push-back: the great depression, the gilded age. WWII. We're havin a great crisis now, but apparently it's not big enough to realign the paradigm:
exactly right, but we should perhaps be grateful for that -- a true crisis might unleash some really bad shit, since so much of the "populist" energy is on the right. Maybe prolonged slow growth will lead to a more incremental transition from previous orthodoxies would be better.
138: I'm not talking rhetoric, I'm talking about keeping the blue dogs in line with some serious, concrete threats to their interests (committee seats, support at election time, fundraising help, earmarks, perhaps some dirty laundry if it exists), and trying to peel off a few Republicans with similar inducements. IOW a little hardball politics. He's blown it by letting Congress sit in the driver's seat.
Congress *is* in the driver's seat, and should be constitutionally too. Clinton tried to do health care reform out of the executive branch, and that was a disaster. This go-round is much better -- we are now close to a major health care reform bill. But health care reform as the be-all and end-all of domestic policy was always a mistake.
my own status as a Civil War historian
But how much status is that? Seems to me that being a Civil War historian puts you somewhat above "Civil War re-enactor" in status, and somewhat below "dungeonmaster."
But as it happens, I am in dire need of a Civil War historian at this moment, because I'm trying to understand how the Republicans emerged.
I occasionally argue that good Americans don't need to create at third party; what they need to do is take over the existing Democratic Party. What happened to render the Whigs non-viable? And what lessons are in those events for folks wondering about a modern third party?
realign the paradigm
I can't believe I used that phrase. It sounds like something involving crystals and auras and chi
But I don't really believe in incrementalism in political restructuring. I don't think change happens that way. I don't have any real, what you might call, evidence, but I think it's like structuralism. You get inversions and reversals and oppositions, you get the symbols staying the same but the meanings flipping (or vice-versa) but it's not an incemental process. It's a matter of some portion of the population abandoning the old models, the old categories, and adopting a new set - not a matter of saying "we'll keep this but substitute this for that, while changing the other slightly". Rather, it's a matter of abandoning one whole world and adopting another. That's Mikey's Model of Culture Change.
Thumbnail: the Republicans emerged out of the ashes of the Whig Party, which failed because it couldn't handle the slavery question, meaning it couldn't maintain party discipline between its Northern and Southern wings (so-called Conscience and Cotton Whigs), nor could it appeal to the waves of immigrants arriving at the time.
The Democrats also blew apart over the question of slavery. But it took them longer (until the 1860 election) to do so. And then they reconstituted themselves largely as a regional party after the war (with the various precursors of the Klan acting as their military arm).
About this:
And what lessons are in those events for folks wondering about a modern third party?
um, find an issue so divisive that it splits one of the current parties irrevocably. And I posited above that the appropriate way of dealing with the Republicans might be such an issue.
whether the intransigence and bad faith of the Republican Party will lead to the dissolution of the Democratic Party
That's one possible outcome, I guess, but the burgeoning craziness is looks more immediately threatening to rattle off bits and pieces of the GOP.
as a new coalition will be needed to beat back the ravaging legacy of movement conservatism
But who's going to be in that coalition that doesn't already vote Democratic? The Ron Paul people and the non-homophobic CEO types? My sense is that the people who don't vote aren't really that mobilizable.
Current right-wing hysteria is making me consider that the founding fathers might have been, in part, a bunch of dicks.
There were only about thirty of them. So, probably.
156: Apo can be so sound and sober sometimes, most times, that he (you) make me stop.
If the current craziness is just going to damage the GOP and leave the Democratic party intact, what's the deal there? Everyone is just going to vote Democrat? I don't think so, Apo, though you know I love you. Where are the Republicans going to go? The concern, I suppose, now that I face up to it, is that the Republican party will lose its internal battle to its rightmost wing, the Palin types will move to it, and the reasonable types will go, well where?
147:I hear that Emerson's talking about that a lot over at Open Left.
No.
Emerson has determined that a viable or influential third party is structurally impossible in America. Emerson also thinks the progressive interest groups, while well funded, are not effective.
Emerson is talking about working outside the party structure by directly funding Democratic candidates. No more dollars or hours to the Party. He was enthused about the Firedoglake maneuver of raising campaign funds to give directly to House Democrats who pledged to kill a health bill with no Public Option.
I think I have this right.
161: Ah! Thanks, bob! I hope you have it right.
Well, so. We might should visit on Emerson there and tell him if we agree with what he says.
The concern, I suppose, now that I face up to it, is that the Republican party will lose its internal battle to its rightmost wing, the Palin types will move to it, and the reasonable types will go, well where?
reasonable types will go, well where
Fascism comes bottom-up, when right-wing elites are forced to choose between their crazy allies and their reasonable enemies.
160: The American two-party system is incredibly resilient. Eventually the Republicans will come back to power. In the short run though, the crazy screaming helps the Democrats. I'm pretty much on board with Emerson's strategy, as explained by Bob.
I sometimes think this is ObamaRahm's last desperate strategy, anything, anything at all to reassure Goldman-Sachs (or its creditors)
The current Right funded by Scaife is a nuisance and impediment. The Right given tens of billions by Wall Street is a putsch.
If that threat is real, of the military and corporate elites committing to Palin no matter the social consequences, then I am not sure what I would do in Obama's shoes.
FDR threatened dictatorship and martial law in his inaugural. He meant it.
164: Okay. I confess I've thought that the Democrats' (or liberals') doom-saying for their own party has been a bit much. If health care reform goes down, though, I may say something different.
I kind of think Nancy Pelosi is cool. I haven't been following closely, though, so don't shoot me.
166:Last against the wall, parsi
Latest post from Thoma's by Fedwatcher Tim Duy
Japanification. A decade+ of flat wages, 10+% unemployment, increased insecurity and lower standard of living. They want us to pay the Bank bailout and our own healthcare. Soon we will paying for the ripped off pensions. This is the plan. Is it necessary?
ari's right. The Democrats are going to fall apart.
But not ante-bellum USA. Weimar.
I should be clear about three things: First, I'm not predicting that the Democratic Party is going to collapse. I'm just musing is all, musing because it seems increasingly clear to me that the Republican Party is no longer acting in anything like good faith. And that fact is a big problem for Democrats, who may lose the House in the coming midterms, may pass a lousy health care bill to placate centrists in their own party (who, in turn, are placating Republicans in their states/districts), and likely will have to deal with the fallout from both Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming years. If/when all of those things happen, lots of people are going to be pissed. And there will be real questions to answer about why the Democrats squandered the situation they now enjoy: control of the White House, where a very popular president sits, and massive majorities in both houses of Congress.
Second, I'm not wishing for any of the above to happen. A major political realiginment will only take place after some serious pain for the whole country. And I'm not much for suffering. Plus, as someone noted above, the populist outrage is very likely to break the Republicans' way, particularly given that Obama really is a corporate tool (I'm not taking this as far as bob does, but seriously, come on.).
Third, I think the Democrats are likely to pass a surprisingly decent health care bill. I've been saying this all along. That said, I really could be dead wrong. And if I am, see above (even though PGD is right that health care reform isn't the only game in town).
who may lose the House in the coming midterms
Yeah. I tend to forget about that. Thanks for the reminder, and I know there are others out there.
By the way: this thread has wavered back and forth between discussion of winning the hearts and minds of the public, the electorate, and just fucking winning and keeping electoral office. We tend to equate these two, but there are a lot of people out there shifting apparent public opinion who actually don't vote.
There was a brief period last fall when, for the first time in my life, it was conceivable that the US government might pass laws that would solve people's problems, but now I'm back to normal.
168: I think the Democrats are likely to pass a surprisingly decent health care bill. I've been saying this all along.
If they don't then I'm going to switch over to supporting the most noxious right wingers I can find. Getting anywhere without going to hell first appears increasingly impossible.
There was a brief period last fall when, for the first time in my life, it was conceivable that the US government might pass laws that would solve people's problems, but now I'm back to normal.
Right with you, my Canadian* brother. Still, health care reform! It could be great! Or not. Want some poutine?
* You are, right?
The Democrats don't need to win more people; they already have 55% of the vote behind them, don't they, and another 5% wavering in the middle. The problem is how to deal with an intractable minority at this point; what does one do with the Republican bitter-enders in the Senate?
I think Obama & the Senate Dems should go fucking ugly to be honest; make it clear that health care reform will go through & if the Republicans don't like it, well, most legislatures don't have any supermajority requirements; the Senate mightn't soon.
Just starting this thread, but Sara Robinson thinks right-wing violence is definitely increasing since the election of Obama.
13: The forgeries that ended Dan Rather's career are a counterexample.
Alleged forgeries. That particular lie was never tested in a court of law and just because Rather (or rather, his employer) caved in to rightwing loons doesn't mean they were right. Bush did go AWOL, the documents proving this were alleged to be fake, but never proven to be so.
Rather's suit against CBS is still ongoing, I believe.
And on the heels of this post, I had to field a call from an old lady who was totally adamant she is at risk of harm from ACORN, because watching Glen Beck has taught her that ACORN is a force for evil in the world. I shit you not.
So I'm working the front desk until 1900, and around 1845 I have to call a woman who told dispatch she wants to report a "threat". This old woman tells me that just a few minutes ago there was a young black woman going door to door with pamphlets. So when said black woman came to this old woman's door, she asked if she was from ACORN. The old woman says the black woman first replies "What's ACORN", but the old lady persists! She finally gets the black woman to say she's from ACORN, at which point this old woman tells the black woman to get off her porch and don't come back. The black woman replies, "Oh, I'll be back", and leaves.
This, the old woman tells me, was clearly a threat. She also tells me that she watches Glen Beck so she knows that ACORN is a rotten corrupt organization. I try telling this old woman that all the news about ACORN concerns isolated incidents that didn't occur in Utah, and that I've never even heard of ACORN doing anything remotely criminal in this state. No appeasement to be found, and I quote, "there's a first time for everything, and what if she decides to come back and set our house on fire or kill me and my husband?"
I finally get her off the phone by telling her that I'll be on patrol in fifteen minutes and that I'll personally drive through her neighborhood and check for suspicious activity. And boy do I feel stupid when I do that only to find that ACORN rampaged through the neighborhood slaughtering old white people and setting their houses ablaze.
176
Alleged forgeries. That particular lie was never tested in a court of law and just because Rather (or rather, his employer) caved in to rightwing loons doesn't mean they were right. Bush did go AWOL, the documents proving this were alleged to be fake, but never proven to be so.
The documents appear to be crude and obvious fakes and hence should never have been used in the broadcast without some convincing justification for taking them seriously.
173
I think Obama & the Senate Dems should go fucking ugly to be honest; make it clear that health care reform will go through & if the Republicans don't like it, well, most legislatures don't have any supermajority requirements; the Senate mightn't soon.
You are assuming there is majority support to get rid of the supermajority requirement which is not at all clear.
I am assuming that the people who voted for Obama want Obama's policy agenda & that they probably won't be too picky about the internal rules of the Senate if they get healthcare reform.
But yes, there may not be majority support to end the supermajority commitment; in that case, arguably Obama should be focussed on convincing the healthcare reform supporting majority to support that and not worrying too much about the anti-reform minority.
181
I am assuming that the people who voted for Obama want Obama's policy agenda ...
I voted for Obama because I couldn't stand Bush not because I particularly liked Obama or his platform.
... the healthcare reform supporting majority ...
A majority may support health care reform in general, it is doubtful that a majority supports any specific reform.
That's as maybe but I think that's my current best-of-a-bad situation plan; it isn't very good, no, but i don't think there are any properly good plans
majority support to get rid of the supermajority requirement
My guess is there isn't a majority who could even correctly explain the supermajority requirement. Democrats should just go ahead and do it if that's the best path forward. It's like judicial appointments; there's always a huge sturm und drang about them, but almost nobody actually bases their vote on them. People aren't going to change their votes based on Senate rules of order.
The problem is how to deal with an intractable minority at this point; what does one do with the Republican bitter-enders in the Senate?
That's the wrong question to ask. The real problem is the Democratic party itself, which is not leftist nor interested in picking fights with the Republicans. It won the elections in 2006 and 2008 by playing the waiting game, content to let the Republicans fuck up the country enough so people turned back to them, not by actively opposing their policies, many of which the party agreed with anyway. They're content to be the minor partner in the power structure.
178: ZOMG.You should have told her that if they come back, she should claim to be a hooker and ask for financial advice, thereby establishing that she's on their side so they don't hurt her.
And boy do I feel stupid when I do that only to find that ACORN rampaged through the neighborhood slaughtering old white people and setting their houses ablaze.
A conservative is just a liberal whose family has been slaughtered by advocates for the voting and economic rights of the poor.
the tall rich tattooed dude who demanded that the back door be unlocked so that he could go smoke in the back garden, frex. Asshole.
A conservative is just a liberal who was asked to unlock a door by a tall rich tattooed dude.
between 1932 and 1968. And even then, it was only a very few liberals and a very few punches.
A conservative is just a liberal who was punched by another liberal on very rare occasions between 1932 and 1968.
between 1932 and 1968. And even then, it was only a very few liberals and a very few punches.
My dad told stories about punching people he saw wearing German Bund uniforms in the late 30s.
Man, your dad was either precocious or had children very late.
I should stick with history and cede current events to the economists.
A conservative is just a liberal who had to cede current events to economists.
191: Well, we know that oud's older brothers are like 15 years older.
Which reminds me:
A conservative is just a liberal whose much older brothers alternately ignored and cruelly teased her.
Andrew Sullivan is finding all kinds of polls recently. This is good news for the Democrats' image, although what that's worth is of course uncertain. This is good news for those who have some hope of the current system still working. However, it is bad news for ari's idea that the Democratic Party might fracture over, of all things, how to handle the Republican Party. Or at least, for the idea that anything good would come of that. People can't split over something they don't know about.
191/93: Yeah, I was going to put my standard much-older! disclaimer in, but felt like I had said it a bunch and that it seemed like I was being weird about my age or something. But it goes like: my dad was born in 1921 and married my 21yo mother when he was in his mid-30s. I didn't show up until he was 50.
I don't preside over an open shop, so casting me as protagonist would be wrong-headed; there is no open shop.
A conservative is just a liberal who was forced to join a union in order to work in a bookstore.
A conservative is a liberal forced to justify why her father punched people in the 30s.
See, Walt gets it. Get on board, people - it's fun!
A conservative is just a liberal who doesn't get why it's fun.
I think your pseud should evolve further, into "Y'all".
No, wait, I don't. But it would be funny.
I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I only get board for things that are not fun.
A conserva- oh, hell with it. Close the thread.
The forgeries that ended Dan Rather's career are a counterexample.
Not really. The left doesn't have any particular commitment to the reliability of those documents. To the extent that the left has a narrative on this subject, it regards the facts those documents purported to prove.
Those underlying facts have been quite persuasively documented elsewhere - and in fact, when CBS went to the Bush administration with the alleged forgeries, the administration didn't deny the content of the documents. One of Rather's problems is that he was building on reporting done by the Boston Globe, and the documents were really the only new "information" that justified the story - so when the documents were questioned, that overturned the entire basis for Rather's story. But it didn't meaningfully change what we knew about the underlying facts.
Efforts to find equivalence between the right and left don't intrinsically have to be misguided, but it seems they almost always are.
A conservative is just a liberal who wants to close the thread.
A conservative is just a liberal who has a thread closed on him. Which reminds me:
Update: Within like an hour, this post was on the front page of a Google search for the lyrics. I have a fearful image of a student stumbling across this post. So, google-proofed.
This, combined with the previous closing of a thread dedicated to discussion of the most amazing thing ever to happen on the internet, makes me think that heebie doesn't even want to goose pageviews.
184
My guess is there isn't a majority who could even correctly explain the supermajority requirement. ...
I meant a majority within the Senate. I agree that most of the public doesn't care.
204
... The left doesn't have any particular commitment to the reliability of those documents. ...
Maybe not but a fair number of individuals on the left are reluctant to concede the obvious.
207: Ah. Well, that makes sense.
I think the deal there is that the proof that the documents were forgeries isn't obvious. As I remember it, it seems to be incontrovertible, but it's not obvious -- you have to get down in the weeds with the kerning and the did typewriters with superscripts exist or not and the matches MS Word exactly and all that to be convinced. Someone looking at the story globally, and convinced of the underlying facts by all the other non-forged evidence, wouldn't be terribly unreasonable in rejecting the idea that the memos were forged without getting into the weeds. Wrong, but not all that unreasonable.
210
... wouldn't be terribly unreasonable in rejecting the idea that the memos were forged without getting into the weeds ...
Actually they would be as it is really obvious that it is possible that the documents were forged. So they usually have fallen back to the position that it hasn't been "proven" that the documents were forged. Which for a sufficiently high standard of proof is true but still unreasonable. It isn't much of a defense for Dan Rather and CBS to say there is a 1% chance the documents are genuine (and the actual probability is much lower than 1%).
And a lot of the document defenders have gotten deeply into the weeds in the characteristic crackpot way (in which lots of facts are marshaled in defense of a ridiculous theory).
If I'm remembering the weeds correctly, anyone who's down in them and is still defending the documents is certainly being silly. I'm speaking up mostly for someone who's convinced by the evidence for the story in general, and has mistakenly reasoned backwards from "if the story's true" to "evidence in favor of it probably isn't forged," and has been dismissive of the forgery talk as not-proven on that basis.
Rather's own defense of the documents on television consisted of finding an old secretary (I think) who said that the contents of the documents were factually accurate and reflected the opinion of the (deceased) National Guard guy alleged to have produced the documents. The woman's opinion, however, was that the documents themselves were fakes.
This is one of those times where the defense contrived by the accused pretty much seals his guilt.
Huh, you think Rather was involved in the forgery? I always had the impression he was basically a potted plant -- I figured he'd been suckered either by a lily-gilding informant, or (more baroquely, but not impossibly) by someone working either for Bush or in Bush's interests who wanted to discredit the whole story by associating it with forgeries.
I think Rather was a dupe - maybe even still a dupe when he put the secretary on the air. I'm just saying that any sensible observer understood from Rather's own defense of the original story that the story was screwed up. I'm agnostic on the question of how quickly Rather understood he'd been had.
(more baroquely, but not impossibly) by someone working either for Bush or in Bush's interests who wanted to discredit the whole story by associating it with forgeries.
I still fail to see how this is isn't the most LIKELY option, far from being "baroque". If they had the ability to do it, they would have done it. They had the ability to do it.
Even if it's true, it's a baroque plan -- any plan involving forging and publicizing documents that damage your cause, so that when you expose the forgery it'll taint the whole case against you is baroque enough that I'd expect to find Bertie Wooster involved in it somehow. I'd believe it in a heartbeat if I knew of any direct evidence for it, though. Without that, I'm agnostic between stupid lily gilding (someone 'duplicating' memos they were pretty sure had existed but couldn't locate), and double-reverse-whammy ratfucking.
I love how much baroque has popped up in LB's speech lately. It's totes an awesome word, though.
218: Well, you know, if it ain't baroque........
220: not pwnd by 219 -- my ... was going to be followed by "it may be rococo."
Really? Huh, I wonder what set that off. Maybe I'll make an effort to switch to 'rococo' for variety.
How did "baroque" as a general-purpose adjective come to mean what it means? Seems roughly the opposite of how I would characterize Baroque art. If it's extrapolating from Baroque music it's maybe slightly less of a stretch, but still seems pretty weird.
We should totes use "tenebrism" for arguments or viewpoints that are too starkly black-and-white.
Both baroque and rococo are words referring to freshwater pearls -- the funny, bumpy, non-round ones. So, 'ornately complicated' works for the original meaning of both words, even if it's not a great description of baroque art. (I couldn't tell Baroque from Mannerist from anything else without a refresher course, so I can't really speak to your substance.)
227: Interesting. I knew that about the word rococo but not about baroque (probably I once knew and forgot).
Google suggests the name was first given to an architectural style, then spread to music and art of the same period, and that this architecture involved elaborate ornamentation.
All the kerning and all that shit was done on the back of bloody _screenshots_ of the documents in question by people who had never used a typewriter in action -- it was just that the entire rightwing mediasphere was shouting FAKE that drove the "scandal".
This is years later, but I don't remember it being finely resolution dependent. Superscripts aren't going to be altered in a screenshot.
229
All the kerning and all that shit was done on the back of bloody _screenshots_ of the documents in question by people who had never used a typewriter in action -- it was just that the entire rightwing mediasphere was shouting FAKE that drove the "scandal".
It was a great story. CBS news falling for crude forgeries and then floundering around in a ludicrous state of denial. Some people just can't stand for the right to be right about anything.
Some people just can't stand for the right to be right about anything.
To the extent that I'm one of these people, I am comforted by the fact that Charles Johnson, the blogger who did the heavy lifting in exposing Rather, is in the process of being excommunicated from respectable wingnut circles.
It was a great story.
On the other hand, in Martin's telling, it's an extremely peculiar story: CBS and Rather essentially refusing to defend themselves against charges from a bunch of bloggers. To this day, as far as I know, Rather and Mapes haven't attempted any serious defense of the documents. And I like that the alleged forger professes to have destroyed the originals after having faxed them to Rather and Mapes.
Being entrapped in my own little liberal bubble, I never bothered to examine the case against Rather, but the Rather-CBS-Mapes-Burkett response is all the information you need to convict them.
It's not hard to tell Times New Roman from a screenshot, given that people see it all the time, on screens.
I guess the point I wanted to make is that the left has constituencies which are just as credulous as some on the right. It's easier to be left-leaning and honest in the US, since so much of what has been done by Republican presidents from Reagan forward is clearly disgusting. I'm not claiming left-right equivalence, just saying that leaning left does not at all imply thoughtfulness or an inclination to skepticism about facts.
Lefties tend to be better educated and less likely to be well-connected in profitable enterprises, so there are population biases in which untruths will have traction with left-leaning people versus right-leaning people. What about the somewhat widespread belief among people who lean left that unexplained details in the collapse of the WTC buildings are evidence of a cover-up? Or, perhaps more controversially and less immediately political, what about the Duke lacrosse trial or Tawana Brawley?
Some people just can't stand for the right to be right about anything.
Oh, this is me totally. But it's never come up.
I struggle to reconcile this:
I guess the point I wanted to make is that the left has constituencies which are just as credulous as some on the right.
With this:
I'm not claiming left-right equivalence
I mean, yes, there are delusional idiots on the left, but that's a pretty distant left fringe (who is your exemplar of this phenomenon?) Whereas on the right, being a nut (or being willing to pretend to be one) is fairly close to mandatory. Name me five conservative leaders, and odds are, you'll be naming five people who profess to be proud to have said nutty things.
It is true, however, that one time a Moveon contest entrant did put up a video that equated Bush with Hitler. Also: Bill Ayers.
Lefties tend to be better educated
I suspect you'd be surprised about this.
so there are population biases in which untruths will have traction with left-leaning people versus right-leaning people
And you're not trying to establish some kind of equivalence here?
What about the somewhat widespread belief among people who lean left that unexplained details in the collapse of the WTC buildings are evidence of a cover-up?
You're closer to being on track here - or would be, if WTC trutherism was exclusively a liberal phenomenon.
Or, perhaps more controversially and less immediately political, what about the Duke lacrosse trial or Tawana Brawley?
Find me a liberal - any liberal - who thinks that the Duke lacrosse guys and Tawana Brawley's supposed attackers were actually guilty. Then we can talk.
re: 225
I'm not sure what you are getting at. Baroque art is pretty damned baroque. Wander round any city with a lot of Baroque art and architecture -- Rome, Prague, etc -- and it's pretty obvious.
Lefties tend to be better educated
I suspect you'd be surprised about this.
This reminds me of the poll that was commissioned to explore various sociological facts about Yankee fans v. Met fans. Met fans -- to everyone's surprise -- were richer and better educated and way more Republican. I think it really messed with some folks worldviews -- you know, all Yankee fans are Westchester captains of industry Republican assholes and the Met fans are scrappy of-the-people dems.
Oop. The second line there should be ital too.
More details about the death.
I think the 'lefties are better educated' thing kicks in if you correct for economic status. I'd have to look up statistics to check, but I remember that Republicans are richer than Democrats, and that's probably enough for Republicans to be more likely to be college educated than Democrats. People with graduate degrees, on the other hand, are more likely to be Democrats -- that's just not that big a group to balance out the richer/poorer thing.
And the Yankee fan thing is totally true. The modal Yankee fan is, (I would guess), a low income Dominican guy from upper Manhattan or the Bronx. Mets fans live on Long Island.
I figured Yankee/Met fandom is the sort of thing that would be handed down through families primarily.
Neoclassicists and to a lesser extent Romantics viciously attacked Baroque art and architecture, which is I think how Baroque came to mean excessively ornate. It was a culture war, of sorts.
I have no opinion on the Dan Rather documents, but I will say that the Right's ability to repeat that particular sort of reveal has not been inspiring.
I do, however, have an Idea! Somebody on the front page should link to Emerson's posts on a semi-regular basis. Since I am officially stuck-in-the-mud and do not browse around the larger leftish political sites, I would like an easy pointer to stuff he is writing over there. And maybe a link and a discussion would lure him back here! On a broader, meta- level, one of the things I miss about the ogged-era unfogged is that he would read and link to the "farm team": the b-list of this b-list blog, as it were. The perfect person for this job would be compulsive-reader LizardBreath, but she's been making too-busy-to-post noises recently. Anyone else want to step up?
Neoclassicists and to a lesser extent Romantics viciously attacked Baroque art and architecture, which is I think how Baroque came to mean excessively ornate. It was a culture war, of sorts.
I have no opinion on the Dan Rather documents, but I will say that the Right's ability to repeat that particular sort of reveal has not been inspiring.
I do, however, have an Idea! Somebody on the front page should link to Emerson's posts on a semi-regular basis. Since I am officially stuck-in-the-mud and do not browse around the larger leftish political sites, I would like an easy pointer to stuff he is writing over there. And maybe a link and a discussion would lure him back here! On a broader, meta- level, one of the things I miss about the ogged-era unfogged is that he would read and link to the "farm team": the b-list of this b-list blog, as it were. The perfect person for this job would be compulsive-reader LizardBreath, but she's been making too-busy-to-post noises recently. Anyone else want to step up?
Oh jesus. I don't know how that happened, but maybe it has something to do with the cafe wifi? I swear I only hit post once.
I could start habitually linking to Emerson -- I'd just have to get myself psyched up for posting when I really don't have anything substantive to add.
I can't stay on top of other blogs very well - reading takes too much concentration for me to half-ass it while I'm grading or prepping or whatever. (Unlike commenting.) But guest posts can be half-assed if you see that Emerson's posted and you'd like it to get thrown up on the front page here.
I hate sites like Open Left and Daily Kos -- not substantively, structurally. I know Emerson's been posting at OL, I've read the posts from links. I just signed up with an account there and searched the site for him and couldn't find his posts. Feh. I will keep trying.
