Reading Alexandra’s post, I learn that I have "sold out" due to my "blind loyalty to the liberal cause of sabotaging the Administartion (sic) with whatever means available at any given time." I’m "now simply dancing to the tune of the Daily Kos audience, and it is very disappointing to watch." Her primary argument in support of this theory is that I have "attempted to pulverize the talented John Hinderaker and Jonah Goldberg," that I hold "the brilliant Jeff Goldstein" to a "higher moral standard," and that I say unkind things about the "relentlessly talented and courageous Michelle Malkin." Seriously. That's because my "posts have become a barrage of personal attacks on conservative bloggers which were not present pre-love affair with Daily Kos, Atrios, Digby and Crooks and Liars ."
I want to leave the personal issues to the side and examine a few of the substantive issues raised (unintentionally) by Alexandra’s post. It used to be the case that in order to be considered a "liberal" or someone "of the Left," one had to actually ascribe to liberal views on the important policy issues of the day – social spending, abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, immigration, "judicial activism," hate speech laws, gay rights, utopian foreign policies, etc. etc. These days, to be a "liberal," such views are no longer necessary.
Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.
One can see this principle at work most illustratively in how Bush followers talk about Andrew Sullivan. In the couple of years after 9/11, Bush followers revered Sullivan, as he stood loyally behind Bush, providing the rhetorical justifications for almost every Bush action. And even prior to the Bush Administration, Sullivan was a fully accepted member of the conservative circle. Nobody questioned the bona fides of his conservative credentials because he ascribed to the conservative view on almost every significant political issue.
Despite not having changed his views on very many, if any, of those issues, Sullivan is now frequently called a "liberal" (at best) when he is talked about by Bush followers. What has changed are not his political views or ideological orientation. Instead, he no longer instinctively and blindly praises George Bush, but periodically, even frequently, criticizes Bush. By definition, then, he is no longer a "conservative." As Sullivan put it:
OFF THE RESERVATION": Brent Bozell says I'm no "conservative." Label debates are silly. But I should say, for the record, that I favor the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, have been horrified by the incompetence of the occupation, but have been trying to make constructive arguments for how to win for quite a while now. Yes, I oppose the torture and abuse of military detainees. I'm a little stunned that this is now something that now requires one to be seen as a "liberal."
I support almost all of Bush's tax cuts (I support the estate tax) but also believe in balanced budgets and spending restraint (heretic!); I oppose affirmative action; I oppose hate crime laws; I respect John Kerry's military service; I believe all abortion is morally wrong and that Roe vs Wade was dreadful constitutional law (but I do favor legal first trimester abortions); I support states' rights, especially in social policy, such as marriage; I oppose the expansion of the welfare state, as in the Medicare prescription drug plan; I supported John Roberts' nomination and Sam Alito's; I believe in a firm separation of religion and politics, but I certainly take faith seriously and wrestle with my own. As regular readers know, I'm no fan of the far left. At some point, I have endorsed every single Republican president in my adult life.
All of that makes me a "liberal." Imagine what it now takes to be a "conservative" in Brent Bozell's eyes.
What it takes to make someone a "conservative" in Bozell's eyes is the same as what is required in the eyes of all Bush followers -- a willingness to support Bush's actions because they are the actions of George Bush.
We see the same thing happening to hard-core conservative Bob Barr due to his criticism of Bush's violations of FISA . Similarly, the minute a Senator with years of conservatism behind them deviates from a Bush decree on a single issue, they are no longer "conservative." George Voinovich became a "liberal" the minute he refused to support John Bolton’s nomination; John Sununu is now "liberal" because he did not favor immediate renewal of every single provision of the Patriot Act which Bush demanded, and Senators like Chuck Hagel and John McCain long ago gave up any "conservative" status because of their insistence on forming opinions that occasionally deviate from the decrees from the White House.
People who self-identify as "conservatives" and have always been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens the moment they dissent, even on the most non-ideological grounds, from a Bush decree. That’s because "conservatism" is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as "liberal" is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government.
That "conservatism" has come to mean "loyalty to George Bush" is particularly ironic given how truly un-conservative the Administration is. It is not only the obvious (though significant) explosion of deficit spending under this Administration – and that explosion has occurred far beyond military or 9/11-related spending and extends into almost all arenas of domestic programs as well. Far beyond that is the fact that the core, defining attributes of political conservatism could not be any more foreign to the world view of the Bush follower.
As much as any policy prescriptions, conservatism has always been based, more than anything else, on a fundamental distrust of the power of the federal government and a corresponding belief that that power ought to be as restrained as possible, particularly when it comes to its application by the Government to American citizens. It was that deeply rooted distrust that led to conservatives’ vigorous advocacy of states’ rights over centralized power in the federal government, accompanied by demands that the intrusion of the Federal Government in the lives of American citizens be minimized.
Is there anything more antithetical to that ethos than the rabid, power-hungry appetites of Bush followers? There is not an iota of distrust of the Federal Government among them. Quite the contrary. Whereas distrust of the government was quite recently a hallmark of conservatism, expressing distrust of George Bush and the expansive governmental powers he is pursuing subjects one to accusations of being a leftist, subversive loon.
Indeed, as many Bush followers themselves admit, the central belief of the Bush follower's "conservatism" is no longer one that ascribes to a limited federal government -- but is precisely that there ought to be no limits on the powers claimed by Bush precisely because we trust him, and we trust in him absolutely. He wants to protect us and do good. He is not our enemy but our protector. And there is no reason to entertain suspicions or distrust of him or his motives because he is Good.
We need no oversight of the Federal Government’s eavesdropping powers because we trust Bush to eavesdrop in secret for the Good. We need no judicial review of Bush’s decrees regarding who is an "enemy combatant" and who can be detained indefinitely with no due process because we trust Bush to know who is bad and who deserves this. We need no restraints from Congress on Bush’s ability to exercise war powers, even against American citizens on U.S. soil, because we trust Bush to exercise these powers for our own good.
The blind faith placed in the Federal Government, and particularly in our Commander-in-Chief, by the contemporary "conservative" is the very opposite of all that which conservatism has stood for for the last four decades. The anti-government ethos espoused by Barry Goldwater and even Ronald Reagan is wholly unrecognizable in Bush followers, who – at least thus far – have discovered no limits on the powers that ought to be vested in George Bush to enable him to do good on behalf of all of us.
And in that regard, people like Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker, Jonah Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt are not conservatives. They are authoritarian cultists. Their allegiance is not to any principles of government but to strong authority through a single leader.
It is hard to describe just how extreme these individuals are. Michelle Malkin is the Heroine of the Right Blogosphere, and she believes in concentration camps. As an avid reader of Michelle’s blog, I really believe that she would be in favor of setting up camps for Muslim-Americans and/or Arab-Americans similar to the ones we had for Japanese-Americans which she praises. Has anyone ever asked her that? Could someone? I don’t mean that she would favor interning them indefinitely - just for the next few decades while the war on terrorism is resolved.
And as excessive as the Bush Administration’s measures have been thus far -- they overtly advocate the right to use war powers against American citizens on American soil even if Congress bans such measures by law -- I am quite certain that people like John Hinderaker, Jonah Goldberg and Jeff Goldstein, to name just a few, are prepared to support far, far more extreme measures than the ones which have been revealed thus far. And while I would not say this for Jeff or perhaps of Jonah, I believe quite firmly that there are no limits – none – that Hinderaker (or Malkin or Hewitt) would have in enthusiastically supporting George Bush no matter how extreme were the measures which he pursued.
We have heard for a long time that anger and other psychological and emotional factors drive the extreme elements on the Left, but that is (at least) equally true for the Bush extremists. The only difference happens to be that the Bush extremists control every major governmental institution in the country and the extremists on the Left control nothing other than the crusted agenda for the latest International A.N.S.W.E.R. meeting.
And the core emotions driving the Bush extremists are not hard to see. It is a driving rage and hatred – for liberals, for Muslims, for anyone who opposes George Bush. The rage and desire to destroy is palpable. When John Hinderaker removes those tightly-wound glasses and lets go of the death grip he maintains on the respectable-corporate-lawyer facade, these are the sentiments which are always stirring underneath:
You dumb shit, he didn't get access using a fake name, he used his real name. You lefties' concern for White House security is really touching, but you know what, you stupid asshole, I think the Secret Service has it covered. Go crawl back into your hole, you stupid left-wing shithead. And don't bother us anymore. You have to have an IQ over 50 to correspond with us. You don't qualify, you stupid shit.
The rhetoric of Bush followers is routinely comprised of these sorts of sentiments dressed up in political language – accusations that domestic political opponents are subversives and traitors, that they ought to be imprisoned and hung, that we ought to drop nuclear bombs on countries which have committed the crime of housing large Muslim populations. These are not political sentiments, and they’re certainly not conservatives sentiments, but instead, are psychological desires finding a venting ground in a political movement.
It’s not an accident that Ann Coulter and her ongoing calls for violence against "liberals" (meaning anyone not in line behind George Bush) are so wildly popular among conservatives. It’s not some weird coincidence that the 5,000 people in attendance at the CPAC this last week erupted in "boisterous ovation" when she urged violence against "ragheads,’ nor is it an accident that her hateful, violence-inciting screeds -- accusing "liberals" of being not wrong, but "treasonous" -- become best-sellers. Ann Coulter has been advocating violence against liberals and other domestic political opponents for years, and she is a featured speaker at the most prestigious conservative events. Why would that be? It's because she is tapping into the primal, rather deranged rage which lies in the heart of many Bush followers. If that weren't driving the movement, she wouldn’t provoke the reactions and support that she does.
The combination here of rage and fear is potent and toxic. One of the principal benefits of the blogosphere -- with its daily posting and unedited expressions of thought -- is that it reveals one’s genuine underlying views in a much more honest and unadorned fashion than other venues of expression. For that reason, the true sentiments of bloggers often stand revealed for all to see.
And what I hear, first and foremost, from these Bush following corners is this, in quite a shrieking tone: "Oh, my God - there are all of these evil people trying to kill us, George Bush is doing what he can to save us, and these liberals don’t even care!!! They’re on their side and they deserve the same fate!!!" It doesn’t even sound like political argument; it sounds like a form of highly emotional mass theater masquerading as political debate. It really sounds like a personality cult. It is impervious to reasoned argument and the only attribute is loyalty to the leader. Whatever it is, it isn’t conservative.
This is one of the principal reasons I found the story yesterday of the DoJ’s criminal pursuit of the NSA leakers (including the Times) so serious. Fervent Bush followers have long been demanding that these leakers and the journalists involved in this disclosure be imprisoned, or worse. These demands are made despite the lack of any harm to our national security. They are motivated by one fact and one fact only – whoever disclosed the illegal NSA program harmed George Bush. And for that crime, no punishment is excessive.
If it now places one "on the Left" to oppose unrestrained power and invasiveness asserted by the Federal Government along with lawlessness on the part of our highest government officials, so be it. The rage-based reverence for The President as Commander-in-Chief -- and the creepy, blind faith vested in his goodness -- is not a movement I recognize as being political, conservative or even American.
A movement which has as its shining lights a woman who advocates the death of her political opponents, another woman who is a proponent of concentration camps, a magazine which advocates the imprisonment of journalists who expose government actions of dubious legality, all topped off by a President who believes he has the power to secretly engage in activities which the American people, through their Congress, have made it a crime to engage in, is a movement motivated by lots of different things. Political ideology isn't one of them.
UPDATE: For a glimpse of how actual conservatives quite recently used to think, one should read this article at FreeRepublic.com, which decries the dangerous loss of liberty and privacy as a result of the Clinton Administration's use of a "secret court" (something called the "FISA court") which actually enables the Federal Government to eavesdrop on American citizens! Worse -- much worse -- the judicial approval which the Government (used to) obtain for this eavesdropping is in secret, so we don't even know who is being eavesdropped on! How can we possibly trust the Government not to abuse this power if they can obtain warrants in secret?
Conservatives used to consider things like this to be quite disturbing and bad -- and the eavesdropping then was at least with judicial oversight. Now, George Bush is in office, and all of the distrust we used to have of the Federal Government exercising these powers has evaporated, because we trust in George Bush to do what is best for us. He should not just have those powers, but many more, and he should exercise all of them in secret, too, with no "interference" from the courts or Congress.
That is why I say that whatever else these Bush followers are, they are not conservative. (h/t Stand Strong and aarrgghh).
THE definitive description of the sickness of the Bush crowd. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteTake a look at the Chuck Hagel article in the NYT Sunday mag. today. Here is a real conservative who shares many harsh views of the Bush admin with liberal critics. To the unthinking Republican base, however, criticism of Bush=liberalism.
ReplyDeleteSpot on, Glenn. I’ve watched for 40 years as the rhetoric and vitriol on the rabid right has grown more and more focused on hate, and the word “liberal” become the trigger for that hate. Of course, it has nothing to do with ideology, other than as a vehicle in the way all fascism is a vehicle for hate. There’s a whimsy I sometimes indulge in, and it’s trying to imagine what kind of uniform these people would wear if asked by their leader—and it’s no stretch to see jackboots and swastikas. Therein lies the disease: pathological anger and seething frustration masquerading as an ideology, and seeking its expression in the person of the dear leader. Quite scary to behold.
ReplyDeleteIt's too early to add anything thoughtful, but this was a great, great post.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the excellent work.
Excellent.
ReplyDeleteA further question: Do Bush followers actually care about success in keeping our country secure?
We're dealing with a failed messiah here. Today's lead editorial in the Times provides a good summary of why trusting Bush is folly.
The Trust Gap
We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.
This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time. But last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the point.
DOMESTIC SPYING After 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the conversations and e-mail of Americans and others in the United States without obtaining a warrant or allowing Congress or the courts to review the operation. Lawmakers from both parties have raised considerable doubt about the legality of this program, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear last Monday at a Senate hearing that Mr. Bush hasn't the slightest intention of changing it.
According to Mr. Gonzales, the administration can be relied upon to police itself and hold the line between national security and civil liberties on its own. Set aside the rather huge problem that our democracy doesn't work that way. It's not clear that this administration knows where the line is, much less that it is capable of defending it. Mr. Gonzales's own dedication to the truth is in considerable doubt. In sworn testimony at his confirmation hearing last year, he dismissed as "hypothetical" a question about whether he believed the president had the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance. In fact, Mr. Gonzales knew Mr. Bush was doing just that, and had signed off on it as White House counsel.
THE PRISON CAMPS It has been nearly two years since the Abu Ghraib scandal illuminated the violence, illegal detentions and other abuses at United States military prison camps. There have been Congressional hearings, court rulings imposing normal judicial procedures on the camps, and a law requiring prisoners to be treated humanely. Yet nothing has changed. Mr. Bush also made it clear that he intends to follow the new law on the treatment of prisoners when his internal moral compass tells him it is the right thing to do.
On Thursday, Tim Golden of The Times reported that United States military authorities had taken to tying up and force-feeding the prisoners who had gone on hunger strikes by the dozens at Guantánamo Bay to protest being held without any semblance of justice. The article said administration officials were concerned that if a prisoner died, it could renew international criticism of Gitmo. They should be concerned. This is not some minor embarrassment. It is a lingering outrage that has undermined American credibility around the world.
According to numerous news reports, the majority of the Gitmo detainees are neither members of Al Qaeda nor fighters captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. The National Journal reported last week that many were handed over to the American forces for bounties by Pakistani and Afghan warlords. Others were just swept up. The military has charged only 10 prisoners with terrorism. Hearings for the rest were not held for three years and then were mostly sham proceedings.
And yet the administration continues to claim that it can be trusted to run these prisons fairly, to decide in secret and on the president's whim who is to be jailed without charges, and to insist that Gitmo is filled with dangerous terrorists.
THE WAR IN IRAQ One of Mr. Bush's biggest "trust me" moments was when he told Americans that the United States had to invade Iraq because it possessed dangerous weapons and posed an immediate threat to America. The White House has blocked a Congressional investigation into whether it exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq, and continues to insist that the decision to invade was based on the consensus of American intelligence agencies.
But the next edition of the journal Foreign Affairs includes an article by the man in charge of intelligence on Iraq until last year, Paul Pillar, who said the administration cherry-picked intelligence to support a decision to invade that had already been made. He said Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made it clear what results they wanted and heeded only the analysts who produced them. Incredibly, Mr. Pillar said, the president never asked for an assessment on the consequences of invading Iraq until a year after the invasion. He said the intelligence community did that analysis on its own and forecast a deeply divided society ripe for civil war.
When the administration did finally ask for an intelligence assessment, Mr. Pillar led the effort, which concluded in August 2004 that Iraq was on the brink of disaster. Officials then leaked his authorship to the columnist Robert Novak and to The Washington Times. The idea was that Mr. Pillar was not to be trusted because he dissented from the party line. Somehow, this sounds like a story we have heard before.
•
Like many other administrations before it, this one sometimes dissembles clumsily to avoid embarrassment. (We now know, for example, that the White House did not tell the truth about when it learned the levees in New Orleans had failed.) Spin-as-usual is one thing. Striking at the civil liberties, due process and balance of powers that are the heart of American democracy is another.
Glenn Greenwald writes:
ReplyDeleteThe minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based.
As usual, your amazingly verbose posts are peppered with bombast and exaggeration. The statement above is a prime example. Just a few months ago, for example, much of the Bush constituency found his nomination of Harriet Miers to the SCOTUS unacceptable. Did anyone declare them "liberals"?
In addition, there are countless other examples where prominent conservatives have criticised Bush in regard to his policies. Just a few examples: the Medicare drug program, his failure to veto a single spending bill, and his clumsy handling of the Katrina disaster. No one called Rich Lowry a liberal for publishing such opinions in the National Review.
Where the line is drawn is on our war policy. The Bush haters (you among the most notable around these parts) cannot prevent their intense hatred of the president from poisoning their ability to engage in a serious policy debate on this issue. And because you are more articulate (and can generate so many more reams of text) than the average Bush hater, the attacks that you complain about in your post have recently come your way.
The consequences of Bush hatred are very serious. I was the poster here (under an "anonymous" entry), who first introduced the "useful idiot" concept that Alexandra used as the centerpiece of her post about you. The useful idiot formuation is not just a personal attack, Glenn. I posted it because I believe our mortal enemies are heartened when what should be a loyal opposition descends into a hate-motivated defeat-at-an-cost posture in opposition to the administration. Our enemies will use their useful idiots until they have done their work, and then it will kill them like bugs.
You're a smart guy, Glenn. These are life-and-death issues. Bush hatred is a chronic illness that is polluting our political culture and heartening our enemies, and you've got a bad infection.
I posted it because I believe our mortal enemies are heartened when what should be a loyal opposition descends into a hate-motivated defeat-at-an-cost posture in opposition to the administration.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds a lot like what went on in the 1990s. How comes types like you didn't object then to a "defeat-at-any-cost posture in opposition to the administration"?
And can you give me a few examples of some of the "loyal opponents"? I hear a lot about them, but I never hear anyone identified as such unless they agree with and praise George Bush's terrorism and war policies (Joe Lieberman is an example of the "loyal opposition," a title he apperently earned by never actually opposing - only praising). Who are the critics of Bush's terrorism and war policies who qualify as "loyal opposition"?
Bush hatred is a chronic illness that is polluting our political culture and heartening our enemies, and you've got a bad infection.
I know, Bush followers are very upset by all of the hatred in our political dialogue.
Speaking of which, isn't it about time for another best-selling book about how all "liberals" are traitors who should be spoken to with baseball bats from their nice internment camps they share with the ragheads? Jonah Goldberg has a nice book coming out soon about how "liberals" are Nazi fascists. Rush Limbaugh recently fantasized to his 20 million followers about deporting all of the liberals out of the country.
Those things are a power tonic to all of the "hatred" which is upsetting you so.
It's true: political labels are too often used as weapons rather than as descriptors with reliable meaning. "Liberal" and "conservative" have become code words for enemies and friends. But labels still may be useful in making historical connections. If there is a political philosophy that describes the present regime and its unquestioning apologists, consider this excerpt from Wikipedia:
ReplyDelete"Merriam-Webster defines fascism as 'a political philosophy, movement, or regime ... that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition'. The American Heritage Dictionary instead describes it as 'A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.'"
Are we there yet?
this excerpt from the washington post exquisitely captures the mindset of the bush adolators:
ReplyDeleteBob Barr, Bane of the Right?
www.washingtonpost.com
"Are we losing our lodestar, which is the Bill of Rights?" [former congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.)] Barr beseeched the several hundred conservatives at the Omni Shoreham in Woodley Park. "Are we in danger of putting allegiance to party ahead of allegiance to principle?"
Barr answered in the affirmative. "Do we truly remain a society that believes that ... every president must abide by the law of this country?" he posed. "I, as a conservative, say yes. I hope you as conservatives say yes."
But nobody said anything in the deathly quiet audience. Barr merited only polite applause when he finished, and one man, Richard Sorcinelli, booed him loudly. "I can't believe I'm in a conservative hall listening to him say [Bush] is off course trying to defend the United States," Sorcinelli fumed.
[snip]
Far more to this crowd's liking was Vice President Cheney, who stopped by CPAC late Thursday and suggested the surveillance program as a 2006 campaign issue. "With an important election coming up, people need to know just how we view the most critical questions of national security," he told the cheering crowd.
[Viet Dinh, one of the authors of the USA Patriot Act], now a Georgetown law professor, urged the CPAC faithful to carve out a Bush exception to their ideological principle of limited government. "The conservative movement has a healthy skepticism of governmental power, but at times, unfortunately, that healthy skepticism needs to yield," Dinh explained, invoking Osama bin Laden.
Dinh brought the crowd to a raucous ovation when he judged: "The threat to Americans' liberty today comes from al Qaeda and its associates and the people who would destroy America and her people, not the brave men and women who work to defend this country!"
for more on the remarkable fluidity of neo-conservative positions see also: A Trip Down Memory Lane
They are authoritarian cultists.
ReplyDeleteOh, I’m so glad you used that term, Glenn, because I was just re-thinking my use of term “Cult of Bush” because it’s much bigger than him or anyone person and can be transferred to whoever succeeds him – with all those implications.
It is a cult of power and authoritarianism, and this cult will do anything to keep that power.
Chris Floyd had some interesting observations on the “blind faith” in government that you talked about and he quoted from that Suskind article about the Bushies “creating their own reality.”
Suskind quoted a Bush supporter, "I just believe God controls everything, and God uses the president to keep evil down…God gave us this president to be the man to protect the nation at this time." And Floyd made these observations:
God appointed Bush; thus Bush's acts are Godly. It's a circular, self-confirming mindset that can't be penetrated by reason or facts, can't be shaken by crimes and scandals. That's why Bush's core support – comprising almost half of the electorate – stays rock-solid, despite the manifest failures of his administration. It's based on blind faith, on poisonous fantasy: simple, flattering ("We're uniquely good, we're God's special nation!"), comforting, complete – so unlike the harsh, bewildering, splintered shards of real life.
There's never been anything like it in American life before: a messianic cult backed by vast corporate power, a massive cadre of religious zealots, a highly disciplined party, an overwhelming media machine and the mammoth force of history's most powerful government – all led by men who "create new realities" out of lies, blood, theft and torment.
I think that’s an important point. The idea that the U.S. is “uniquely good and God’s special nation” is also part of this cult, thereby wrapping it up not only in patriotism but Christianity (or at least the cult’s version of it).
It is an American cult of power and authoritarianism.
Glenn posts:
ReplyDeleteThat sounds a lot like what went on in the 1990s. How comes types like you didn't object then to a "defeat-at-any-cost posture in opposition to the administration"?
We didn't. We worked with Clinton on welfare reform. We supported Clinton on his Bosnia policy. We overwhelmingly voted for his SCOTUS nominations. Those examples alone (there are many others), prove conclusively there was no "defeat-at-any-cost" strategy among those of us in the conservative movement at the time.
There are some on the right who use exaggeration and bombast to make their points. Some use intemperate language (Coulter most prominent among them). Even so, it does not address the point of my note to you, Glenn, regarding your Bush hatred and its consequences.
My point was that your own Bush hatred prevents you from engaging in serious debate about our war policy. The first presumption among those reading your entries (both supporters and opponents of your views), is that you hate the guy so much that your reason is affected. You seem to dismiss every administration action out-of-hand. Every Bush policy (according to your posts) is pernicious. Every Bush statement mendacious.
Neither of those things is true, and you know it. The problem is, as I said before, that you can't divorce your analytic powers from your emotional revulsion of the man.
That Glenn, is unfortunate for all of us.
Dear gedaliya:
ReplyDeleteRe: ....I believe our mortal enemies are heartened when what should be a loyal opposition descends into a hate-motivated defeat-at-an-cost posture in opposition to the administration.
I always love formulations such as this. The implication is that only you can decide what is "loyal" criticism vs that which heartens our enemies.
Is it possible that the greatest dangers to us are not the ones that seem most obvious to you? For example, I often think GWB is doing OBL's work for him. Do you think OBL intends to defeat us by bombs and crashing buildings? Or could it be by subtler means such as:
1. The slow erosion of the principles by which we run our country.
2. The unnecessary expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars of national treasure
3. Creating an environment by which we turn against each other by such things as declaring dissent treasonous.
Looked at from that point of view, who is doing our enemies work?
Devoman
My point was that your own Bush hatred prevents you from engaging in serious debate about our war policy.
ReplyDeleteEvery significant Bush action - from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Patriot Act to the confirmation of his two judicial appointments -- have received overwhelming support from Democrats. I have defended Bush on multiple occasions from charges and critcisms that I thought were unfair or misguided.
The reality is that any criticism of Bush is described as "irrational hatred" by his followers because cult members always see criticisms of their leader as coming from a place of irrationality and hatred. Speaking of which, I asked you for an example of a critic of Bush's war and terrorism policies who is a member of the "loyal opposition." Are there any?
Excellent. I have said for years that "liberal" and "conservative" now operaate the way racial slurs operate. So the one thing I would disagree with is that this cult of personality is not ideological. It is not a political ideology, I agree. It is racialized ideology that blends with other racisms (like Malkins' and Coulter's and Goldberg's), only the racism is now a matter of belief and loyalty to Bush. Liberal is evil, dishonest, lazy, stupid, etc., etc. Sound familiar to any other collections of hateful beliefs?
ReplyDeleteGedaliya wants to focus on the actions of our government, Glenn is focusing on the political words of Bush supporters. I'd say Glenn has the larger truth - how is it in fact possible to "engage" Ann Coulter or people who subscribe to her views?
ReplyDeleteIt IS a serious matter to consider whether or not the Administration had an idee-fixe on Iraq rather than formulating policy based on analysis and thought before starting a war. It IS a serious matter to consider whether or not the president is obliged to obey the law during wartime. It IS a serious matter to consider whether it makes sense to prosecute the war in current manner.
I'd personally be very glad to engage conservatives on any of these topics. What Glenn is pointing out is that the Bush-treue among us would rather call us traitors for even raising these issues.
In a nutshell, they want a king. People would prefer to believe over thinking. It's only made worse by the fact that all their 'thoughts' come to them from TV these days. It's all emotional, not rational at all.
ReplyDeleteGlenn, this is an extremely thoughtful and right on post. Please continue your work and continue to get out there and express it. I have thought for some time that what is going on in the right smacks of a personality cult. Reasoning is not "in" with them, nor do they get it. They are too afraid and angry. In fact, they are so afraid that they feel that anything justifies feeling LESS afraid, including dishonesy with themselves and others.... and idealizing a father figure to save them. But the positive thing is ( and you're part of this) that a growing number of people from all sorts of different groups are finally decoding this cult. We are figuring it out as opposed to being rocked back on our heals by the breathtaking irrationaliity of their attacks. It's hard to intelligently answer back when "why do you liberals always do that?" is thrown in your face Instead of a legitimate, thoughtful response to an issue. And the Rovian think tankers know this. It's called diversion and conquer. I think we need to continue the decoding don't you? For example, the latest gambit of the right to say dissent is "anger" or "rude" Three years ago this would have shut people down.....now they are saying...ahh...this again, I'm getting tired of this shit and it makes me MAD. So there is hope. Nothing is remains in stone.
ReplyDeleteGedaliya wants to focus on the actions of our government,
ReplyDeleteActually, Gedaliya is someone who once read a post linked to by Instapundit, written by this woman calling herself "Dr. Sanity," which claimed that people who criticize Bush are mentally ill and suffer from something called "Bush Derangement Syndrome."
And, like a 10th-grade nerd who gets high and reads Ayn Rand or Nietzsche and thinks he discovered some Ultimate Truth that he uses to look at the world for the next two decades, Gedaliya thinks he found Ultimate Truth in the post by that silly Dr. Sanity, and now goes around seeing the world based on that single Internet post.
really sad.
The consequences of Bush Hatred are discussed in this excellent James Q. Wilson piece in the latest issue of Commentary:
ReplyDeleteHow Divided Are We
(As an aside, I rarely read Instapundit. I first heard about Bush Derangement Syndrome from Gerard van der Leun's excellent blog American Digest
This is a fabulous post. I wish someone would look more closely at what elements in our culture promote the kind of personality cult we see in today's conservative movement.
ReplyDeleteYou're also right that much of conservative politics today is driven by hate and fear.
Something that liberals should consider when planning a method of attack, though, is whether a corresponding noise machine on the Left will be effective.
What drove conservatives to the point that they are at today? What parts of German culture lead to the rise of Hitler?
Somehow, I don' t think vituperation from the Left is the answer.
Mr. Greenwald,
ReplyDeleteThis post is spot on. Thank you for an eloquent and precise explanation of the fear and loathing felt by far too many people in this country.
Excellent post, Mr. Greenwald. It's interesting that she chose the term "useful idiots" as popularized by Mona Charen and falsely attributed to Lenin and links to the Anthony Browne article in her piece. From Wikipedia:
ReplyDelete"In political jargon, the term "useful idiot" was used during the Cold War by certain anti-communists to describe communists and apparent communist sympathizers in western countries (particularly in the United States). The implication of the insult was that the person in question was naïve, foolish, or in willful denial, and that he or she was being cynically used by the Soviet Union or another Communist state, thus unwittingly being a traitor to his or her home country.
The term is purported to have been coined by Vladimir Lenin to describe those western reporters and travellers who would endorse the Soviet Union and its policies in the West. However, no reference to a communist sympathizer or political leftist as a "useful idiot" was made in the United States until 1948, and not until decades later would the attempts to attribute the phrase to Lenin be made (after 1948, when the phrase was used in a New York Times article in relation to Italian politics, it was not mentioned again in print until 1961 [1]). Lenin never wrote it in any published document, no one has claimed to have heard him say it first hand, and it contradicts the opinions expressed in Lenin's published documents in reference to the Comintern.
In the contemporary United States, the term is used as a pejorative by political conservatives against political liberals. The tone of usage implies that the target of this sobriquet is ignorant of the facts to the extent that they end up unwittingly advancing an adverse cause that they might not otherwise support. The term gained increased use after the publication of conservative columnist Mona Charen's 2004 book Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First.
Since the 9/11 attacks, the term "useful idiot" has also been used by some conservatives both inside and outside the United States to describe those who, in their opinion, take a softer line against Islamism. For example, Anthony Browne wrote in Britain's The Times newspaper:
"Elements within the British establishment were notoriously sympathetic to Hitler. Today the Islamists enjoy similar support. In the 1930s it was Edward VIII, aristocrats and the Daily Mail; this time it is left-wing activists, The Guardian and sections of the BBC. They may not want a global theocracy, but they are like the West’s apologists for the Soviet Union — useful idiots."
Similarly, Bruce C. Thornton, a professor of Classics at Cal State Fresno wrote in FrontpageMag.com:
"Lenin called them "useful idiots," those people living in liberal democracies who by giving moral and material support to a totalitarian ideology in effect were braiding the rope that would hang them. Why people who enjoyed freedom and prosperity worked passionately to destroy both is a fascinating question, one still with us today. Now the useful idiots can be found in the chorus of appeasement, reflexive anti-Americanism, and sentimental idealism trying to inhibit the necessary responses to another freedom-hating ideology, radical Islam."
I would posit that they, not you, are the "useful idiots" and the same kind of people who coined the term after WWII are the same ones using it today.
I've been saying for the past 5 years that the Republican party has ceased to be a political party, and is now merely an organized crime syndicate in the upper echelons, and a cult in the rank and file. Think of them as the GOPranos.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant summary of what so many on the Right are doing now. It is all about the team they are on than what nation they live in.
ReplyDeleteMany of us have been thinking for a while that these folks would gladly choose permanent Bush dictatorship over the chance another party, and perhaps another person, were ever to gain control of the government for any period of time.
Under such circumstance a "Cult of Personality" arises. This is one of the great dangers to a democracy. But they don't care, its all about preserving the fiction of the great and noble leader.
Precisely. I've noticed this a long time ago. The paralells to authoritarian regimes of old are palpable, but none dare make comparisons to the ascension of the Nazi party in Germany, or others.
ReplyDeleteThose who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
As someone politically motivated by concern about the increasing concentration of power in the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned of, I qualify as a leftist.
ReplyDeleteNow, we've been on the receiving end of these authoritarian right-wingers' spittle-flecked screeds ever since we had the temerity to be right about the civil rights movement.
In the political and cultural battles since then, we've watched "responsible" conservatives lead the country in what to us is an appalling direction, by riding on the backs of these racists, know-nothings, McCarthyists, religious fundamentalists, and paranoids.
"Responsible" conservatives didn't much complain about these lunacies until the inmates completed their hostile takeover of the asylum industry. Now they're on the business end of the paranoid, sociopathic fantasies, just as we on the left have been for decades.
So, on behalf of true leftists and liberals I say to them: welcome to our world. It's disturbing and frightening, but they'll get used to it.
Would have been nice if they'd spoken up before, though.
Any critic of Bush falls under one of two categories:
ReplyDelete1) Bush Hater
2) Bitter and/or Politically/Financially Motivated
The first category is obvious. We see it here on this thread presently. The second occurred most clearly with Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill. In both cases, these convenient excuses become the focus, so much so that the basis for their criticisms aren't even considered.
The majority of the globe opposes the Iraq debacle, or thinks it was a bad idea (even a majority of Iraqis!), but to Bush's acolytes everything is wonderful. Apparently the world is comprised of a majority of "Bush Haters."
definitely a cult of personality.
ReplyDeletealthough one wonders based on what?
can somebody point to an analysis of
what people see in this creep?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality
Mr. Greenwald,
ReplyDeleteI have been mulling over this Cult issue a lot lately, and I come up short as to how to fight, or counter it.
I completely agree with your post here and wonder if you have any sort of ideas for a solution to "deprogram" these Branch Georgians.
Glenn, this is a brilliant post and will be widely read. I think gedaliya's response is symptomatic--he or she simply can't recognize that politics doesn't end when war begins: war is the failure of politics on a grand scale, it creates political problems domestically and internationally, and all serious citizens should be encouraged to continue thinking seriously and critically about all policies relating to war. There is no bright line in history or in politics that makes bush as a domestic leader who can be criticized on medicare etc... suddenly infallible and uncriticizable on the war. Its the same man, gedaliaya. The same one makes the same mistakes, is foolish and incompetent to the same degree whether he is fighting for his estate tax cuts or fighting with our troops lives (and our children's futures) in a war in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteOnly a child or an "authoritarian cultist" would make the argument that on domestic things good citizens can disagree but on war issues good citizens can not. The number of people like Glenn and "the liberals" (those people who "hate america" because their brains didn't stop working on 9/11 and they didn't stop thinking about policy and the public good) will simply continue to grow until Bush steps down and his "dead enders" suddenly discover the need for a new god to follow.
I'd also like to say that I think the charge that people "on the left" or "liberals" simply hate bush is utterly false and is, in its way, projection. Not the satire, of course, but all the public policy discussions with bush and his administration revolve around clearly defined policy diferences. People have objected to Bush's *actions* for verifiably good reasons--the war isn't going well, the deficit is growing, the constitution is being shredded. Gedaliya's defence of the president /his attack on Glenn however simply revists tired ground--you don't like my dog, my god, my president, so you aen't a good person.
I met a woman recently who really disliked bush and I found, to my surprise, that I don't. I'm indifferent to him as a person, as I was to clinton, frankly. My president isn't my father/lover/god he's just a guy who was chosen to put into place policies that affect my life.
Glenn, the next post should be on millienerian cults.
aimai
Thanks for referencing that freeper article decrying FISA back in 2000. The seventh comment on that article, includes this question: "Any chance of Bush rolling some of this back?" I wonder what that commenter thinks now.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with you somewhat Glenn. Most of these folks don't pledge fealty to George W. Bush because they revere him and trust him. They do so for one reason and one reason only: To do otherwise would be akin to opening the gates of the citadel, and letting the heathen hordes invade unobstructed.
ReplyDeleteAnd by "heathern hordes" I am not talking about terrorists or Al Qaeda. I'm speaking of Democrats and true, ideological liberals.
More than anything elkse in this world, they fear liberals and Democrats. Not terrorists. They are merely using the threat of terrorism as a means to an edn. Spcifcally, to crush all liberal dissent to their ideology.
Bush, to them is a tool rather than a leader.
As it becomes more and more obvious that Bush is an objective failure and that the Republicans are going to be swept from power, they get more and more shrill and desperate in trying to prop Bush up.
Bush the the only thing that is holding up the creaky, rotten edifice of Republican and conservative polkitic s. His personal qualities of leadership. that appeal to about 40% of the population.
Take all that away, and they have nothig left.
To admit that Bush is a failure is to admit that their whole worldview is a failure.
And anyone who strays from the party line becomes a mortal threat to the kingdom, so to speak.
What you are seeing is the death rattle of the conservative movement. It is a spent force.
BTW, Glenn.
ReplyDeleteThere is a much better word for "authoritarian cultists."
It's "fascists."
I don't understand why people are reluctant to use the word "fascist" to describe these people. Even though it describes them perfectly well.
Maybe thge whole "Godwin's law" nonsense has made people reluctant to call a spade and spade?
I regrad "Godwin's law" is mostly a bullsgit mean to deligitimize legitimate comparisons between contemporary poklitical figures and fascism of the 1930's.
In most cases, the analogy is inapt. But in this case, it isn't.
Gedaliya may think you used way too many words, but as far as I'm concerned, this is the most succinct analysis of the Bush cultist mindset that I've ever read. Bravo Mr. Greenwald.
ReplyDeleteChris
There needs to be a new self-help group founded:
ReplyDeleteBush Anonymous
Do you suffer from factophobia, mathophobia, and feel emasculated by US veterans who actually served their country? Do you feel compelled to channel the resulting insecurities through uncontrolled rage at those US veterans who disagree with George Bush? In fact, do you need to demonize everyone who disagrees with George Bush because of the lack of your own identity and self esteem makes you feel like a small, inconsequential person but by hating others you find a meaning for your pathetic life? Do you resent others with real backbones who stand up for their rights and yours as well?
Does your unrestrained need for loving George Bush cause you to watch Faux News and spend all your money (and that of your children, grandchildren, and great grand children) in the fruitless pursuit of a $12TRILLION national debt? Does your addiction to George Bush blind you to the incompetence of his cabinet, the paucity of good judgment in focusing on Iraq instead of Osama, and is that feeling so overpowering that you must gutlessly surrender your freedom?
Then repeat this statement:
"I am powerless over the cult of George Bush and that his unprincipled destruction of American values has become unmanageable."
You quite ably and eloquently just described something I've been (feebly) trying to put into words for some time now. Thank you for writing this, and for writing it so well.
ReplyDeleteaimai says:
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to say that I think the charge that people "on the left" or "liberals" simply hate bush is utterly false...
Unfortunately, this statement in your post is fatal to its credibility. I've been around long enough (first presidential vote in 1972) to know with certainty that in my lifetime, at least, the hatred of this president is unprecedented in its scale among those self-identified as the political opposition.
That is the point of my post, and a similar point is made by James Q. Wilson in the Commentary article I referenced above.
It is one thing to oppose the president's war policy out of a genuine concern for its efficacy or even wisdom, but quite another thing to oppose it based on a deep hatred of the president and his policy team. The latter action, as I stated above, poisons our political culture and emboldens our enemies. It is dangerous to our nation.
The comments in this thread are symptomatic of the problem. Bush supporters are characterized as "sick," a "cult," and "rabid." Glenn himself, in a failed attempt to mask his own intense hatred of the man, George Bush, postures that he, Glenn, is the "true" conservative and that Bush is no more than a poseur. If this weren't so bizarre, it would be laughable.
The American people, at least those who live in the heartland, have rejected and will continue to reject a Democratic Party whose leaders and activists are motivated mainly by a hatred of our president. This is also dangerous. As I've said before, this nation needs a vibrant, credible and effective political opposition. After all, we conservatives treasure competition in all spheres of public life. Unfortunately, today's Democratic Party is so infected with hate-mongers and anti-Bush fanatics that it has lost its way.
This is a very ominious development and one that bodes not well for our nation and culture.
gedaliya writes: There are some on the right who use exaggeration and bombast to make their points. Some use intemperate language (Coulter most prominent among them). Even so, it does not address the point of my note to you, Glenn, regarding your Bush hatred and its consequences.
ReplyDeleteAnd what consequences might those be? I'm one of those persons who was never on the left -- some considered me on the right -- and now, because I have serious concerns about Bush (beginning with detaining U.S. citizens indefinitely without even letting them speak to a lawyer, building with the Schiavo insanity, but revving into high gear with this illegal spying program) am finding myself dismissed as having "gone over to the dark side," as one Bush-supporting friend of mine recently put it. Well, I'd vote for Barry Goldwater in a heartbeat, and he would have an aneurism were he here to witness Bush's brand of conservatism, and what that movement has become.
Sure, temperate concern about the Medicare program or Bush's immigration policies can be found expressed by some on the right. But never -- ever -- will there be the least suggestion that he is, on the whole, not serving us well. Never. It doesn't happen among those who will defend him unreservedly in any area where criticism could truly be dangerous to him.
And Glenn is totally correct about the massive amounts of sheerly hateful invective directed at those who do not support Bush or who are otherwise considered liberal. Ann Coulter has "joked" that a Supreme Court justice should be poisoned and also that only the conservatives on the High Court should be warned if that body were threatened by a terrorist attack, and she remains very popular among conservatives where she is a huge draw. Malkin's enormously popular blog, well, that host believes in concentration camps, and I am certain Glenn is right that many, many Bush supporters would rally behind the man if he wished to round up all Muslims and dissenters and put them in camps. I'm not saying Bush is planning to do this -- I'm saying that if he did, a huge segment of what these days passes for the right would support him. So, it is a bit much to rant about Glenn supposedly inducing "consequences" via his purported Bush hatred.
Yes, Glenn is verbose and bombastic. But he is also often right, and his analytical abilities are unassailable. You won't find a better site for explicating the sheer illegality of Bush's warrantless surveillance program, and by virtue of that alone, Glenn has performed an important and patriotic service. Goldwater would salute him.
P.S. I also do not like many of Glenn's friends; Kos and FDL are most decidedly not my cup of tea. That said, it isn't as if the Bush worshippers at The Corner, Powerline, or Freeperville are going to link to him and get the civil libertarian message out, now is it?
I agree completely with Gedaliya. Sure, the current-day conservatives completely go against everything that they stood for before, but there's a perfectly good explanation for that: That was then, this is now. The conservative movement is nothing if not pragmatic, and simply because some liberals like Glenn are stuck in a pre-9/11 attitude concerning political ideologies is no concern to us. The conservative movement has moved on, and guys like Greenwald and Sullivan were simply left behind; flailing about like dying salmon.
ReplyDeleteYou see, before 9/11, America's biggest threat was Bill Clinton and his Soviet masters, and so the conservative movement worked to combat that threat at every turn. The exceptions, of course, being Welfare Reform, which clearly worked against his Soviet master's interests, as well as the war in Kosovo; in which we again maneuvered Clinton to go against the Soviet agenda. And we clearly won that battle, as Bill Clinton is no longer President and the Soviet Union has been vanquished.
But post-9/11, everything is different. Now our biggest threat is no longer communism. Now our biggest threat is fundamentalism. And so our arguments have adapted accordingly. No longer opposing government power, we now believe that an infinitely strong government and budget-busting deficits are key to defeating the new threat that America faces. And by doing so, we will surely have the Bush-hating liberal idiots defeated in no time. Oh, and the terrorists too. It'll be a two-fer. We'll get them both.
And so that explains Glenn's confusion as to why the label "conservative" no longer applies to him. Rather than this being a case of a movement without ideology; we see a poor dinosaur about to go extinct. Nice try, Glenn. But you're going to have to do better than that.
gedaliya said...
ReplyDeleteI've been around long enough (first presidential vote in 1972) to know with certainty that in my lifetime, at least, the hatred of this president is unprecedented in its scale.......
If you try to seperate hatred of the person and revulsion with the policies that statement is naive.
Nixon was despised far more than any other president on a personal level. He was unlikable.
Next Clinton was the subject of more intense personal hatred from the right on purely personal morality grounds.
Bush's policies are the object of the scorn. And clearly, the Supreme Court decision to make him president is resented. But hated as Nixon or Clinton were? Not even close.
doctor biobrain said......
ReplyDeleteLeave me alone. Fascism suits me fine.
Actually I think the level of 'hate' for Bush is relatively low.
ReplyDeleteIt's the scorn for the mindless, Bushbot, dittoheads themselves that his followers are experiencing.
"You mean you support ANOTHER unfunded 3/4 TRILLION proposal from Bush - this time to privatize Social Security?"
"You mean you STILL believe there are/were WMDs that Atta picked up in Prague from Saddam that were used on 9/11?"
The disrespect is aimed at those who follow such knucklehead crap.
You mean Doctor biobrain's comment wasn't parody? I think it was.
ReplyDeleteaimai
Glenn, one tiny quibble, you say:
ReplyDelete"The blind faith placed in the Federal Government, and particularly in our Commander-in-Chief, by the contemporary "conservative"..."
He's not "our" Commander-in-Chief, although he always refers to himself that way. He's the C-in-C of the armed forces, only. The endless repitition of Bush saying "I'm the Commander in Chief" is, I believe, designed to acclimate the population to the notion of him as "Supreme Leader'.
In fact, in time, he could drop the "In Chief" part and simply refer to himself as "Commander", or "Your Commander".
Flash Foward: 2008
"Good evening, Patriots. As you know, as Commander I have cancelled all elections during the current state of emergency...."
"I've been around long enough (first presidential vote in 1972) to know with certainty that in my lifetime, at least, the hatred of this president is unprecedented in its scale among those self-identified as the political opposition."
ReplyDeleteThat might be the silliest thing on the entire board.
First, the hatred of Clinton was at least as vociferous as that of Bush.
Second, the hatred of Clinton was almost entirely about irrelevant, and mostly false, issues. People hated Clinton because of Whitewater (read the final report- nothing there), because of the White House travel scandal (ditto), because people stole the "W" keys from keyboards (a damnable lie), because he cheated on his wife (what business is that of yours), etc.
People hate Bush because he ignored threats that said bin Laden wants to attack the US, because he cherry-picked intelligence to lead us into a war in Iraq with no plan for leaving, because he failed to catch bin Laden, because he is so intent on sucking up to religious exremists that he invaded the privacy between Terri Schiavo and her husband, because he makes public speeches as President and squelches any debate, because his "free expression zones" have reduced the First Amendment from the entire nation to a chain link mini-jail, because he holds hands with Saudi oil shieks while refusing to address our nation's need to stop feeding the Middle East oil/terror partnership, because every day we feel a little less free, because he is the most partisan President in recent history- governing as a Republican rather than as a President.
So yeah, people hate Bush. But just calling it "Bush hate" without first asking "and is there a damn good reason for it" is mindless debate, rejection without thought.
And to argue that Bush hate is greater than any ever is only to lie, either to yourself or to us.
Gedalyia exhibits the weird imperviousness of the frightened conservatives. They can't actually defend things like the invasion of Iraq on a lie, without preparation or even basic concern for the lives of US soldiers, so they absolutely insist on debating the motives that they imagine for anyone who dares to dissent. The sheer improbability of their arguments - that a majority of Americans are so derranged by a unjustified hatred of Bush as to wish to tear down their own country - like all their arguments is an inadvertant admission of their own insanity and self-destructiveness. As they blindly cheer the dupes of the Iranian Secret Service who have seized power in the US, they have to insist that nothing, nothing, is wrong except for the inexplicable and unexcusable failure of most of us to cheer.
ReplyDeleteworst president everurl.com/">
ReplyDeleteThat’s an excellent post Glenn. I’m rapidly becoming a big fan of yours. The only thing I’d suggest is to be careful with exaggeration – saying Malkin is for concentration camps, with what that normally implies, could be challenged I think.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I like the fact that you’re an attorney. I comment on Patterico.com at times. But I’m not an attorney, so I can’t always debate them in legalese.
He's not "our" Commander-in-Chief, although he always refers to himself that way. He's the C-in-C of the armed forces, only.
ReplyDeleteI'm aware of that. I use that term satirically.
The other point to be made about this supposed Bush "hatred" (a point I actually made already, but since it doesn't fit into Gedaliya's mantra, he can't acknowledge it), is that throughout 2002 and 2003, and even through today, every one of Bush's major policy initiatives was supported by scores of Democrats (Afghan., Iraq, Patriot Act, confirmation of Roberts & Alito, domestic legislation). And Bush used to have approval ratings in the high 60s and now they're in the low 40s. Why? He's the same PERSON. These "Bush haters" were willing to support him before. Why not now?
Because as people saw more and more of his extremist and inept POLICIES, he has become more and more unpopular. To accuse the same people who previously supported him of now suddenly "hating" him because they've changed their assessment of his policies is just irrational, to put it generously.
Unlike the Republicans who dug into Clinton's sex and business scandals from the moment he entered office, Democrats were willing to give Bush a chance, and even supported him for several years, until they saw just how radical and corrupt his Administration really is.
Lastly, gedaliya - any chance of getting an example from you of a critic of Bush's war and terrorism policies who is an example of "loyal opposition" (it's the third time I asked)?
Don't let Gedalyia bug you.
ReplyDeleteReally, what can be said of a person who bought the idea that Saddam Hussein was going to pilot a remote-controlled model plane - from 6,000 miles away - over their home to spray them with anthrax?
That one item alone says all that needs be said about Gedalyia - and his or her brethren's - powers of reasoning.
Let's all remember Orrin Hatch's plainly expressed views prior to 9/11 - when opposing Clinton's 1996 anti-terrorism package, Hatch went on record saying: "Terrorism is a PHONY ISSUE." His view typified the view of the entire party, which was much more intent on sniffing out extramarital blow jobs than terrorists who planned to attack our country. For them to now accuse anyone who objects in the slightest to any of King George's imperial decrees as holding a "pre-9/11 worldview" is the height of hypocrisy. But lord knows, they've always had that in ready supply.
gedaliya:
ReplyDeleteYou continue to dismiss the reasons why the "liberals" have become so crystalized against this administration. It comes not from the ether, but as the direct results of the outrageous actions Bush has taken. Just look at the timeline of his approval ratings.
At first, "liberals" considered him a bubling idiot who would be saved by his cabinet. At worst. But then we had 9/11 and before we all realized how ridiculous it was for him to sit and read children's books during the attacks, we all rallied around Bush to go to Afghanistan. We actually complained that it took him too long, and that we should have invaded the country with boot on the ground, not by proxy.
But he bumbled that, too. Now we know that UbL was basically given an out.
In the meantime, domestic policy was a distant memory, and the era of Big Government was ramping up. In all our need to be coddled by our Big Father, we applauded. Today we see how wrong that was.
Then came Iraq. I actually had a big argument with my dad, who argued that these guys want to invade for other reasons. I defended the invasion saying that despite the neo-cons' agenda in Iraq being clear for the previous 10-years, this time the threat of WMDs made that point moot.
Joke's on me......well....actually on the 16,000+ American casualties and the countless Iraqi casualties. Oh, and on our children, and ME stability, etc.
Then we started to learn all these "little details" such as torture and secret prisons. Compounded by Gitmo, Padilla, the use of war powers on US Citizens in US soil, against the law, tax breaks for the wealthy, service cuts for the poor, massive deficits, accounting shennanigans to hide the true cost of everything, political pressure on technocrats to shut up, crappy job numbers and growth, the political vilification of everyone, no matter how honorable they are (McCain? Kerry? Cleland? Murtha?), strong-arm tactics by the "uniter, not divider", Rove, the outing of a CIA covert agent because of an Op-Ed that spoke the truth (and they knew it!).
Whew! It just sort of rolls off, doesn't it.
And we had Katrina. Holly molly! They actually messed that up worse than Iraq, and they still haven't got their act together. I guess this is the "ownership" society that they talk about. Then you had Coretta's funeral and the audacity to denounce the event where supporters of a vocal civil rights leader spoke about what she believed in, in precisely the way she would have done so herself and had done all her life because it hit too close to home.
I could go on, but I get depressed that this administration has turned this country into a hate-filled place. What, pray tell, has Bush done to unite the country?
So, when accusing the "liberals" of hating Bush, stop and ask yourself how we came to that? Is it because we just don't like the guy, or is it because he has done so much to earn those feelings?
they have to insist that nothing, nothing, is wrong except for the inexplicable and unexcusable failure of most of us to cheer.
ReplyDeleteI like this line so much...Brevity, wit, and all that.
Kudos.
Excellent work, Glenn.
ReplyDeleteWhat you describe is akin to a religious cult -- a Church of Bush.
"Unfortunately, this statement in your post is fatal to its credibility. I've been around long enough (first presidential vote in 1972) to know with certainty that in my lifetime, at least, the hatred of this president is unprecedented in its scale among those self-identified as the political opposition."
ReplyDeleteSince dismissive, conclusory, ad hominems are apparently a legitimate trump card for right-wing "debate," I'll just say that we have been given here a textbook example of confirmation bias. Since "Bush derangement syndrome" can be used to dismiss substantive claims with a wave of the "BDS" hand, we can write off the rest of the above post as an extended, picture perfect example of confirmation bias.
It is all about the team they are on [rather] than what nation they live in.
ReplyDeleteSpot on.
Vince Lombardi is going to acheive from beyond the grave what Marx, or Lenin, or Stalin, or Hitler, or any of the great foreign bogemen of history were unable to do in life -- destroy the United States.
"Winning isn't everything -- it's the only thing" is poised to succeed where the competition from Kapital to Mein Kampf failed.
I for one call upon all true Americans to join me in a rousing "All power to the Soviets of fans and followers!"
Glenn writes:
ReplyDeleteTo accuse the same people who previously supported him of now suddenly "hating" him because they've changed their assessment of his policies is just irrational, to put it generously.
I've accused no one who "previously supported" the president of now hating him. My argument has been that the political opposition (the Democratic Party) is now infected with a Bush hatred of such virulence that its ability to function as an effective opposition is nearly nil. The people who now hate him have always hated him. The difference is that they are now ascendant in the Democratic party and its pundocracy.
For you to deny this is silly.
Democrats were willing to give Bush a chance, and even supported him for several years...
This is fantasy. Ever since the 2000 election the majority of Democratic activists and pundits have rejected the legitimacy of this president and have not been shy in their expressions of revulsion of him on a personal level. There is too much evidence in the public domain for you to dissemble this, even in front of (what appears to be) a largely fawning audience.
any chance of getting an example from you of a critic of Bush's war and terrorism policies who is an example of "loyal opposition" (it's the third time I asked)?
Sure. McCain and Hagel on the Republican side, Lieberman on the Democratic Party side.
The line above was by citizen k. Forgot to attribute
ReplyDeleteGeorge Bush, as he continues, is indeed a conservative. And he apeall unequivocally to conservatives. And consistently.
ReplyDeleteBut you need to understand that modern conservatism is deeply inconsistent and contradictory. And that is why Bush is acting deeply conservative when he eliminates civil liberties and expands the role o government.
It has to do with the importance of religion, the influence of which is grossly underestimated, even now, on modern conservatism.
I'd suggest a step back to discover motivation. The Cult of Bush, as several commenters have mentioned, is based on fear. They are pants-wettingly terrified that swarthy, bearded terrorists are going to kill them and their families in their beds (or more likely, their airplane seats or 50th-floor cubicles). "9/11 changed everything!"
ReplyDeleteI don't understand where all this fear comes from. For most of the period of the Cold War, we were in danger of the extinction of the human race. Compared to Global Thermonuclear War, an airplane flying into a building is tiny. Could it be that the cultists have forgotten that, repressed the memory, or are simply so young that they didn't experience it?
gedaliya writes:
ReplyDeleteThis is fantasy. Ever since the 2000 election the majority of Democratic activists and pundits have rejected the legitimacy of this president and have not been shy in their expressions of revulsion of him on a personal level. There is too much evidence in the public domain for you to dissemble this, even in front of (what appears to be) a largely fawning audience.
Again, you fail to present any evidence for your view. You simply state that you are right and that this is self-evident.
Forgive us for not taking you for your word.
Where's the beef? The growing "hatred" you cite is a direct corollary of the extremist agenda that this administration has been pushing. It comes as a response to what true patriots see as a direct attack on our country and our form of government.
For you to pretend this isn't true is silly.
Very principled and perceptive post (although a little slippery there about states' rights! C'mon!)
ReplyDeleteRe: fascism:
David Neiwert at Orcinus has argued at length that far-right-wing extremism has increasingly infected mainstream conservatism, largely via the media (rush, malkin), laying the groundwork for a genuine outbreak of American fascism given thte right circumstances. Not marching jackboots yet , but a lot of people busy polishing them. See especially his essays The Rise of Pseudo Fascism and Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exegesis
It is one thing to oppose the president's war policy out of a genuine concern for its efficacy or even wisdom, but quite another thing to oppose it based on a deep hatred of the president and his policy team. The latter action, as I stated above, poisons our political culture and emboldens our enemies. It is dangerous to our nation.
ReplyDeletegedaliya--If indeed this is the case, then what policy proscriptions follow from your analysis and conclusion?
Getting back to von Maltzan, doesn't this quote alone indicate that she has no idea what she is talking about?
ReplyDelete"The relentlessly courageous
and talented Michelle Malkin"
Ever since the 2000 election the majority of Democratic activists and pundits have rejected the legitimacy of this president and have not been shy in their expressions of revulsion of him on a personal level.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the gentle reminder.
In Steve Martin's immortal phrase "I forgot".
Here I was despising Junta Boy solely on his performace in office -- as arguably the worst president ever.
I had forgotten his installation in office by a corrupt court in defiance of precedent and two centuries of tradition.
Memory issues -- I suppose a sign of middle age.
As for personal revulsion -- I never met the man, but will freely admit I do find the way he comes across on my TV most unpleasant.
I've been around long enough (first presidential vote in 1972) to know with certainty that in my lifetime, at least, the hatred of this president is unprecedented in its scale among those self-identified as the political opposition.
ReplyDeleteI'm always baffled by people who say this. As someone who donated to the Family Research Council, listened to Rush religiously, and subscribed to the American Spectator through the Clinton administration, I call BS. The Five Minutes of Hate that we conservatives flung at the Klintons was just as passionate and vitriolic as anything the left has thrown at Bush.
I can only assume that we inhabit strange parallel universes, where important realities have diverged. What's the atomic weight of carbon? How many states are in the union? Who was the 16th president? We need to establish that we come from reasonably similar histories before the conversation can continue...
gedaliya writes:
ReplyDeleteMy argument has been that the political opposition (the Democratic Party) is now infected with a Bush hatred of such virulence that its ability to function as an effective opposition is nearly nil. The people who now hate him have always hated him. The difference is that they are now ascendant in the Democratic party and its pundocracy.
Piffle. The Democrats cannot function as an effective opposition party because the do not control any branch of government. And while it is true that lunatic leftists like the Kossacks, the Michael Moore devotees, and moveon.org make a lot of noise, most Democrats do not rush to embrace these people, any more than most Republicans are eager to have Pat Robertson keynoting their functions. No, none of that explains the drop in Bush's approval ratings, or why so many Republicans and Independents are now critical of George Bush.
Further, for anyone to claim that hatred of George Bush is some unique phenomenon in American politics is so far removed from reality as to defy belief. Are you familiar with R. Emmett Tyrrell's now defunct, dead tree version of the American Spectator? I took that journal until the early 90s, when Clinton Derangement Syndrome turned it into a sex-obsessed, crude caricature of the more cerebral magazine it had prior thereto been. Clinton hatred literally destroyed that magazine -- and did so after it started advertising on the Limbaugh show, and lowering its intellectual standards accordingly unto becoming a totally rancid tabloid.
Please. I didn't vote for Bill Clinton. But the idea that hatred of Bush is a pervasive occurrence never before seen in the nation's politics is utterly preposterous.
Von Maltzan illustrated her post with a painting titled, "The Betrayal of Christ." Since I don't think von Maltzan is capable of irony that's kind of spooky and pretty much says it all.
ReplyDeleteGlenn wrote: any chance of getting an example from you of a critic of Bush's war and terrorism policies who is an example of "loyal opposition" (it's the third time I asked)?
ReplyDeleteGedaliya replied: Sure. McCain and Hagel on the Republican side, Lieberman on the Democratic Party side.
You're proving Glenn's point. Lieberman is not "a critic of Bush's war and terrorism policies," he's a supporter of Bush's war and terrorism policiies. If Lieberman is your only "good Democrat," then you're effectively saying that failure to support Bush's policies is essentially illegitimate.
McCain, too, is a supporter of Bush's foreign policy, though he sometimes criticizes the way it's carried out. Only Hagel can be even described as close to an actual critic of Bush's policies.
So I'll ask again: are there any actual critics of Bush's foreign and terror policies that you consider "loyal opposition?"
Here is the aspect of the Bush cult that I do not get:
ReplyDeleteWhy are his followers so impassioned to follow him?
I mean, autocratic militaristic leaders of the 20th century that we could name had great charisma and excellent oratorical skills, enough for example to beguile Albert Speer.
Yet Bush is consistently embarrassing as a public speaker, and his debate performance in 04 was a disaster.
It must be that they are projecting something on to him, their own deep-needed desire for an authoritarian figure to make them feel safe. At heart, these are very scared and insecure people.
As Anonymous @ 7:38am on the previous post says, contrast this with the English matter-of-factly getting on with their lives in the midst of the WWII blitz. Not only did they not make a cult of Churchill, they kicked him out in 1945 because they were tired of him once the war was over!
I think we just have to accept that a certain segment of this country has deeply authoritarian tendencies. I think there was some of that on the left in the 1960s, that is part of the reason for the swing to the right since then. But 9/11 did something, a lot of people got scared and then got angry and then were given licence to blame the Fifth Columnists in our midst. My hope is that eventually these people will be marginalized and purged from the mainstream of political debate. If it happens, it will have done incalculable harm to the political right, by association, in this country.
Of course the other scenario is that there will never be a return to rational discussion in this country, and we will continue in perpetual warfare with Eurasia or Oceania or whomever we're at war with. Right now I'd say that's the most likely scenario, unless the gutless opposition steps up to the plate, perhaps joining hands with disgusted conservatives like Bob Barr.
David Shoughnessy: Peter Edelman resinged from Clinton's government as a protest against his pathetic support of welfare "reform". Reaction of liberals: applause of Edelman, crticism of Clinton. If you want to see a principled liberal take on Clinton's legacy see Eric Alterman's 2000 nation article
ReplyDeleteCompare to the "conservative" ideology that criticism of Bush is necessarily impelled by bad motives.
This is so ironic to me. When I first learned of this blog, I checked out some of the links, including ATB. I almost sent the RSS feed to the trash.
ReplyDeleteBut I kept reading and realized that the author was trying to get to the truth of what's being done to our Constitution. It didn't matter who his "friends" were or what other opinions he might hold that differ from mine. This is the only issue that matters right now.
conservatism has always been based, more than anything else, on a fundamental distrust of the power of the federal government and a corresponding belief that that power ought to be as restrained as possible
ReplyDeleteWhile I am a fan of your blog, I disagree with the above. Conservatism has always been about protecting the powerful from the great unwashed. When out of power, conservatives espouse a small non-intrusive government, when in power (see Reagan, Nixon, Bush) government power is expanded. When libertarian types express feelings of betrayal, the conservative bigwigs wink and say "he wasn't a true conservative, we'll get one in next time", thus preserving their false claims about what conservatism is.
If the true believers looked at reality, at the lies told and believed, they would have to admit that they were manipulated and their judgment was faulty. By maintaining a blind faith in Bush, they can also maintain the illusion that they were not victims of a clever con game.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I do not hate Bush. I would be very happy to be indifferent to him if he were back permanently in Crawford cutting brush. If he would pursue this as his only career starting tomorrow , I would be very happy to dismiss him as just a bad dream.
I do have extremely strong feelings about the direction this country has been going in under his incompetent leadership. While the true believers like to quote that all real Americans are blindly loyal to their god, the polls continually indicate that the majority of Americans believe that the country is going in the wrong direction under Bush’s leadership. This is another reality that the true believers prefer to dismiss as just another plot against their great leader
Doesn't anyone remember how hated JFK's successor was? "Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" That internationally known chant was a new development in domestic US politics, and that hatred and rage was not based on opposition to his domestic agenda with its increasing deficits, but based on opposition to a war that had roots as far back as the Eisenhower administration, and was personal.
ReplyDeleteTo blame opposition to this war, to blame the concentration of personal power and secrecy, the manifest and repeated failure of the media and congress to perform standard oversight on "Bush hatred" is just silly. It's not Bush opponents running around asking for newspapers to be bombed or cheering and joking at the thought of killing elected politicians.
No, this authoritarianism is all being promulgated in the name of Beloved Leader with his indulgence if not his actual supervision and direction. As Glenn has argued recently, what's going on is different in kind from anything this country has previously seen. And to reduce all the policy arguments that the unilateral BushCo war and its un-American tactics are only being challenged because of "Bush hatred" is to falsify history.
hypatia writes:
ReplyDelete...none of that explains the drop in Bush's approval ratings, or why so many Republicans and Independents are now critical of George Bush.
I never made a single statement regarding the drop in Bush's approval ratings.
I believe most Republicans (my guess is well over 80%) still express approval of the president in opinion polls. His most glaring loss in support has indeed occurred among independents, but I suspect (and many on the Democratic side fear), that this erosion is temporary and will reverse itself enough this year to ensure that the Republican control in Congress remains intact.
Further, for anyone to claim that hatred of George Bush is some unique phenomenon in American politics is so far removed from reality as to defy belief...
I never claimed this. My contention is that the scale of this hatred is unprecedented within the ranks of the opposition party, at least in my lifetime. Clinton was reviled by some Republicans, sure, and there was plenty of nastiness in certain quarters of our coalition, but the scale and extent of Clinton hatred comes nowhere near what we see today within the ranks of the Democratic Party.
But the idea that hatred of Bush is a pervasive occurrence never before seen in the nation's politics is utterly preposterous.
Once again, I made no such claim.
aimai said...
ReplyDeleteYou mean Doctor biobrain's comment wasn't parody? I think it was.
Fact or fiction?
Truth or parody?
With Bush cultists or their parodists, it's hard to see any difference.
Bush is the most hated president of all time!
And by some, I mean ALL and with 100% passion.
ReplyDelete"My contention is that the scale of this hatred is unprecedented within the ranks of the opposition party, at least in my lifetime. Clinton was reviled by some Republicans,"
Oh what a sheltered cultish life we lead.
The Right was all for "state's rights" when they didn't control the Federal government. Now that they do, they have done a 180 degree turn and advocate for unrestricted Executive and Federal powers. That they are not aware and honest enough to confront their own intellectual disnonesty tells us everything we need to know about the Bushniks.
ReplyDeleteThe most amazing spectacle will be the reaction of these bedwetters if a Democrat regains the White House. In the blink of an eye they will be outraged by the expansion of presidential powers and the intrusion of the federal government into private lives. Eight years of unhinged devotion to the correctness of the executive branch will be forgotten. Unfortunately all those editorials and blog posts will still be floating out their haunting them.
ReplyDeletegediliya said
ReplyDeletebut I suspect (and many on the Democratic side fear), that this erosion is temporary and will reverse itself enough this year to ensure that the Republican control in Congress remains intact.
I suspect???
Perhaps you mean hope, or pray daily.
The jury is in. Bush is a failed president. No 'bad karma' let Osama escape, restrained him from using his veto to add over $2Trillion in new debt, screwed up Iraq, and srewed up the Katrina response worse, etc.
The guy is bad news. Republicans just can't accept that they backed a loser.
I've been around long enough (first presidential vote in 1972) to know with certainty that in my lifetime, at least, the hatred of this president is unprecedented in its scale among those self-identified as the political opposition.
ReplyDeleteI am starting to wonder if you fell asleep between 1993-2001.
Glenn's link to the Free Republic post on FISA summarizes the truth: when Clinton tried to protect America from terrorists, he was villianized by the Right, accused of wagging the dog, and derided every step of the way. His attempts to take out Osama were ridiculed by the Right as an attempt to distract the public from the absolute rubbish of the Lewinsky "scandal".
Back then, it wasn't treasonous for the Right to obstruct the Clinton Administration's attempts to protect us from terrorists. He spent eight years dealing with these fake scandals (Whitewatergate! Travelgate! Haircutgate!) I can only imagine how much focus that took from their efforts to undermine the terrorist networks.
Even more galling is to listen to the Right try to blame the Clinton administration for 9/11, as if eight years of their partisan carping had nothing to do with the success of that attack.
I disagree with Gedaliya, because I think the leadership of the Democratic party is too intimidated to be an effective opposition.
ReplyDeleteIn general, the leadership of the party tries to agree with the President on core national security philosophy and differentiate itself on management issues. This makes it ineffective.
Most of the Dem grassroots dislikes and denigrates Bush, this on the basis of hard-earned experience. To the grassroots, the Republican party is an unamerican cabal given to secrecy, mendacity, incompetence and corruption.
There can be no serious debate when one side is called traitorous, it is that simple. This is exactly the way the Republicans want it, in my opinion.
Here's what Bushies mean by Loyal Opposition:
ReplyDelete"Your landing on the carrier was magnificent Mr. President, sir, but I have a few minor points of disagreement. First, the "mission accomplished" banner should have been larger, second, we needed more closeups of your codpiece, it really helps with morale, sir."
I took a look at the Free Republic article Glenn made reference to. In the 8th (ish) paragraph, I noticed this:
ReplyDeleteReportedly, the Clinton administration had not always been enthusiastic about expanding the court's powers. Like its predecessors, it operated under the assumption that the executive already had inherent authority to exempt itself from Fourth Amendment constraints and could order warrantless searches to protect national security. Nonetheless, the government avoided allowing this inherent authority to be tested in the courts.
Does anyone know about this? Did Clinton operate under such an assumption? DId this paragraph catch anyone's attention?
Dr. Biobrain is right.
ReplyDeleteI have mocked those of the modern American conservative movement for abandoning previously revered long- and deeply-held conservative convictions but now realize that I was wrong and that the new true American conservative now stands resolutely behind our truly longest and most deeply held and only important conviction - that there are many, many things in the world around us to deeply fear and that we need to completely and resolutely surrender to these fears and pray for a great protector to rule over us as we cower. So I say Bravo you new American conservative in bringing us back to our primal centers!
I mean really, how could a true American conservative really get behind such a whacko liberal notion of limited government and power vested in the people (especially the less fortunate smelly ones, and the non-white ones, and the womin ones, and the secular ones, and the intellectual ones, and the un-fraidycat ones, ………..).
Great essay. Very clear in its indictments; very levelheaded in its presentation. So unlike me, with my emotion! But that's why I like reading others. Especially when we believe similar things. And it's grounding to read one of the people who seems not, yet, to have been whipped into a froth. My anger and disbelief have, as of late, numbed me out. I mutter, shake my head. Suddenly expound, ambush a moment with acrobatic decibel arrangements. Soon, I'll be able to speak on things. But if the Bush faction has succeeded in anything, it's provoking so many of us beyond reason.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this one, it seems to capture a very important awareness. Scary, but quite timely and needing to be said aloud.
Excellent work Glenn. You have narrowed the definition down to a palatable form. Now if we can just realize that political gambits and strategy are not going to make them go away. We need new tactics focused on the social side of the spectrum instead of waiting for a Dem majority to save us. These people have to be spotlighted and ridiculed and society has to begin to shun them, finding an affiliation with them to be embarrassing.
ReplyDeletegedaliya wrote:
ReplyDeleteThe Bush haters (you among the most notable around these parts) cannot prevent their intense hatred of the president from poisoning their ability to engage in a serious policy debate on this issue.
and then states:
Bush hatred is a chronic illness that is polluting our political culture and heartening our enemies, and you've got a bad infection.
I have personally tried on many occasions and in many places to have a "serious" discussion with those on the right. How do you expect this to happen when you second statement above is the prevailing attitude?
Hint: Just because you aren't listening doesn't mean there aren't attempts for a serious dialogue.
When I do get someone to listen and talk it almost always boils down to a simple element: Trusting Bush.
My point is that it doesn't matter if I trust Bush or not. Our government survives on checks and balances and openess. These are aspects of the government that this administration has been systematically shutting down. I shouldn't have to put my blind faith in Bush or simply trust him. That is the point of the Constitution.
Does anyone know about this? Did Clinton operate under such an assumption? DId this paragraph catch anyone's attention?
ReplyDeleteYes, he did operate as if the 4th Am did not bind him in certain national secuity matters. But that is irrelevant to the current controversy. Clinton engaged in warrantless physical searches on the basis of his inherent authority in the area of national security; then FISA was amended to include physical searches, and thereafter Clinton complied with that law and obtained FISA warrants.
Orin Kerr is absolutely certain that Bush would lose in the SCOTUS if his warrantless surveillance program were adjudicated. But Kerr is also of the opinion that the program does not violate the 4th Am., based on reasoning similar to Clinton's. Kerr (rightly, in my view) argues that Bush would lose because he is in violation of FISA, and that pursuant to the SCOTUS's holding in Youngstown, whatever inherent authority Bush has must give way to a duly enacted law of Congress.
So, it isn't much about the 4th Amendment -- tho I believe Glenn has concerns in that regard as well.
I don't understand where all this fear comes from.
ReplyDeletePrimal fear.
Outstanding analysis, Glenn. Very clear, cuts through the cultist's emotion and fantasy laden rhetoric ,and provides us with an objectivity lacking in many other places.
One possible next avenue of exploration would be to delve into the psychology and the totalism of cultists. Robert Jay Lifton has done great work in this area.
I believe it would be far easier to deal with the irrationality and the numerous projections used by the Bush cultists if there were an underlying grasp of what actually makes them tick.
Take the term "Bush Derangement Syndrome" for instance. It applies all right - but not to Democrats. The deranged are those who wish to follow the leader into the pit of war hell, and want to drag the rest of us along with them. When we object to the burning pits and sulphur fumes, we are called "deranged."
There is, I believe, an objective illness here. It would be easier to counter the anxious, even hysterical, fantasies of those on the right with some understanding of their unconscious fears.
I think the entire US Government, Republicans AND Democrats, and the US Corporate State Controlled Media should be put on trial for war crimes against humanity, and tarred, feathered, and strung up on light posts so the Citizens of the Republic can form a new Government, but that would make me a disruptor or terrorist now, so I'll just shut the fuck up zzzzzzz!
ReplyDeletegedaliya: You're a smart guy, Glenn. These are life-and-death issues. Bush hatred is a chronic illness that is polluting our political culture and heartening our enemies, and you've got a bad infection.
ReplyDeleteYeah, right after the Hate-a-Thon in New York prior to the 2004 Election, it's obvious that Bush is all about peace and love.
On true life-and-death issues, this Administration is a complete failure. But that's not what right-wingers mean by "life-and-death" issues. What they mean by "life-and-death" issues is the chances of their leaders holding on to power, no matter what. That's why they're running up the flag of secrecy. There's so much there they don't want you to see. In this sense, yeah, it's a 'life-and-death' issue.
The point that "conservatism" has now become the Cult of George is certainly a valid one. However, the idea that conservatism is characterized by "a fundamental distrust of the power of the federal government" is not valid. That principle that conservatives gave lip service to was a reaction to the liberalism that started with the New Deal.
ReplyDeleteThe reality is that liberalism does trust the power of federal government. Why? To do as much as possible for the betterment of as many people as possible, hopefully to bring about a measure of equality for all.
Conservatism, on the other hand, sees people as inherently of poor character, and that society is made better if the people are kept in line by the "right people". So, conservatism is the idea that only the "right people" should have the power, and that only the "right people" should be the beneficiaries of that power, because the "right people" are inherently better. (The term most used for the "right people" since who knows when is "aristocracy".) This is in reality the only guiding principle of conservatism.
Because liberalism led to those other than the "right people" being the beneficiaries and because liberalism had the power most of the 20th century, conservatives reacted by defining themselves as the opposite of liberalism, which at the time meant that they should distrust federal government.
So once the conservatives got complete power, it should surprise no one that conservatives became so enamored of federal government power. After all, according to conservatives, the "right people" are now in charge, namely the Bush cadre of GOP apparatchiks.
Bob Barr is really not a liberal since he honestly holds the principle that federal government should be distrusted. He is also not a conservative because his principles say that people at least are of good enough character to govern themselves, so the "right people" aren't necessary to govern.
In summary, Bushism is conservatism. Any other definition of conservatism that was used by the GOP to get their power was a cynical load of crap.
"Ascribe" means something different than you think. I think you want "subscribe."
ReplyDelete"We ascribe certain views to people who claim to be libertarians."
"Neoconservatives are often presumed to subscribe to certain views."
Great post, BTW!
gedaliya: The people who now hate him have always hated him.
ReplyDeleteAmen! And also, "We are now at war with Oceana, we have always been at war with Oceana!"
gedaliya: My contention is that the scale of this hatred is unprecedented within the ranks of the opposition party, at least in my lifetime... Once again, I made no such claim [that the hatred of Bush is a 'pervasive occurrence never before seen in the nation's politics']
See, gedaliya said it was the worst in his/her lifetime, not the worst in the entire history of the country. It is your deep-seated, burning hatred that keeps you from noticing the vast chasm that separates these two statements.
If you'll excuse me now, I'm going back to read some Powerline and Malkin. I can only hope that you will someday give up your hatred and join me in the love of discussing putting Americans in internment camps and the decrying traitorous actions of Jimmy Carter.
Excellent, thoughful and perceptive article. It brought to center focus many of the signs of the times.
ReplyDeleteThe question remains, though. Just what is driving all this hatred? Where is it coming from?
What is it about our culture that has produced a social phenomenon such as that which we are seeing?
Glenn wrote: "any chance of getting an example from you of a critic of Bush's war and terrorism policies who is an example of "loyal opposition" (it's the third time I asked)?
ReplyDeleteGedaliya replied: Sure. McCain and Hagel on the Republican side, Lieberman on the Democratic Party side.
And m.a. noted: "You're proving Glenn's point. Lieberman is not "a critic of Bush's war and terrorism policies," he's a supporter of Bush's war and terrorism policiies. If Lieberman is your only "good Democrat," then you're effectively saying that failure to support Bush's policies is essentially illegitimate."... So I'll ask again: are there any actual critics of Bush's foreign and terror policies that you consider "loyal opposition?"
And now I'm asking too, Gedaliya. Joe Lieberman, who supports Bush's foreign and terror policies, can't exactly be called a critic of Bush's foreign and terror policies, now can he? So, like m.a. and Glenn, I'm increasingly curious if there's such a thing as an American who is critical of Bush's foreign and terror policies who is not, in your view, a "useful idiot" doing the work of our "mortal enemies."
Let's hear some examples, please.
You've now been asked *five* times, Gedaliya.
"Liberal" and ("conservative" to a lesser extent) are used like racial slurs, as someone noted. On other forums I've witnessed members using 'liberal' the same way someone from the KKK would use the term 'nigger'
ReplyDeleteRegarding the "cult of Bush", the Economist's review of Fred Barnes Rebel in Chief compares it to hero worship that is displayed in N. Korea for Kim Jong-il. Even though they do it to note that Barnes' "gushing" praise isn't nearly as bad as what goes on in N. Korea, the fact that they could even make the comparison says a lot.
You seem to dismiss every administration action out-of-hand. Every Bush policy (according to your posts) is pernicious. Every Bush statement mendacious.
ReplyDeleteStrawman much? I haven't been reading here since 1972, but I've seen at east a couple legal and Constitutional arguments made for disagreements with specific Bush policies. Of course, when you can ignore any disagreement as "not serious debate" because it's based on hate, and posit the hate based on the lack of serious debate, it certainly makes things easier.
It's no accident that that neo-con movement was founded by ex-trotskyites. They took the tools of the trade, added "christianity" and American constitutional language, and installed their communist regime where the State is all, and any dissent is an infallible sign of mental illness or treason.
ReplyDeleteGlenn, I actually think you give "conservatives" too much credit in this passage:
ReplyDeleteAs much as any policy prescriptions, conservatism has always been based, more than anything else, on a fundamental distrust of the power of the federal government and a corresponding belief that that power ought to be as restrained as possible, particularly when it comes to its application by the Government to American citizens. It was that deeply rooted distrust that led to conservatives’ vigorous advocacy of states’ rights over centralized power in the federal government, accompanied by demands that the intrusion of the Federal Government in the lives of American citizens be minimized.
The love for "states' rights" was in the context of a liberal federal government, and of course during the post-WWII period functioned mostly as a fig leaf for segrationism. American conservatives have always been happy to use the power of whatever level of government they control, as long as that power was not directed at business interests.
i've asked it before, i'll ask it again:
ReplyDeletehelp stop this country from becoming a fundamentalist theocracy aiding and abetting a kleptocratic war profiteering police state that continues to remove civil liberties from americans on the premise of fighting a never ending war on a transitive adverb
ø¤º°°º¤ø¤º°°º¤ø¤º°°º¤ø¤º°°º¤ø¤º°°º¤ø
t_o_s_e_c
By the way, Gedaliya, "Bush-hater" is an ad-hominem argument... a logical weakness that you (and Alexandra) have leaned on a lot in the last couple days.
ReplyDeleteYou seem like an intelligent person, Gedaliya. And thus, regardless of what creepy motives you assume to be behind Glenn's arguments, you should certainly be able to refute them on the arguments' merits, alone. Right? So why don't you?
Glenn. Terrific post. I’ve been saying it for years, but never so well.
ReplyDeleteIn Sullivan's case, the Bush-apologist vitriol is particularly telling. Not only is he denigrated, implausibly, as “liberal”, but it is now conventional wisdom with this group that his opposition to Bush is all because he’s gay.
Here’s how Mark Shea (who isn’t necessarily a Bush apologist, per se, but reflects this “conventional wisdom” quite well) put it in his blog:
“The key to everything Sullivan writes is the defense of his sex life. His attacks on Bush suddenly began after Bush said no to gay sex. [..snip..] I have serious difficulty believing he would be nearly so passionate [about torture] if Bush had announced that he would do everything in his power to make gay marriage the law of the land. In that event, I think we’d be reading lots of fawning suck-up pieces abut Bush’s “tough stands” against international terror, etc.”
Hey, if you can avoid engaging a substantive criticism by calling the critic “liberal”, or a “Michael Moore sympathizer”, or a “KOSian dancer”, or a “useful idiot”, or a "Bush hater", great. If, on top of all that, you can play the homophobe card, all the better.
Where have I heard all this before??? Oh yes. North Korea.....
ReplyDeleteAnd here's a link to a post which parses the hate behind an e-mail which fantasizes about violence against "liberals"
ReplyDeleteThis authoritarian cult is first and foremost about power. To maintain that power it is dependent on two components: 1) fear, and the labeling of anyone who disagrees with their positions on National Security as being “weak on terrorism” and, 2) the cultivation of the authoritarian religious right as a necessary ingredient for retaining power.
ReplyDeleteOne of the few times this cult would not trust Bush was in the nomination of Harriet Miers and their suspicion that she might not be sufficiently “pro-life.” On this issue, they refused to trust Bush’s judgment and deferred to the religious right instead.
That’s why I think that this authoritarian cult is more than just a cult of personality around Bush. He wasn’t able to go against this important part of the cult.
Another candidate able to tap into these two crucial components will be able to perpetuate this cult and its power. This ideology is bigger than Bush.
gedaliya said: I've accused no one who "previously supported" the president of now hating him. My argument has been that the political opposition (the Democratic Party) is now infected with a Bush hatred of such virulence that its ability to function as an effective opposition is nearly nil. The people who now hate him have always hated him. The difference is that they are now ascendant in the Democratic party and its pundocracy.
ReplyDeleteFor you to deny this is silly.
This is complete and utter bullshit.
Once again, bullshit.
I used to like Bush. I used to vote Republican. I even initially supported the Iraq war, because I was told that Hussein had nuclear weapons. (He never did.)
I hate Bush now. There is a good reason for that.
The reason is that Bush abandonded the conservative ideals he professed, and instead put a socialist economic policy into action. Bush lied to me about Iraq. Bush locked up American citizens for years without a trial. Bush broke the law and spied on American citizens without a warrant.
It is because I am a conservative that I oppose Bush.
I just wish Bush supporters would quit pretending they are anything but authoritarians.
Why don't you just admit that you think a fascist government is what it will take to save America?
Gedaliya, Gedaliya, Gedaliya,
ReplyDeleteCould your memory really be so poor that you think Bush hatred on the left today can even hold a candle to Clinton hatred on the right a few short years ago? Sorry, but it's not even close.
With Bush it's much more about policy and performance. With Clinton, it was all personal.
Glen brings up one nice example in the endless parade of blatant hypocrisy that is right-wing positions then versus now. My personal favorite remains Kay Bailey Hutchison on Meet the Press shortly before Fitzgerald came down with the Libby indictment:
" I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality..."
Even the fringe extremist groups don't apply their gov't hate consistently. Dave Neiwert has several posts up at his Orcinus blog about Halliburton being awarded an open ended contract to build mass detention facilities as a contingency for an "immigration crisis".
ReplyDeleteIs there any way in Hell that the militia groups would not be be going absolutely insane if Clinton had implemented plans to build concentration camps?
Yes indeed. The driving rage and hatred you describe as a defining characteristic of the so-called "conservative" Bush lover dove-tails perfectly with the defining characteristic of his Christian base: a hatred and denial of any Other whose existence threatens the validity of their delusions, and a yearning for the death of the world in order to confirm those same delusions.
ReplyDeleteGod save us.
Patrick Meighan:
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Gedaliya, "Bush-hater" is an ad-hominem argument...
Well, I am replying to Glenn in kind. He (as I hope most here will agree) tends to use bombast and overkill to make his points. Some examples:
Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush
This is a silly statement.
People who self-identify as "conservatives" and have always been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens the moment they dissent...
The "moment they dissent"?
..."conservatism" has come to mean "loyalty to George Bush"
Oh please.
And in that regard, people like Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker, Jonah Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt are not conservatives. They are authoritarian cultists.
ad hominem anyone?
...I believe quite firmly that there are no limits – none – that Hinderaker (or Malkin or Hewitt) would have in enthusiastically supporting George Bush no matter how extreme were the measures which he pursued.
No limits whatsoever? Glenn believes this "quite firmly"? I suspect that this rhetorical flourish is a more than a little exaggerated.
And the core emotions driving the Bush extremists are not hard to see. It is a driving rage and hatred – for liberals, for Muslims, for anyone who opposes George Bush.
Ad hominem anyone?
There is little doubt Glenn is entertaining to read. However, refuting his "arguments" when they are largely composed of bombast is an exercise in futility. His purpose (at least in the post I quote from), is to please his base of fans. It is not to provide cogent argument.
It is a certainty that if he was writing a legal brief in support of his position all of the quotes above would be absent from the text. When Glenn decides to compose such an argument, I (and others I am sure) will engage him on the merits of his case.
There are some on the right who use exaggeration and bombast to make their points. Some use intemperate language (Coulter most prominent among them).
ReplyDeleteExsqueeze me? "intemperate" as in wishing Tim McVeigh had blown up the Time-Life Building? "War on Christmas"? "Hitlery"? There are entire web sites of nothing but right-wing "bombast", complete with video and transcripts, and every damn time someone like Coulter gets called on something they've said they don't deny it; they stand by it and usually elaborate on it.
Seems to me right-wingers forgive their side no matter what batpshitt insanity comes out of the pieholes of creeps like Counter, Malkin, Hannity, Scarborough, Boortz et al, as if every one of those comments is a totally unique event, instead of a continuing phenomenon. Where IS the line, guys? What WOULD one of yours have to say to be "going too far?" Or is, to paraphrase Goldwater, extremism in the defense of Bush no vice?
BTW, this dribble about "Bush Derangement Syndrome" -- remember, in the Soviet Union they had such a "perfect" system that if you rejected it you were "insane". Are the wingers actually TRYING to look like Stalinists these days, instead of merely doing it unconsciously?
Glenn, the word you are looking for is Fuehrerprinzip. Dare to speak its name.
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent post. Perhaps one good thing about this authoritarian cult is to make me realize what the conservative values are that I do cherish--and I am, by most definitions, a liberal.
ReplyDeleteConservatives also cherish many of the liberal values centered on personal liberties (the word freedom, after all comes from the french word liberte).
I remember with Clinton's scandal, I came to realize I was sticking up for his lying out of partisan loyalty. What a relief to finally realize that, and take off that biased burden. I think many fellow citizens on the right have realized that liberation and relief as well, as they drop the need to defend Bush simply because he's in their political party. Intellectual honesty and a willingness to see the other side are a strong tonic and my deepest hope for our beautiful America.
prunes writes:
ReplyDeleteThis is complete and utter bullshit.
Once again, bullshit.
...I hate George Bush now
Tacitus wrote that "It is human to hate those who we have injured."
I can think of no better response to your angry post.
It's simple.
ReplyDeleteThey're scared, Glenn.
You use substantive analysis and intellect, and rather cite the concept of facts and then spout opinion, you utilize actual facts.
Most bloggers, left and right, do not do the above--and, I think, many cannot.
So, if they can't take the threat down with chest-thumping, shame is the next approach.
You're a cut above. Keep it up
David Shaughnessy said...
ReplyDelete"Indeed, Clinton's transgressions were primarily venial until he abused the resources of the presidency to trick the nation into sympathizing with him by demonizing his accusers."
I'd love some examples of this, and I don't mean that argumentatively. I'm just curious to hear (read) some examples...
The Cult of Bush--or at least, the ideas and emotions that it feeds on--is nothing new. Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Tradition in American Politics," a prescient essay written back in 1964, shows just how deep its roots are. Highly recommended reading for anyone trying to understand Bushevism and its hold on so many of our fellow citizens.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't wade through every comment, but I love how gedaliya proves the point of your post. You said you were in favor of the war in Iraq, the only criticism offered in this post being of the subsequent occupation (which was poorly-handled at best, and I'd like to see anyone successfully argue otherwise).
ReplyDeleteImmediately, in Gedaliaya's view, you are a defeatist. It was defeatist, Ged, for our soldiers to stand by idly as looting ran rampant through Iraq. It was defeatist for the Administration to ignore people with actual war experience who warned that this should not be allowed to happen. It was defeatist for Donald Rumsfeld, who never served in a war, to ignore the policies of Colin Powell which helped us win the first Gulf War. It was defeatist for Dubya to presume he knew better than his father, who knew that occupying Iraq would be a super DUPER problem for the U.S.
George W. Bush is, himself, a defeatist. How can you decide to invade a country and only a week before learn for the first time that there are factions living there that have hated one another for hundreds of years?
I hate George W. Bush and I have good reasons. And I don't care if I'm labeled a conservative, liberal, or whatever. The reason people hate George W. Bush is because there are a lot of good reasons to hate George W. Bush. He's self-involved and intellectually lazy. He is a slave to special interests. If I met him at a bar and didn't know who he was, I'd be willing to bet I'd hate him within minutes. I'm certain any conversation with a non-President Bush in a bar setting would end with me turning to my friends to say, "What a tool."
But my hatred for Bush doesn't mean I'm not right when I say that "staying the course" in Iraq may not be the best plan of action. It doesn't mean that I'm not right when I say that I don't want the federal government spying on Americans without at THE VERY LEAST a paper trail.
But there it is. I hate Bush. But that doesn't make you any less wrong for giving him carte blanche to be an asshole.
David S. -
ReplyDeleteThe argument that the hate from the right at Clinton is similar to Bush's is not valid IMO. Many have pointed out in this thread that independents and dems gave Bush the benefit of the doubt long after 911. His policies have eroded that support, and if that is now termed "hate", then so be it.
Clinton hatred started from the outset, even before he was elected. The hate from the right was not based upon his policies or the execution of them. And, to compare Clinton's demonizing his opponents over the Lewinsky scandal to Bush's demonizing of his opponents over policies that have taken this country down a very wrong path is irrational.
Also, I agree in accountability for sure, but maybe some of us have different thresholds for when this accountability kicks in.
Is Bush and Clinton "hatred" spawned from the same origin? I think one would need to get some perspective if they hold that view.
Some of us have differed somewhat with Glenn on this issue, and I agree with those that have.
ReplyDeleteI think this cult is bigger than Bush. If a wingnut gets elected in 08, then you will see the same blind loyalty. This movement is bigger than Bush because it is mostly fueled by the rise of hate radio and the internet. This is not a coincidence. People with whack views now can comiserate and feel emboldened. They realize there are others out there that share their views, so now they are more vocal.
I've always felt that democracy cannot thrive when a country is infested with irrational religious bigots. They are more organized now than ever, and we have started to see the erosion of civil liberties and signs of fascism. This is also no coincidence.
Glenn, I must comment again...I think you're getting dangerously close to broad-brushing here. I'm a conservative, and I support George W. Bush, and I don't see a contradiction. Are all of his policies conservative? Good God, no...but, believe it or not, there are a good chunk of us out here who think we was the right man for the job at a time when we needed a man of more fortitude than nuance.
ReplyDeleteFor better or worse, September 11th frames the Bush presidency, and it is on the basis of his strong response to that tragedy that he won most of his initial support, and keeps quite a bit of it to this day.
I'm not an apologist for Bush, or for other bloggers, or for other conservatives...I speak only for myself. However, as a fellow blogger who has been susceptible at times to overly broad statements about the Left, I can tell you that I have learned the hard way, partly through mistakes of my own, that broad statements about a movement are seldom enlightening, or accurate...
gedaliya now seeks to set quite a standard for how things should be written on this blog:
ReplyDeleteIt is a certainty that if he was writing a legal brief in support of his position all of the quotes above would be absent from the text. When Glenn decides to compose such an argument, I (and others I am sure) will engage him on the merits of his case.
So what are we to make of gedaliya's statement that about Republicans and Bosnia?
From gedaliya:
We supported Clinton on his Bosnia policy.
Does this come close to meeting the 'legal brief' test? If you think it is even close to factual, I suggest you check your history. Maybe you can start with this article: http://www-tech.mit.edu/V115/N59/gop.59w.html (GOP Rivals Attack Clinton's Plan to Send Troops to Bosnia).
With just another moment of Googling (bosnia clinton republican opposition) we have the following from Bob Dole:
"The fact is that President Clinton has decided to send U.S. forces to Bosnia, The fact is that these troops will be sent, and indeed some are already there. The president has the constitutional power as the commander-in-chief to send these forces. The Congress cannot stop this troop deployment from happening."
That is the view of the Republican leadership, 'we can't stop it.' That is gedaliya's version of support. Or maybe gedaliya was thinking of the chairman of the House National Security Committee Rep. Floyd Spence, who said he would oppose President Clinton's decision to use ground troops in Bosnia.
What about Republican Senator and Presidential candidate Lamar Alexander denouncing the U.S. presence in Bosnia, "we are not the world's policemen." Also fellow candidates Steve Forbes, Phil Graham, Pat Buchanan, and Bob Dornan all repeatedly voiced strong opposition to U.S. participation in Bosnia.
We supported Clinton on his Bosnia policy.
And yet almost every candidate (Lugar and the fatalistic Dole being the exceptions) vying to become the leader of the Republican Party was saying they were against it... Maybe they were trying to win the ever so small sliver of the GOP that didn't support Clinton. Yeah, that's what politician's do, aim for the minority opinion.
How about the article titled "WHAT'S A RESPONSIBLE REPUBLICAN TO DO? OPPOSE CLINTON'S FOLLY -- A U.S. DEPLOYMENT IN BOSNIA" from the Center for Security Policy? Maybe it's that we are so blinded by our 'hatred' of Bush that we are incapable of seeing that this article really is support for Clinton. gedaliya may be right, and that hatred is preventing us from seeing the truth... us... yeah that's it... us.
Some more quotes:
“It is neither in the President's nor the country's best interests to forge ahead with a plan to send United States troops to Bosnia without the full support of the American people through their representatives… Congress has a duty to exercise its power of the purse when it feels the President is making a grave mistake.” Majority Leader DeLay, Floor Statement, 11/17/95
“I believe the President has made a grave mistake. He has put Americans in danger without clearly articulating what national security interest requiring the use of United States forces is at stake in Bosnia.” Majority Leader DeLay, Floor Statement, 11/17/95
"US troops will be deployed in Bosnia no matter what the Congress does. Congress should support the troops without endorsing the president's policy." Sen. Arlen Specter, CNN, 12/14/95
“Even though, as Commander in Chief, the President has the constitutional authority to commit United State soldiers to Bosnia, I cannot support a plan that does not minimize the risks to, and maximize the security of, our troops, especially a deployment that is not vital to our national security interest.” Rep. Sam Brownback, Floor Statement, 12/14/03
“It is because I support the troops, because I am concerned about their well-being, that I am opposed to sending troops to Bosnia. I have no doubt that the Americans who serve in the Armed Forces of the United States will go where their Commander in Chief sends them. They will serve proudly. They will do their job well. That is not the issue here.” Sen. Phil Gramm, Floor Statement, 12/6/95
Gedaliya quotes tacitus "it is human to hate those we have injured" but it is gedaliya, and only gedaliya, who thinks that democrats "hate" bush rather than disagree with his policies. On the contrary, gedaliya has repeatedly insisted that not only are democrats evil (because they hate bush) but their evil is such that they will and should be forbidden to rise to power again in this democracy. If that isn't "hate" I don't know what is. But at any rate, the absurdity of positing that the president of this country, who controls three branches of power, who isolates himself so thoroughly from contact with the populace that with a single exception (Mrs King's Funeral) he has yet to be display himself outside of a carefully screened event is "hurt" by any individual american's "feelings" about him is simply, again, projection.
ReplyDeleteAnd its projection of a very strange kind. Here's news for you, gedaliay, Bush doesn't know you, and he doesn't know "us"--and he doesn't care what we think of him. He has said as much. We can't hurt him with our thoughts. That is pure magical thinking. It has no place in a political discussion, of course, but it has a place in the kind of hysterical hero worship/sports identification that you seem to be showing for your chosen leader.
Turning from millinerian cults to the sports analogy Gedaliya insists that the evil thoughts of the "fans" on the other side, their refusal to wear the uniform of his team, their refusal to cheer when his team comes on the field, makes them traitors to *the game* and hurts the performance of his players.
aimai
I was a Democrat prior to 911. Now I feel that
ReplyDeleteSome of us have differed somewhat with Glenn on this issue, and I agree with those that have.
ReplyDeleteI think this cult is bigger than Bush.
I don't really per se disagree with this. Bush, along with historical circumstances, gelled at the right time in the right way to maximize this authoritarian reverence. His appearance at this moment in time was more about luck and circumstance. He hasn't galvanized them or this movement. He is a symbol for what they revere.
I agree totally that if he can be replaced with someone of similar characteristics, that substitute will inspire the same loyalty and this movement will continue. But right now, Bush is necessary for it - they want to rally around a strong leader and Bush, at least symbolically, is it for them. He is able to be the glue which holds all the pieces together. Right now, the cultism centers around him. That is not to say that it could not survive without him. It can. It just needs the right person.
gedaliya to prunes:
ReplyDeleteTacitus wrote that "It is human to hate those who we have injured."
I can think of no better response to your angry post.
I believe you.
wow Glen-
ReplyDeletei'll join the throngs who say "spot on".
now i too am a lifelong conservative (never before gore did i vote for a democrat.) i have served my country in two branchs of the service (USN, USMC). now i do what i can to make sure that the "neo conservatives of today go the way of the dinasaur as soon as possible..
as a longtime anti bush blogger i have narrowed the bush crowd down to 3 basic types..
financial republicans - they are wealthy, or at least think they are, and support the president because they believe that somehow, profits can be made.
christian nutbags - who for some reason think that gw actually gives a shit about them and is himself a "man of god" put here to help them do the lords work. type "A" useful idiots in my book.
the NASCAR family - high shool was as far as these people got and it shows. they like huntin' and fishin' and believe completely that the "sand niggers" must die for expressing their outrage at the good ole'red white and blue on 9/11.
(type "B" useful idiot)
as things go, only the financial republicans stand to gain anything ( actually only a small percent will do better) the rest will tolerate the administation because they have fear of god or fear of admitting that they were made fools of.
either way, america loses
http://coyotesbark.blogspot.com
For better or worse, September 11th frames the Bush presidency, and it is on the basis of his strong response to that tragedy that he won most of his initial support, and keeps quite a bit of it to this day.
ReplyDeleteSee, this is what doesn't make sense.
I didn't find anything particularly "strong" about his response. He spent the day of the actual event fleeing all over North America, and later we come to find out that there had been warnings, lots of them, which no one did anything about. His "strong response" seems to have boiled down to standing on the entombed remains of victims at the WTC and shouting about how big our dick is through a megaphone - four or five days after the fact. He shouted out some promises through that megaphone that only 6 months later, he indicated that he never cared all that much about keeping.
He had the Patriot Act ready to go toot sweet though, didn't he? And it passed like shit through a goose. But then he failed to fund port or border security, etc etc.
Yes, he went into Afghanistan. I believe any American president would have done so under the same circumstances. But most of them would have probably stayed on task until the guilty parties were captured or killed. Instead, this guy used the worst attack on civilians in the nation's history as excuse to pursue an agenda already in mind when he took office - to fix Dad's mistake and take down Saddam Hussein. The price of that choice was continued freedom for Osama bin Laden.
And what about those anthrax attacks? Haven't heard any mention of that in quite awhile - because there's not an interest in finding out who did it, or they know who did it and have their own reasons for not arresting and prosecuting them.
This president's true record on the issue of national security could hardly be worse. It's a sad joke that so many look to him for safety.
Glenn,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the response.
From your reply I take it that you don't think somebody like Guliani or McCain would inspire the same fanatical loyalty. I agree.
If either of those two were in lockstep with the gun lobby, spewed religious jargon in every speech, was anti-choice, or was indifferent to racism they would have the same following. But, both of them fail some of the above litmus tests and thus would not get the same rabid support.
Even so, I think these 2 for example are the exception rather than the rule. The Republican party is filled with leaders who espouse these "qualities", and a new puppet would easily step in IMO. The "right person" as you say is 90% of the Republican politicos.
Agreed Bush had a perfect storm with 911, or he would have been one term. If 911 would have been say a bunch of Tim Mcveigh's flying into buildings then he also would have been one term. The fact that it was (a) non xtians and (b) arabs provided all the fuel the loony right needed to bring forth their agenda. It's not about all the BS that Bush uses to justify the Iraq debacle; it is the fact he is killing "ragheads", period. IMO if "John Doe, Republican" would have been in office instead of Bush, you would be writing about him instead if he had the exact same policies. The policies of Bush are the policy of hate. That is the follower's real political allegiance.
Believe me, I live in Houston and work for one of the companies that gets bashed alot. I know how these people think because I am around it every day. It is not Bush, it is the cause.
Thanks alot for your blog. It is at the top of my list and though I sometimes disagree with you (very rarely), you always make me think and your positions are respectable. Keep up the good work.
there are a good chunk of us out here who think we was the right man for the job at a time when we needed a man of more fortitude than nuance.
ReplyDeleteOne speculates that the above comment is a key reson why it's called "Dumbfuckistan."
--Something Polish
So, in response to your request, here is an (unpublished) Op-ed piece that I wrote in April of 1998, entitled, "The Offense of the President’s Defense."
ReplyDeleteGee David, thanks for sharing that with us. I cannot imagine why that wasn't published.
Glenn gave me a good laugh today as he has a temporary case of moonbatism.
ReplyDeleteHe picks a list of moderate Republicans, Barr, McCain,Sullivan, etc., none of whom are traditional conservatives who are suddenly beseiged as liberals because they have at time taken liberal stances. Is it a surprised that when they take liberal stances that on occasion they will called liberals?
He attacks Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and then runs a blog where supporters of Bush are called Nazis, fascists, cults, a church and tries to make a point how radical Bush supporters are.
The he points to a conservative who didn't support FISA as some kind of massive change within conservatives regarding the role of the president. I got a really good laugh at that one as leftists are now defending FISA when they did nothing but rage about its secretive nature. Here's a story of Jonathon Turley calling FISA unconstitutional.
http://mediafilter.org/caq/Caq53.court.html
The point Glenn is missing is that there is a large segment of the population that wants a strong stance against terrorism. If you want to paint those people as conservative or people who think they are conservative but aren't it doesn't matter. Bush represents a strong stance without giving up civil rights that affect anyone's normal lifestyle. The left is soft and waffles on policies that protects us with weak arguments that regular people are affected by the Patriot Act or the NSA.
Glenn has hopped on the waffle house protection plan and then tries to make fun of those of us who think his stance is wimpy. Being strong represents warrantless surveillance between terrorist suspects and U.S. citizens, being able to hold enemy combatants and having a strong Patriot Act. It also means stabilizing Iraq and bringing the troops home as we can. It means having a John Bolton in the U.N. to maintain a tough stance on terrorism. This is why Bush won the last election, he is rock solid in this war. Since Glenn supports none of this, he can expect to be called weak on defense even though he thinks himself a patriot.
gedaliya sez: We supported Clinton on his Bosnia policy.
ReplyDeleteYou are either lying or ignorant. It was a few short years ago, people remember these things:
"You can support the troops but not the president."
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)
"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years."
--Joe Scarborough (R-FL)
"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
--Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99
"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
--Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)
"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy."
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)
"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."
--Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W Bush
"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."
--Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
--Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)
Wow. Accusations of 'bombast' against Glenn while claiming 'unprecendented hatred' of Bush. This in a country which (as someone else pointed out) once had crowds in the streets calling an American president a mass murderer.
ReplyDeleteAccusations of 'ad hominem' from someone who dismissively terms anyone (yese, even a few conservatives and Republicans who reject Bush on his policies) as 'Bush-haters.'
Statements that a 'loyal opposition' to Bush exists, while citing presumed examples of that 'opposition' that actually support Bush.
The mind boggles.
Orwell lives.
Fear, hate, blind faith and unwavering loyalty in a leader with a vision? That's not politics you've got there, that's religion. Conservatives made a deal with the devil when they courted the religious right, and now they're paying the price. Serves you bloody right, too.
ReplyDelete"And its projection of a very strange kind. Here's news for you, gedaliay, Bush doesn't know you, and he doesn't know "us"--and he doesn't care what we think of him. He has said as much. We can't hurt him with our thoughts. That is pure magical thinking. It has no place in a political discussion, of course, but it has a place in the kind of hysterical hero worship/sports identification that you seem to be showing for your chosen leader. "
ReplyDeleteWE have overlooked the role of psychology in all of this for far too long, and we continue to overlook it at our peril. EVERYTHING that has happened - everything- has been the product of the human mind.
We can continue to ignore it, and stay in the ditch we are in, or we can confront it. This is one battle I'm afraid we are going to have to fight right here at home.
As long as we allow the conservatives to project their hatred onto others - Democrats, foreigners, nothing will change.
We have to insist that they embrace THE most personal of responsibilities, the very responsibility from which they flee - responsibility for their own mental hygeine.
So how many of the pro-Bush voices here are actually private contractors paid by the CIA/ NSA/ D.o'D.?
ReplyDeleteJust wonderin'.
Great post. America has a strange case of political amnesia right now - it is as if every morning, people wake up and reconfigure their political compasses based on where a handful of politicians and commentators stand on the issues.
ReplyDeleteFor example, when Al Gore gave a speech criticizing Bush's wiretapping program, it was described as a "move to the left" - even though warrantless wiretapping is against the law, rather than being merely a conservative political stance that is opposed by liberals. If, instead of criticizing wiretapping, Al Gore had been proposing a massive national health care regime supported by a tax increase, or proposing a federal law that required states to recognize gay marriages - then he would have been advocating a liberal issue.
Wow, that was fast. Banned and deleted after only three posts. I made three very civil posts there. The first she dismissed with a "I don't care you won't be back". The second was just a suggestion for some javascript to improve the format of her website (honestly).
ReplyDeleteIt took Roger L. Simon weeks to ban me, Jarvis months, Totten most of a year, and Amanda Marcotte a few weeks. Ann Althouse hasn't banned me yet, but she has threatened too.
Here is my dangerously offensive banninating post.
My problem is that the Bush love prevents the conservatives from engaging in serious debate about our war policy, this is why it is necessary that we round them up, and disenfranchise them, and the sooner the better.
Alexandra, I really cannot agree with this. These seem to be words, but not an argument. Are you serious when you say that conservatives just cannot engage in serious debate? That seems way over the top! I know they are passionate and fervent in their beliefs, but really?
Why should we allow enemies to annihilate us simply because we lack the clarity or resolve to strike a reasonable balance between a healthy skepticism of government power and the need to take proactive measures to protect ourselves from such threats? It was good that we passed Patriot I, and that Colleen Rowley helped expose the institutional problems in the FBI, it was terrific that Pat Roberts released the second half of the Senate Intelligence Report, the half that examined the institutional misuse of the intelligence by the Administration. But it wasn't enough. We need Patriot II, and more, we need to be able to do pretty much anything President Bush says we need to do in the interests of national security.
Alexandra, I really cannot agree with this either! It seems to me that it is wrong to frame it as you do, as one of two choices. Aren't there other alternatives?
After we captured Bin Laden and established the healthy democracy in Afghanistan, it was imperative we took steps to increase trade and communication with North Korea and Iran. How can you liberals still deny that?
Ah, you're making more sense now.
The third post was this.
>The people who now hate him have always hated him
ReplyDeleteWrong. I didn't start hating George II until Katrina.
I was a Republican until 1999, when I became independent thanks to Dittoheads telling me how to think and feel. I vote my consience now. Have you ever done that, gedaliya? Are you even cabable, do you even *have* a conscience? Because you sound like an automaton with a big vocabulary. I'm shocked at how quickly seemingly intelligent people on the right like yourself are so quick to abdicate your grip on reason and reality in the face of neocon scare tactics.
I also love the way the Bush cultists are so quick to tag its critics as "full of hate." So quickly (or intentionally) they forget the smothering wave of blind, hypocritical Republican hatred of the Clintons that was THE PRIMARY REASON I abandoned the party I'd been a member of since I was first eligible to vote. I left the GOP because of YOUR hate, which was unjustified, unsubstantiated and completely uncalled for.
Fool. You'd argue Satan's case if he was a Republican.
Anon,
ReplyDeleteIt is reasonable to debate whether Bush's way of combatting terrorism is the best or right way. His "strong stance" against terrorism is open for interpretation, depending on what type of person you are. And, it also depends on how you perceive it can be won.
IMO, terrorism is not something that can be bombed into defeat like, for example, Germany in WW2. Terrorism is a mindset that arises from fundamentalist religion mixed with despair and hate.
Since I feel that way, I do not think it is reasonable to expect the relatives of the 100k+ Iraqis killed to to be dancing in the streets when they see the US flag. They don't have to have an army to screw this country up. Hell, all that was needed were boxcutters on 911.
So, your arrogance on what is a "strong stance" and what is not illustrates Glenn's post, that apparently went right over your pointed head. You are not willing to listen or reason things out, or even ask yourself how this "war" will be won. And if that position makes sense.
Your sarcasm over Glenn's writing just confirms his words.
Thank you. Well said and to the point of my perspective for years now. Somehow, we are no longer entitled to ideas as individuals - if, in fact, we ever were. Yet, it is our ideal. It is our fervent pledge as a youthful country.
ReplyDeleteWe can not be thinking, rational citizens if we blindly follow either party or politician. As civilizations have tried this type of idiocy before, and it has never worked. It won't work now either, but we have yet to see the turning of the tide. Any country that makes policy based on fervent opposition rather than community building sows the seeds of destruction, and we see living proof of it daily in our newspapers and Internet.
Your still, calm voice is applauded. Hopefully, the collective hand clapping will drown out the noise of the defensive screams and arrogant nastiness.
Thank you, Glenn -- this was brilliant and should be widely reposted.
ReplyDeleteYou're doing great, great work.
- mercury
I think politics has morphed into entertainment in general, sports entertainment in particular.
ReplyDeleteLook at gedaliya's shallow and facile arguments--they are the arguments of a pissed-off homer on sports talk radio after the beloved home team takes a loss at home the day before. "It's quite evident that the Mudhens would have one if only they had went for it on 4th-and-20!" "It's quite evident that you bush haters are blinded by your blindingly blinded blind bush hatred. I am reporting each of you to your respective state drivers' licensing agencies for eye exams."
You have the teams, the Democrats and the The Republicans. Dean and Mehlman as coaches, Bush as general manager. Only the party in the White House has a g.m., part of us Democrat's problem.
The players are the elected reps. Like hockey players, they aren't paid especially well, and aren't especially intelligent.
Lobbyists are like agents now. They go around getting good deals with sponsors for their "players" in Congress. They wouldn't piss on their own mothers if she were on fire without a golf junket to Scotland as the pay-off.
The courts are the refs, the bad part-time NFL type. There's only defensive holding at the Supreme Court, what else explains the fact that the only individual they've interceded for in 2 decades is W. Bush?
The press is the sporting press. Limbaugh came from sports "journalism". 'Nuff said. (So did Olbermann, so nevermind.)
Like sports, the ones who make out like bandits are the owners. The big oil companies, military contractors, chinese-crap importers. Tax cuts and no-bid contracts. Sweatshops set up on U.S. protectorates. How about immunity to civil vaciine lawsuits slipped into the Defense Appropriation Bill after it's voted on?(Frist) Your wish is my command, boss.
gedaliya basks in the same reflected glory as the sports fan and has the same irrational, easily-injured attitude about politics.
It's all a game to them. And just like sports, it's the fans(you and me) that pay for it, whether it's the crappy nosebleed seat where we can barely see the field or the crappy administration secrecty where we can barely see what the President is doing with our money in our name.
First, a quote, written in 1961 by someone who I just realized today was the kind of a voice then that Glenn is today:
ReplyDelete"Just as the Republicans and Democratic parties are becoming indistinguishable, so are their respective intellectual spokesman... And while conservatives are lumbering toward the Middle Ages, in quest of a philosophical base for their views, the "liberals", always the avant guard, have outdistanced them and are now galloping , on the same quest, toward India of the fifth century B.C., the original source of Zen Buddhism."
The speaker goes on:
"What most people are evading today is the realization that under the lip service they are paying to an anti-totalitarian crusade, they have accepted all the basic premises of a totalitarian philosophy--and the rest is only a matter of time and degree.....Whose job is it to offer an alternative? Who provides a country with ideas, with knowledge, with political theories? The intellectuals....."
Alas, then comes the observation:
"It is time to stop and realize that there are no intellectual sides any more, no philosophical and no poltical theories, nothing but an undifferentiated mob of trembling statists who haggle only over how slowly we are going to collapse into a totalitarian dictatorship, whose gang will do the dictating, and who will be sacrificed to whom...."
That was 1961, uttered in a prophetic speech by a lone voice in the wilderness, but a voice that went on to be the inspiration for tens of millions of people throughout the world.
And now comes Glenn. It's a heavy mantle to bear, Glenn, and it may be too late, but you have just written the definitive explanation
of what is wrong in America today.
I just have to hope, and do my bit to maximize that hope, that your voice of reason becomes the one that prevails.
Congratulations, Glenn. Your achievement in putting together today's post is momentous.
9/11 has less to do with the "cult of Bush" than 1973 does. A good percentage of that core 38-40% of people who always support Bush do so because they believe that ultimately he will make it possible to overturn Roe v. Wade. That makes him "a good man" in their eyes -- a man they can trust -- whether the issue is abortion or national security or global warming. For a lot of Red Staters, it also makes his party the "good" party.
ReplyDeleteIn the last 30 years, with the increase in evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity and the growth of the megachurches, abortion has become THE issue for about a third of the US population.
An important key breaking down that support is to increase their cognitive dissonance by pointing out the many discrepancies between this "good" man/party and the "bad" things they do (i.e., torture, tax cuts for wealthy, authorizing leaks as a tool of political revenge, law-breaking, giving Karl Rove a job, etc.).
One of the mistakes the left makes is to see these supporters as "cultish" or "ignorant" or "uninformed" or "authoritarian" (alhough with the caveat that some of these supporters may be one or all of the above). But in fact much of that support is based on a rational judgement as to which party is most likely to act on the issue that is most important to them. And it is based on a moral imperative that tells them to act and vote to protect what they define as human life. They don't identify themselves with storm troopers but with abolitionists.
And the right-wing talking heads and the Republican leadership cynically help to promote that view in order to maintain support for the other garbage on their agenda.
Bush's own speechwriter has listed his own favorite five presidents (after Bush) and everyone of them is a Democrat with FDR at the top of the list. So why is he a Republican? Abortion. Democrats can dismiss this as cultish or authoritarian or ignorant ... but they continue to do so at their own electoral peril.
One of the Bush cult's favorite arguments is that his anti-terror policies, including the war in Iraq, must be effective because we have not had a serious terror attack since 9/11.
ReplyDeleteSo let's do a little thought experiment around a horrible hypothetical scenario. Let's say, tomorrow morning, we wake up to some kind of horrible terrorist attack, thereby completely eliminating that line of argument.
Does anybody imagine in the least that this would make one single bit of difference to the Bush cult?
Can we forecast what the Bush cult apologists would say? Liberals would surely be at fault for not having allowed Bush to do literally "everything he wants" to "protect us". And, of course, the Bush cult would say "see, they really do want to kill us and you liberals didn't care".
The facts would not matter. The fact that Bush and the Republican congress have not followed the 9/11 commission recommendations would not matter. The fact that the Bush adminisatration has decreased funding to decommission nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union would not matter. The fact that the Bush administration has inflamed and empowered radical Islam rather than worked to diminish its influence would not matter.
David,
ReplyDeleteThat mindset is why the dems keep getting their asses handed to them come election time. The mushy middle will go for the aggressor, especially post 911.
You go about rationalizing with the wingnuts Glenn describes in his post. What was that once story about 2 people getting executed? One refused the blindfold....the other pleaded with him not to make trouble and to get along.
It's time we got in the dirt with these people and called them what they are. The time for civilized discourse is long gone, and it only makes us look weak to espouse that approach.
Damn good post, Glenn! You have an amazing gift for exposing the true essence of what's happening. You correctly identify it as a cult, not a political ideology. Being conservative now just means unquestioning allegiance to Bush, all as a result of 9/11 and the irrational fear it provoked. The new mantra is simply "My President, Right or Wrong".
ReplyDelete"David Shaughnessy said...
ReplyDeleteI have a radical suggestion..."
Lots of "anonymous"-es here; I'll make a go. I don't particularly agree with your point(s)/Op-Ed, but I'm the anonymous that requested examples, and I appreciate your response.
Best I could do. *shrugs*
Gedaliya,
ReplyDeleteI'm asking, as have others, for your answer, yet again:
Could you please provide some examples of people you consider as "loyal opposition" to Bush... people who vocally oppose Bush's foreign and terror policies, but who are not, in your eyes, mere useful idiots, giving aid to our mortal enemies? It is possible to do that, right? So let's have some examples!
You've been asked now six (SIX!) times for examples. And you still haven't answered, except for the comment where-in you listed two Republicans and a Democrat (Joe Lieberman) who actually *supports* Bush's foreign and terror policies.
So, again, for the sixth time, please list some people (maybe possibly from an political party other than the Republican Party please?) who oppose Bush's foreign and terror policies and whom you DON'T tar as disloyal abettors of the enemy.
Thanks, Gedaliya. Really looking forward to that answer.
Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA
Glenn, I am going to cut this post out and email it to everyone I know. I may even put it on my wall.
ReplyDeleteI want you to remember something: in our current society, power - fanaticism, organization, discipline, financial resources - wins a lot of elite battles. Everyone wants to cave to everyone else. But this does not apply to elections, where everyone has a vote.
The cult of Bush might seem overwhelming at times - and it is dangerous because it has planted seeds amonst the elite. But does not and will never represent more than a tiny slice of the electorate. Most of the electorate votes its real life. This is why Bush's approval ratings are so low. Tax cuts, deficits, and cuts to popular social programs will suck this country dry. The erosion of civil liberties will eventually explode into an armada of hassles for the average citizen. America is very big and very strong, so you can fuckup a lot with hurting the average citizen much, but you can't be a fascist incompetent indefinitely and avoid consequences.
The Cult of Bush is a tiny minority can make themselves look a lot larger on the internet then the really are. The cult of fervent anti-bush zealots are also a small minority, but a larger one, because reality builds these hatreds and republicans have been in absolute power for half a decade.
It's true that the neutral average american doesn't see civil liberties as very important. But that doesn't mean they support bush for wiretapping us: they don't care either way. The wiretapping issue is a struggle between elite organized networks for control of framing the narrative that gets passed down to the masses.
Probably we will lose, because the bush cult has all the resources right now - but it won't save them in 2006, which we will win. Maybe not enough to break the hammerlock, but enough to keep Bush and the Cult in the same Fear-Hate Death Spiral for another two years.
And in 2008 comes the landslide.
The only weakness in this paradigm is the ability of moderate republicans to position themselves as different from Bush. Elite liberal networks need to be demanding as possible, as uncompromising as possible. We need to force all of Bush's power structure be absolutely loyal to him, or else become democrats.
If voters can be persuaded that they can vote for a republican and still end the Bush Era, his Cult will steal the reins of control back from the nominee in 08' as soon as the election is over.
It's sad that there is so much hate in the blogosphere, but there's no solution but to win the war on the merits - to learn to rise above. Hate is ultimately self-destructive to a country, and elections are the means of curing that disease.
It can get you so far, but no farther. That's why GWB ran in 2000 as a compassionate conservative.
glasnost
Very interesting post, Glen. Thanks. I generally agree that there isn't a conservative movement any more in the U.S.; there is just Bush, his surging power, and the believers in it. Three additional notes:
ReplyDelete* The case of Harriet Miers--where we did see opposition from the right--is a complicating one for your thesis. I would urge you to take it up. What happened there?
* I still haven't seen any good explanations for why the conservatives, so-called, folded their tent and merged themselves into a movement to enlarge Bush's power. One can think of many possible reasons, but which of them is accurate? I'd love to know, just as I'd love to know why there's so little conservative opposition given the provocations.
* The dynamic you identify--liberal means anyone who questions Bush--was a major factor in the blow-up surrounding the Dec. 10th column by Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell, The Two Washington Posts, in which she wrote: "Political reporters at The Post don't like WPNI columnist Dan Froomkin's 'White House Briefing,' which is highly opinionated and liberal."
To this day Howell doesn't realize that she misspoke. She didn't mean "liberal," she meant "critical of Bush." But she doesn't know it because of the phenomenon you describe here.
Neither she nor the Post reporters who "don't like" White House Briefing could find in Froomkin's work any liberal positions taken, because he does not take such positions. He holds Bush accountable and subjects him to rigorous scrutiny, and he certainly doesn't like the way the White House operates. There's nothing "liberal" about that.
I wrote about it, and Dan testified about it, here.
Cheers and thanks again.
Re 'Bush Derangement Syndrome', I once read that during the Apartheid era South African psychiatrists invented a bogus disorder called 'Bantu hysteria' to explain away the anger felt by the black majority at being oppressed and politically powerless. BDS seems to be a similar attempt to explain away justified anger -- except, of course, that Bantu hysteria was accepted by orthodox medical science in South Africa while BDS is, fortunately, only a wingnut meme.
ReplyDeleteGlenn,
ReplyDeleteYou are confusing and mixing pre-9/11 quotes and thinking with post-9/11 thinking. You note the differences, but fail to allow for the cause of those differences.
Says the "Dog"
Gedaliya,
ReplyDeleteI'm asking, as have others, for your answer, yet again:
Could you please provide some examples of people you consider as "loyal opposition" to Bush... people who vocally oppose Bush's foreign and terror policies, but who are not, in your eyes, mere useful idiots, giving aid to our mortal enemies? It is possible to do that, right? So let's have some examples!
You've been asked now six (SIX!) times for examples. And you still haven't answered, except for the comment where-in you listed two Republicans and a Democrat (Joe Lieberman) who actually *supports* Bush's foreign and terror policies.
So, again, for the sixth time, please list some people (maybe possibly from a political party other than the Republican Party please?) who oppose Bush's foreign and terror policies and whom you DON'T tar as disloyal abettors of the enemy.
Thanks, Gedaliya. Really looking forward to that answer.
Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA
There's no doubt that Bush is the most hated President in our lifetime.
ReplyDeletegedaliya is right about that -- but he or she is wrong about the cause, which is simply that the Bush administration is the most incompetent, hateful and corrupt administration since the Harding era.
In the last five years, we've seen the World Trade Center destroyed while Bush did nothing (hey, did we ever catch that Bin Laden guy, what happened to him?), we've been attacked with anthrax (our own "weapons grade" anthrax, remember? -- hey, did we ever catch them either?) and we've seen our friends and allies around the world suffer terrorist attacks in London, Madrid, twice in Bali (hey, it's that Bin Laden guy again!)
We've seen the East Coast go black for days (did that ever get fixed?) and the West Coast brown out for months while friends of Bush looted and the government did nothing.
We watched in sick horror as the government failed to react, and worse, prevented others from helping, over hours, days and weeks, and we lost one of our greatest ports and at least a thousand lives.
Yes, we certainly hate George Bush for losing New Orleans. Perhaps it could have been prevented, but we'll never know, because didn't even pretend to try.
And of course, there's Iraq -- that trillion dollar mistake, the grave of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by Americans. Bush didn't even pretend to plan this war -- he just sent the troops in -- and the catastrophic results directly damaged the lives of millions of Americans and countless millions of other humans.
Yes, we very much hate Bush because he stood up in front of us and lied to us and led us into this terrible pointless war. We hate him for the tens of thousands of young American men and women mutilated, crippled and killed for *nothing*. We hate him for the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead, and for the living people of Iraq who have lost not just their relatives and friends but their economy, their infrastructure, their livelihoods, and we hate him for our grandchildren, who will still be paying for this mess.
And as patriots, we hate him for his total contempt for the Constitution. We hate him for suspending half the Bill of Rights with his Orwellian "Patriot" act and we hate and fear him for spying on Americans.
And we hate and fear that fact that President, a man who appears to be proud of the fact that he's ignorant, violent, and unable to plan in advance, has now announced that he's not subject to the rule of law, now and indefinitely.
Yes, gedaliya, we are partly paralyzed by our fear and hatred.
We see what has happened in the last five years and we fear three more years of war, fear, suspicion, lies, torture and death, run by a stupid, short-sighted, violent man who has now declared that he is above all laws.
And we hate this man for stealing our liberty and destroying our beloved country.
Patrick Meighan writes:
ReplyDeleteCould you please provide some examples of people you consider as "loyal opposition" to Bush...
I answered this question in a previous post. You don't seem to accept my answer. To that, all I can do is shrug.
For anyone interested, my comment above has been slightly rewritten and turned into a blogpost; solely because I'm so lazy that I couldn't think of anything to write about today.
ReplyDeleteI think the rewrite goes slightly further in explaining how absolutely wrong Glenn is about everything.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI noticed after the 2nd election of George Bush that things seemed to get worse as far as liberal mud flinging went and I stopped expressing my opinions for fear that someone might overhear.
I for one say that it's crowded here on the Liberal side and hope that all true Conservatives can make it home safely so us true Liberals can get back to good debating. But until then, I stand ready to defend your right to express your conservative views and my right to express my liberal views without fear of reprisal. After all, that's what people have been dying for since the beginning of American Freedom.
I will book mark your blog and read it to get a reasonable view point on non-Bush Conservatism. I am really tired of "flaming bloggers".
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Gedaliya, Glenn is hardly a Bush hater. He hates the policies which are threatening to make our country a totalitarian dictatorship. If those policies stick, the next person in office will be someone Glenn opposes with as much passion as he does Bush, even if that person is Hillary Clinton. If you can't see how a person can, and should, express outrage at the dictator himself, the one in whose hands the power lies, (or are you saying you didn't like Hitler's policies, but he was an okay guy because he loved his dog and did nice drawings?), then perhaps the best place to look for a "useful idiot" would be a mirror.
ReplyDeleteTacitus wrote that "It is human to hate those who we have injured."
ReplyDeleteI can think of no better response to your angry post.
You can think of no better response because you cannot defend a fundamentally flawed ideology.
It is much easier to simply ignore difficult self-examination isn't it? It's so much easier to tell yourself that difficult truths are only irrational rants.
But you know, deep down, that that's not so.
Jay Rosen asks a very good question:
ReplyDeleteThe case of Harriet Miers--where we did see opposition from the right--is a complicating one for your thesis. I would urge you to take it up. What happened there?
In other words, if conservatism has devolved into an authoritarian cult centered on the person of George Bush, the leader-who-can-do-no-wrong, how is it that this cult didn't follow lock-step when its leader nominated Harriet Miers?
I am quite eager to hear Glenn's analysis of this seeming contradiction. Personality cults, by definition, don't dissent from received opinion.
Doesn't this fatally undermine the Greenwald Authoritarian Cult thesis?
Harriet Miers is perhaps the best argument against this "cult of Bush" theory. He backpedalled hard and fast on her and not because true conservatives thought she was incometent or unqualified. It was because roughly 30% of his base didn't trust her on abortion.
ReplyDeleteSo it forced them to question whether or not they could trust Bush. They are not sheep as much as some people on the left would like to believe that they are. They are simply single-issue voters.
The dittoheads are a much smaller groups than the left wants to believe. But they get a lot more press. Fancy that.
I got a really good laugh at that one as leftists are now defending FISA when they did nothing but rage about its secretive nature.
ReplyDeleteThe Left is defending FISA by pointing out the President took even more advantage of the privacy rights and liberties of Americans than FISA grants?
Are you serious?
I would like to make two comments on Alexandra’s personal attack on Glenn America's Useful Idiots.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the image she uses to describe Glenn’s betrayal to “conservatives” is Giuseppe Cesari’s ‘The Betrayal of Christ’ – thereby wrapping their viewpoint up in religious imagery of Jesus.
Bush is our savior.
Secondly, she doesn’t address the Glenn’s arguments (legal and political) at all.
She doesn’t have to. She relies upon fear totally:
It is clear that Glenn does not consider al Qaeda to be much of a threat at all to the United States. Neither do many of his compatriots on the left. That is the major reason why the American people do not trust them with their safety and will keep on electing Republicans.
I wonder what the actual point is? We do not have an enemy?
You see, Glenn, al Qaeda really is a threat to the United States. As such, we must do everything in our power to thwart their designs to foment mayhem and promulgate murder. You may not understand this, but most Americans are more than willing to sacrifice our civil liberties and much more so than we have done so far in this effort.
In short, if you don’t agree with the cult’s point of view, you are denying the existence of a real threat.
Is there a good defense against this charge?
She’s saying, “I’m more afraid than you are, so I’m right!”
Now that may be childish, but it is the basic argument that the cult makes.
It needs to be dealt with.
Me, to Gedaliya: "Could you please provide some examples of people you consider as "loyal opposition" to Bush..."
ReplyDeleteGedaliya: "I answered this question in a previous post. You don't seem to accept my answer. To that, all I can do is shrug."
No, you *didn't* answer! You were asked, very specifically, to name someone who opposes Bush's FOREIGN AND TERROR POLICIES whom you don't consider to be giving aid to our mortal enemies.
The sole non-Republican you listed in your "answer" (Joe Lieberman) is someone who actually happens to support Bush's foreign and terror policies.
So now I'm asking again. Here's the question again--the seventh (7th!) time you've been asked it today--this time with the key element capitalized so you'll be sure not to miss it:
Gedaliya, could you please provide some examples of people you consider as "loyal opposition" to Bush: specifically, PEOPLE WHO VOCALLY OPPOSE BUSH'S FOREIGN AND TERROR POLICIES, but who are not, in your eyes, mere useful idiots, giving aid to our mortal enemies?
If, in fact, your answer is that it is impossible for any American (especially an American who doesn't happen to be a member of the GOP) to vocally oppose Bush's foreign and terror policies and still be loyal to our nation, then simply say so. Or say, "L'etat c'est Bush," since that's exactly the same thing, Gedaliya.
Thanks, in advance, Gedaliya, for finally answering this simple question.
Best regards,
Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA
The case of Harriet Miers--where we did see opposition from the right--is a complicating one for your thesis. I would urge you to take it up. What happened there?
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that one instance of independent thought in five years proves or disproves much of anything. The fact that people cling tenaciously to this example as proof that there are residual flickers of independent thought left among Bush followers says alot in itself.
I think and have argued that Bush followers are excessively loyal to their leader, not that they've been lobotomized into mind-controlled zombies of the type one sees in a science-fiction film.
But I will say this: one will see criticism of Bush when he doesn't defend the movement with sufficient vigor or extremity. If they perceive that the White House isn't attacking liberals with sufficient fervor, or that they're backing down and compromising too readily, they will urge a more resolute posture on behalf of the movement. That's all Harriet Miers was. They were unconvinced that she would be as reliably loyal as Bush thought she would be, and they wanted someone more reliable and dependable to the cause.
Glenn dissembles:
ReplyDeleteI think and have argued that Bush followers are excessively loyal to their leader, not that they've been lobotomized into mind-controlled zombies of the type one sees in a science-fiction film.
In the very piece we are discussing in this thread, you write the following:
The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.
Rich Lowry disagreed with Bush about Miers. I don't believe he became a liberal "the minute" his views were published in the National Review.
Similarly, the minute a Senator with years of conservatism behind them deviates from a Bush decree on a single issue, they are no longer "conservative."
Hmmm. Rick Santorum opposed Miers (upon her withdrawal his reaction was "thank God"). The "minute" he opposed Miers, he did not lose his conservative credentials. In fact, he is being vigorously supported by the White House in his tough re-election bid against Casey.
People who self-identify as "conservatives" and have always been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens the moment they dissent..
Like Ann Coulter when she opposed Miers?
And in that regard, people like Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker, Jonah Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt are not conservatives. They are authoritarian cultists. Their allegiance is not to any principles of government but to strong authority through a single leader.
Each one of the individuals you name came out publically against Miers. It would appear you are simply wrong here, i.e., that their allegiance was in fact to principle and not to an "authoritarian cult," as you maintain in your piece.
I agree with Glenn on most points. What I WOULD like to see is, indeed, a discussion of policy WITHOUT an accusation that "you just hate Bush," or "you just blindly love Bush." Bush isn't the issue. And hate isn't the issue. It does NOT matter who or why people hate. It matters that certain Americans are willing to "joke" (or speak seriously) about murdering, interning, or stripping rights from, other Americans.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is that we have Americans in power, and their supporters, seriously arguing that central aspects of the Constitution are passe. I would be happy to discuss Iraq war policy. I would be happy to discuss why I think unregulated (read: illegal) wiretapping is a problem. I would be happy to discuss why I think torture is a policy, (besides comprising the essence of we have reviled in leaders like Saddam) that generates more terrorists than it stops. I would be happy to talk about why I think interning people, including American citizens, indefinitely without charge or access to a lawyer is a problem. In essence, I am happy to defend the Constitution to those who think it doesn't matter anymore.
Our leaders did not take an oath to uphold the Constitution "until things got tough." They took an oath to uphold the Constitution no matter what. That oath comes ahead of protecting citizens. For it is the Constitution that makes us Americans. Too many people have died defending the Constitution to treat it cavalierly now.
Let's posit for a moment that Gedaliya is right. We on the left are, for the sake of argument only, simply knee jerk anti Bush people. As far as we are concerned (in the myth) no matter what Bush does, even if it's something we agree with, it's wrong.
ReplyDeleteIf this were true, who would be the "conservative"? The person who blindly distrusted the federal government, or the person who blindly trusted it?
I thing Glenn Greenwald is
ReplyDeletean example of someone who
opposes Bush's policies but
is not giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
This would be as opposed to
Michael Moore (anti-american propoganda) or Ted Kennedy (numerous quotes giving comfort to the enemy).
I hope this ends this harassment for examples and let's get on to other topics.
The issues related to Bush's followers have less to do with irrationalism associated with religious faith and more to do with blatant dishonesty and an unwillingness to play by the rules.
ReplyDeleteAny attempt by the Left to smear relgious faith, per se, is doomed to failure.
Don't attack faith. Attack HYPOCRISY.
Gedaliya is playing ridiculous 4th grade word games.
ReplyDeleteShe knows perfeclty well what Glenn means, and moreover, that he's correct.
- mercury
Liar.
ReplyDeleteThat's all that needs to be said.
Wow, Gedaliya is quite a character, isn't he? I wonder if he'll ever figure out the difference between an ad hominem argument and simply expressing a negative opinion about somebody? Here's a hint: one is intended as a distraction.
ReplyDeleteIt's really quite something to see a poster refer to Bob Barr as a 'moderate'. That pretty much proves Glenn's original point pretty neatly.
"Useful idiots". "Irrational hatred syndrome." "Poisoned ability"....
ReplyDelete...what is most disturbing about this discourse is the eliminationist undercurrent. Gedaliya (who appears to be a fair representation of Bush supporter thought) is arguing in favor of muzzling people who disagree with Bush in ways that she doesn't like.
That IS the logical end-point of this line of argument, isn't it? Those who disagree are insane, dangerous, and quite possibly traitors. What do you do with dangerous maniacs and traitors? You lock them up, "for their own good" in the former case and for the good of the country in the latter case.
More than that, she (and those who support her) are questioning their humanity itself, as what makes a human a human more than his or her ability to think? Calling them "irrational" means that they can be seen as subhuman, and if you aren't human, you have no rights.
To clarify: Meiers is a poor example, because Bush was criticized for being insufficiently conservative in his choice, and not true to his own style of governance. The actual person had deviated from the myth, and was punished for it.
That is worlds different than admitting that any of Bush's critics to his left are--or could be--accurate in their criticism. McCain and Hagel cannot be examples of a liberal "loyal opposition" because they are not liberals, and Lieberman is a notorious supporter of Bush in the Democratic party.
More to the point, Gedaliya, you don't get to define a Loyal Opposition, even if you understood what one was. A loyal opposition is loyal not to Bush, but to the country and its constitution, and it is up to them to define what that means. If they believe (and they certainly do) that Bush is a threat to the health and well-being of country and constitution, it is their duty to say as much, regardless if it is convenient for the current president.
There's nothing "irrational" about the dislike of George W. Bush. It is built on a wide variety of legitimate grievances and a perception that he has been a bad president. That you don't understand and agree with these grievances doesn't change the fact that they form a rational case for the dislike.
Attack the case or believe it as you will. The fact is that it remains.
Thank you, Glenn.
ReplyDeleteI've been arguing a similar point with my Republican friends for a long time now. Republicans don't stand for anything anymore. Just tax cuts and privatizing for the sake of privatizing. They love big government. They love deficits. They love "nation building."
Republicans are the ones who are telling us that "patriotism" means sending your troops off to war and never talking about them again. It always seems strange to me because I remember screaming Clinton-hatred and criticism of Clinton sending troops to Kosovo. It's the whole intellectual dishonesty that bothers me. At least my ideology is internally consistent.
I think a lot of the criticism of the left as "angry" and "unhinged" is actually projection. It seems strange that a group of people who write about liberals as "traitors" and "fascists" go into vapors when this criticism is echoed back.
I don't think we should take it anymore. The next time a Democrat or other admin critic is on TV and called "treasonous" by a Bush-cultist, they should demand an immediate apology. We shouldn't put up with this kind of language. Criticism of government is critical in a democracy.
--Unstable Isotope
rhetoricus:
ReplyDeleteHate definitely is the issue. Bush represents a constituency that revels in hate.
Evidence of this hate (here I diverge from Gedaliya, who accuses others of hate without backing up his/her arguments).
- tolerance of imprisonment without due process
- anti-gay bashing as a matter of routine
- willingness to use military might as a weapon against other nations without any causus belli
- Constant villification of political opponents in nasty, personal terms that have nothing to do with reality (e.g., the long-standing insinuations that the Clintons were guilty of murder)
- the usage of mob violence to stop the orderly process of election counting
For years, those of us opposed to the war in Iraq tried to make the case using calm, rational arguments. We figured that, once the next election came, reason would win out. So how is the 2004 election determined? More than by anything else, it was determined by
- vicious character assassination directed at John Kerry
- repeated invocation of orange alerts to heighten the fear of terrorism (curious that there have been zero since Bush's second inauguration)
I don't think there's any way to intelligently oppose Bush and the people he represent without noticing that his crowd plays the cards of anger and fear constantly. This approach has been the modus operandi of the Atwater/Rove approach to politics since the mid-80s.
I for one do not wish to continue to live in a country where fear and loathing are the keys to power. But if you want to intelligently approach the question of how to solve the problem, you have to be honest about who stokes the fear and rage.
Put another way: aside from the cult of personality, what exactly does George W. Bush stand for? Tax cuts for rich people?
It looks like, in the Meirs case, the Bush followers have indeed found an example of an instance in which they dared to disagree with their Fearless Leader. Leaving aside the suspicion that Meirs was put up on purpose, to be shot down so Bush could ram-rod through the real arch-conservative he truly wanted all along. The fact that they use this singular act of defiance as a badge of courage to convince themselves they are less than mindless followers, ("I did too disagree with Bush once!!), tells us how close Glenn has come to hitting the mark. You'd need more than a single instance to counter Greenwald's assessment of the mindless loyalty of the True Believers among Bush supporters. In 5 years you've got 1 instance where you strayed. Wow, what bravery.
ReplyDeleteI think this post of Glenn's is probably the most dead-on accurate description I've read to date of the state-of-things at the current time. The protests coming from the right smack of desperation, as Glenn has managed to shine a light on their innermost demon.
I've often marvelled that anyone anywhere could ever blindly follow a leader. Bush-Lovers seem utterly incapable of doubting the infallibilty of the man they've chosen to embody their imperial dreams. Blind loyalty to a politician--amazing. I see it happening right here in my own country and it's teaching me more about how cults of power get started than any history could. Scary stuff.
Who ever said:
ReplyDeleteFor better or worse, September 11th frames the Bush presidency. Untrue.
The date that frames the Bush Administration is August 29, 2005 -when Homeland Security and the White House lost an entire Congressional District of people.
Any fool could on their own TV what a real security failure looked like by a government so full of its own idiology and puffery that It couldn't bother to check the weather.
"Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush."
ReplyDeleteWTF have you been smoking? Pledging loyalty to Bush, have you been reading like, Democratic talking poitns. Here are just a few issues that Republicans are at odds with the Bush administration:
illegal immigration
increased federal spending
prescription drugs
increase of welfare programs
snooponyoo writes:
ReplyDeleteHewitt? If he did, it was long after she withdrew her nomination. He was the truest of True Believers on that one...
You are right about Hewitt. I stand corrected.
The reason is that Bush abandonded the conservative ideals he professed, and instead put a socialist economic policy into action.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that Bush abandoned conservative ideals (if he ever held them), his economic policy could in no way be described as "socialist."
He just blows a lot of money.
If his economic policy were socialist, all that blown money would be paying for health care, our soldiers' families wouldn't have to have bake sales to pay for their children's armor, and he wouldn't have put forth a proposal that made sure our elderly would be forced to live on cat food.
And Cheney's secret energy policy meetings would have been about nationalizing it, instead of (presumably) working out the way to make the most money for Exxon, et al.
Don't forget the estate tax. The drive to eliminate it is expressly anti-socialist, not to mention anti-democratic. The accumulation of great wealth is antithetical to a democratic, meritocratic ideal. We're lucky that Andrew Carnegie was such a strict Calvinist (as much as I disagree with them) because he thought it was his duty to spend all he had before he died, and we have many libraries to show for it.
I don't see that commitment to community, to all of us, to our country, that used to be a hallmark of all Americans, left or right.
justadood said:
ReplyDelete"There are people in any society that have a deep-seated need to give up all responsibility for themselves to somebody else, letting that other person make all decisions for them concerning various aspects of their lives. With this, then, the individual can distance themselves from the bad decisions of the leaders...again, 'It's not my fault, I don't make the decisions....I was only obeying orders...I didn't know they were doing *that*"'...and the list goes on. If you're not responsible, then you don't have to face the consequences of your actions, or inaction.....see? says here right on the box."
I just want to point out how true this is in many, many marriages as well. Since the family is a microcosm of the community, and the community is a microcosm of the nation, the parallel holds.
And note the bottom-line authoritarianism of male "domestic violence" perpetrators. I'm sure many wives of such abusive husbands use a "backseat driver" psychological defense to try to preserve their sanity in the face of the smothering and abusive control exerted by the family "authoritarian." [And to be realistic, it's also possible that those women who are most ready and willing to relinquish their personal responsibility to a "driver," in a relationship, are those who are most likely to be victimized and "owned" by such authoritarian males.]
Maybe we should start there, in the search for the root cause of so much of the fear and loathing expressed on our national airwaves.
I'm a Republican and a conservative. I voted for Bush twice. I didn't want to the second time, but it was a two-horse race, and the other horse was Carter redux. I disapprove of Bush's job performance and have more than once been called a liberal or equivalent on conservative blogs as a consequence, despite my beliefs, which put me solidly in the moderate-conservative portion of the political spectrum.
ReplyDeleteI disapprove of Bush's presidency for a number of reasons, including fiscal recklessness, the misprosecution of the GWOT, the nationalization of issues like education and marriage, and general incompetence on the issues, from Katrina to Miers. Frankly, I don't think Bush is much of a conservative himself. I think he's a low-tax liberal who gets along with religious people at home and a Wilsonian abroad. And yet when I say as much to many Bush supporters, I'm the one who is branded the liberal, the troll, etc.
Bushism IS a personality cult. And yes, we Miers opponents on the right did get branded with that same Scarlet L. On one prominent conservative site, one of the contributors announced that "the bastards won" when Miers withdrew. Yes, an entire cross-section of the right were "bastards" for daring to question the wisdom of the Leader.
Now personality cults are nothing new. They've occurred frequently throughout political history, so we aren't exactly making history here. Far more interesting is the dissection of the Bushist personality cult. Its heart seems to be in the deep south. The south is where Bush is loved the most, and where his opponents are despised the most. I'm sure there are a number of political and sociological reasons for this, not the least of which being Bush's ideology, which has been the general ideology of the South for some time. Southerners have always benefited from generous gov't spending, have always preferred that taxes be low but outlays be high, and have always been more comfy with the thought of a church/state overlap than the rest of the country. As such, the South likes this new brand of "conservatism" that Bush is marketing and fear anyone who promises to bring back the "leave me alone" version of conservatism which has always been a western/midwestern ideology.
I'm sure there's also a reflexive desire as part of the human psyche to develop an attachment to a strong leader when safety or security is threatened. Put simply, if Bush had presided over a time of peace, I don't think the personality cult would've developed, though the regional struggles would've remained. And I am pleased that Bush doesn't have a sitting veep that plans to continue his presidency, as such a candidate would be the wrong person for conservatism and for the country and would probably lose to Hillary.
Matthew,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the thougtful post.
I, for one, am grateful for an opposition party. But lately, this opposition has come down to the cultish attitude that you have described.
Believe me, most of us that frequent these blogs are very angry at the Dem leadership in Congress. You are not alone in being critical of your party. They are enablers, and the right has taken advantage of it.
Opposition party's cancel out the fringes on either side. This is a good thing, and it leads to moderate government. The Reps have been hijacked by the bigot/religeous/hateful fringe. It is your job to fix it because we run nothing and we have cowards for Dem leaders. Keep up the good fight.
BTW, accusations of being a troll are not confined to the right. A few weeks ago on FDL I criticized Fitzpatrick for not going far enough, and you would've thought I wore a Cheney t-shirt to a DNC fundraiser.
Republicans, republicans, the
ReplyDeleteonly true Americans
oh how they cower and shake with fear
because them Arabs are so near
But thank the Lord, they will
be Saved
By steadfast George, so tough and
Brave.
All he wants from good
Christians and Jews
Is a sacrifice and some burnt offerings too.
So bow down at George's glorious shrine
And curse Ted Kennedy, the heretical swine
They'll burn the constitution to their Lord
and get on their knees to kiss his big Sword.
Here are just a few issues that Republicans are at odds with the Bush administration:
ReplyDeleteSure, they make noises on the chat shows and in the papers about 'grave concerns' and such.
But when it's time to vote on Bush's initiatives, however much they voiced 'concerns' in the 'debate' leading up to the vote, they fall right in line and cast their vote for whatever initiative Bush is offering.
You gotta wonder when or if any of these Republicans will re-claim their integreity and vote their conscience rather than the party line or what their lobbyists insist upon.
Probably never. That's the problem.
:::chuckle:::
ReplyDeleteThis has very little to do with blind support to George Bush. I would have supported Bill Clinton if I had known he was running the nearly identical Able Danger program.
Rather, this issue simply cut across party lines in a rather new way...
The modern "conservative" movement known as the Republican Party is made up of several streams, some conflicting, as is any majority party in our very diverse country...
Glenn, if you haven't already read it, I would strongly recommend the book "The Right Nation" by two lefty British journalists named Micklethwait and Wooldridge. They have written perhaps the best analysis of the GOP which I have seen.
There are three major strains in the GOP...
1) The GOP has been the party of business since the industrial revolution. This is fundamentally different from the pejorative "Party of the Rich.' The mega rich are about evenly split. However, those who create and run businesses are overwhemingly GOP. Apart from favoring pro business legislation, these people are all over the place politically. Big business supports corporate welfare and enacting regulations which favor them. Middle to small business are generally libertarian economically. These people have no category morally.
2) Religious conservative catholics and evangelical protestants. When the Dems went down the road of Euro style secularism, the traditional faith communities went to the Elephants. The folks are morally conservative, but often are populist or leftist economically.
3) Military hawks. When the Dems turned their backs on the military in Vietnam, the military turned their backs on the Dems even more so. These folks are pro military, traditionalists morally, and are like the business community economically. Something to keep in mind, this group is also disproportionately from religious conservative families.
What unites these disparate groups is a general belief in free markets, God and the military.
To tell you where I am coming from, I am a military hawk with two tours of service in the Army in the Airborne and then the Infantry. In all other things apart from foreign policy and the military, I am a social and economic libertarian. I joined the Libertarian Party for awhile, but left to join the GOP when Reagan was elected and I started serving in the military.
Libertarians are hopelessly naive about all matters concerning war including nonsense like requiring warrants to gather intel on the enemy.
The NSA program represents a minor wedge issue for the GOP. The libertarian end of the party will oppose this program while everyone else in the party will support it. That is why you will see the occasional "conservative" law professor or politician "go off the reservation" on this issue.
On the other hand, the remaining hawks and traditionalists still left in the Dem Party support the program.
It is funny to see some in the GOP calling conservatives like Barr "liberal" and to see the left in the Donkey party call liberals like Lieberman "conservatives" (among other less polite names.
However, it is just the nature of this particular issues that makes it cut across party lines.
Let's not kid ourselves; fear has always been a Republican stock-in-trade. For a long time they had the commies to kick around; when that went away in the early 90s, they turned on "the enemy within" - liberals, homosexuals, non-Christians. And then along came Osama to present them with a convenient new bogeyman - one that can be expected to be useful for at least as long as communism was. And one which gave them a handy club to use in beating the "enemies within" over the head, as well. A twofer, if you will.
ReplyDeleteThe left's biggest failing is in not clearly enunciating to people the simple truth that we are all going to die, some day, some way, and for those of us who do not perish by our own hand, it won't be in a manner of our own choosing. Sacrificing every right we possess will not keep us "safe" from death, because life itself is inherently unsafe - no one gets out of it alive.
Here's what amazes me about the "we must sacrifice some of our rights to be made safe" crowd: statistically, each of us is at least a million times more likely to die in an auto accident than at the hands of a terrorist. Yet most people would regard as unreasonable the suggestion that we should surrender our driver's licenses and give up driving so we can be made "safe" from dying in an auto accident.
Add to that the very American tendency to supplant fear of the probable with fear of the quite improbable - so you can focus on that rather than what is most likely to happen. Which is, loss of economic status. I think that's the root of fear for most Americans, because they see its inexorable approach, they've watched it spread for the past 30 years, and in their heart of hearts, most of your middle and lower class people know it's merely a matter of time before it hits them as well.
The Cult of Bush is at its very heart a cult of fear - and moreover, it's a cult of irrational fear. It cannot be fought by making promises to keep people safe - that cedes to the Republicans the notion that yes, the fear is indeed rational, and we will accept your framing of it as such, and we will play the game by the rules of your choosing. IMO, that's mistake number one.
There was nothing remotely rational in Bushco's claim that Saddam Hussein was going to attack us with remote controlled model planes of death - but look back, it was one of the three or four main pieces of "evidence" trotted out as a reason for why we had to attack Iraq - NOW. Whenever someone calls me "delusional" for not seeing the danger of Saddam Hussein, I always reply that "Hey, I'm not the one who bought the idea that he was gonna fly a remote controlled model plane over my house to spray me with ANTHRAX. And you're calling me delusional?" And that's always pretty much the end of the discussion, because really, not even the most staunch wingnut can defend having accepted such a ludicrous excuse. Had anyone pointed it out to them in such a scornful way at the time, perhaps a few more people would have been thinking "hey, if this loony-tunes stuff is the best they've got, then there's no reason for going to war."
So job number one is - start pointing out irrationality whenever it raises its head. Stop allowing Republicans to cook up these ridiculous ideas and then going along with them as if they are the least bit probable. They aren't. Most people can see that when healthy skepticism is expressed. If they don't see that skepticism, they start to believe that it's a reasonable thing to fear or believe, because no one is saying otherwise.
And job number 2, of course, is to address the issues where people have very real - and very justified - fears. Fear of being bankrupted by medical catastrophe. Fear of losing jobs, homes, the chance at education for their kids. Real stuff, not this loco crap the right keeps throwing. Ridicule the hell out of them for it - what's next, is Bush going to tell us we have to bomb Iran because of their plans to send sharks - SHARKS WITH FRICKEN' LASERS ON THEIR HEADS! - against us. Make it harder for them to play this sick little game. If it stops working, they'll stop playing it.
With the right ingredients, any ideology can be lawful . . .
ReplyDeleteHouse Judiciary Briefing: Monday 3PM EST, Feb 13th
Chris Cylke may have some news on why the White House and DoJ are worried: [ Click ]
You made some reasonable points (regarding Sullivan's supposed liberalism and Bush's lack of fiscal restraint), but it's hard to concentrate on them given the embarrassing gaffes and outright howlers.
ReplyDelete"I really believe that she would be in favor of setting up camps for Muslim-Americans and/or Arab-Americans similar to the ones we had for Japanese-Americans which she praises. Has anyone ever asked her that? Could someone?"
Uh, how about 95% of the the radio and TV hosts of shows where she plugged her book? It's a rather obvious question (and the answer was no).
"And the core emotions driving the Bush extremists are not hard to see. It is a driving rage and hatred – for liberals, for Muslims, for anyone who opposes George Bush."
That's just projection, Glenn. Who's got spittle flying off his lips, Howard Dean or Ken Mehlman? Who's angrier, Rush Limbaugh or Randi Rhodes?
Hinderaker was right; the guy who wrote him didn't know anything other than talking points on Jeff Gannon, or he would have realized that he got his press credentials under his original name.
"It’s not an accident that Ann Coulter and her ongoing calls for violence against "liberals" (meaning anyone not in line behind George Bush) are so wildly popular among conservatives."
In fact, she's been criticized quite publicly by numerous conservative bloggers for her more stupid utterances, especially the things she said last week.
Bart...
ReplyDeleteI take it you're not convinced that Greenwald's Bush Authoritarian Cult thesis has merit.
I have to agree with ej's comments that one of the impressive things about this blog is that it is linked to a lot of different viewpoints.
ReplyDeleteThats why I think that this authoritarian cult is more than just a cult of personality around Bush. He wasnt able to go against this important part of the cult.
Well, when you have people always talking about being in "a cultural war," somewhere along the way you start to realize that they really mean it.
I tend to think Mr. Newt's idea of governing has a lot to do with the partisanship that effects almost everyone today. Discourse is important between parties in a democracy and when it is continually cut off for political gains, then democracy grinds to a standstill.
When you hear people say, "We must do everything we can to keep these people from the levers of power," at fundraisers or other events, they are just repeating Mr. Newt's strategy for gaining a plurality in government. So, it really is more a cult of the party than it is of an individual.
Of course, in the end, when this is what your mantra of governing becomes it means you have run out of ideas of when it comes to problem solving because you have limited your options.
Democrats become Republican-lights because the conservatives were coming up with ideas that made more sense then the outdated notions that the left had. Now that the right is defending the absurd, you'd think that the opposite would occur. If it doesn't then our democracy is probably in a tad of trouble......
The tablecloth,
fallen off
the right edge
it shows
more blue.
Glenn, you are a lawyer. I reprint the below from Firedoglake. Seems like it would be a very significant point if the "authorization" Cheney will claim he had to declassify documents was in fact illegal:
ReplyDelete"Shouldn't the MSM be asking a very basic point of information -- was the NIE ever declassified prior to 8 July 2003? Not some mumbo-jumbo about "authorization" -- whatever this means -- Was it ever formally, officially declassified (by whatever authority, including the Pres or VP)? Presumably there must be some record of this -- even if the Pres or VP can unilaterally declassify the NIE, without the CIA's input, one presumes that there must be some formal documentation somewhere of this official action.
Because if not, and even if the Pres/VP has the authority to unilaterally declassify the NIE (which at least these paragraphs make it sound like they do not), then it seems that this "authorization" did not involve any official declassification, and thus was quite illegal."
Mr Greenwald:
ReplyDeleteI am a "Bushie" (your label) and a conservative. I, like Andrew Sullivan, believe in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. I believe more needs to be done in the GWOT. I believe in eliminating the racist policy of Affirmative Action. I believe in a balanced budget. I believe in all of the traditional conservative political stances excepting, perhaps, making abortion illegal (though I think the practice is abused today, and I also believe there needs to be a law, not some liberal interpretation of a 33 year old SCOTUS case).
So where does this leave me? Am I an evil drone who blindly follows this president? Certainly if I believe in a balanced budget, I wouldn't vote for John "$1 Trillion health care entitlement" Kerry. If I believe in the security of this country, I wouldn't vote for any Democrat, none of whom have consistent views regarding our safety and security, although some of the leftist Senators excuse inconsistency as a Hallmark of their party. If I believe in racial equity, I wouldn't vote for Al Sharpton, who is as racist as anyone who dares to claim a desire to hold office, nor would I support someone like Robert Byrd, a former Kleagle of the KKK.
I don't think your blog addresses the problem; it merely creates one.
The problem isn't that "bushies" are blind followers of his leadership; the problem is that there is no superior alternative.
If people would eliminate the major source of problems in our political system (that is eject Senators and Congresspeople who are incompetant, at best), we'd have a more effective presidency.
The solution to the Bush presidency is someone who is FAR RIGHT of President Bush. That person would veto spending bills pouring out of Congress. That person would effectively address the GWOT (although Bush has done a great job thus far). That person would slash entitlements. They would identify the theory they call "global warming" as the bunk that it is. They would shrink the federal government's size, cost, and power, and eliminate the thousands of bureaucrats who cost taxpayers Billions each and every year.
This person will never be found, nor will a more conservative person be elected because they would be labeled a "Nazi", "Dittohead", "Moron", or some other demeaning name, and dismissed.
In the meantime, I challenge you to find a superior political figure who will advance the cause of this free nation and provide a better alternative to Bush. Here are some hints: it isn't Senator Clinton (socialist). It isn't John Kerry (socialist billionaire, an impossibility in any place but America). It isn't Howard Dean (complete fool). It isn't Joe Biden (perhaps the most embarassing Senator). It isn't Ted Kennedy, big-spending liberal who likes his booze, money (family fortune: $500 million), and his yachting rights (doesn't like a wind farm near the compound for that reason).
Find us a better alternative, and you can provide your readers some hope.
Right now, all you are doing is echoing the anti-Bush sentiments of the disenchanted, which is the last thing those people need right now.
aqualung - with some of them you can't.
ReplyDeleteBut I have to defer to my own experience. I've thrown that "hey, you're the dumbass who bought the bull about the remote planes of death" at quite a few rabid mouthfoamers, and without exception, none of them has ever even attempted to justify their acceptance of it. Yes, there are people too irrational to be reached. But for the vast majority, all you have to do is find the right example...and then the floodgates open.