You think you’re so clever, don’t you?
From an editorial at the Washington Times:
Mrs. Palin is well within her rights to feel persecuted. Since the Saturday bloodbath, members of the liberal commentariat have spoken in a unified voice, charging her and other conservatives with being indirectly or somehow directly responsible for the lunatic actions of accused gunman Jared Loughner. Typical of blood libel, the attack against Mrs. Palin is a false charge intended to generate anger made by people with a political agenda. They have made these claims boldly without evidence and without censure or consequence.
This is simply the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against conservative thinkers. The last two years have seen a proliferation of similar baseless charges of racism, sexism, bigotry, Islamophobia and inciting violence against those on the right who have presented ideas at odds with the establishment’s liberal orthodoxy. Columnist Paul Krugman took advantage of the murders to tar conservative icon Rush Limbaugh and Fox News superstar Glenn Beck as “hate-mongers.” It’s this sort of reflexive and dastardly mudslinging that drowns out reasoned discussion of public-policy alternatives and poisons the well of political debate in America.
You start saying blood libel and pogrom to me and I think it’s time to load up the shotgun. That kind of crap figures just a little too prominently in my family’s history two and three generations ago. I have few true hot buttons but those, dear repub-shits are fighting words.
Shorter Washington Times — “You liberals have the unmitigated gall to take what we say seriously.”
Clearly Palin has suffered more than Christ. At least Jesus had some help. Do you know how hard it is to crucify yourself? That last nail must be a bitch.
Plus, he was a Jew and who cares about those people?
I’m actually starting to think that the nation is, collectively, being punked. That somewhere in a room a bunch of conservative speechwriters are laughing their asses off and saying things like ‘Wait, wait. Can we work in a Holocaust reference without our bosses noticing until afterwards? Somehow?’ ‘No, think BIGGER. Plagues! And firstborn children, shit, Palin loves to talk about her kids, right? Work with me people!’
I think it’s more like they’re more like Stewie here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DheXU13NneI
It’s about getting a rise out of liberals. Once we’ve demonstrated incredulity, annoyance, disgust, or anger, they run off giggling because they’ve “won.”
Liberalism needs to learn how to say cool story, bro
That’s what we hired that skinny Kenyan what’s got them big ears for.
It’s be nice if he started dong the job.
WTF?
You’ve spent the past two years complaining that he doesn’t pound the table and engage in confrontational politics, and now this?
The food was terrible, and the portions were too small, eh?
Perhaps I misinterprted what was meant by “cool story, bro”. I thought that it meant “the thing that you just told me was very entertaining, but obviously false” and was meant to indicate that liberalism needs to respond to right-wing narrative by nodding politely and then pointing out politely that it is full of shit.
If Obama would get around to pointing out that the right-wing narrative is full of shit, he might well be accomplishing something. As it is, he does the polite listening thing, and leaves it at that. If he won’t be confrontational, he could at least be committed. He hasn’t even managed that–look at the tax cut fiasco, or the Catfood Commission.
If I misinterpreted the meaning of “cool story, bro”, then I apologize. I had assumed that irony was part of the package.
Whoops, my bad. I misread danbu sama, and thought he wrote that Democrats need to learn to STAY cool.
Do you know who else told people to please tone down the rhetoric?
Hitler?
Plato?
Plato’s mom
“Stop answering a question with another question boy.” Its damn annoying.
I like how they slipped in the bit about poisoning the well at the end, too.
Truly, Sarah Palin is the Jew of Liberal Fascism.
Maybe someone should tell them that when you make your living by inciting hate and fear the correct term is hate (product) monger (sell or offer to sell).
I will buy your hate for a reasonable amount. What’s your offer?
I buy mine wholesale. It’s cheaper and then you can brand it whatever you like.
Slackers. I make my own. It’s easy to do in the basement, and you can compost any leftovers.
At least nobody has accused her of palin’ around with terrorists or creating ‘death panels’ because that would really be over the line. That would be worse than Auschwitz!
I notice he (I’m playing the odds) did not actually contend that these such accusations are false.
Poor, poor Sarah. My s.o. and I have considered making and marketing self-crucification kits. I think we got a customer.
But seriously, if you can hear the sound of your cross scraping the floor, put it down—you’re no martyr.
Obviously the Times editorial board hasn’t read the LGM comment choir, because if they did they’d realize that these views are anything but unified on the left.
When my overwhelmingly conservative family and friends lose access to their country clubs, networking events, social gatherings, and elite schools, then we can start using scary words. For now, “pogrom” my ass.
Yeah, but would you expect anything else? I always wonder if the situation is symmetric: when a new outrageous meme develops on the right, are there dissenters lurking on their blogs saying, no you can’t say that or, no that goes too far? I’m not sure myself, but maybe some hearty soul who reads some of those blogs regularly can tell us.
No dissenters, sadly. It’s the joke of it! OUTLAW!
not true, Scott. The dissenter dissents from further on the right
This sort of ultra-defensive and inclusive rhetoric has been streaming out of conservatives for a good while, and those conservatives inclined to dissent from typical conservative discourse fled the ranks during the Bush presidency.
Here is a blog post from Reason dealing with Palin’s comments, and there are 201 comments if you want to peruse them:
http://reason.com/blog/2011/01/12/palins-not-complicit-in-loughn#commentcontainer
I am surprised they didn’t mention the Bataan Death March of adverse Facebook posts Ms. Palin and her staff has faced.
Teddy Roosevelt preemptively answers Sarah Palin, Oct. 14, 1912:
“Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet – there is where the bullet went through – and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.
. . I want to say something very serious to our people and especially to the newspapers. I don’t know anything about who the man was who shot me to-night. He was seized at once by one of the stenographers in my party, Mr. Martin, and I suppose is now in the hands of the police. He shot to kill. He shot – the shot, the bullet went in here – I will show you . . .
“Now, friends, of course, I do not know, as I say, anything about him; but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft.
“Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party; and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the Republicans, the Democrat, and Socialist parties, that they cannot, month in month out and year in and year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal, violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.”
I have a rather strong dislike for Roosevelt, but you have to give the man credit for giving a speech with a bullet inside of him. On the other hand, the idea that the “vitriol” of Eugene Debs is somehow at fault is totally absurd–nothing drives one to violence like the call for public ownership of utilities!
Also, TR seems to be calling Debs a socialist!
Even worse–Debs called himself a socialist! Once it starts, who knows where it will end.
He doesn’t accuse Debs of vitriol. He accuses the media of going overboard on behalf of his opponents including Debs. See the difference? It seems in those days, papers would say all kinds of nasty things the candidates would not. The difference today is that rightwing candidates feel no such restraint while less-rightwing (we don’t actually have a left today, that’s another difference) feels nothing but restraint for any kind of criticism.
So perhaps what have here is not an increase in lying vitriol, but the explosion of media.
Not to excuse the vitriol. What the half-term governor and the Wash Times said this week was truly reprehensible. But in TR’s time, if a newspaper in say, Davenport Iowa printed something like that, a reader in Hartford would probably never find out. Now? Simultaneously released on the paper’s website and available 24/7/365 worldwide immediately.
Washington Times = Podhoretz = Ledeen = horses**t
Mary McCarthy would be gratified: every single word in that sentence is a lie.
Save for the oxymoron in the last two words.
Well, they’re not ‘conservative’ – they want radical change in just about every aspect of US public life [and quite a few aspects of private life, teh Gheyz an' all], and they’re not thinkers. So two lies in two words.
‘Conservative thinkers’ is not an oxymoron in itself – Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, heck, Benjamin Disraeli…
I always felt that Krugman and DeLong were, at their core, conservatives. They pay careful attention to history, value the structures that work that they inherited from their forebearers (Social Security, for example), and try very hard to balance the risks of change with the risks of inaction.
The modern Republican party are flaming radicals, in a real sense, and no two ways about it. Screw the policies and perspectives that have be the source of whatever greatness the US possesses, it’s time for tax cuts for rich people and creationism!
I absolutely agree, but I see the conservative/liberal dichotomy in terms of social stagnation/progress.
Krugman and Delong are vehement defenders of the corporatist state we have now. Krugman especially with his advocation of trade war with China, his preference for looking at bond prices rather than food prices, and his statements on immigration.
and his statements on immigration.
Okay, I’ll bite. Krugman is an advocate of relatively open immigration. What is the True Libertarian position that is an improvement on Krugman’s perfidity?
I think Mr. Potts is saying that Paul Krugman wants Mexicans to take our jobs to provide cheap labor, as that is the only possible reason why a liberal like Krugman could possibly oppose surround the country with barbed wire and machine gun nests.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/opinion/27krugman.html?hp
Shorter Paul Krugman: I’m pro-immigration but here is a list of reasons why should oppose it.
Atchly, the column you linked to is better read as “I’m pro-immigration, but it’s not without its costs and we have to acknowledge those in the debate.” But thanks for playing!
Atchly, the column you linked to is better read as “I’m pro-immigration, but it’s not without its costs and we have to acknowledge those in the debate.” But thanks for playing!
In that case, Brad has a point. Libertarians never, ever acknowledge nuance, so Krugman’s position is, indeed, substantially different.
No. Libertarians typically reject the “immigrants lower wages so we should keep some out” bullshit argument that Krugman throws out repeatedly. Here is a Cato publication downplaying the effects on wages.
What’s more, libertarians generally side with the moral opposition to immigration control against social cost. You will not hear many libertarians make the argument that we should violently block immigration in order to maintain higher wages for current citizens.
This is precisely a situation where libertarians branch away from typical conservatives in support of radical progressive policy. Paul Krugman is making a “they’re taking our jobs” argument and siding with conservatives.
Now, if you are saying that “violently restrict the movement of a particular group of people in order to preserve high wages for a privileged class” to be nuance, then yes, I don’t acknowledge it.
My goodness, this is a great comment
They pay careful attention to history, value the structures that work that they inherited from their forebearers (Social Security, for example), and try very hard to balance the risks of change with the risks of inaction.
I don’t think that’s conservative at all. By the time you’re trying to separate the traditions that still work today from the traditions that don’t still work today, you’ve not only admitted the fallibility of your traditions, but also arrogated to yourself the right to second-guess your forebears, which is two strikes against you from a conservative standpoint. If you then go on to advocate changing some of those traditions based on evidence and reason about the needs of society today that are different than in the past, you strike out of conservatism altogether and into something else entirely.
Tradition before reason is the core of conservatism; because, as a true conservative would say, the reason of any one person is suspect when it conflicts with the received wisdom of our traditions. Who are you going to believe, the Founding Fathers or your own fallible mind?
I have stopped feeling so guilty about disliking Palin, having learned from the latest Bryan Fischer column that my dislike is inspired by Satan himself.
This is frustrating.
Yes, liberals can be prone to automatically assigning nefarious motives to critics and opponents when the labels don’t really apply. I don’t want to bring up examples because I don’t want to argue, but it happens.
The problem is that, at this point in this political climate, if one was to take a conservative talking head at random, it would be far more likely that he or she is arguing from a position of base bigotry and hatred.
Instead of admitting that rhetoric in the country has gotten crass and heated and acknowledging their prominent role in it, they cry victimhood with overwrought references to extreme violence.
There is a self-sustaining political back and forth in this nation, and I think both sides are fairly complicit with it. Each side realizes that they raise their profile and rally their side to their defense by provoking the other side, and so both sides have a lot of individuals who look for nothing more than to provoke the other side.
Meanwhile, those who want legitimate, rational discourse are swept up in association, as it is nearly impossible to distinguish the genuine. And almost no matter how you look at it, there is no greater danger to society than when people can no longer differentiate between the genuine and the liars.
I’ll bet it’s frustrating for you, since it weakens your “both sides do it” argument. Oh, and if you don’t want to argue, don’t make an argument.
Yeah, its almost as frustrating as trying to figure out to respond to irrelevant dipshit responses like that.
Actually, you keep floating the “both sides do it” bit and then failing to back it up. If you don’t want the argument, as Dave S. has said, you might not want to start it. If you do want the argument, give us the examples and be prepared to rebut the counter-examples. This is a bit like the “ratio” question in a previous thread.
When I said I didn’t want to argue, I was specifically referring to individual instances of liberals rushing to judgments concerning their ideological opponents. I thought by extending the fig leaf that they were often justified in doing so because conservatives are so often pandering in hatred and bigotry might avoid that particular argument.
If you don’t think liberal commentators and politicians are sometimes too quick to assign evil motives to their opponents, I don’t think there is much point in arguing it.
Now if you disagree with this part:
I will argue, but so far no one has even expressed any disagreement with any part of my actual post. There isn’t even any gainsaying, it just went directly into an argument about me.
There is a large media structure in this country that is owned by wealthy people (surprise!) which will never give voice to leftist critiques of government or society because that would conflict with the interests of the owners of the media outlets. That’s why the “both sides do it” argument is at best disingenuous. Where are the leftists going to promulgate their opinions? On 8 1/2″ x 11″ photocopied pages stapled to telephone poles?
The equivalence argument is founded in falsehood: that there is equal access to media outlets. Hell, even Google responds to money.
I don’t really disagree all that much, outside the relative position of our two sides.
To that I ask, what particular leftist government critiques do you accept that don’t get media coverage?
To that I ask, what particular leftist government critiques do you accept that don’t get media coverage?
1) Well, we already discussed the School of the Americas here. I’d assume less than 5% of Americans have ever seen coverage of that.
2) The health-care “debate” never vaguely considered any actual “leftist” solutions – you know, the ones proven effective pretty much everywhere.
3) Ever see the phrase “American imperialism” in the major media?
I can go on and on in this vein.
To flip this around, can you name one single “leftist” (and that term is not in fact synonymous with DLC centrism) position ever given serious consideration by the major media?
What Malaclypse said.
If any network news figure came on television and pointed out that the increasing gap between rich and poor in this country is costing lives, and that our entire economic system is based on the exploitation of low-paid workers, that figure would be unemployed by day’s end. Hell, if a major media figure said that kind of stuff in private and it got out, they’d be unemployed.
So I have to ask–what is the point of your question, once again?
I would just like to point out that the radical libertarian right is in the same boat on each of these.
What libertarian philosophy as radical as your Marxist interpretation of capitalism is taken seriously by the media?
What libertarian philosophy as radical as your Marxist interpretation of capitalism is taken seriously by the media?
1) Tax cuts pay for themselves, because 2) it is your money anyway.
3) (as referenced in this very comment) Marxist economics and Keynesian economics are basically the same thing – SOCIALISM!!!
When did Keynes ever deal with this sort of political economy:
You do realize that Keynes was trying to save corporate capitalism, right?
He succeeded.
A number of capitalist economists have pointed out that a large gap between rich and poor is destructive–it’s hardly Marxist. It is merely the recognition of observable facts.
You do realize that Keynes was trying to save corporate capitalism, right?
Yes, Brad, I do realize that. So why did you refer to my (and I suspect Doc’s) Keynesianism is Marxist?
What libertarian philosophy as radical as your Marxist interpretation of capitalism is taken seriously by the media?
We’ve had thirty years of full-throated cries for deregulation, abolition of the income tax, abolition of inheritance taxes and abolition of such oversight as OSHA and the EPA. We got NAFTA, which deregulates movement of capital across borders. More recently, we’ve had mainstream figures advocating the idea of a property requirement for voting–that those who own the country should govern it. Then we get to the whole Koch fiesta.
We’re back to the ratio question again.
Wait, you consider support of NAFTA to be on par with full-scale denouncement of modern western capitalism?
No, NAFTA is more deregulation.
Don’t move the goalposts, Mr. P.
I think job Stewart’s analysis on the problems of our politics is the most accurate (and Matt Taibbi talks about in his latest book): the problem with our politics is that media and politicians tell us we are divided into Left/Right camps, whereas the truth is that we are divided in the Money Party and everybody else. Sure the everybody else party has 75% of the population (or more), but few of the politicians and none of the money and none of the media. The politicians profit from the Left/Right divide by being able to hide what they do and the media profits by making politics a “show” where people can tune in and watch their favorite team play.
Whole thing reminds me of the Blues versus the Greens in Constantinople c. 400-600 BCE. A few centuries from now, people will scratching their heads, trying to figure out why so much energy was spilled on Jermiah Wright and Jerrad Loughner and “Mission Accomplished,” while the real movers and shakers, the neo-feudalists, became richer and more powerful by the minute.
True, but incomplete: the Left/Right dichotomy actually does have something to do with the money party: the Left actually does attempt to oppose them and the Right does actively support their expansion. While Grand Guignol and tribalism are part of the picture, and distraction over non-issues is a tactic of the ruling class, the recognition of a ruling class that isn’t characterized by Volvos and Chardonnay is the work of the Left.
Once again, it’s very important not to fall into the “both sides do it” trap.
Evidently you are as ignorant of pre-60s economic thought as Malaclypse.
Keynesian economics is corporatism.
Brad, I have a fucking Masters degree in economic history, with an emphasis in macroeconomic theory. I know that is nowhere near as impressive as reading The Road To Serfdom while smoking weed, but we do what we can.
Love this comment.
Posted at 4:20, no less.
No fucking way!
You have a masters degree in economic history, and you would call this Keynesian economics:
…and then somehow seem to make the argument that Keynesian economics has no public exposure.
And even you would admit that mainstream conservatives pay no attention to Hayekian or other libertarians outside of poaching a half-argument here or there when it suits their political gains.
If you and Doc are gonna say you are Keynesian, then you have no right to say things like this:
Within the media and government, Keynesian economics is established orthodoxy. Hayek and other libertarian economists are treated as extreme even by conservatives.
If you guys had professed a taste for Veblen or someone of that sort of heterodoxy, this discussion may have had a purpose, but Keynesian economics are quite plainly not shun by the media or politicians.
Doc’s not a Keynesian; Doc is a pragmatist. Like you, I’ve read a whole bunch of different thinkers, from David Ricardo and Adam Smith to Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse to Denis Diderot and Peter Kropotkin. I’ve even read Bookchin and Ragnar Redbeard. And yes, I have read Veblen, thank you very much.
Unlike you, I don’t latch onto labels or make a great show of being a member of a group. Go back to Bentham’s Utilitariansim–”the greatest good for the greatest number”–and that’s as close as I have to a single philosphy, which inclines me toward socialism.
But to address your actual points: If you think that the current bunch of Republicans in Congress are Keynesians, I want some of whatever you’re smoking. You complain that “conservatives pay no attention to Hayekian or other libertarians outside of poaching a half-argument here or there when it suits their political gains” but fail to note that the exact same is true regarding Keynes’s ideas–and that Marx is still beyond the pale. (Even you use his name as a cudgel– Marxist interpretations of capitalism are only radical in the US; they’re common to the point of banality in Mexico, the EU countries, and, well, pretty much the rest of the world.)
So let me know when a mainstream US commentator is able to quote Marx approvingly (in a non-ironic way, as they do it at National Review), and when someone is truly vilified for quoting Hayek on a Sunday morning press-the-meat show. When those things happen, you might just have a point. Until then, enjoy the irrelevance of your agorism and the assistance it gives to the corporate interests.
I have three things to say:
1) You are absolutely correct that the far left (in American context) is too marginalized in US political discourse. I despise the Krugman style establishment left who basically sit around arguing for all the great things we can accomplish if we just leave the establishment alone to work.
2) I didn’t mean to use Marxism as a cudgel. Marx was the last gasp of the LTV, and in a sense I consider his economics a grand failure, but I personally don’t think any supporter of the free market should ignore his historical and social critiques of political economy.
3) I hope we find more common ground in the future.
Oof.
That’s gonna leave a mark.
I don’t necessarily fall into the “both sides do it” camp, but we shouldn’t confuse ourselves that there are tons of people on the left who support Chuck Schumer or Chris Dodd or any one of a million corporatist Democrats. Hell, the Tuscon is the perfect example. Next year, no one would know who this guy is, yet fo a week, the country has been screaming about whose camp he belongs in.
Meanwhile, Goldman and a couple of other banks are re-inflating the commodities bubble and pushing the cost of oil and food back up to ridiculous levels again. Demand hasn’t increased; supply hasn’t changed….why are prices rising? Somewhere hedge fund managers are giggling into their bank accounts
$50 says some cretin busts out 5000 words on the Holocaust of Hate directed at Palin within the next week.
No wait, MLK day is Monday. $25 on HoH, $50 on Modern Day Lynchings and Attempts to Enslave Her Free Speech.
How much for the Firebombing of Phlegm?
But the people who lived in Dresden and Tokyo were pure evil and thus deserved their fates! How is a firebombing an appropriate metaphor, don’t you know that Palin is a True Red-Blooded American, not some immoral furriner?
I think this is a planned-out “Overton Window” strategy, to say such extreme and offensive things that “the Republicans’ years-long campaign of violent rhetoric and gunfire imagery has nothing to do with actual political violence” become the reasonable, moderate position that everyone believes.
I find it more likely that Palin is an ignorant self-aggrandizer than a grand political mastermind.
And in keeping with the general sentiment on this board, I doubt portraying Palin as a schemer intent on bringing about a society of political violence against opponents is a particularly safe form of rhetoric.
Palon’s not the one putting forward the idea that “blood libel” means Republicans got their feelings hurt; Glenn Reynolds initiated it, and it got picked up by the right-wing press and amplified. Same thing with “death panels”. Palin isn’t smart enough to be a real player; she’s a gifted performer, but she acts mainly as an amplifier.
But it’s not just her. The “blood libel” phrase, as applied to liberal criticism of conservatives’ rhetoric in the wake of the Tucson shootings, didn’t begin with her, and now we’re seeing it ramped up further with the use of “pogrom” in the Moonie Times.
She’s just getting a lot of attention for picking up on a line of rhetoric that, in the manner we’ve all come to recognize as the workings of the Wurlitzer, quickly and mysteriously has become immediately widespread among the right.
There’s nothing mysterious about it, unless you want to call the recognition that wealthy and powerful people frequently act in concert “conspiracy theory”. The majority of media outlets are owned by a few corporations, whose on whose boards sit the same men (yes, mostly not women) as sit on the boards of other corporations (what that shrieking Commie Dwight Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex”), and the people who work in the major media pretty much know what their bosses expect of them.
The mysterious part is the number of rightbloggers who will work against their own obvious economic self-interest for free.
I would like to direct you to this OpenSecrets.org page:
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.php?cycle=2010&ind=B02
Comcast, NCTA, NA of Broadcasters, Time Warner, Cable Vision, News Corp(!), were all net democratic donors.
Is that inconsistent with what you have been saying?
Brad, in this country, the Democrats are the Conservative party. The Republicans are something else. A state that has no non-military functions (and that is the end state of the Republican platform) may be a lot of things, but conservative is not one of them.
Jonathan Schwatz said it best:
As always, dead on, Malaclypse
I think that’s better phrases as “The conservative party is a member of the Democratic coalition.”
You do see the deep green colour? That is the proportion of the contributions of individuals. Most of the money does come from individuals who just work for tehse companies. If I am e. g. a comedy writer for fox and donate for the democrats, that does nor really means corporate influence directed by Murdoch.
This message isn’t coming from “the majority of media outlets,” it’s coming from the explicitly right-wing, partisan media, pundits, and political figures – the Mighty Wurlitzer.
The corporate media is the arena for the spread of these ideas.
What is interesting is that the phrase “the Mighty Wurlitzer” to describe the press was coined by a director of the CIA in the 1950s.
I did not know that. Interesting.
Frank Wisner, Deputy Director 1950-1965
I doubt portraying Palin as a schemer intent on bringing about a society of political violence against opponents is a particularly safe form of rhetoric.
So true, especially when liberals couple it with repeated assertion of their first amendment right to peaceably assemble and petition. At a recent political event I saw liberals openly carrying clipboards loaded with petitions. One woman said she had a pen, and wasn’t afraid to let others use it to assert their constitutional rights.
Where one side keeps shoving their first amendment agenda in people’s faces, it’s only to be expected that others reply by urging a second amendment response.
Finally someone had the courage to point out that reasoned, political commentary is exactly as heinous as the targeted mass murder and destruction of an oppressed ethnic and religious minority.
Once we can make to proper apologies, then the healing can begin. This might take a while, since right wing grievances are much like black holes.
I don’t know if what was done to Palin is evidence of an “ongoing pogrom”, but it’s certainly was beyond the pale.
So close, so typo. But it was a good gag.
No-one noticed the same joke at SN!.
Yeah, poor dear. In Chicago and Minneapolis, the FBI is searching the homes of people who protest the war and hauling them in front of grand juries for “material support of terrorists” for having spoken out (thanks to SCOTUS’s ruling in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project), while Sarah’s go-get-’em exhortations have condemned her to the ignominy of a bigger media presence and more money flowing in. It must be awful to be her.
Cue the Fiddler on the Roof for a mournful strain…the gall of these people is bottomless. I am hopeful that at long last this will unmask the modern-day GOP for what it is; a party of bigotry, corporatism and mendacity. We can not hold a civil discourse with those who continue to insist that the Sun rises in the West and world is flat.
No, no, no! The God smiles on the West and the class structure is flat. Haven’t you been paying attention?
“TRADITION!!!”
The assumption we keep on making is that they’d want a civil discourse despite all the evidence to the contrary. They whine in the face of criticism for two main reasons. Their whines advance their politics by victimhood and ressentiment while also gaming the ref so that when they use uncivil rhetoric there’s no penalty.
Their spokespeople and audience don’t really care what the opposition says or believes, except to the extent that it provides material for their own rhetoric. The only people they accept as arbiters of the debate are on their side. The only time they seem to express contrition or acknowledge crossing a line is after Rush says it must be so. And lo, he’s the recipient of most conservative apologies.
Their game is one of attrition. They simply want to exhaust their opponents to the point there’s no longer a response.
It used to be that the mostly likely responses were righteous outrage or derisive mockery. Well, they’ve reached a point of such self-parody that the best material is all used up. Worse, any attempts at parody are likely to become reality in short order.
And it’s difficult to remain outrage in the face of such ludicrous behavior. It seems undignified to give them such an earnest response.
Responding in kind isn’t going to improve the situation. What’s left? Labeling the behavior and moving on?
That being said, does this mean Wasilla is a shtetl?
Well, if Chabon’s version of history were accurate, pretty much, yes.
I meant to quote the “does this mean Wasilla is a shtetl?” part at the start of my response. It makes more sense if you know what question I was answering.
But of course the mayor of Sitka was McAdam.
So Palin, by opposing McAdam engaged in Blood Libel and Progrom.
You just have to think like a right–winger: Combine the standards of Palin and a imaginary world.
Responding in kind isn’t going to improve the situation.
Very true. Also, the progressive ideology embraces diversity and as a result has more causes and goals than it has adherents. Responding in kind is just not possible… Progressives don’t stay on message. Some of them don’t like trying to paint others as enemies. Some of them are trying to face criticism honestly, instead of whining. Some of them like to limit their remarks to ideas they actually support. Etc.
“Responding in kind” is switching sides.
I love the smell of wingnut hyperbole in the morning. It smells like victory.
They’ve never figured figured out what to do when they’ve been out-classed.
They don’t know how to shut up or back down when it’s in their interest to do so.
Why would it be in their interests to back down? Because it’d be the decent thing to do? Since when has being decent mattered to them?
It would be in their interest so as to avoid looking, to everyone outside of their clique of fanatical supporters, to be precisely the callous, irresponsible, bloodthirsty, belligerent kooks that they are accused of being.
In short, it would be in their interest, because the image that they create for themselves is offensive of off-putting, in a manner that serves to confirm the existing narrative about their shortcomings.
I don’t know about an “ongoing pogrom”, but Palin certainly has been made a scapegoat.
Ooh, can anyone play this game?
The blood libels against Sarah Palin are part of an ongoing pogrom of crucifying her. What we are witnessing is a high-tech lynching of conservatives by liberal fascists. This is nothing short of a Holocaust.
Sarah Palin is the Walther Rathenau of liberal fascism. Criticism of Palin is just like the campaign against the kulaks.
I don’t want to be outdone here:
The Koch Brothers are sitting in their banana republic plantation are sending out their Stalinists, Jackboots, lynch mobs, and brown shirts to bring about another Kristallnacht and usher end to democracy in America.
But don’t worry, we can fight back against the rising fascist threat.
But don’t worry, we can fight back against the rising fascist threat.
because we all know there are no real fascists.
Mal,
Your ability to use individual criminal acts of violence to infer the beliefs of an entire political movement and then condemn them is incredible.
As for the actual tea partiers there, they actually did resist the desire to curbstomp the woman after her first aggressive confrontation with Paul. When Paul exited the vehicle, she went running after him and was intercepted, leading to the events that you are talking about. That doesn’t absolve those involved or make anything better, but at least the other Paul supporters quickly asked the police to intervene.
Your ability to use individual criminal acts of violence to infer the beliefs of an entire political movement and then condemn them is incredible.
How dare I judge people’s actions, rather than the beautiful thoughts in their minds?
at least the other Paul supporters quickly asked the police to intervene
Horse shit. They stood around cheering. It’s on the video.
Doc, in their heads, they were appalled. Brad already said we were not to judge actual actions.
Except that the Koch brothers are actually doing doing what George Soros is accused of by the right-wing press; it’s extremely well-documented, and even non-Cato libertarians recognize the tentacle-prints of the Kochtopus.
And gee, the rise of a party that uses populism and the threat of violence in a weak economy to seize power, aided by industrialists? A party with filled with white supremacists and militarists? A party that uses scapegoating as a central part of its electoral campaigning? That’s historically unprecedented!
(Okay, “populism” is the wrong word; “appeal to the yahoos” might be a better description.)
‘Poujadism’ works, but you have to have a frame of reference that’s more than just the USA and Hitler…
Telling the Teabaggers that they’re following a French political/cultural movement is a recipe for some high-decibel howling. I like it, I like it!
Don’t shift the goal posts, here, Doc.
We are talking about overblown, heated rhetoric specifically as it deals with historically persecuted groups.
Are any of those authors more justified to call conservatives jackboots, brownshirts, lynch mobs, and purveyors of Kristallnacht, than Sarah Palin is to reference blood libel?
“Shift the goalposts”? That’s pretty funny coming from you, ratio-boy. Conservatives are not by any means a historically persecuted group; quite the opposite, in fact.
Making accurate historical observations about the behavior of the American Right is not libel, and its not overheated. I would direct you to the work of Chip Berlet and David Neiwert. When you’re writing about people who are openly white supremacists and who use scapegoating to advance a law-and-order platform featuring lots of surveillance and strong support from industrialists, you’re writing about incipient fascism. That’s not hyperbole, and it’s not overheated rhetoric. It is a historical observation.
So its alright to call tea partiers jackboots and brownshirts because they are?
So its alright to call tea partiers jackboots and brownshirts because they are?
Well, they certainly don’t denounce the violent white supremacists in their midst (kind of like the Pauls, when you think about it).
Jackboots and brownshirts are articles of clothing, but yes, calling teabaggers fascists is quite accurate. They are members of a political movement that has all of the attributes listed above. It’s pretty straightforward.
What I find weird is that you–libertarian extraordinaire–defend them heatedly and at length. When guys like Fritz offer you fulsome praise, that should be an indication to you that you’re heading off into bad realms.
What I find weird is that you–libertarian extraordinaire–defend them heatedly and at length
They want taxes lowered. That is the penultimate libertarian principle.
The saddest part is there are academic disciplines and scholars devoted to fascism. Defining it, identifying it, and fighting it. And helping improve the rhetoric about it.
I don’t think it even crossed Brad Potts’ mind to Google “fascism” and try to come up with a list of salient characteristics that the tea party fails to meet.
I think that the tea party movement has not yet crossed into fascism but does display just a few of the key properties, as highlighted by the well-informed DocAmazing. Therefore, I do think that there is a reasonable case that rhetoric disapproving of fascism should be employed against them (depends on exact details).
hv,
FWIW, most of the serious academic stuff (i.e., published in APSR and the like) I’ve read regarding fascism comes to the unhappy conclusion that the word essentially means “a political ideology you don’t like”.
If you feel the wikipedia entry for fascism is inaccurate, Fritz, I suggest you improve it. One of the cool things about the internet is you can be the change you want to see.
Another cool thing: they have a whole process for smoothly handling trolls. So I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Edit the entry there, make it stick, and we will recognize it. Until then, there is certainly no disputing that Brad Potts has at least some material to form an argument, and he is choosing to employ none of it.
FWIW, most of the serious academic stuff (i.e., published in APSR and the like) I’ve read regarding fascism comes to the unhappy conclusion that the word essentially means “a political ideology you don’t like”.
Yes, Fritz, we get your pithy Orwell reference.
Statements like that are why I tend to defend tea partiers here.
Fritz, cites please? Because APSR, AJPS, and JOP do not seem to have anything relevant one way or the other on what fascism is. Most of the articles on the subject in those journals tend to be about the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany before WWII.
The most relevant work I know of if Arendt’s stuff on totalitarianism and fascism as one variant of it: while the theory is flawed it does have the benefit, as hv suggested, of providing a clear definition of fascism such that one could compare the the vision of the tea party movement to Arendt’s definition. By this definition, the tea party movement falls short of being facsist, but if they enacted their policies we would be closer to it than we are now.
In terms of pithy Orwell references, you should ask yourself, whom did Orwell think most likely to band together under the banner of fascism?
Of all the things that I could be doing with my life, editing Wikipedia is not a priority. As I tell my students, wikipedia is often a good place to start an investigation, but rarely would I want to end up there. I’m surprised that you consider it the last word.
In any case, I’m thinking most about Gilbert Allardyce’s piece, “What Fascism is Not: Thoughts on the Deflation of a Concept”. It appeared in the April 1979 (Vol. 84, No. 2) edition of The American Historical Review. It’s a good piece, certainly not the last word, but I think it lays out many of the fundamental problems.
My word, Fritz, it sounds as though you’d never heard of Robert O. Paxton ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400040949 ), who dissected fascism about as well as anyone has, and who provided an excellent thumbnail definition:
“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with trditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraint goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
Actually, I’m not surprised that you’ve never heard of him.
Statements like that are why I tend to defend tea partiers here.
And you wonder, Mr. P, why so many here consider you a troll…
Roger Griffin thinks that 1991 is a significant date in studies about fascism; he claims starting then, a consensus about the definition has formed.
But I’m not really inspired to post a bunch of links because I am more interested in the claim that there is enough out there to chew on for Brad Potts not to be a troll.
I regard that claim as established.
I don’t need to look up fascism to know how ridiculous the claims are.
Most importantly, the tea party bases its rhetoric in a vague belief that America is exceptional precisely because the government is unintrusive. Therefore it is diametrically opposed to the grand economic, social, and militaristic engineering plans of fascist leaders.
How do you think the Tea Party would have responded to the Autobahn, nationalization of the Reichbank and the drastic Keynesian spending under Nazi Germany?
The Nazis were as much a political success for their major Keynesian public programs and wiping out unemployment as they were for the German exceptionalism.
Therefore it is diametrically opposed to the grand economic, social, and militaristic engineering plans of fascist leaders.
Yes, I recall the dozens, if not hundreds, of signs at tea party rallys: “US Out of Iraq”, “No Blood for Oil”, “The So-Called Ground Zero Mosque Is Not A Threat”, “We Are a Nation of Immigrants – Repeal Arizona SB1070 Now”, “Repeal Prop H8″, and so on. The Principled Libertarianism on display was really quite impressive.
Prominent voices associated with the Tea Party have come out in support of expanded immigration, repeal of DADT, and Pentagon cuts, which is something we never would have heard from the conservative without the Tea Party.
And even if the Tea Party is weak on consistency, the Nazi party and other fascist movements tended to gain support and power from their massive Keynesian projects targeted at unemployment.
Prominent voices associated with the Tea Party have come out in support of expanded immigration, repeal of DADT, and Pentagon cuts,
Funny how the signs at the rallies all had the opposite take. Why, it is almost as though tea party leaders were willing to say anything they think their astroturfed followers want to hear!
Seriously, you think the tea party wants expanded immigration? The people holding signs “Take Our Country Back” and “No Spanish Spoken Here” and “Speak English, Morans!” like immigration?
How do you think the Tea Party would have responded to the Autobahn, nationalization of the Reichbank and the drastic Keynesian spending under Nazi Germany?
The Teabaggers already love the Autobahn, which we call the Interstate Highway System. When they bitch about taxes, one of the examples that they love to blather on about is that the roads have potholes and there aren’t enough of them and what the hell are we paying taxes for anyway? with the next bit being that we have a poorly-maintained Autobahn because we’re spending too much on the Untermenschen and the Auslanders.
Nationalization of the Reichsbank? That would be the Fed, already a done deal. The current Teabagger marching orders are to be suspicious of the Fed, but to leave it alone, because we need it to bail out the financial services industry, and even though we don’t like them and are suspicious of them, to go after them would be Communism.
Teabaggers and drastic Keynesian spending? “Get your government hands off my Medicare!”
If you’re looking for opposition to statism among the Teabag crowd, you are looking in the wrongest possible place. They loves them some government–just not government that provides services to the Untermenschen.
…the tea party bases its rhetoric in a vague belief that America is exceptional precisely because the government is unintrusive.
You display a troll-like resistance to educating yourself to participate intelligently, even at the request of others. What is the downside of becoming more informed, exactly?
In particular, the author I mentioned, Robert Griffin – yes, the one who thinks a new consensus on the definition of fascism emerged in 1991 – believes that new consensus centers around a “cultural” orientation (rather than governmental structures as you claim).
Ironically (as others have mentioned) the tea party’s commitment to smaller government is also suspect… so since all parts of your statement were goofy, it can’t really come back to bite you.
Magnificent!
Are you some kind of post-modern performance artist?
Yes, because there actually are people in the conservative movement who fit that description, whereas absolutely nobody has accused Sarah Palin of using blood of murder victims in a ceremonial manner.
teh awesome. you win the internets.
In a short period of time, the libertarians are gonna be appalled when the divorce comes between what is essentially the Republican base and their new libertarian brides. Good luck, Brad, because watching Rand Paul sell himself like the new corporate Republican he is, is gonna be damn entertaining.
For now, if you think Levin and Limabugh are libertarians, then you underestimate the power of the two party system in America. Fonzie has already learned that Boner lied to him. Only gets worse from here
The whole point of being a libertarian is not having to wake up from your dreams.
Fair point, but I like to think I can prod them toward reality. Instead of just pretending to be a wingnut, JUST be one. Jennifer Rubin is not having any trouble with that concept
My grandmother told me about the many times the Cossacks came riding into her village and put up signs saying “You’re racially insensitive and your rhetoric is inappropriately overheated for what should be a civil discussion!”
And to think those poor people thought they were escaping such violence and repression by coming to the New World. What have we become, America? What have we become?
win
I read that as Kossacks.
Do you really want to advertise your immunity to irony?
What kind of an idiot thinks it’s a good idea to link to an article written four months before the 2006 Congressional elections, featuring the thesis “those kids and their internets – when have they ever won anything?”
Next up on Fritz’s link list: a 1990 article about how those noisy bands from Seattle are nuts if they think anybody is going to listen to them.
a 1990 article about how those noisy bands from Seattle are nuts if they think anybody is going to listen to them.
That does seem to be the way they’re headed: “Someone said something in 1990! You’re just as bad as us!” (The implicit acknowledgment is, of course, never acknowledged.)
You say 1990, ignoring everything that is of much more recent vintage. It’s a new site, so we’ll see how much it grows.
I don’t think they’re trying to make the claim that you are as bad as us. In many ways, because of the hypocrisy, you’re much, much worse.
Of course, I think that American politics has always been heated and that people are getting bent out of shape over nothing. Now, I know that there’s some doubt as to whether it’s important to know what the Founders said, and forgive me if I make a fetish out of the Constitution, but from The Federalist #1:
In many ways, because of the hypocrisy, you’re much, much worse.
Yes, because it’s much worse when groups of pacifists opposing violence use violent imagery than it is when groups who proudly attend events with automatic weapons do … wait, no it isn’t. Hypocrisy doesn’t have any bearing whatsoever on the quality of the statement, except to those who are more interested in scoring points than making them.
In many ways, because of the hypocrisy, you’re much, much worse.
It only sounds like hypocrisy because you have no ear for nuance and no interest in rigor in specifying what statements you think are hypocritical.
For example, in the criticism of violent imagery in political rhetoric, it is generally understood that a few more details are required. For example, if Sarah Palin etched a violent speech into a rock and launched that beyond orbit, I think no one would be critical.
So let’s just think a tiny bit harder about when violent imagery deserves criticism. Once you meditate on those details, you will be enlightened about hypocrisy.
I think there’s still a lot to like about that article. In any case, it’s got Kossacks in the title.
It is always satisfying to have one’s prejudices confirmed.
It’s rather stunning that they accuse Krugman of participating in a pogrom, given his family’s history.
Halloween Jack is easily stunned.