It’s Still All About the Heritage

Walking the Plank, as it were, reminds me what a magnificent resources the blogosphere has in Tapped, a group of excellent writers with serious things to say about policy. The Plank is by no means as bad as The Corner, but lord, it’s not good. Today, Jason Zengerle allows that while John McCain may be beset by both sides of the evil blogosphere, at least he has the mainstream media in his corner, and that counts for something. We then find that those who thought Stephen Colbert was funny on Saturday night hold to a Stalinist aesthetic. Adam Kushner suggests that liberals were willing to tolerate Saddam Hussein, without pointing out that, before 1990, conservatives were so tolerant of him that they were willing to sell him weapons, give him advice on how to use his chemical munitions, and ignore his attack on the USS Stark. All fine and committed wankery, but I’d like to turn your attention to this post by Jason Zengerle.

I actually have a fair amount of sympathy for some Southerners who love the Confederate flag. I even once wrote a piece about them. For these people, the flag really is a representation of their heritage; perhaps more importantly, it may be the only thing in their lives that actually transcends their daily existence. Put it this way: if you’re a guy whiling away your days in Scotland Neck, North Carolina, the fact that your great-great-grandfather fought at Gettysburg–the only thing connected to your life that you ever actually read about in a history book–is a real source of pride. Therefore, it’s perfectly understandable that you’d express that pride by flying a Confederate flag, or putting a sticker of it on your car. And there’s nothing more unfair than being branded a racist for doing so.

Right.

I mean, it’s not as if anyone from the South fought in the Revolutionary War, or that there were any critical battles fought against the British in, say, Virginia. No Southerners fought in the War of 1812, or the Mexican American War, or really participated in any other event of historical consequence prior to 1861. The Spanish-American War was conducted entirely with troops from New England, and Southerners were banned from participation in the Army in World War I. And the school year always ends before you get to World War II, so it’s not as if anyone can be blamed for not feeling a connection to it. Was there a Southerner in Saving Private Ryan? I don’t recall…

So, while the South has been a part of the United States for 230 years, the only time worthy of historical note is the period between 1861 and 1865, where the slaveholding elite dragged the rest of the South into a war of treason in defense of slavery. If you wish to have pride in the South, it’s rather too troublesome to think of the Battle of Yorktown, or the Battle of New Orleans, or of the Southerners that fought in the Battle of Belleau Wood, or in the Battle of the Bulge, or at the Chosin Reservoir, or at Khe San. This is not even to mention the tremendous difficulty of developing a regional identity based around cultural and artistic contribution, rather than around war. How could pride in William Faulkner ever hold a candle to pride in your great-great-granddaddy’s experience at Gettysburg?

No, really the only option for Southern pride is attachment to the Confederate flag and its unfortunate connections with treason, rebellion, slavery, racism, and white supremacy. Pity the Ohio native whose great-great-grandfather fought on the Union side at Gettysburg; the only flag he can fly is the Stars and Stripes, and this clearly isn’t good enough.

Finally, while I allow the possibility that the fetishization of the Civil War in the South has meant that our hypothetical North Carolinian may know more about Gettysburg than any other event in US history, this is rather part of the problem, and not an excuse.

On the Uselessness of "Authenticity"

As many people have pointed out, Tom Frank’s review of Joe Klein is in fact pure gold from beginning to end. I think this is the key to understanding his worldview, and the core of Millionaire Pundit Values more generally:

Eventually, though, a discernible order emerges. But it’s less a coherent thesis about consultancy than a handful of prejudices that, for Mr. Klein and certain other writers still enthralled by the creaking swingerisms of the 60’s, stand solid amid the swirling oceans of history. The first of these is authenticity, or, I should say, the transcendent aesthetic and philosophical value of authenticity. This is something of a theme in Mr. Klein’s oeuvre: Years ago, he wrote a biography of Woody Guthrie, the Dust Bowl songwriter who came to personify proletarian trueness for the 60’s, so surely Mr. Klein knows the authentic when he sees it. And he claims that people used to see it often enough in the political realm.

[...]

This aesthetic quality, then, is what politics is all about. It’s authenticity that separates winners from losers, good politics from bad, and he-man leader types from consultant-directed puppet boys. Real politicians say honest and heartfelt and down-home things like “Turnip Day”; candidates who listen to consultants mouth shameful clichés and “banana-peel words.” (Of course, if authenticity is what’s required to win, and if what consultants do is strip away authenticity, then one wonders why anyone hires consultants in the first place, a mystery that the book never really resolves.)

The first problem here, of course, is that Klein’s concept of “authenticity” is just a feeble tautology; as even the sympathetic Times review points out it’s always retrospective. Winning candidates somehow always have “authenticity” and those that lose don’t. A few more hundred votes in Florida and Klein would be saying that Gore finally let his true self shine at the convention, and who is a scion of the East Coast elite like Bush trying to fool with his fake-cowboyisms and Potemkin ranch? And when a candidate is sometimes authentic but loses, then suddenly it’s no longer a good thing; then it’s a case of “Negative Turnip Days” or something.

But leaving that aside, there’s a bigger problem, which is that trying to discern “authenticity” is an utterly idiotic way of evaluating candidates. In this, DLCers like Klein are very much like Naderites like Michael Totten, who whined about mean Democrats who didn’t like it when you tell them “that Al Gore is a blowhard and a phony.” But the answer to this, of course, is that even if it’s true, who cares? Whether he’s a phony or a blowhard or was once mean to a girl in the fourth grade, what’s rather more important is that he wouldn’t pass massive upper-class tax cuts or pack the federal courts with neoconfederate cranks or launch disastrous wars etc. etc. etc. (And, of course, there’s the additional humor involved in someone voting for Ralph Nader because his opponent is a “blowhard.” Had Totten been alive in 1912, he would have voted for Taft because his opponents were too portly.) Klein and Totten circa 2000, for all their differences, believe in evaluating candidates with standards that might be appropriate–or at least harmless–for an elementary school student council election. To make Presidential politics about trying to replicate the moment in which Bobby Kennedy made you all starry-eyed is, in a fundamental sense, to not be interested in politics at all. And, of course, making politics about these silly personality issues, like passing notes about the pretty girl in the front row, is a luxury most obviously available to affluent white guys largely isolated from the consequences of bad government policies.

And for that matter, it should be noted that “authenticity” is completely meaningless in all contexts. There is a taco chain in Seattle with horrendously bland food; when we were arguing about going there, a friend of ours argued that “but real Baja food is supposed to be bland.” Well, fine, but again who cares? Bad food is bad food whether it’s made according to traditional recipes or not. Authenticity is only good if it involves faithful replication of good recipes–and even then, what matters is that it’s good, not that it’s authentic. Faithful replication of bad traditions is no virtue. Authenticity is always beside the point.

…Laura has more.

Letting al-Zarqawi Walk

Mahablog summarizes the evidence. But, obviously, when it comes to being Tough in the War on Terra (TM) actually stopping terrorists is so much less important than your willingness to violate the Constitution (with, needless to say, the collaboration of your friends in the other institutions unwilling to provide necessary checks) your opponent’s propensity for windsurfing, and stuff like that there.

And "Alabama" Was Such A Lovely Tribute To George Wallace

Shorter Verbatim John J. Miller: “The last time Young grabbed my attention was shortly after 9/11, when he come out with a song called “Let’s Roll.” I really, really wanted to like it. But it’s hard to get around the fact that it’s a plodding number. He could have written another “Rockin’ in the Free World”–a song that captured the spirit of 1989, as the Iron Curtain was falling, and a song that really rocked–but he stumbled badly with “Let’s Roll.”"

Yes, who can forget that song’s great celebration of the Iron Curtain falling. I believe this is this verse they originally planned to sing during 7th inning stretches after 9/11:

I see a woman in the night
With a baby in her hand
Under an old street light
Near a garbage can
Now she puts the kid away,
and she’s gone to get a hit
She hates her life,
and what she’s done to it
There’s one more kid
that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love,
never get to be cool.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world…

Yeah, I think that must have been co-written with Lee Greenwood…anyway, I’m not sure if this is as egregious as George Will turning “Born In The U.S.A.” into a love letter to Reagan, but it’s up there…

(Via Edroso.)

UPDATE BY ROB: I don’t think that this discussion could possibly be complete without John Gibson’s contribution.

UPDATE BY SCOTT: I see from comments that the Derb needs a history lesson aboit the Neil Young/Van Zant “feud.” I’ll turn it over to Patterson Hood:

And out in California, a rock star from Canada writes a couple of great songs about the
Bad shit that went down
“Southern Man” and “Alabama” certainly told some truth
But there were a lot of good folks down here and Neil Young wasn’t around

Meanwhile in North Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd came to town
To record with Jimmy Johnson at Muscle Shoals Sound
And they met some real good people, not racist pieces of shit
And they wrote a song about it and that song became a hit

Ronnie and Neil Ronnie and Neil
Rock stars today ain’t half as real
Speaking there minds on how they feel
Let them guitars blast for Ronnie and Neil

Now Ronnie and Neil became good friends their feud was just in song
Skynyrd was a bunch of Neil Young fans and Neil he loved that song
So He wrote “Powderfinger” for Skynyrd to record
But Ronnie ended up singing “Sweet Home Alabama” to the lord

And Neil helped carry Ronnie in his casket to the ground
And to my way of thinking, us southern men need both of them around

The other thing is that the Derb’s correspondent really seems to thing that Bush and the war remain so enormously popular that “the rest of the country” will be outraged. Talk about a dreamer of pictures…

Swords?

I don’t mean to pick on Ezra, but, after our recent experience with Josh “The Roman Troll” Trevino, you can color me deeply skeptical that the “Swords Crossed” project will amount to anything beyond hollow pomposity…

Ask a Wingnut: The Changing of the Horses

Dear Wingnut,

Kingdaddy has this post which says that changing leaders in mid-war can be a good thing. He’s wrong, isn’t he?

Confounded in Topeka

Dear Confounded,

Kingdaddy’s post is interesting enough, but his invocation of the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts is obviously ill-conceived. It is, of course, always acceptable to replace a Democrat with a Republican in the course of a war. Democrats are pussies, and can’t be expected to fight worth a damn. Once the Republican is in office, the rule about not changing horses in mid-stream applies.

Wingnut

Another Note on Conspiracy Theories

Some of the comments in this thread deserve a more lengthy response.

On the various question regarding one piece of evidence or another, it’s important to realize that conspiracy theories are, by their nature, impervious to evidence. If the government produced the flight recorder, and all of the data supported the conventional conclusion regarding United 93, it wouldn’t prove anything. If the plane really was shot down, and the government really did want to cover it up, then of course the administration would release a falsified data recorder. You could produce a hundred experts on plane crashes pointing out that passenger planes maneuvering violently at high speeds run the risk of breaking up, and the retort from the conspiracy theorist would invariably be that experts are easy to buy, or that evidence is easy to conceal, or that this other expert said something different. Moreover, the conspiracy theorist would be right; once the conspiracy has been submitted, no evidence can possibly be sufficient to disprove it.

The other argument that some have made is that, while it may be difficult to ferret out the precise motive for a cover-up, the Bushies are congenital liars and really are capable of anything. To an extent this is true, and there are many things that I would believe of the Bushies. But it does not follow that I must believe that everything Bush and Cheney do is tinged with deceit. I am capable of believing, for example, that there were serious problems with vote counting in Ohio (I don’t believe it made a difference, but I don’t think that people who do are out in left field). However, if someone began arguing to me that there was widespread voter fraud in Wyoming, my brain would shut down pretty quickly. Why would anyone ever risk stealing votes in Wyoming, even if they were otherwise deceitful? To me, it makes about as much sense as concocting an elaborate cover-up of the fate of United 93, which is none at all.

Now, if in a year some fighter jock turns up and produces conclusive evidence that he personally shot down flight 93, I will issue a retraction and apology. Until then, however, I’m sticking to my position that this is the first step on the road to madness.

Contrarian Centrism at its Best

If you need a perfect example of how non-sensical Slate’s form of knee-jerk contrarianism is, look no further than Lord Saletan’s article on gay and covenant marriage.

Fair enough. But the test goes both ways. In their foundational statement on marriage, Catholic, Baptist, and evangelical leaders claim to be defending it against cohabitation, divorce, and “diminishing interest in and readiness for marrying.” They call for “mentor couples” and “influence within society” to promote marriage. Can you imagine a more powerful influence than finding out that the gay couple down the block has a stronger marriage than you do? Can you imagine a more powerful way for that couple to earn society’s respect? Here’s a chance to get more marriage, less cohabitation, and less divorce. Is that what conservatives want? Or would they rather keep out the gays?

If anyone can show just cause why these two movements may not be joined together, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.

In other words, if we take a form of marriage that even Christian conservatives find idiotic (covenant marriage) and combine it with gay marriage, then everyone will be happy! Conservatives would love gay marriage if only the gays couldn’t get divorced!

How stupid do you have to be to write this kind of crap? Does Saletan seriously believe that conservatives are going to evaluate gay marriage based on the likelihood of divorce, rather than based on the notion, you know, that men shouldn’t marry men and women shouldn’t marry women? And why does Saletan think that gays are going to want to accept a far more legally onerous type of marriage than heterosexuals? Believe it or not, some gays just want to get married like everyone else; the point is that they love someone, not that they want to make political hay.

Saletan remains mired in this idea that for every political disagreement there is a compromise that will make everyone happy, and that if a Slate writer just thinks hard enough about it for a while, the solution will appear. It is a fundamentally unserious approach to politics.

UPDATE: In response to Patrick, I too wondered whether this article was intended as sarcasm. Let’s say that Saletan has not earned the benefit of the doubt.

Chilling Effect

The multi-million dollar federal lawsuit filed against blogger Lance Dutson for a post critical of the advertising agency hired by the state of Maine is indeed highly disturbing. As Jarvis points out, the most frightening part of the suit is its allegation that “Dutson also claimed, falsely, that WKPA is ‘pissing away’ Maine tax money.” In addition to being legally farcical under current First Amendment doctrine, if this type of claim can serve as the basis for a lawsuit any political blogger is under the constant threat of a major lawsuit. Hopefully they won’t sue me for libel when I note that Warren Kremer Paino should change their name to Deignan Advertising…

Occupied Britain

Interesting post and thread at Crooked Timber on the idea of a Nazi occupied Britain, based on an interesting article in the Guardian.

On the one hand, it’s important to note that French behavior wasn’t all that atypical of countries occupied by Nazi Germany in World War II. If the English Channel had not existed, Germany would undoubtedly have successfully conquered Great Britain and installed some sort of collaborationist regime. The French weren’t cheese-eating surrender monkeys so much as they were cursed by geography. On the other side of the continent, Russia prevailed over Germany only by giving up several France-sized chunks of territory. The French military defeat in 1940 was just that; a military defeat. All it revealed was that Germany had a more potent army and better intelligence than the French, and neither of these is, particularly, a moral or cultural failing.

However, I am inclined to think that Vichy was unusually poisonous for a collaborationist regime. Although fascist groups existed in Britain, I don’t believe that they ever had the strength that the right was able to claim in France. The Third Republic was a bit of a mess by 1940, riven by factions which had ceased to believe that they could work with the other side. The defeat of France by Germany was taken as a signal by the right wing factions that the left had finally led France to destruction. These groups saw Vichy as an opportunity to expunge the Third Republic, the Dreyfus Affair, and even the Revolution from French life. I don’t think that any British group had aims as far ranging, which suggests that the British collaborator government would have been somewhat less awful than the Vichy regime. Of course, I yield to any specialist on this question.

I also suspect that, because of the strength and relative independence of the British Empire, that a far more significant residue of UK fighting power would have continued the struggle. Neither Australia nor Canada would have surrendered to Germany, and both would have probably joined the US in its war against Japan. I would imagine that a significant portion of the Royal Navy would have passed to Canadian or American control, regardless of the neutrality of the United States.

Spanish speakers? They’re not really as American as the rest of us…

I seem to recall a little while ago that all the wingnuts were in a rage because immigration demonstrators didn’t wave enough American flags. Today, Dear Leader made clear that patriotism in Spanish just isn’t quite as good as patriotism in English.

That Bush’s claim is appalling doesn’t particularly surprise me. More importantly, it seems really stupid and hamfisted; how many of the people on the right who find this issue important are going to be swayed to vote by this? Bush has just made a symbolic identification of the English language with American identity. This is quite a bit different than making a practical argument (one that I think most people, including immigrants, agree with) that English is necessary to doing well in the United States. Moreover, it would seem a perfect issue for Democrats to use in the Spanish language media. The President has made clear that the Spanish language isn’t good enough to sing the national anthem in; by extension, Spanish speakers are second class citizens.

When you have to appeal to the bigots, you’re eventually going to step in it, and I think that’s what the President just did.