The Republican Dream World

Today on the DNR Board an interesting comment was made by one of the regular conservative commenters. I couldn't help but notice the use of some of the standard right-wing noise machine cliche/smears that appeared in the comments. Glenn Greenwald has a new book (linked below the fold) that shines the light on the Republican Dream World. I'm just getting into it and hope to have more commentary as I work my way through it. Meanwhile... The thread is here, and you might want to read the original letter to the editor inspiring the whole exchange here.

Comment:

"Certainly the Bush Deranged have placed all of their eggs in the "defeat in Iraq" basket, and if the latest military successes ultimately lead to a stable democracy; the BD will have another inconvenient truth to ignore."

Response:

Again, your grasp of the Republican dream world is breathtaking.
The Scene: A military or administration spokesman tells us that we should wait just six more months and then see where we are and then we'll re-evaluate our position. Meanwhile he states that things are improving, great progress has been made...(trots out a meaningless statistic that supports the dream scenario) so we REALLY need to just stay the course a little longer.

We (the Bush Deranged) get it! It doesn't matter that it will cost over 3 TRILLION dollars and thousands of lives. We simply can't accept defeat! Our nation crumbles around us, our economy goes in the tank, my fixed income is getting relatively smaller and smaller, but in the Dream World all is well! Keep lowering those taxes, damn the deficits, keep the boys in Iraq, shower the world with bombs of love, we're fighting for democracy, the American way! (flags are waving.)

Comment:

"That, in addition to fielding a candidate who advocated the banning of handguns, consorts with known terrorists and racists and engages in metatarsal marksmanship almost daily, makes this a fluid election environment."

Response:

Way to go! You get today's Golden Cliche Award for pointing out that Liberals are namby pamby wimps, cowards, and unpatriotic. You Rock!

Comment:

"The constant spinning and waterboarding of logic by the Obamarama crowd is rather telling in itself."

Response:

It's just the "reality based" viewpoint intruding on the Dream World. Yeah, I think the Dream World looks really groovy too. Meanwhile.... elect a Liberal who can actually understand the problems we face, can listen to a broad spectrum of input and actually put together a domestic "coalition of the willing." Look around.... it's happ'nin'.

The thread is just a small example of the willingness of the Republican conservative movement to push upon us once again the Dream World platitudes, the cliches, the false ideology, the hypocrisy of faux patriotism, and the flat out lying about Liberals and Progressives. The fact that this Dream World has become so entrenched in our political debate that it appears in the simple casual comments found on small town blogs is the proof of it's effectiveness.

Watch the debate on TV or look for examples of conservatives painting any and all Democrats with the brush of elitism, gentility, being out of touch and not being "real Americans" with "strong moral values." It doesn't matter a whit, that EVERY Democrat fits this Dream World stereotype. The hypocrisy is clear. Look for Republicans to be described as true patriots, draped in the flag, pronouncing how tough they are by fanning the flames of war, advocating torture, and sending "bad guys" to prison. Listen to the fawning media describe Democrats as "girly men" and, quite famously, "faggots."

Glenn Greenwald expresses it quite nicely in his new book "Great American Hypocrites."

The most important right-wing marketing method, as examined in Chapter Three, is the relentless effort to depict GOP male leaders a tough guys, real men of courage, and swaggering warriors. Conversely, Democrats and liberals are gender-confused freaks-their males are effeminate, soft weaklings, and their women are emasculating, controlling, threatening dykes.

It is the right-wing noise machine and marketing campaign that has dominated the elections since the era of Ronald Reagan. This type of blatant marketing, based on a Dream World scenario, has led us to the abyss that has been the Bush Presidency. Glenn Greenwald calls on us to point out the hypocrisy and deceit at every opportunity. Write letters and blog aggressively. Point out the cliches. Check the record and point clearly to connection between failed policy and Dream World ideology.

The Golden Cliche's

Well, after a series of editorials that actually showed some journalistic progress and well organized insight, the DNR has decided to try and sell a few papers. Partisan button-pushing has always been a tried and true method of getting attention and good ole liberal bashing, cliche spouting, partisan ranting, name calling, and stupid insults are once again on display in today's blog rant that trying to pass as an editorial. Go ahead and read it first here. Page 2....

"the Liberal Messiah opined"

Any particular reason to use this as a silly playground epithet? Never mind that the Messiah WAS a radical liberal... Jealous?

"the sermon continued"

So Barack is now a pastor? Must have been all those years in the pews getting hammered with fire and brimstone. What is it with pastors that annoys you sir? My daddy was a pastor!

"that truth does not mean the federal government must shove its snout into the matter"

Of course not. Remember! Small government, privacy, NO taxes, NO socialism. Of course also remember the exceptions, the military, the post office, the fire department, the rescue squad, National surveillance of private citizens, borrow money to fight a war so we won't have to raise taxes to pay for it.... This comment gets the Golden Cliche Award #1!

"signing book contracts and dealings with a crooked slumlord."

Ok we'll try and ignore that Obama CAN actually write a book, showing the amount of thoughtfulness and powers of observation missing in this editorial. And this comment gets Golden Cliche Award #2..... accusing a political opponent of dirty dealing.... ta da!

"America's Crackpot Emeritus"

This title or lame epithet, take your pick, is richly deserved and currently owned by your predecessor at the DNR. Pretty lame to try and change it now....

"career of spewing racist rhetoric about "rich whites"'

That sounds like a thoughtful analysis of oh,say, 20 seconds of a sermon spoken from the pulpit of a big city black church.... 20 seconds! Of course that's all that's necessary. This one is a simple "takes one to call one" cheap shot.

"his own colleagues, the politicians in Washington who, even as they setttle such crucial matters as how much water toilets can flush"

So much for the environment, the quality of water. For you, I know the most important use of water is flushing your toilet. I won't say what every one is thinking about why that is necessary. And of course, what is "setttle?"

"somehow can't find the time to stop federal bueraucrats'... (that would be bureaucrats) ...'from swindling the taxpayers with government credit cards"

Now WHEN did that happen? And WHY did that happen? Something about lax oversight and the government staying out of our lives, and hooray for spending our grandchildren's taxes?? Ladies and gentlemen I give you Golden Cliche Award #3 - Federal bureaucrats are incompetent!

And the Grand Prize for today's Golden Cliche Award for pots and kettles!

"Mr. Obama has enough worries without tackling problems he knows nothing about."

Of course, let Mr Editor's heros be in charge some more. They've done SUCH a good job!

There will be War...

From Think Progress today, a question directed at Senator John McCain:

Q: My question is, if you are elected president, will you reject the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war?

McCAIN: I don’t think you could make a blanket statement about pre-emptive war, because obviously, it depends on the threat that the United States of America faces.

Think Progress noted that the term pre-emptive war refers to a response to an imminent, measurable, and dangerous threat like the massed Egyptian armies on the Israeli border in 1967. The term preventive war in the words of Ted Kennedy in 2002,

By contrast, “preventive” military action refers to strikes that target a country before it has developed a capability that could someday become threatening. Preventive attacks have generally been condemned. For example, the 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was regarded as a preventive strike by Japan, because the Japanese were seeking to block a planned military buildup by the United States in the Pacific.

Glenn Greenwald takes it one step further in his denunciation of two popular political writers and calls preventive war a "war of choice" or "aggressive war." His comment:

As is frequently pointed out by historians and other scholars, the types of aggressive wars that McArdle, Drezner and their fellow establishment mavens support inevitably lead to exactly the sort of war crimes and pervasive government lawbreaking which they want to pretend doesn't matter. Here is what lead American prosecutor Robert Jackson said in his closing statement at the Nuremberg Trials:

We charge unlawful aggression but we are not trying the motives, hopes or frustrations which may have led Germany to resort to aggressive war as an instrument of policy . . . It merely requires that the status quo not be attacked by violent means and that policies be not advanced by war. . . .

The central crime in this pattern of crimes, the kingpin which holds them all together, is the plot for aggressive wars. The chief reason for international cognizance of these crimes lies in this fact. Have we established the Plan or Conspiracy to make aggressive war?

Aggressive war is the linchpin of war crimes and tyranny and inevitably produces them. And that's precisely the evidence that is now emerging as a result of the endless, aggressive war people like McArdle and Drezner supported -- the systematic implementation of a regime of torture and lawless detention by the highest levels of our government, the assertion of the right to suspend even the most basic Constitutional liberties such as the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the seizure of power even to break the law and to immunize the lawbreakers, and the ongoing willingness of our highest government officials to lie about terrorist attacks and the law in order to obtain still more unchecked power.

John McCain promised that there would "be more wars." Will these wars be "preventive?" Will he engage in the same rhetorical hysteria that we heard from the Bush Administration trying to convince us that Iraq was a "imminent, measurable, and dangerous threat?" McCain understands warfare. He understands strength. Will he continue to drag us through the "big muddy?" Is he the old fool that keeps telling us to "move on?"

The Muslim "Smear"

The picture of Obama in a turban; the idea of Obama attending a madrassa; the middle name Hussein that means "good" or "handsome;" are items, when taken as individual events are interesting, a little bit enlightening, or kind of like looking at a friend's photo album and scrapbook. In a political campaign however it would be an understatement to say that they become ammunition for attack ads.

Placed in the hands of radical conservatives who truly fear their perceived enemies, they become news items, paid political advertisements, and published innuendo that serves as a smoke screen to obscure, distract or smother a campaign. In the words of a local Republican Party operative and active blogger:

The tools of our trade aren't for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture.

A culture which evidently now includes the entire Muslim community. The idea of using a religious affiliation as racist propaganda, sadly, is not new or unique in history. It is however a current manifestation in our nation and in our community.

Barack Obama, the subject of this racism, is getting a lot of heat from the left for not speaking out more strongly against this blatant political profiling. There is an entire article by Naomi Klein in a recent edition of The Nation magazine about this problem.

The turban "scandal" is all part of what is being referred to as "the Muslim smear." It includes everything from exaggerated enunciations of Obama's middle name to the online whisper campaign that Obama attended a fundamentalist madrassa in Indonesia (a lie), was sworn in on a Koran (another lie) and if elected would attach RadioShack speakers to the White House to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer (I made that one up).

Klein goes on to say that

Occasionally, though not nearly enough, Obama says that Muslims are "deserving of respect and dignity." What he has never done is ... denounce the attacks themselves as racist propaganda, in this case against Muslims.

The central idea of the candidacy of Barack Obama is to try and heal the wounds of the Bush Administration and to mend the reputation of America in the eyes of the world, especially in the eyes of the Muslim world. While I'm sure that Obama will address the Muslim "smear" in more depth and with more passion as the campaign continues, it is an appropriate time right now to call out those locally who would try and use the Muslim religion as a political bludgeon. Those who would seek to use religious affiliation as a weapon of political "war," are using racist propaganda and fear mongering in its basest form. In an issues dominated campaign, to pull the Race/Religion Card is a simplistic attempt to hijack the debate, distract the electorate, and use fear to manipulate the elective process.

Be wary of any rhetoric that seeks to

use our powerful tools of conservatism for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of our Conservative Tenets, meeting every loose fact and distortion and unethical practice with the truth of our Conservative convictions.

especially when those "Conservative Tenets" include racism, religious bigotry, and character assassination by association.

The Law of Opposites... Golf and Governance?

The more they try to get it right, the more they get it wrong. Anyone who plays golf knows the rule of opposites. If you try to hit the ball to the right, it goes to the left, hit to the left, it goes right. If you try to hit UP on the ball it goes down, hit DOWN on the ball and it goes UP! This all defies conventional wisdom and is completely wrong in the annals of common sense.

Conservative ideology is filled with conventional wisdom, common sense, and the famous "gut feeling."

From Dan Froomkin:

"Asked on NBC's 'Meet the Press' whether he thought Iran was trying to develop a nuclear weapon, Hayden said, 'Yes,' adding that his assessment was not based on 'court-of-law stuff. . . . This is Mike Hayden looking at the body of evidence.'

"He said his conviction stemmed largely from Iran's willingness to endure international sanctions rather than comply with demands for nuclear inspections and abandon its efforts to develop technologies that can produce fissile material.

"'Why would the Iranians be willing to pay the international tariff they appear willing to pay for what they're doing now if they did not have, at a minimum . . . the desire to keep the option open to develop a nuclear weapon and, perhaps even more so, that they've already decided to do that?' he said."

Conclusion by rhetorical question. When have we heard that before?

You couldn't try and get it that wrong IF YOU TRIED!

From Dana Milbank via Dan Froomkin also in the WAPO on Monday.

Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post about how Kevin Rudd is one of the many foreign leaders who owe a lot to the president. Rudd unseated Bush favorite Prime Minister John Howard last fall.

Writes Milbank: "Bush may be a loathed figure in much of the world, but one group owes him a debt of gratitude: the many opposition leaders who came to power after Bush-friendly ruling parties were voted out. Howard took his place alongside Jose Maria Aznar of Spain (whose party was dumped in 2004), Italy's Silvio Berlusconi (tossed out in 2006), and Britain's Tony Blair (stepped aside in favor of a Bush-skeptical understudy in 2007). Ruling parties in Poland and Japan also paid for their leaders' friendships with Bush with big defeats.

"Bush's pariah status has turned his Coalition of the Willing into a retirement community and given the president an unusual role in the domestic affairs of other countries. In Australia, one of Rudd's predecessors as Labor leader, Mark Latham, got the top job after describing Bush as 'the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory.' He further described members of Howard's government as a 'conga line of suckholes' to Bush.

"Howard, in turn, expressed a view that al-Qaeda terrorists would be praying for a 2008 victory by Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular.

Reality has shown that the law of opposites applies here too when actually al-Qaeda is quite happy with the current regime and is rooting for McCain to continue the conflice for "100 years."

More from Milbank:

"Bush enjoyed this mutual affection. 'I can tell you, relations are great right now,' he said last year in Sydney, which was all but shut down by security measures needed to keep him safe."

I'm telling you, the harder you swing..... Here's one in the "Swing easy, hit it hard" category:

Pete Yost writes for the Associated Press: "The CIA leak probe cost $2.58 million, the Government Accountability Office disclosed Monday, wrapping up an investigation that ensnared Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff for perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI.

By contrast, as Carol D. Leonnig noted in The Washington Post in 2006: "Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr's investigations of President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica S. Lewinsky and his ties to the failed Whitewater land investment cost $71.5 million and took eight years.

But I know those guys were fighting harder and they just KNEW they'd find something if they could just hit it a little HARDER!

Here's one from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, describing the Bush administration line on Iraq: "So if the violence goes down, that is because of the success of the surge. And when the violence goes up, that is because of the success of the surge."

On and on... The smaller they try to make the government the more they spend to do it, The harder they try to win "hearts and minds" the more hearts and minds they lose, the more they try to get government out of our private lives the more they intrude, and the more religion they get, the bigger the sins they commit.

Oh that this dance be over....

The Right at War

This interesting post appeared on a local conservative blog last week.

The Left and the Moderates are unprincipled. It's dog-eat-dog out there. They don't fight fair. But we don't live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren't for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful tools of conservatism for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of our Conservative Tenets, meeting every loose fact and distortion and unethical practice with the truth of our Conservative convictions. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building the Republican Party back to its days of glory.

Evidently, we are at war. The "massively corrupt" culture is battleground and the enemy is the "Left" and, in a big surprise, the "Moderates." More enemies to shake their sticks at and wave their rattles to the sky. These folks need enemies! The more enemies the better! The Left wasn't good (or bad) enough so add the Moderates! Who's left?

There's a fiercely loyal minority still--not many, perhaps, but probably more than you think. We're holding on, not because of what we think we're going to get out of it, but because we're convinced of the true Conservative Tenets. If we were thinking of our own immediate self-interest, we would have left long ago.

This is the radical conservative movement in our District. Welcome to War! They are fighting a pitched battle, knocking their heads against the walls of culture, crying and bleeding, dreaming of virgins in conservative heaven... Only the pure will survive and only the chaste will win. Into the valley of the death!

This friends and neighbors is what passes for political discourse in the conservative neighborhood. The writer is an officer in the Republican Party. Using the war-like language and the metaphorical "us against the world" cult-speak, they're trying to warp the whole meaning of politics, public service, and civil discourse

...meeting every loose fact and distortion and unethical practice with the truth of our Conservative convictions.

My point is simply to shine some light on the conservative blogosphere and suggest that this is pretty normal for what passes as conservative political discourse these days. The fact that this blog is owned by an officer in the local Republican Party makes it an important measuring stick for the conservative viewpoint. It also suggests that this type of RedSpeak is how conservatives talk to EACH OTHER. I'm sure the conservative readers of the blog pretty much agree with the writer, and usually jump to each other's support at every opportunity.

The good news is that, this is easily recognized in the media and in the Blue Blogosphere and dismissed as simplistic jingoism. It's always interesting to check in and find out what the conservatives are thinking though and how they are girding themselves up against their many perceived enemies, a constantly growing list.





Swift Boating Part II - The Local View

Swift Boating - embellishing a sliver of truth with innuendo, exaggerations, falsehood, and intimidation; often used in political campaigns as a tool to gain control of the election process; generally recognized as a pejorative description of a political attack or smear.

From Glenn Greenwald of Salon Magazine, constitutional lawyer and blogger:

"By far, the most significant pattern in how our political discourse is shaped is that the right-wing noise machine generates scurrilous, petty, personality-based innuendo about Democratic candidates, and the establishment press then mindlessly repeats it and mainstreams it."

The Right Wing Noise Machine knows that an aggressive attack can cover all sorts of sins. Divert attention, obfuscate, blow smoke, obscure, and distort the debate. Use innuendo, embellish the facts, change or ignore the context. In their "normal" discourse with EACH OTHER and in the media, they regularly engage in what the military refers to as "demonizing the enemy." In the military this helps soldiers get ready to kill.

In politics demonizing your political opponent serves the purpose of minimizing or diverting the debate through intimidation and threats. The less talk of the issues and the less we focus on the ideology of the radical conservatives the more likely they win. What is it that they don't want to talk about? Why are they so fearful of open debate and why do they insist on using such aggressive attacks in all political settings? We should be wary of anyone who uses intimidation and threats to gain political advantage.

The good news is that all of these playground style attacks and attempts to intimidate can be simply swatted away as insignificant and ultimately futile tactics. Simple re-focus of the debate and respectful consideration of the issues involved does the trick every time. Unfortunately, as we have seen repeatedly over the past decade or so, when these attacks DO gain traction the ENTIRE debate is hijacked and the ATTACK becomes the news instead of whatever issues of politics and governance are involved.

The prime example recently is Barack Obama's response to the Fox broadside trying to play the race card against him. Obama's speech was exactly the correct response. He respected the issue, considered the issue in a historical and political perspective and spoke to us as a mature, strong leader. As a result the attack has melted away. Remnants linger in the press and in the blogosphere precisely because of the effectiveness of Fox's media assult. THAT'S WHY THEY KEEP DOING IT.

Locally, conservative bloggers have been largely frustrated in their attempts to hijack the debate, though not for lack of trying. None of their rumor-mongering, innuendo, or back channel mud-slinging has made it out of the blogosphere. The District 6 Democratic Congressional campaign has been a pretty clean affair. I've seen a few attempts to throw the mud behind the scenes with little or no effect, but much to their credit, both candidates have run unrelentingly positive campaigns. Open debates and honest respectful discussions of the issues will ultimately give us the best candidate in our district to go against the Republican candidate in the Fall.