Mission Accomplished: Funding Battle Highlights American Embrace of Moronitude
ORLANDO–I’m against the war. Who isn’t? (Maybe the two percent who tell The New York Times/CBS poll that Iraq is going “very well.”) But this column isn’t about the war. It’s about logic.In his new book Al Gore argues that Americans are losing the ability to, well, argue. “Reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions,” claims the President-in-Internal-Exile. Never mind left versus right; irrationality has become so prevalent that outlandish jingoism and sentimental lunacy have displaced reason as the framework of our national dialogue. What passed for debate on the latest funding bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan makes a convincing case for Gore’s thesis.
The 2006 midterm sweep was widely interpreted as an electoral mandate to end the war. Democrats were supposedly now in the driver’s seat on Iraq. So why do they keep steering right, as if November never happened? Despite Democratic control of both houses of Congress and polls that show widespread contempt (76 percent) for the war and Bush (63 percent), party leaders felt they had no choice but to give Bush exactly what he wanted: another $100 billion, no strings attached.
Even for the majority that believes invading Iraq was a mistake, there are several reasonable, even liberal, arguments for staying the course: preventing a bigger civil war, keeping the conflict from spreading into other Middle Eastern nations, honoring our commitment to rebuild a country we’ve destroyed, the superpower’s strategic imperative of flexing its military prowess just because. Logic, however, never entered the debate. Instead, an absurd rhetorical turd carried the day, among prowar Republicans and reluctant Democrats alike: supporting the troops requires funding the war.
“Like it or not, we ran out of options,” said David Obey, the Democratic chairman of the House appropriations committee. “There has never been a chance of a snowball in Hades that Congress would cut off those funds to those troops in the field.” Even Hillary Clinton, one of just 14 senators who voted no, said she’d thought “long and hard” about her vote because she wanted to “do everything we can to protect the troops.”
Remember, this isn’t about war–it’s about logic. Cutting off funding would do nothing to jeopardize U.S. troops fighting in Iraq. That’s obvious. It would, of course, endanger the war itself. Without Congressional appropriations, Bush would be forced to bring them home. Which would make them, despite the reductionist and false 2003 GOP talking point that the streets of some U.S. cities are more dangerous than Iraq, safer. A lot safer.
Both parties, with the media playing along, have painted a bleak, transparently ridiculous portrait of besieged American soldiers, surrounded by rabid insurgents. It’s The Alamo 2007, or maybe 2008, and our brave young men and women go down, fighting to the last man (or woman) until they run out of ammo, cursing Washington politicians for failing them. Save the last bullet for me, buddy!
It is baffling that this fiction prompted any response from the media, or Democratic pols, beyond dismissive laughter. The fact that it carried the day in a Congressional vote, without even a word of comment from national barometer Jon Stewart, stands as testimony to the triumph of what Mike Judge termed “idiocracy.”
“Thank goodness we are finally here,” Republican Congressman John Boehner said in reference to the Democratic agreement to support the war, “choking up” for C-SPAN. “Three and a half months [the time spent on the debate] to respond to our troops and their families is too long,” added his colleague Roy Blunt. What are they talking about? The troops don’t need or want the appropriation. They get a paycheck whether they’re stationed in Iraq or here in the States. The Congressional appropriation in question goes to weapons manufacturers, contracting firms such as Halliburton, and Iraqi tribal sheiks in the form of bribes. The troops don’t see a cent, much less their families.
What puts our troops in harm’s way is the war. No war, no worries. Sure, Iraq falls apart (faster). Sure, Iraqis die (faster). But lost in the malarkey is the brutal truth: Voting for more money for the war means more troops get killed and wounded. Again, there are valid arguments for subjecting them to these risks. But there is no logical basis for the claim that the money will make them safer.
Stupidity isn’t new, but the willingness of a culturally sophisticated and technologically advanced society to swallow such obvious hogwash brings it to a higher plane of moronitude: We’re smart enough to know better, but we choose not to. A striking symbol of such willful idiocy takes the form of a new Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. The $27 million facility posits that the Earth is barely 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were created on the sixth day, and Jesus is the savior who will one day repair the trauma of man’s fall. Fossils, the museum teaches, are no older than Noah’s flood; in fact dinosaurs were on a section of Noah’s ark…There are 52 videos in the museum, one showing how the transformations wrought by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 reveal how plausible it is that the waters of Noah’s flood could have carved out the Grand Canyon within days.”
Hipsters are driving rented Zipcars to Kentucky to revel in smirky awe at the cheese of it all, but there’s a serious reason fundamentalist churches spend $27 million on such propaganda: It works. A new Newsweek poll finds that 48 percent of American adults don’t believe in evolution, and “one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact.”
Back among the chattering classes, the war=troops trope has outlived the funding battle. Attacking Democratic presidential aspirants Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, John McCain decried their votes “against funds to support our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.” I wonder: Is McCain that stupid? Or is he a liar who knows he can count on a brainless public not to call him out?
COMING SOON: I return to Central Asia.
Ted Rall is the author of the new book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of
© 2007 Ted Rall
I would trust the Iraqis to know what’s best for them. Over 80% of Iraqis want the U.S. to just leave. They’ve had four years to see how much the US can contribute to rebuilding their infrastructure. They’ave had four years to see how much US forces have done to lessen civil war tensions.
In fact, there are many reports that US forces are behind many of the so-called insurgent attacks.
What if we withdrew all our forces and the violence wound down instead of up? That would be telling, wouldn’t it?
So, I reject the assumption that the US forces can do any good whatsoever in Iraq as pure speculation, not something to be “sure” about.
America embraced moronitude when it elected the biggest moron of them all: George W. Bush.
Ted Rall: Jon Stewart has repeatedly commented on the absuridities of the funding debate.
adamsrw: Bush wasn’t elected.
For a normally very sharp commentator, I am surprised the Mr. Rall would buy into the argument that America is doing some good by staying in Iraq. The argument that Iraq would fall apart faster and more Iraqis would die if US troops left, seems to me to be no more valid than the “funding the war = supporting the troops” falsehood. It is just more propaganda to prolong the occupation.
As Clark points out, it is just as likely that Iraqis would be capable of rooting out the terrorists among them (the ones that now take advantage of the chaos of the war to attack civilians) and getting their country back to a function state, once the common enemy - the US occupying army - is gone.
Of course that won’t happen because the US has invested too much capital and prestige into this military adventure and its ruling class (both political parties and the corporate media) will say and do whatever insanity is required to hang on to those military bases and the possibility of one day grabbing all that oil.
Zsolt, Rall is sketching out rational arguments which could be offered but aren’t. He isn’t embracing them as his own.
Ted, the problem is far deeper than what you term “moronitude.” It includes aspects of group dynamics, and an individual’s attitude to action.
It is common for an individual to equate “doing the right thing” with “avoiding the wrong thing.” Such an individual determines what is right by avoiding breaking any rules espoused by the social group to which they belong.
For instance, if a group’s dynamics requires the belief “a good Christian does not believe in evolution,” then it becomes “wrong” for a member not to espouse it, even if there is enough evidence to falsify the belief. This is why you see many evangelicals proselytizing that they do not wish for their fellow unbelievers to go to hell. However, rarely do they question whether it is moral for a deity to send anyone there in the first place. The argument reduces to “Hell=bad; avoid doing anything to go to hell.”
To change the aptitude for “moronitude,” it is incumbent upon those fortunate enough to realize the difference between “doing right” and “avoiding wrong” to help change a society’s attitude to action.
Ted nails it again.
It’s political discourse by catch phrases. To date, the predominate method of mass communication has been television. With television you have at most 30 seconds to make a point. Thus it becomes a battle between short phrases.
The Iraq situation is way more complicated than a few words can convey. But don’t expect Bush to utter anything more than a few words.
Bushism prevails because Bush is in fact moronic while Congress is indeed imbecilic and at least 97% of US are abject idiots. THAT puts Bush on top!
BUSH WAS NEVER ELECTED. I’m tired of hearing how stupid Americans are for electing him when we know that wasn’t true in 2000, and as the article below argues, it wasn’t true in 2004. We are, however, living under the thumb of corporate elites who run this dog and pony show as if it were a ‘democracy’ when, in fact, it is plutocracy if not a fascist state posing as a democratic one. We are, it is clear, in a bad situation. Getting out in the streets is one response to this, using what freedom we have left to resist. Perhaps this will come to a ‘contingency moment’…
A Corrupted Election
Despite what you may have heard,
the exit polls were right
By Steve Freeman and Josh Mitteldorf
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1970/
Recall the Election Day exit polls that suggested John Kerry had won a
convincing victory? The media readily dismissed those polls and little has
been heard about them since.
Many Americans, however, were suspicious. Although President Bush prevailed
by 3 million votes in the official, tallied vote count, exit polls had
projected a margin of victory of 5 million votes for Kerry. This unexplained
8 million vote discrepancy between the election night exit polls and the
official count should raise a Chinese May Day of red flags.
—-
SNIP
Perhaps the Democrats odd behavior is caused by the fear of what one person, Joe Lieberman, might do.
test
“Voting for more money for the war means more troops get killed and wounded.”
“there is no logical basis for the claim that the money will make them safer.”
The exact opposite is argued passionately by certain politicians every single day.
They have nothing but contempt for the voting public or democratic mandates to govern intelligently.
“How can I look good for (re)election?” goes before “How can I protect our brave men and women?”.
All the more reason to vote for Al Gore.
In my opinion with all that is known about Bush (or in some cases not known like his military records) the election should never have been close enough to steal. When I talk to friends and relative (well, actually most of them dont talk to me anymore) they listen to right wing talk shows and spout the bumper sticker logic as if it were their own. Knowing that most of them read no books or newspapers I know they havnt an original thought in their head-certainly nothing logical. They like the emotional appear of nationalism-sounds good, feels good. They like and defend our concentration camps and torture in Cuba. They would not protest if we pursue another “final solution”. In the background I can hear the music of nationalism and ethnic cleansing. Maybe the swastika will make a come-back.
I was just thinking some of these exact thoughts on my walk to work this morning. Idiocracy …a film every American ought to see.
Scariest point of all: “A new Newsweek poll finds that 48 percent of American adults don’t believe in evolution, and ‘one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact.’”
If these numbers are true, the situation’s hopeless.
The situation is much more hopeless.
We don’t hear about polls which would measure how many
Americans have ever heard of Social-Democracy and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1% - a guess), have a different religion than “My boss is my Lord), believe that intellectual curiosity is a good thing and that knowledge is important. I can continue endlessly.
Any parent capable of using logic and reason is aware that children are no longer taught to think - they are actively discouraged from doing so by today’s education system.
I’ve known this for over 40 years [when I broke the TV, forcing my kids to read for entertainment]. So why is Al Gore, or anyone else surprised at the level of idiocy in Congress or the Administration.
Did anyone see even a hint of intelligence lurking in Gonsalez’ gaze? Not just at the latest hearings, but ever?
Shifty? Sly? Dishonest, but I’ve yet to hear any critic accuse us of being duped by the ‘best and the brightest’. Truth is, they’re a reasonable reflection of the public that puts up with them.
Harried, pressured, ignorant, lazy, and spoiled.
That’s why we seem to get along with each other, the average Joe Blow is to busy being entertained to worry about a group of left-wing fanatics who actually read books without pictures!
If they ever decide we’re a threat, we’ll be spammed out of existence. I’ve seen it happen on other boards…
Perhaps there’s something in the water.
Could be the water and the air. However, generally speaking, I think it’s plain laziness and tradition not to question or look further when your folks brought you up a certain way and by God Reading takes effort. Plus you might be someone who has to work 12 hours a day just to survive. People feel good if they can convince themselves that there is no need to ever look into it, someone else will.
You know its a moronathon when superstition beats science and jingoism beats logic.
Frankly, some know this much earlier – when they hear positivity/negativity/troublemaker/whiner/team work/productivity, etc. talk.
By the way, how many are familiar with the name Stakhanov?
The easiest way to counter the “Support the Troops” mantra, is to inform citizens what the money is being SPENT on.
How is building 104-acre permanent bases in Iraq supporting the troops? How is paying for 50,000 mercenaries engaged in combat operations, not in the military, supporting the troops? How is spending billions on 104-acre American embassies supporting the troops?
Don’t support Blackwater mercenaries. Don’t support permanent bases in Iraq. Don’t support contractors scamming tax-payers in Iraq.
If the anti-war movement wants to reach out to idiot America, maybe a good message would be that “IRAQ = PORK”
Flag-waving middle-America might be too stupid to understand that the American army is a ‘destabilizing force’ in Iraq. But Americans understand TAXES. They understand PORK. They understand war COSTS MONEY.
Tell them… “They done spent all yous taxes on apartment buildins’ for them mercenaries to kill us some Iraqis… but it ain’t worth it, y’all. Ain’t you kids get a college edumacation with thats funding of war and stuff.”
Americans are the most ignorant people on the face of the earth. They wave the flag and sing their warmonger anthem, and think they’re a peaceful nation for the betterment of humanity!!! Amazing what American propaganda has achieved.
USA is #96 on the list of peaceful nations…out of 121. That says it all. They should have been last!
“By the way, how many are familiar with the name Stakhanov?”
What is your point, comrade annac21?
Besides, America is a land of plenty, hence why morons should be in short supply: they need neither plowing nor planting, they are growing by themselves.
I’m against the war. Who isn’t? etc. etc. That sort of logic had some merit before shock and awe. Not to mention the ten years of UN sanctioned “No fly Zone”. With shock and awe a line has been crossed and one does not or can not walk off the field as if this were game of cricket. Life is not totally unfair even in this day and age. The piper must be paid.
Americans are no more moronic than anyone else. You want proof, come here to Australia. Top to bottom fuckwits. Last election, the government stood on a platform that the first thing it would do was pass legislation to make it easier for firms to sack workers summarily without needing a reason. Working people queued up to vote for it. If you can convince people to endanger their livelihood for little or no reward, you are either a master manipulator or the people you’re convincing are morons.
“What puts our troops in harm’s way is the war. No war, no worries.”
Sorry, Ted, but what puts and keeps our troops in “harm’s way,” (if only we could only catch this “harm” who’s way our troops keep getting in front of,) isn’t “the war” because, as you well know, THERE IS NO DAMN WAR! There was an ILLEGAL AGGRESSIVE INVASION followed by an ILLEGAL OCCUPATION. Since “the people” have been literally brainwashed into believing the USA is at war with anybody thanks to four years of constant “war war war,” accusing them all of mass stupidity is a generalization that fuels apathy.
Follow the motive, not just the money. Politicians who pretend stupidity, or sincerity, or whatever have clear plans and agendas. Remember, President CocoBananas does not even have a Texas accent. It’s fake (notice no other Bushie talks like a hick moron.) No one here in TX sounds like him, and the chances of retaining said accent after Andover, Harvard and Yale are nil. No, Rove knows that stupid is the greatest stealth cover of all, and more and more politicians are starting to realize that acting stupid (and suffering from chronic amnesia) can cover a lot of dirty tracks and tricks.
Adamsrw (near to the top). You actually believe Junior Bush was elected!
The United States has no intention of leaving Iraq. Ever. The Republocrat swine in office will conduct an Orwellian war in perpetuity where the federal treasury will be looted and the Dow Jones will go through the ceiling. Time for something more than words.
President Bush building vast bases and a vatican style embassy in iraq puts a lie to his previous statements, ‘when they stand up we’ll step down’.
Iraq is the base from which to bring chaos to the middle east.
Sociopaths have taken over our government and methinks this was accomplished from long term planning and promoting their kind to high level positions in all government positions including DoD and CIA.
Frank1569: Well the stupid act sure worked for detective Columbo! Dr. Zen as per the behavior of Australians: what we are seeing in many “civilized” western nations is an all-out power grab by the small moneyed ruling elite. They are using numerous and diverse strategies to render of our modern world an equivalent feudalism, where they have become the land owners and the rest of us serfs. As recent articles about the WTO and World “free” trade demonstrate, the sovereign laws of nations are breaking down to facilitate a mafia-like style of commerce among those with the money to buy off or buy interests. Media, especially entertainment, has become the “new opiate” of the peoples and for a great many caused them to stop seeking truth or taking active positions. Sure, there IS a laziness factor, but there is also a mass style hypnosis at play. Most people need to belong and feel great pain if they are labeled outsiders or “untouchables.” Thus the power of conformity to shape attitudes, outlooks and behaviors cannot be underrated. Media sets the “standards” and when those who control media also have a stake in authoritarian style government, they use sports, religion and other social venues to shape the public. It’s not just stupidity, there’s a whole lotta subliminal activity going on here.
Are Americans stupid enough to accept a permanent president after he drops a nuclear bomb on Iran?
I think the idea is to create a permanent enemy to our empire, our national interest, and have emergencies that will deliver us a permanent political power elite, namely Republicans.
Sounds like Rove’s next logical move.
Zsolt
“The argument that Iraq would fall apart faster and more Iraqis would die if US troops left, seems to me to be no more valid than the “funding the war = supporting the troops” falsehood. It is just more propaganda to prolong the occupation.”
Well, there is some truth to it. The idea is not to withdraw our troops but to have the international community intervene. There is absolutely no policy from the US government which is even inviting the international community. The fact is that no nation would want to enter this quagmire unless there is some sort of gain involved which the US government does not want to share with anybody. So we will have to go through the pain of watching civilians and troops die endlessly while the Congress presses for benchmarks such as the hydrocarbon law which when passed will fulfill the main goal of this war. We are used to believing that Republicans are all about oil companies which is not true. Dems get a lot of funding for their campaigns from oil giants as well so there is absolutely no reason why Dems will vote against funding the troops. Besides, as this article pointed out, we are living amongst a bunch of stupid people who get swayed away by powerful rhetoric about bravery, freedom and democracy. Dems don’t want to look like a bunch of anti-war pussies while the Republicans are talking tough!
WE NEED A NEW PARTY AND MORE PEOPLE LIKE KUCINICH!!
americans are stupid, moronic, apathetic, misled, misinformed, ignorant, self centered, not active enough and on and on. i sure am tired of being stereotyped.
Congress is afraid that some day there will be another “boom-boom” (tear-wrist attack) and anyone who did not see US aggression as the solution will be out of office.
Every detective realizes that it’s necessary to understand your adversaries’ motivation. As long as we maintain US bases in the Middle East, we won’t be “safe”.
In the meantime, the best way to stop this war isn’t reason, it’s to get the people of this country to pony up and pay for it. Since the Republicans abhor taxes, let them chose between new taxes to pay for the war or ending the war. Since this is supposed to be a war to span generations, as Cheney said, then we can’t expect to pay for it as a rainy day, off the budget, item. It’s sad to equate lives with money, but money is the only thing that will get the people to look up from American Idol long enough to get concerned.
I retract the elected statement. No. I don’t believe blunderBush was truly elected. However, there were so many morons who voted for him it made it much easier to steal the election.
Speaking of morons. I’m curious to know if our urban cowboy is going to make a visit to the creation museum? I’m expecting to see the picture of him when he spontaneously jumps on the back of a T-Rex waving his cowboy hat yelling Yahoooo.
Has there been a study to see if high CO2 levels effects human brain activity? Maybe that’s why we’re such morons
It is traditional, when the machinations of the elites cause a lessening of prosperity in certain clases who were formerly recieving at least some governmental amelioration of economic inequality for their children, with a very diminshed hope of any meaningful inheritance, to join the Army or Navy and seek their fortunes there.
So Americans are simply doing what peasants everywhere have done. And for those children of diminshed domestic expectations, we need a colonial war to send them to.
Otherwise the damned kids would never move out, the slackers.
To quote Bugs Bunny:
WHAT A MAROON!!!