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Arizona Debate: Conservative Chickens Come Home to Roost
How about that race for the Republican nomination? Was last night's debate crazy, or what?
Throughout this entire process, the spectacle of these clowns thrashing each other and continually seizing and then fumbling frontrunner status has left me with an oddly reassuring feeling, one that I haven't quite been able to put my finger on. In my younger days I would have just assumed it was regular old Schadenfreude at the sight of people like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich suffering, but this isn’t like that – it's something different than the pleasure of watching A-Rod strike out in the playoffs.
Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich at the Republican Presidential Debate in Mesa, Arizona.
No, it was while watching the debates last night that it finally hit me: This is justice. What we have here are chickens coming home to roost. It's as if all of the American public's bad habits and perverse obsessions are all coming back to haunt Republican voters in this race: The lack of attention span, the constant demand for instant gratification, the abject hunger for negativity, the utter lack of backbone or constancy (we change our loyalties at the drop of a hat, all it takes is a clever TV ad): these things are all major factors in the spiraling Republican disaster.
Most importantly, though, the conservative passion for divisive, partisan, bomb-tossing politics is threatening to permanently cripple the Republican party. They long ago became more about pointing fingers than about ideology, and it's finally ruining them.
Oh, sure, your average conservative will insist his belief system is based upon a passion for the free market and limited government, but that's mostly a cover story. Instead, the vast team-building exercise that has driven the broadcasts of people like Rush and Hannity and the talking heads on Fox for decades now has really been a kind of ongoing Quest for Orthodoxy, in which the team members congregate in front of the TV and the radio and share in the warm feeling of pointing the finger at people who aren't as American as they are, who lack their family values, who don’t share their All-American work ethic.
The finger-pointing game is a fun one to play, but it’s a little like drugs – you have to keep taking bigger and bigger doses in order to get the same high.
So it starts with a bunch of these people huddling together and saying to themselves, "We’re the real good Americans; our problems are caused by all those other people out there who don’t share our values." At that stage the real turn-on for the followers is the recognition that there are other like-minded people out there, and they don’t need blood orgies and war cries to keep the faith strong – bake sales and church retreats will do.
So they form their local Moral Majority outfits, and they put Ronald Reagan in office, and they sit and wait for the world to revert back to how they remember things used to be, a world where there was one breadwinner in the family, and no teen pregnancy or crime or poor people, and immigrants worked hard and didn't ask for welfare and had the decency to speak English – a world that never existed in reality, of course, but they're waiting for a return to it nonetheless.
Think Ron Paul in the South Carolina debate, when he said that in the '60s, "there was nobody out in the street suffering with no medical care." Paul also recalled that after World War II, 10 million soldiers came home and prospered without any kind of government aid at all – all they needed was a massive cut to the federal budget, and those soldiers just surfed on the resultant wave of economic progress.
"You know what the government did? They cut the budget by 60 percent," he said. "And everybody went back to work again, you didn't need any special programs."
Right – it wasn’t like they needed a G.I. Bill or anything. After all, people were different back then: They didn’t want or need welfare, or a health care program, or any of those things. At least, that’s not the way Paul remembered it.
That's all the early conservative movement was. It was just a heartfelt request that we go back to the good old days of America as these people remembered or imagined it. Of course, the problem was, we couldn't go back, not just because more than half the population (particularly the nonwhite, non-straight, non-male segment of the population) desperately didn't want to go back, but also because that America never existed and was therefore impossible to recreate.
And when we didn’t go back to the good old days, this crowd got frustrated, and suddenly the message stopped being heartfelt and it got an edge to it.
The message went from, "We’re the real Americans; the others are the problem," to, "We’re the last line of defense; we hate those other people and they’re our enemies." Now it wasn’t just that the rest of us weren't getting with the program: Now we were also saboteurs, secretly or perhaps even openly conspiring with America’s enemies to prevent her return to the long-desired Days of Glory.
Now, why would us saboteurs do that? Out of jealousy (we resented their faith and their family closeness), out of spite, and because we have gonads instead of morals. In the Clinton years and the early Bush years we started to hear a lot of this stuff, that the people conservatives described as "liberals" were not, as we are in fact, normal people who believe in marriage and family and love their children just as much as conservatives do, but perverts who subscribe to a sort of religion of hedonism.
"Liberals' only remaining big issue is abortion because of their beloved sexual revolution," was the way Ann Coulter put it. "That's their cause – spreading anarchy and polymorphous perversity. Abortion permits that."
So they fought back, and a whole generation of more strident conservative politicians rose to fight the enemy at home, who conveniently during the '90s lived in the White House and occasionally practiced polymorphous perversity there.
Then conservatives managed to elect to the White House a man who was not only a fundamentalist Christian, but a confirmed anti-intellectual who never even thought about visiting Europe until, as president, he was forced to – the perfect champion of all Real Americans!
Surely, things would change now. But they didn’t. Life continued to move drearily into a new and scary future, Spanish-speaking people continued to roll over the border in droves, queers paraded around in public and even demanded the right to be married, and America not only didn't go back to the good old days of the single-breadwinner family, but jobs in general dried up and you were lucky if Mom and Dad weren’t both working two jobs.
During this time we went to war against the Islamic terrorists responsible for 9/11 by invading an unrelated secular Middle Eastern dictatorship. When people on the other side protested, the rhetoric became even more hysterical. Now those of us outside the circle of Real Americans were not just enemies, but in league with mass-murdering terrorists. In fact, that slowly became the definition of a "liberal" on a lot of these programs – a terrorist.
Sean Hannity’s bestseller during this time, for Christ’s sake, was subtitled, Defeating terrorism, despotism, and liberalism. "He is doing the work of what all people who want big government always do, and that is commit terrorist acts," said Glenn Beck years ago, comparing liberals to Norweigan mass murderer Anders Breivik.
And when the unthinkable happened, and a black American with a Muslim-sounding name assumed the throne in the White House, now, suddenly, we started to hear that liberals were not only in league with terrorists, but somehow worse than terrorists.
"Terrorism? Yes. That’s not the big battle," said Minnesota Republican congressional candidate Allan Quist a few years ago. "The big battle is in D.C. with the radicals. They aren’t liberals. They are radicals. Obama, Pelosi, Walz: They’re not liberals, they’re radicals. They are destroying our country."
In Spinal Tap terms, the rhetoric by the time Obama got elected already had gone well past eleven. It was at thirteen, fifteen, twenty …. Our tight little core of Real Americans by then had, over a series of decades, decided pretty much the entire rest of the world was shit. Europe we know about. The Middle East? Let’s "carpet bomb it until they can’t build a transitor radio," as Ann Coulter put it. Africa was full of black terrorists with AIDS, and Asia, too, was a good place to point a finger or two ("I want to go to war with China," is how Rick Santorum put it).
Here at home, all liberals, gays, Hispanic immigrants, atheists, Hollywood actors and/or musicians with political opinions, members of the media, members of congress, TSA officials, animal-lovers, union workers, state employees with pensions, Occupiers and other assorted unorthodox types had already long ago been rolled into the enemies list.
Given the continued troubles and the continued failure to return to good old American values, who else could possibly be to blame? Where else could they possibly point the finger?
There was only one possible answer, and we're seeing it playing out in this race: At themselves! And I don’t mean they pointed the finger "at themselves" in the psychologically healthy, self-examining, self-doubting sort of way. Instead, I mean they pointed "at themselves" in the sense of, "There are traitors in our ranks. They must be ferreted out and destroyed!"
This is the last stage in any paranoid illness. You start by suspecting that somebody out there is out to get you; in the end, you’re sure that even the people who love you the most under your own roof, your own doctors, your parents, your wife and your children, they’re in on the plot. To quote Matt Damon in the almost-underrated spy film The Good Shepherd, they became convinced that there’s "a stranger in the house."
This is where the Republican Party is now. They’ve run out of foreign enemies to point fingers at. They’ve already maxed out the rhetoric against us orgiastic, anarchy-loving pansexual liberal terrorists. The only possible remaining explanation for their troubles is that their own leaders have failed them. There is a stranger in the house!
This current race for the presidential nomination has therefore devolved into a kind of Freudian Agatha Christie story, in which the disturbed and highly paranoid voter base by turns tests the orthodoxy of each candidate, trying to figure out which one is the spy, which one is really Barack Obama bin Laden-Marx under the candidate mask!
We expected this when Mitt Romney, a man who foolishly once created a functioning health care program in Massachusetts, was the front-runner. We knew he was going to have to defend his bona fides against the priesthood ("I’m not convinced," sneered the sideline-sitting conservative Mme. Defarge, Sarah Palin), that he would have a rough go of it at the CPAC conference, and so on.
But it’s gotten so ridiculous that even Santorum, as paranoid and hysterical a finger-pointing politician as this country has ever seen, a man who once insisted with a straight face that there is no such thing as a liberal Christian – he’s now being put through the Electric Conservative Paranoia Acid Test, and failing!
"He is a fake," Ron Paul said at the Michigan debate last night, to assorted hoots and cheers. And Santorum, instead of turning around and laying into Paul, immediately panicked and rubbed his arm as if to say, "See? I’m made of the right stuff," and said, "I’m real, Ron, I’m real." These candidates are behaving like Stalinist officials in the late thirties, each one afraid to be the first to stop applauding.
These people have run out of others to blame, run out of bystanders to suspect, run out of decent family people to dismiss as Godless, sex-crazed perverts. They’re turning the gun on themselves now. It might be justice, or it might just be sad. Whatever it is, it’s remarkable to watch.
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57 Comments so far
Show AllA very insightful article; thank you. The only upside to the Republican Twisted Dream is that excessive, unhealthy worldviews such as these ultimately collapse upon themselves. Also, it would be interesting to hear what the Democrat's irrational twisted dream is, as well. (And as we can see, the D dream is also in a state of decay / collapse.)
The reason I'm interested to know about the particulars of the R and D dreams is because when you understand a tribe's illogic, you can look for creative ways to solve their psychic problem in a healthier way. For example, if Conservatives are clamoring to return to a (nonexistent) time when the man worked, the wife stayed home, and all the immigrants spoke English, what current insecurities are they trying to compensate for by wishing for this, and what solutions could be offered to them to help them feel better in a more adult, functional way? Because at the end of the day, if no one offers a better strategy, people will continue to project their fears onto Others and dream dysfunctional dreams.
Good Article by Matt Taibbi pointing out the insanity that is the GOP.
Now, let's have an article pointing out the evils of the democratic party! I'm sure there's plenty to write about.
I remember watching a movie where two men are talking of the past.
The first one says, "It ain't like it was in the good old days".
The second man agrees, "Yea, it never was".
But the pathetic thing is that while the Republicans are busy outstripping each others credentials as Supreme wing-nut, the Democrats are selling the farm to Goldman Sachs and the Military Industrial Complex... Paranoid conspiracy theorists might even be persuaded to believe that these clowns are being PAID and stage-directed by Goldman Sachs and the Democratic Leadership Council... Obama can continue to shred the Constitution and bomb 3rd world peasants to his heart's content -- we're all too busy watching the Republican Slapstick Comedy...
Good post, Arkay. And I wish Mr. Taibbi wasn't so quick to buy the official 911 narrative, either. The subtext of this article is that the Repugs are so insane, who in their "right" mind could vote for other than a Democrat? Americans love reality shows, and the election has become a cross between "Survivor" and "The Jerry Springer Show." As for Ann Coulter, her karma is pure evil for laughing at others' pain, and mocking those who can't stand up due to injury, ill health, or another crippling disorder. (This example is offered as a metaphor.)
The real analogy here is to Stalin. He was Lenin's thug and after Lenin's death, there was no one powerful enough to keep him from taking over the Bolsheviks and through them the nation. The right wing served as the thug of the conservatives of both parties in the 1960s assassinating JFK, MLK, RFK, the Greensboro 5, and perhaps many others since. (Note the overwhelming propensity of air crashes to claim the lives of Democratic congresspersons thoughout an era of GOP majority.) Now the right wing has supplanted conservatism in the GOP and this perhaps has made little ideological difference -- but it has certainly reduced the vocabulary and spelling skills evidenced in the public debate. We are faced with an intolerable situation, the complete collapse of which is both impossible and inevitable -- and this crisis is likely the invitation to a civil war that nobody wants but nobody can avoid.
It's this kind of paranoid outburst that makes reading CD's comment pages such a painful experience so very often. I don't really want to get to know you, but you raise the question in my mind, "What can possibly have caused this person to feel such rage?"
I've visited parts of the world where most people live in real poverty, not just "relative" poverty. Yet the people there seem so much happier than some computer owners (i.e. doing OK economically) in the US who are so full of rage and dark fantasies of destruction.
I admit, i don't understand it. I really don't. Good luck, Mr/Ms Act, and may you find some kind of peace.
I have lived in the third world, not just "visited." Now I live in the first world and I see people living in the same kind of horror as the third world. My comments were not paranoid, but factual if not officially endorsed since the suspects hold the authority to pronounce themselves innocent. When you truly see the world ugly inconvenient truths might soil your beautiful, peaceful mind.
I have to wonder if Leezasky is an alias of Barbara Bush.
Pish, I wonder to myself how long a time it would be from the widespread breakdown of routine life (for example the halting of grocery deliveries) to .. ?? You name the horror. My guess is about 4 weeks.
I don't know a lot but what I do know is that we are losing a lot. We are losing the right to bargain, the 40 hour week as they layoff everyone and expect the people who are left to work into oblivion and not pay them overtime because they can go to the corner and get someone for $7.25 an hour. They want to bring back child labor. Minimum wage is WAY below poverty. They are getting rid of unions. Just when we have medical insurance like Congress has, they are going to take it away. There aren't enough jobs for everyone. My husband and I have given all our saved retirement to our sons so they can just survive. My one son served in the army and cant any of his VA benefits. We continue to import poverty from over the border when we can't even take care of the poverty we have here. We have created a salve race again.
I am not paranoid. I'm not "full of rage." I am flat out scared.
Ever since we repealed the Fairness Doctrine and hold NO ONE accountable for lying,smearing and just plain propaganda on our airwaves (especially AM Radio) in 1986 we have seen this madness grow. Now we have a combination of corporate control and religion framing the debate. If enough people believe this crap we will soon be a Fascist Theocracy.
Please, if you listen to Rush, Hannity, Savage et al and then go home and watch Fox would you at least consider Reagan's advice "Trust, BUT VERIFY".
Great point, I hope more people listen to you. That is the crux. People repeat what they hear, believe everything they hear, and do not verify for the TRUTH.
lgill & Class Act: Excellent posts.
Great to see someone mentioning the fairness doctrine. To repeal such a thing and to use "liberal" as a pejorative term shows how more extreme the whole US political spectrum is getting. Jeff Clements' book on corporate personhood, coupled with the present emphasis on persons from sperms/ova/zygotes to corporations but NEVER humans already born, especially in the lands of the USA's multitude of terrorist enemies, confirms Matt Taibbi's finding of the GOP and the rest of the spectrum (with no left section) stark staring bonkers!!
good stuff by matt - once again
a few items tho
1. tho i'm not a sexual prude i am about half convinced that the sexual revolution was stage managed by the rockefeller trust - in order to degrade the family structure which in addition to forced schooling serves to extract children from the influence of their parents, which surely they have done
2. the arabs didn't do 9/11. if matt has some proof that they did he should write it up in a column because no one else has ever "proved" it outside of the corporate media psyop which egged the sheeple into supporting the war on iraq
for sure the 9/11 commission failed to proved anything
i am not a 9/11 truther at all - i think they are a psyop managed group despite having many good people in it
judy wood figured out 9/11 years ago - with science. that is why you never heard of her
here is her site:
http://www.drjudywood.com/
watch this video
http://www.drjudywood.com/videos/Hiroshima_videos.html
and learn something
her work has been vilified all over the place but she has never had even one aspect of her work refuted
also, she is the world's leading expert on 9/11 - bar none
once again, that's why you never heard of her
It's time for your meds, dude.
Boy, do I second that, Class Act! The 60's were stage-managed protests, but 911 was the real thing... and pity those "poor Truthers." Talk about inverting things! But Med, while able to cut and paste a number of compelling tidbits, also has a nasty habit of conflating all the good work Planned Parenhood does today, with an alleged interest in Eugenics on the part of one or two of its founders. Although he feigns Left, it's odd that so many of his posts support right wing suppositions and causes... like his rants against public education. I'd give Med the CD "Deli Sandwich Award" for packing some great pickels in with a lot of baloney.
like i said - no one has ever proven her wrong in even the slightest of details but she gets a lot of the empty personal attacks from clowns like you
like i said dr judy wood is the preeminent authority on 9/11 - bar none
keep the crap rolling shills...
Comedians' live tweets of the Republican debate in Mesa, Arizona:
This debate audience is the kind of white where you pronounce the "h." - Patton Oswalt
*****
97% chance Gingrich's opening statement is just "pies." - Dave Anthony
*****
"I'm a home-schooling father of seven." -Rick Santorum, giving us a succinct reason to not vote for him - Doug Benson
*****
"I am Mitt Romney. You have fifteen seconds to comply." - Warren Ellis
*****
Guys, you're in Mesa. You've got the go-ahead to turn on the crazy-hoses. - Patton Oswalt
*****
Santorum: "A Kenyan, a Muslim & a socialist walk into a bar. And then he makes everyone have an abortion." - Andy Borowitz
*****
I'm thinking about ordering either earmarks or Thai food. - Todd Barry
*****
"Can't we just talk about the Sbarro I want to build on the moon?" -- Newt. (Patton Oswalt)
*****
I thought Santorum summed it up nicely when he said "Jesus wizard hate-grenade chastity bullet pink-star Sharia Twain." - Rob Delaney
*****
This is how couples fight. "Remember when you said THIS?" - Patton Oswalt
*****
If they keep saying "pork" eventually they can trick Gingrich into getting hoagies for everyone. - Jerry Renek
*****
It's halftime at the debate. Would love to see Madonna come on and blow Santorum. - Albert Brooks
*****
Ron Paul is more fun if you pretend he's on the same mission that Bruce Willis was on in 12 Monkeys. - Gerry Duggan
*****
"How great is it if rape makes a baby? Save the rape babies." - Santorum (Dave Anthony)
*****
"Of course I didn't help rape victims!" - Mitt (Susan Burke)
*****
Gingrich: "We should leave no child behind, only wives." - Andy Borowitz
*****
Can we electrify the fence between church and state? - Blaine Capatch
*****
Now that we all agree contraception is a bad idea, let's take a harder look at electricity and soap. - Andy Borowitz
*****
It's going to be an awkward ride back in the Mesa Hilton courtesy shuttle. - Todd Barry
The Republican candidates vying for the nomination offer nothing in my opinion. Romney only wants to succeed by ripping others apart, even his own team. That is his contribution. He changes his stand on issues like a chameleon. I do not think he even knows what he stands for. His money is his ally and he thinks that because he is in the 1%, he is above having to answer to his statements that he has made defaming others. However, he offers no solutions. I wish he would wipe that grin off his face. Hard working Americans want to hear IDEAS, not slander. Santorum, on the other hand, is well..I do not know how to describe it. I feel he would take rights of women and repeal them just like everything else the Republicans want to repeal. Gingrich is too unpredictable a personality for President. Ron Paul is a man of conviction and very honest, but he does not have the following to become President. President Obama is working diligently with everything he has..which is not much..consider the lame Congress we have, which BTW people voted into office. At least, President Obama is trying to move ahead despite the total uncooperation from the other side. He is the adult.
"President Obama is working diligently with everything he has..which is not much..consider the lame Congress we have, which BTW people voted into office. At least, President Obama is trying to move ahead despite the total uncooperation from the other side. He is the adult."
W.T.F???!!!
Are you even awake? Do you know how to think for yourself? I'm not even going to waste my time listing the dozens of Obama initiatives that have hurt us everyday Americans. If Republicans are vicious dogs, then Obama is the one throwing them hefty meat-filled bones while they are still 3 blocks away. Nobody is making him do this. HE CHOOSES TO!
Please list the "dozens of Obama initiatives that have hurt us everyday Americans?" Go for it. Your attitude is that of the Republican party...smear, don't think for YOURSELF and come up with new ideas...just smear. Go for it, I will await your list.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Uh oh. Someone is about to get pwned. Excuse me while I grab some popcorn.
1. NDAA
2. Bank Bailouts
3. War on Libya
4. Continuation of the "War of Terror"
5. Refusal to close Gitmo
6. Failure to restore habeas corpus
7. Prosecution of whistleblowers as spys
8. Continuation of Bush era Unitary Executive Policies
9. Implementation of domestic drone spying
10. Refusal to consider Universal Healthcare, instead industry giveaway in the form of Obamacare
11. Threats of War against Iran
12. Continuation of warrentless wiretapping
Shall I continue?
Thank you, Mysterio. You save others the trouble. As Obedient Servant and others have noted, coming into election season means hearing all the "new" names just show up to remind us what a great job Obama has done, given all those obstacles he faced upon assuming the Oval Office. (Only to continue every one of the acts of fraud, graft, corruption, theft, along with financing the endless killing fields of his diabolical predecessor.)
Should you continue? To that question all I hear are crickets...
Thanks, Mysterio. Excellent start, but I wish you had mentioned Obama's drones now menacing so many vulnerable little countries scattered thither and yon. And it continues while the attention of the disenchanted voters is on the idiotic antics of presidential contenders who spew invectives at each other while holding the majority of Americans in contempt. But, not to worry. Come convention time (speaking of a return to the good old days), is it possibible that Jeb Bush just might miraculously appear, waiting patiently in the wings?
Yeah the list is really long. I just picked 12 things I could think of quickly off the top of my head. I bet if we really thought about it and compiled a complete list, there'd be at least 50 things on it.
I'm tired of the Obama / Democrat drones and their idiocy. They're JUST as bad as the GOP true believers.
Elmysterio,
I know you could have added more but the fill in the blanks test called for only twelve answers. Good job.
Great list..Excellent response.
Thomas Gilbert-
I believe your one to twelve list has been completed. When you have been around here for a while you will learn that you are dealing with many people who are extremely well informed.
I would suggest that you stop using your face to block punches...
Thomas Gilbert-
"against the Islamic terrorists responsible for 9/11"
Nice try Matti.
Aside from the obvious fact that "Islamic terrorists" were not responsible for 911, is anyone else bothered by the term "Islamic terrorist"?
Even if you accept the official narrative, the characters listed by the FBI can hardly be considered devout Muslims. They hung out on Jack Abramoff's Casino boat, they snorted coke, they loved lap dances. M. Atta was heard to yell "Fuck God!" at a strip club; he was a gangster-wannabe, showing off his money clip, peeling off c-notes.
When Brevik committed that atrocity in Norway, he was not described as a "Christian terrorist". This despite the fact that he was/is clearly obsessed with Christianity, or at least his own bizarre interpretation of it. When Jewish "settlers" commit acts of terrorism against Palestinians, we do not refer to them as "Jewish terrorists".
So why do people use the term "Islamic terrorist"?
I think I have the answer. Attributing violence by people who live in Muslim cultures to their religion -- even if they're not religious -- allows us to sidestep their actual motivations. Resistance to occupation is rational, whereas extremist religiosity is irrational. The term "Islamic terrorist" is a form of Orientalism. It allows us to portray the "enemy" as a fanatic, devoid of reason.
As always, right on the money, Durrutix. Thank you for pointing out the ethnic slur attached to the "popular" framing, and how it reinforces the official narrative. What better way to create probable cause for beefing up the make-war state then to convince uninformed citizens that efforts must be diligently made to counter all those Muslim/Arab terrorists bent on Amerika's destruction. By the time the MIC completes its arc of instability across the Middle East, sewing terror wherever it parks its heavily armed crews, sooner or later some Arab group WILL find a way to retaliate. It's as if the Middle East were a bee hive, and U.S. military forces there to keep teasing it until they manage to coax a cloud of avenging drones from that hive. Some might make it to the "Homeland."
Yes, the beehive analogy is apt. I too am surprised that more acts of real terrorism have not been committed against the United States. The FBI is constantly having to cook up fake plots and/or entrap mentally ill/cash-desperate Muslims. Indeed this pattern of deception has been happening since the FBI was founded. In Gary T. Marx's study "On an Overlooked Category of Social Movement Participant: the agent provocateur and the informant", he quotes a former G-man -
“Enemies of the public were created to justify the bureau’s role as defender of the National Security”…and “to each slanderous name-calling or alarmist leak to the press, Hoover added a soft-spoken if tendentious appeal to Congress for more money and additional personnel” (Wall 1972).
It is not "obvious" that Islamic terrorists were not responsible for 9/11. The facts show that the people who hijacked the four planes and flew three of them into large office buildings with high symbolic value were in fact terrorists who were motivated by their version of Islam.
It is not "Orientalism" to use the term "Islamic terrorists". There are some terrorists who profess Islam, just as there have been terrorists who professed anarchism, socialism, Irish nationalism, Zionism, etc. The US has produced terrorists also: Timothy McVeigh was an American nationalist terrorist; John Brown was an anti-slavery terrorist etc etc.
Referring to the belief system that motivates an act of terrorism helps us to understand the nature of the act. It helps us to place it in historical context, to examine it as a response to social conditions, to perceived (and real) provocations, and in other ways.
That Islam, or Zionism, or abolitionism (or many others) can be ideologies that motivate some people to commit acts of terror does not mean that these ideologies are "nothing but" excuses for terrorism. Islam's 1500 year history is full of examples of the highest human achievement, the noblest morality, the deepest spiritual reflection. The same is true of Judaism and Christianity. Irish nationalism influenced the poetry of Yeats, the novels of Joyce, and other great creations, as well as people who set off bombs in London and many other places.
Anarchism, which your name seems to imply you admire, influenced the peaceful, saintly Prince Kropotkin; and the presidential assassin Czolgosz. Some people said that all anarchists were bomb throwing terrorists. They were wrong. But it would have been ridiculous to pretend that no anarchist ever committed an act of terrorism.
it's true that some people think -- or pretend to think -- that Islam is nothing but an ideology of terror, and that all Muslims must therefore be terrorists. They are wrong. The billion and half Muslims are not terrorists, though a few of them are. Those few have misinterpreted and perverted the religion they claim to uphold. They may have real and justified grievances (I think they do), but Islam does not enjoin them to use terror to address these.
To pretend that it is impossible to say "Such and such Muslim is a terrorist" unless you are an "Orientalist" bigot is to shut down intelligent discussion.
Surely you don't want to do that?
Leezaky wrote -
"Referring to the belief system that motivates an act of terrorism helps us to understand the nature of the act"
I see. So you're claiming that Islam is the motivating factor behind people given the name "Islamic terrorists"? You're wrong.
Take the suicide bomber. Islam actually forbids suicide. Of the world’s three Abrahamic faiths, “The Koran has the only scriptural prohibition against it,” according to Robert Pape.
"In his recent book, ''''DYING TO WIN: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism ,'' University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape has provided an indispensable public service by collecting data from all 315 suicide terrorist campaigns from 1980 to 2003, involving 462 individuals. His overall finding: The major objective of 95 percent of suicide attacks is to expel foreign military forces from territory that the terrorists perceive as their homeland. There is little connection with Islamic fundamentalism or any of the world religions. The taproot of suicide terrorism is nationalism and it's ''mainly a response to foreign occupation.''
Do some people given the name "Islamic terrorist" have religious beliefs that influence their behavior? Sure. But it's not particularly relevant. Thus the term "Islamic terrorist" is a propaganda device. That's why we hardly ever hear the term "Christian terrorist" or "Jewish terrorist".
You state --
"It is not "obvious" that Islamic terrorists were not responsible for 9/11. The facts show that"
What facts are these? The Koran left at the airport alongside the flight manual? The testimony of the FBI informant living with one of the hijackers? The fire-proof passport found at ground zero?
To be honest, I'm not particularly interested in arguing about the "facts" of 911 at this point. If you've looked at the evidence and you're convinced by the Cheney-Zelikow-Clarke story, it's not likely that I'm going to change your mind.
Mr Taibbi hit's it out of the park again..
One rumor circulating on right wing hate radio this afternoon is that Ron Paul is subtly shifting into attack mode against Santorum, rather than against Romney or Newt, because Romney's people have promised Rand Paul the VP slot. Stranger things have happened.
Interesting analysis by Matt Taibbi. He sees the Republican slide starting with self righteous Moral Majority types naively envisioning a return to the good old days of Ronald Reagan western movies if the federal government could just be contained and shrunk down to size. Their frustrations built up throughout the Clinton years when it appeared American culture was becoming more hedonistic, and even less like those Norman Rockwell images of days gone by. Dismantling government services and deregulating corporations during the 80's and 90's didn't magically restore a mythic past, so somebody - enemies foreign and domestic - had to be at fault, undermining the nation's return to what supposedly was once upon a time the natural order of things. That's where the mean spirited demonization streak in the GOP world view came from.
The insufficiently God fearing, the gays, the feminists, the peaceniks, the liberals, the tree huggers, the terrorist evil doers - They were the reason why those Thousand Points of Light didn't renew the American spirit. There was a whole multicultural array of foreigners and non-patriotic fellow citizens to blame. So it was okay, sometimes even necessary to hate Them, because often They simply could not be reasoned with.
When demonization becomes the standard fare of political discourse, what happens when presidential primary season comes along? Damn right Saint Ronald's famous Eleventh Commandment - Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Fellow Republicans - has been exposed as a dead letter. I like Taibbi's take on how the circular firing squad we are currently witnessing (fueled by Citizens United attack ads) is a byproduct of how the Republican Party's ideology and its "take no prisoners/win at any cost" Karl Rove/Swift Boat mentality has evolved.
That style of hate and fear mongering can work very effectively when the target is the opposition party's standard bearer, in a one-on-one horse race. But when there's a whole crowd of wannabes using the same tactics against one another in pursuit of grabbing the Holy Grail in order to lead the charge, villify, and slay the arch fiend Obama, the ugliness and hollowness is exposed for all to see.
Bill from Saginaw
Great post, Bill.
I'm currently working on a new script and the central male character is assigned to Anger Management Class. If I am able to successfully turn him into "Exhibit A," representative of the non-repentive American citizen fixated ONLY on his own needs and unable to take in the impact of his actions on others, I'll plant the premise that karma always finds ways to boomerang.
Because the U.S. has never lost a direct war to an opponent on its own soil, it can still hold onto the conceit that being "number 1" means never having to say you're sorry, own what you've done in the way of vast injury to others, or even reflect. Historians of a philosophical bent, should they survive the coming climate change era, will probably define Obama's telling eclipse of decency, in his setting the poor leadership example of holding no former official to account for VAST wrongs. Among numerous diastrous policy decisions, this one sets the cornerstone of the core moral failure of this presidency. By suggesting that wrongs need never know redress, that we might instead just smooth sail onward ever after, is an inexcusable miscarriage of justice.
Just as AA and the other self-help programs teach people to own their own actions and consider better behaviors, such a prescription is also necessary and applicable to a nation. Even one like ours where the dominant power structure acts like an angry, selfish, narcissistic adolescent male... Exhibit B... by extension.
Ron Paul for VP would help capture a sizable youth vote, like Obama did in the last election. An Obama presidency followed by a Romney one will make our young people into serious cynics decades before it would normally happen.
Saw those clowns on the TV news last night. Is THAT the best the USA can do for Head of State? No wonder I am a Monarchist!
Many most interesting posts here, no doubt. It is a comfort to me that the proportion is leaning to the right [finally]Or at least away from the libtard left. In any event, I agree that the debates are a circus, and we are doing better at paying attention. The question now is; will we be able to shut down the circus in time or will we have to choose between the Ob and a schlub? If that turns out to be the case, I say Vote third party, fric and frac both SUCK
What's more, if we would apply a circus hype filter we might see that Ron paul makes alot of sense.
I have a new box of DRAMAmine, so I am now ready for the onslaught of libtard rage that occurs at any disagreement with them NPF
Champagne corks must have been popping all over the White House after that debate. If Obomber wasn't already the best republican president EVER, this country would have to worry. The two-party stranglehold on power has produced elections that are fixed, candidates that agree to continue the sham, and a public with NO OPTIONS.
The reality is that the Current Occupant is the perfect GOP nominee; these other pretenders have nothing to offer. Meanwhile, the Democrat circle-jerk fades into irrelevance.
Taibbi's so happy to be "next in line" as Rolling Stone's political commentator. His plan is to do the job well, make a name for himself, and enjoy the spoils. Plenty of liberals before him pursued the same strategy and rewards. Nothing new at all.
Except that today the people are past the elites' media theatre where liberals and konservatives duke it out to be emperor on the throne of mass destruction.
Liberals wrote an endless stream of blank checks in the US Congruss for the mass murder of one million innocent Iraqis, in order to win the throne for eight years. And they think we're going to forget? Everyone knows now that The People's Agenda of universal equity/justice will only be achieved by the people themselves. Without elite interference. Elites fell in their own traps, poisoned by their own baits. The people are rising above it all. Taibbi better enjoy his spoils before he has to start scrubbing his own toilet again.
For all these decades, konservative ignorance was inflamed by nothing else as much as liberal hubris. Hubris. Hubris again. Hubris in your face four times. Class hierarchy crashing! Loathsome legacies lost!
rtdrury
By Jove, I think you've got it!
If Matt Taibbi plays his cards right -- and I do mean "Right" -- he could aspire to becoming the next Ezra Klein. As such, he could hope to enjoy a small slice of the spoils shared by the rest of Obot A-List commentators like John Nichols, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Robert Reich, Robert Kuttner, and Matthew Rothschild, to name but a few, whose work is published by The Nation, the Huffington Post, the American Prospect, the WaPo, The Progressive, and other well-funded venues. Oh wait! He already does inhabit at least the suburbs of that rarefied gated community via his perch at Rolling Stone.
Or, Taibbi could end up languishing among the Obot bloggers like DKos, Digby, Josh Marshall, John Aravosis, and Greg Sargent, et al., and their brain-dead claque on liberal/progressive talk radio -- Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, Norman Goldman, Randi Rhodes, and, increasingly, Mike Malloy -- aka The Wasteland.
But, if Taibbi gets really lucky, he could become a regular paid commentator on the more visible and much higher-value fake-lefty shows of the wealthy propagandist bullhorns at MSNBC -- Chris Matthews Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O'Donnell -- who frame every segment in the context of "GOPers Bad! -- Democrats..Less Bad!"
You can tell that Taibbi's is becoming increasingly desperate to keep and maintain even a semblance of credibility with the Lefty base -- who include his fans and readers at Rolling Stone -- because he is now literally writing at the top of his voice.
Hubris? Memo to Taibbi: Look in the mirror!
PS -- Methinks the Giant Vampire Squid has consumed Taibbi's brain.
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The Republican debate is the product of the purchase of US politics by the corporate sector, and the dominance of the corporate sector over almost every aspect of American society.
Ordinary people have been shut out of the real centers of decision making in America. Most of them understand this fact very well. The differences among them arise, i think, from their attempts to deal with this situation.
Some try to escape from their political and economic impotence by identifying themselves with the "successful" and siding with them against "outsiders" on whom they expend the frustration, rage, and hate they feel due to their impotence.
Some detach themselves from the public sphere and live private lives, dealing with the ups and downs of politics and the economy as they would deal with storms and droughts, as unavoidable aspects of life in this Vale of Tears.
Some identify themselves as outsiders, and, with rage and frustration exactly similar to those exhibited by the "insiders", expend their rage and hate on "false" outsiders who are "really" insiders who have betrayed them.
Finally, some accept that things are pretty bad, and feel outraged and frustrated, but they find constructive ways to address the problems they see, usually in collaboration with others.
The ferocious rage of the American Right Wing finds its mirror image in the ferocious rage of people who identify with the Left, but who have essentially given up hope, and have resigned themselves to expressing their rage wherever they find an outlet.
The detached millions occasionally take note of the spectacle of mutually reinforcing rage, the paranoid and destructive fantasizing it gives rise to, and turn away in horror and disgust. "politics is dirty and ugly," they say.
The hope of America lies, I think, with the people who are capable of outrage, but who know, or are willing to learn, how to put that outrage to constructive use.
The Italian political scientist Norberto Bobbio summarized the Left as "a combination of indignation and hope". The Right he characterized as "pessimist activism". (Please find the reference, somebody. if he didn't say it, then I'll take the credit...).
In America there's a lot of pessimism, a lot of passivity, a lot of despair on both right and left. But I know there are lots of people on the Left who are trying their best to be constructive and hopeful. I wish CD were their forum, instead of being, far too often, a forum for the despair and the rage of people resigned to impotence, but not resigned to enjoying it.
I object to this blanket smear of the Left, and think it to be without foundation or justification.
"The ferocious rage of the American Right Wing finds its mirror image in the ferocious rage of people who identify with the Left, but who have essentially given up hope, and have resigned themselves to expressing their rage wherever they find an outlet."
Giving up hope in the electoral system, or in the Democratic party, or the "American Dream" does not mean people have given up hope. It means they are not wasting time on false hopes.
Do you really think that the radical here are a mirror image of the right wing? Really?
People rarely post in mindlessly in a rage here. The comments are usually far more informative than the articles, and people go to a lot of time and trouble to make logical and compelling arguments, and support and document their arguments.
"Constructive and hopeful" is, I think, code for "moderate and centrist."
Your post is a disingenuous smear against many very good people here.
The reason the Repubs don't talk about jobs or getting the foreclosed back into their homes: they have no answers. It's easier for them to talk about the evils of birth control or the bad influence of Satan or earmarks.
This progressive found Matt's article insightful, but was not comforted by the spectacle of Republican contenders mauling one another to pander to the fears and resentments of conservatives. Conservatives will have their demagogue soon enough, and then a shot at the White House. If they win it, do you doubt they'll pursue their agenda with an equally irrational vengeance? Compare that to the strategy of centrist compromise and duplicity Obama and Congressional Dems have pursued. In deference to political winds and payola.
As Matt's article paradoxically attests, it is the progressive view that's taking tar and feathers. In case you haven't noticed, Occupy is a whimper against the cannabalistic shouts of a dumbed down America seeking scapegoats. Neither party is leading America anywhere but to the hell ignorance demands. Wealth and power continue to accrue to an elite few already drunk with wealth and power. Their ability to manipulate public opinion against majority self-interest (with a boost from corporate media) is growing, not declining. As one example: oil. The average American is clueless to the fact that the USA is increasingly dependent on foreign oil and no amount of domestic drilling will change that fact. We have only enough domestic oil to meet 11 years of our own demand. Instead of a crash program to reduce consumption and develop alternatives, Repub and Dem admins alike wage an ongoing costly war to assure access to MidEast oil, and we do it while politicians and the oil industry pander to idiots who scream "Reduce dependence on foreign oil! Drill baby drill!". God almighty, as it is we're paying the most profitable companies in the world (all 5 are oil companies) tax credits to deplete OUR oil, which they sell back to us at a rate of profit that makes them the most profitable in the world. Have you heard a leading national politician or major TV newscast explain the reality of Peak Oil? Obama appears tempted but dodges. So instead the talking heads blame rising oil costs on anonymous "speculators", Iran and summer driving. Another example, from CNN. For weeks CNN has been promoting the "news" that over 50% of Americans get a govt handout, and the "news" that the vast majority of Americans pay no income tax. Such lies of ommission (Social Security is not a hand-out, and most Americans with poverty incomes pay a greater proportion in other taxes than the wealthy pay in income tax and other taxes combined) are steady fare, and whip conservatives -- including those retired on SS -- into a frenzy. These months of Repub pandering to the ignorant among conservatives are no laughing matter. They are Burma Shave signposts along America's bipartisan regressive highway to hell. I'll cheer when and if the term "Regressive" is a smear more popular than "Liberal" or "Progressive".
Well said, greghilbert. Matt Taibbi isn't wrong, but he fails to mention another key reason the GOP has gone apeshit: the Democratic Party has annexed most of their former policy territory. The consistent electoral cowardice of settling upon the lesser of two evils has only served to distill the evil.