Pijane Zające

Future Essays A-Coming

2006-09-22T00:28:00.000-04:00

Currently, one of my courses requires me to write a short, bi-weekly essay on race and religion (which my profs apparently believe to mean Caucasian-African-American relations and [protestant strains of]Christianity). I will post these essays here after the course reaches completion (and not before, as I fear being accused of plagiarizing [myself]).

Bleu Unmissed

2006-09-22T00:20:00.000-04:00

Apparently we no longer need to worry about the military firing gay translators like Bleu. CNN informs us: IF Al-Quaeda Wasn't in Iraq Before The War, They Are Now. And now they speak English. Gee, I wonder what pushed them to that extreme.

Only Fitting

2006-09-05T22:24:00.000-04:00

It is only fitting that the man who should choose to quote John Bolton in his first contribution to our Comparative Legal Systems class, finally got something right in class, when he explained the essence of Hobbesian political theory. Most likely, this is because he ascribes to it.

Lady Driver (Well, Pilot)

2006-08-18T12:57:00.000-04:00

How does one confuse a NATO base with a civilian airport? I am sick of hearing that it was due to her lack of knowledge of English and her nervousness. I can't imagine that a military installation and a giant field of concrete peppered with Boeing 747's look very much alike, no matter much she was pushing the altitude capabilities of her civilian aircraft.

Testing 1, 2

2006-08-14T20:32:00.000-04:00

Is this really what we have been reduced to? Moreover, what does this make Iraq in that case? As we all know, Al-Qaida and WMD's had nothing to do with it. And the Iranians were helping American soldiers who were operated in Afghanistan. However, that aside, this makes Olmert's weak overtures to the Palestinians even more disingenuous.
I am equally disgusted with an article which appeared in Sign and Sight. It claims that the world cares not when Muslims kill Muslims, or for that matter when anyone other than Israelis kill Muslims. I beg to differ. This article specifically refers to Iraq, Dafur and Chechnya. Perhaps Monsieur Glucksmann failed to notice a few minor details.
I would compare Iraq with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for one fleeting moment. It is not that the world does not care that Muslims are being killed (although granted, America seems to be the mandatory exception to this rule). Rather, I believe it is that the world has become de-sensitised to these deaths. Each additional death does little to add to the horrors of the scores of deaths that preceded it. I would argue that it is clear that at least in theory, the world wants both of these conflicts resolved.
As for Chechnya, I remember sitting in high school, hearing and reading about the world's outcries. Unfortunately, Clinton was too busy bombing the Balkans to create any moral high ground from which to dictate anything to the Russians. (Don't get me wrong--I like Clinton. However, no matter how many times this strategy is tried, it never produces the results desired.)
Lastly, we have Dafur. I agree: what happened, what is still happening, in Sudan is horrific. I found bitter irony in the fact that in one breath the World's states said, "never again", and in the next, refused to aid those who needed it most. However, I would postulate that Europe and the US had less influence over the Sudanese government than America has over Israel. In other words, the current crisis in Lebanon is all the more deplorable because (a) the Israelis attacked a state which had not attacked it, (b) the US had the requisite influence over the Israelis to bring an earlier end to the hostilities and (c) for all its bragging about it capability to avoid civilian casualties, the vast majority of the dead on the Lebanese side were civilians. Israel attacked a country which was just rebuilding itself. So, perhaps it is not so that "some Muslim corpses are light as a feather, and others weigh tonnes", Monsieur Gluckmann.

Open Your Eyes

2006-08-14T12:58:00.000-04:00

The Polish Government, and for that matter the Polish public's reaction to this exhibit depresses me. To protest the inclusion of materials on the forced transfer of scores of Germans from what is now western Poland is not to minimize the suffering of those peoples whose members were displaced en masse, but rather goes to illustrate that often victims, when given the upper hand, do not always act with magnanimity. I feel that rather this is an especially important reminder that victor's justice is often unjust. Yes, Poland was a victim of WWII and the Cold War. However, it should not forget that even its past is not morally clean.

Flip-Flopping

2006-08-10T22:45:00.000-04:00

Have I mentioned how much I love the Daily Show?
And while I am at it, here are some birth pangs, free of charge.

Hearts, Minds and Tact Aside

2006-08-10T13:42:00.000-04:00

Shrub, with his usual flare and pizazz, has stated that the foiled plot to use liquid explosives on planes traveling from the UK to the US was a "stark reminder" that the US was still at war (to emphasise American's military activity since 2001 just in case it had somehow evaded your attention, I suppose) with "Islamic Fascists". Ah, yes. Brilliant. The man has managed once again not only to offend, but also to display his ignorance of the English language. One cannot be both an Islamist and a fascist. Why not, you ask? Precisely because fascism is grounded in ultra-nationalism. Islamists, by definition, seek unity among adherents of Islam, regardless of what nationality those Muslims may be. Moreover, might he not have given his speech writing crew the easy task of embarking on a search for a better choice of words? Then again, these are also the people who came up with the phrase "terrorist-state"ignoring the fact that terrorist acts, by definition, can only be carried out by non-state actors. Clearly, I expect too much.

Mr Galloway Presents

2006-08-09T07:35:00.000-04:00

While watching this clip that K had sent to me, it dawned on me why the American public is so willing to support Israel. While it is easy enough to rattle off factors, such as relatively low Arab immigration, a strong Jewish lobby, etc, I could not help but feel as though I were missing the most basic piece of that puzzle. Now I realise the exceedingly obvious fact that I had suppressed. The American public possesses no long term memory. The short term memory that it does have does not exceed four weeks in most cases. In other words, the Americans have ungracefully taken this attack by Israel out of context.
I have also been marveling at the skill and deftness of Israeli propaganda, both at home an abroad. The death of each soldier is emphasised and dutifully mourned by Israeli media. Such tactics have a strong effect on the national psyche, allowing Israelis to feel that they are indeed the victims of this conflict. Moreover, Israel has managed to keep at least one key proposal from the headlines. Prior to the bombing of Qana, the Lebanese government floated a proposal which would have included such measures as sending Lebanese troops to the south to prevent a vacuum from being created by the withdraw of Israeli troops and *gasp* the release of the two Israeli soldiers whose capture provided the Israeli government with the excuse it needed to launch its attack in the first place.

Come to think of it, this clip of Mr Galloway reminds me of this clip from British CNN.

Cheney: An Unwitting Prophet?

2006-08-08T10:06:00.000-04:00

I am sure that no one has forgotten about the education Cheney bestowed on us on the dangers of quail hunting. We were not only amused that he had confused his human hunting buddy for a quail, but also that Cheney was hunting cage raised quails, whose wings had been clipped so as to prevent them from flying too high.
Perhaps, just perhaps, Cheney was in fact prophesying Israel's bombing of Lebanon. Now there is a conspiracy theory for you (and just think, even the Right Wing would like it, as it suggests that that malevolent God figure they all seem to believe in sends signs through Cheney's bizarre behaviour).

War does not decide who was right, war decides who is left.--Bertrand Russell

WV Can Do A Lot to Crush One's Very Soul

2006-08-07T17:03:00.000-04:00

Perhaps I have overreacted, but I doubt it. On Thursday, as per my boss' brilliant instruction, I found myself driving him down to WV at 6 am. Driving, I might add, a rental car. This might seem like a small and somewhat insignificant detail, until you realise that in this Grand Ol' Land I am too young to legally drive a rental car unless extra insurance is obtained to over said rental car. Whether it had been obtained is a precious fact which has escaped my grasp. Most likely I should merely be thankful that it was not his SUV which I was driving into WV. It was painful enough to enter a state which screams "uneducated, simple bigots live here" with the power of a thousand banshees without having to endure swallowing my concerns about the very existence of SUV's on well-paved roads. I should have also been grateful, I suppose, that I was no longer the captive audience of the taxi driver who ushered me into my place of business at that ungodly hour. While I found the adventure surrounding his root canal to be not at all interesting (and, therefore, theoretically easy enough to ignore), his constant imitation of a dentist's drill was more than capable of disturbing my not all together peaceful train of thought.
Moreover, I was not even afforded a slow introduction to WV via Wheeling. No, no. I had to plunge straight into the one story countryside, where fonts composed of logs seemed to be a sure way of attracting large-ish customers. Let's all head down to Wood's! Yee-ha!
The courtroom hadn't been changed since the early 1930's (according to the Honourable Justice presiding over the proceedings) and my boss thought it would be good fun to listen to Rush Limbaugh on the ride home while he napped. Needless to say, I was quite spent by the time that I returned to my current place of residence, shallow pitt though it is.
And so, the greater part of my time between then and now was spent on the delicate task of duct-taping what remained of my fragile psyche into a shell of its former self. With any luck, I will resume pontificating on matters I would be better off not pontificating on later today.
Oh, and note to self: Avoid jury loos if at all possible.

Letter from Nader

2006-08-01T07:50:00.000-04:00

Enjoy.

Syria's Ambassador

2006-07-28T07:00:00.000-04:00

I will purge myself of silliness forthwith. Here is the Ambassador's blog. Also, a few days ago, North Korea called Condor a political twit (actually a political imbecile, but there is just something about the word "twit" which strike my fancy in this case). Sometime being a rouge state gives you the power to call the kettle black.

That said, this article disturbs me somewhat (if the article doesn't immediately come up, try here). It is neither shocking nor novel. Yes, yes, yes. I am well aware that the US says that it does not negotiate with terrorists. This is all well and good. However, last I checked (see political twit article), the US was not above talking with "rouge" states. In fact, the US seems pretty keen to speak with the North Korean, great irony though this is. This fact alone makes me believe that in theory they are aware of the concept of diplomacy. So why is it that the US, which has on numerous occasions consistently stated that Syria (and Iran for that matter, but I don't believe they have an ambassador in Washington) has influence over Hezbollah, has neglected to call their local Syrian Ambassador?
Granted, it is as the Ambassador says. It is not as if he could call up Hezbollah and make them stop their actions. Condor's statement regarding Syria's lack of action does not satisfy me in the slightest. I should think that the US is well aware of its lack of influence over Hezbollah, and its sizable influence over Israel. I allow me to explain in baby steps, as perhaps this concept is more difficult to grasp than I realise. The US says that it wants a sustainable peace, but asserts that certain requirements must be met before a ceasefire can be put in place (despite European pressure to force an immediate ceasefire). From what I recall, the US wants Hezbollah to, among other things, withdraw 20km from the border. It is not going to be able to secure this requirement through unilateral action. If the US believes that the Syrians have influence over Hezbollah, perhaps contacting their Ambassador, in the hopes that lines of communication can at least be created, would not be a bad idea. One of two things would be likely to occur, neither of which would be detrimental to US, or for that matter, Israeli interests. The US could (1) realise that Syria's influence over Hezbollah has significantly declined and that it does not have the power to direct Hezbollah to do anything. The Mad Puppet-Master's strings may not actually be as clean and neat as they once were. Of course, it would pose the problem of exposing the fact that American intelligence is not as fool proof as Shrub's administration would have you believe. Nevertheless, I don't think that this would shock the world in any way after the 9/11 and Iraq intelligence scandals. Alternatively (2) the US might actually try to secure its stated prerequisites for a ceasefire, thereby making it seem as if they are actually attempting to stop hostilities in the region, rather than trying to buy Israel more time. Frankly, while I don't think that Shrub's regime deserves it, they could do with some PR magic. Of course, if I had my way, the US would force the Israelis into an immediate ceasefire, and cease aid and weapons shipments (at the VERY LEAST until the ceasefire were secured). Again, not because I am pro-Hezbollah. I most certainly am not. However, I struggle with this entity called a "conscience". It would seem that it is dead set against allowed for the orchestrated murder of innocent, civilian lives. Go figure.

And Now for Something Completely Different

2006-07-27T19:14:00.000-04:00

Classical breakdancing (korean-style), anyone?

Zbig

2006-07-27T10:08:00.000-04:00

I wish that they would at least listen to what a former National Security Advisor had to say.

Discord May Have Been Better

2006-07-27T06:50:00.000-04:00

Yesterday America pushed through statements at the international crisis meeting that any peace would have to be a lasting peace. Afterwards, Europeans desperately tried to make it appear as if progress had been made. However, during their interviews, their voices were strained as they attempted to make positive remarks as to what the results of this meeting were going to be. The Fins sounded especially pained.
And so, today, the Israelis have informed us that the world supports their offensive, or at least has authorised it. Furthermore, the pamphlets have served their purpose, we are informed. Civilians have left southern Lebanon (as they had ample time to do so) and now all who remain in the region are Hezbollah members or their supporters. Hence, they are terrorists and their lives hold no value. Especially when one compares them to Israeli lives. Never mind that among those who remain are those who are too poor/ sick/ wounded/ scared/ Unifil; innocent people who could not abandon their homes, or what is left of them, are trapped. We will comfortably ignore the fact that aid was not able to successfully reach these people, and perhaps help them to escape north, where they would join their countrymen and women in overcrowded buildings and streets. No matter that the constant barrage of bombings induced fears that one could be killed when attempting to flee the south. Moreover, 10-14 days was clearly a low estimate, given so as not to enrage the world too much. After all, one had to wait for the US to provide one with the time window one sought. The Israelis now "reckon" fighting will continue for several weeks.
The US has led us from a world where states and their peoples watched from afar as other peoples, in far distant lands, killed themselves. Now we have states issuing words which were so pliable, as to allow those breaking international law to say that they have the international communities support. Granted, even before the Shrub administration, states were selling arms to militias and authoritarian regimes. Nevertheless, I don't recall those states eagerly announcing that the countless deaths which resulted from their arms sales were necessary to ensure peace. The World has come far indeed.

Update: European states have rejected the Israeli interpretation of statements made in Rome.

Fitting

2006-07-26T17:23:00.000-04:00

Someone from the FDA came here searching for Richard Clarke. I can definatly see how Clarke and drugs would have something in common. Crack. I think crack would be the drug that I would associate with him.

Cartoons Back in the News

2006-07-26T12:36:00.000-04:00

Despite what the Israelis may say, I don't believe that this cartoon can be compared to those depicting Mohammed as a terrorist (and here it should be noted that the Norwegian newspaper in question did not publish the cartoons of Mohammed). This is an attack on a public person, not an entire religion. Therefore, regardless of whether I agree with the cartoon or not, I don't believe that this should cartoon should be censored. As it happens, one of my biggest problems with Israel is that it engages in the same type of behaviour that the Nazis engaged against the Jewish peoples of Europe.

Sheer Poetry

2006-07-26T09:32:00.001-04:00

Apparently the Iraqi PM wasn't prepared to swallow his pride and agree with Shrub's policy on the Israeli-Lebanese War. Vulgarly put, it would seem he ripped Shrub a new one (well, to the extent that he could reasonably do so). Congress, rather than acting nobly, reacted in what can by now be called its traditional reactionary fashion. Expressions of differences of opinion? Rubbish, we don't allow that kind of nonsense on this side of the pond.

All Signs Point to Yes

2006-07-26T07:34:00.000-04:00

Despite Israeli statements to the contrary, it appears that the Israeli military had targeted a Unifil building. Kofi Annan's reaction was unusually brisk, and with good reason--namely the UN had contacted the Israeli military, asking them to stop bombing the UN post. Now there is no question that the Israelis simply do not want to see a new UN mission in southern Lebanon. Surely there was a more delicate way of communicating this. Even if one believes the Israelis, the logical conclusions that one can reach from their statement are troubling. To put it bluntly, the Israelis would have shown their utter inability to target sites with the degree of precision that they have been claiming they are capable of.

Update: The Australians got the message, loud and clear.

Made You Look Away

2006-07-25T09:28:00.000-04:00

With the world's attention squarely on Lebanon, it would appear that Israel is once again (remember Jenin?) feels comfortable using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza. This time, the Israelis made use of two children in its group of human shields. And Israelis are supposed to be the victims?

Mother Jones Knows Best

2006-07-25T09:21:00.000-04:00

I deeply urge all of you to read this article published by Mother Jones which outlines all of the fallacies and self-serving banter contained in the resolutions passed by the US House of Representative and the Senate. It is incredibly troubling that were passed with near unanimity, especially when one looks at the consequences of American foreign policy.

Constructive Criticism

2006-07-24T23:16:00.000-04:00

Recently, someone provided me with a bit of constructive criticism. I was very happy to receive some. In this case, I was told that I link to the BBC too often. Therefore, I will link to a variety of different sources from now on (a number of which, like DW, do their own spread of what various newspapers are saying--again, Poland seems rather keen on embarrassing itself, while the Guardian does us proud), reflecting the wide variety of internet media that I read. I have already gotten my token BBC link out of the way (what can I say, old habits die hard). And so, without further ado...
How can Condi (who I think I will start referring to as Condor, for her tendency to feed on the dead, and yet ability to also prey on the living) claim to support the Lebanese government, while simultaneously stating that, as prerequisites for a ceasefire, the two Israeli soldiers must be released and Hezbollah must withdraw from the border. This could, in theory, not be quite so offensive if the Israelis were to have similar requirements placed upon them, ie if Condor had said to them, "if you would like to resolve this conflict, perhaps you need to stop bombing and invading a sovereign country so that peacekeepers and aid workers might freely move about Lebanon". But clearly, with the situation at hand, neither of these prerequisites, and here I refer to those put forth by Condor and those sarcastically suggested by me, are realistic. They are unrealistic, not least for the fact that verifying that Hezbolllah had withdrawn 20 km from the border would be nigh on impossible, especially considering that Israel has not ceased hostilities. Moreover, somehow I doubt that Hezbollah is going to heed Jan Egeland's pleas for them to stop cowardly hiding amongst the Lebanese population. After all, this has been too successful of a strategy for them, resulting in few of its members' deaths. This has been yet another episode of how not to solve a conflict, US-style. Stayed tuned for another episode, same bat time, same bat region.
The author of this charming little article must have a good sense of humour, or had, perhaps, forgotten to proof his article to see if it flowed properly (and of this latter fault I am guilty of myself--I haven't the energy to do more than a review of the news after having worked well over 20 hours in the last two days alone). How else can one explain one paragraph explaining Israeli frustration at the international media's refusal to portray the Israelis as the victims, while in the next paragraph, the author chose to state that the Israelis have killed over 365 persons, the majority of whom were civilians? Americans can say what they want about Aljazeera (after all, criticism of an Arab news channel doesn't amount to aiding the enemy), but at least their articles are consistent.
Unsurprisingly, Americans have taken a crude view of the war. Most have said that their greatest fear arising from the conflict are rising gas prices. At least, unlike the friendly staff at FOX news, NY taxi drivers are cognisant of the fact that this is incredibly self-centred and that it dismisses the horrors of these recent events. I had also been wondering how long it would take this to happen ("this" being how long it would take for Arab Americans and Jewish Americans to internalise the conflict and fight amongst themselves). However, I commend them on their restraint, seemingly having limited themselves to criticising each other, rather than resorting to name-calling or violence.

Dean

2006-07-24T10:41:00.000-04:00

Once again, the following is courtesy of K (and if you are really ambitious, here is another article on the matter):

The full extent and irreversibility of the damage to our country wrought by the Bush administration will likely not be known until well after George Bush finally disappears from our political life. But understanding the dynamics and impulses of the movement which have enabled these abuses is a critically important task, and that is the project undertaken by John Dean’s new best-selling book, Conservatives Without Conscience (selected excerpt is here). Fortuitously for Dean, this examination of what has become the so-called "conservative" movement (composed of Bush followers, neoconservatives and hard-core religious conservatives) comes at the perfect time.
With 2 1/2 years still left for this administration, the true radicalism of the administration and its followers has become unavoidably, depressingly clear, and it is equally clear that this movement has not reached anywhere near the peak of its extremism. Dean’s central thesis explains why that is so.
Dean contends, and amply documents, that the "conservative" movement has become, at its core, an authoritarian movement composed of those with a psychological and emotional need to follow a strong authority figure which provides them a sense of moral clarity and a feeling of individual power, the absence of which creates fear and insecurity in the individuals who crave it. By definition, its followers’ devotion to authority and the movement’s own power is supreme, thereby overriding the consciences of its individual members and removing any intellectual and moral limits on what will be justified in defense of their movement.Dean relies on substantial social science data to illustrate the personality type that seeks out authoritarian movements. But his case is made much more persuasively by what one can visibly see unfolding before one’s own eyes.
As Iraq collapses into all-out civil war and new, tragic levels of violence, Bush supporters continue to insist that things are going well there and our invasion was a success. As the Middle East spirals into all-out regional war, Bush supporters insist that this repulsive violence is actually good for the region — wars are encouraging "birth pangs" on the road to progress, as the Secretary of State put it yesterday — and they are now actively involving the U.S. in this escalated conflict, even while Iraq rapidly falls apart.
And there is seemingly no limit — literally — on the willingness, even eagerness, of Bush supporters to defend and justify even the most morally repugnant abuses — from constantly expanding spying on American citizens, to a President who claims and aggressively exercises the "right" to break the law, to torturing suspects, imprisoning journalists, and turning the United States into the most feared and hated country on the planet.
And as radical as the administration has become, it is clear that the administration has not even come close to reaching the level of extremism which would be necessary for its supporters to object — if such a limit exists at all. If anything, on those exceedingly few occasions over six years when his followers have dissented from the Presidents’s decisions — illegal immigration, Harriet Miers, the Dubai port deal – it has been not because the administration was too radical, extremist, militaristic and uncompromising — but insufficiently so.
Bush supporters want more spying, much more aggressive actions against investigative journalists and even domestic political opposition, more death and violence brought to the Middle East, more wars, and still fewer restraints on the President’s powers, to the extent there are any real limits left. To them, the Bush administration has not been nearly as extremist and aggressive as it ought to be in dealing with the Enemies. And that is to say nothing of the measures that would be urged, and almost certainly imposed, in the event of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil or in the increasingly likely event that our limited war in Iraq expands into the Epic War of Civilizations which so many of them crave.
Ultimately, as Dean convincingly demonstrates, the characteristic which defines the Bush movement, the glue which binds it together and enables and fuels all of the abuses, is the vicious, limitless methods used to attack and demonize the "Enemy," which encompasses anyone — foreign or domestic — threatening to their movement. What defines and motivates this movement are not any political ideas or strategic objectives, but instead, it is the bloodthirsty, ritualistic attacks on the Enemy de jour — the Terrorist, the Communist, the Illegal Immigrant, the Secularist, and most of all, the "Liberal."
What excites, enlivens, and drives Bush followers is the identification of the Enemy followed by swarming, rabid attacks on it. It is a movement that defines itself not by identifiable ideas but by that which it is not. Its foreign policy objectives are identifiable by one overriding goal — destroy and kill the Enemy, potential or suspected enemies, and everyone nearby. And it increasingly views its domestic goals through the same lens. It is a movement in a permanent state of war, which views all matters, foreign and domestic, only in terms of this permanent war.
Supreme Court justices who rule against the President on national security matters are tyrants, traitors and pro-terrorist. Journalists who uncover legally dubious government conduct carried out in secret are criminals who should be imprisoned for life or hanged. Virtually every political opponent of the administration’s of any significance — Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Kerry, the Clintons — is relentlessly branded as a liar, mentally unstable, corrupt, seditious, and sympathetic to the Enemy.
And even those who devoted much of their adult lives to military service to their country (often in ways far more courageous and impressive than most Bush supporters), or even those who have been longtime Republicans and conservatives, have their characters relentlessly smeared and motives and integrity impugned as soon as they criticize the administration in any way that could embarrass the President — Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neill, the war critic Generals, Joe Wilson, Scott Ritter, Wesley Clark, John Murtha, John Paul Stevens, and on and on and on.
It is a movement devoted to the destruction of its enemies wherever they might be found. And it finds new ones, in every corner and seemingly on a daily basis, because it must. That is the food which sustains it.
* * * * *In many ways, John Dean is the ideal person to examine this dynamic because he has seen and experienced both sides of it up close and personal. Attracted to the political conservatism of Barry Goldwater, Dean joined the Nixon administration and, at the age of 32, became Nixon’s aggressive White House counsel, deeply involved in helping to perpetrate many of the Watergate abuses. Morton Halperin, who was a standing member of Nixon’s "enemy list," claimed in an Op-Ed in Friday’s Los Angeles Times that Dean authored a 1971 memo setting forth a plan to "use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies."
But in 1973, Dean became the first high-level Nixon official to turn against the administration, famously testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee that the President (as well as Dean himself) was personally involved in the Watergate cover-up. As a result of his refusal to copy the example of blindly loyal authoritarian followers such as G. Gordon Liddy and Charles Colson — who lied and covered-up for their leader — Dean became one of the most hated enemies of Nixon followers, a hatred which, he later discovered, would make him the target of the right-wing authoritarian tactics which he previously wielded against Nixon’s enemies.
In 1991, as Dean recounts at length, he learned that 60 Minutes and Time Magazine were preparing to feature a new book, entitled Silent Coup, which claimed that Dean himself was the one who ordered the Watergate break-in. The book alleged that Dean’s motive was that his wife, Maureen, had a connection to a Washington, DC call-girl operation and thus had knowledge of various sex scandals involving Democrats, and Dean sought to obtain documentation to use against them.
The very idea that Dean himself had ordered the Watergate break-in because of his wife’s connection to a call-girl service, and that these secrets were somehow kept for 20 years, was completely absurd on its face. And once Dean vehemently denied these allegations, both 60 Minutes and Time investigated the claims and both decided not to run the story — a noble decision which, in Time’s case, led to the loss of the $50,000 it had paid for the rights to run an excerpt of the book.
But using right-wing smear techniques which, back then, were still new, but which are now a staple of the "conservative" movement, these patently false allegations against Dean were aggressively promoted by right-wing ideologues and then accepted and given great attention by the mainstream media. The book’s publishers enlisted both right-wing follower G. Gordon Liddy and by-then-born-again Christian right activist Charles Colson — both of whom still hated Dean for his blasphemy in testifying truthfully against the President — to promote the book and push its allegations against Dean.
More and more right-wing groups and personalities jumped on board this smear campaign, until it received full-fledged support from mainstream right-wing media personalities. That, in turn, induced many mainstream media programs — from Good Morning America to CNN’s Larry King Live — to invite the authors on to discuss the book. Out of this now all-too-familiar process, this defamatory book ended up on the New York Times’ Best Seller List. As Dean recounts:
Despite most of the news media’s fitting dismissal of Silent Coup’s baseless claims, the protracted litigation provided time for the book to gather a following, including an almost cultlike collection of highprofile right-wingers. Among them, for example, is Monica Crowley, a former aide to Richard Nixon after his presidency, and now a conservative personality on MSNBC, cohosting Connected: Coast to Coast with Ron Reagan. Other prominent media-based conservatives who have joined the glee club are James Rosen and Brit Hume of Fox News. How these seemingly intelligent people embraced this false account mystified me, and I wanted to know. . . .
As for Colson, his reason for promotion of Silent Coup remained a complete mystery for me, as did the motives of people like Monica Crowley, James Rosen, Brit Hume, and all the other hard-core conservatives who embraced this spurious history and made it a best seller. The only thing I could see that these people had in common was their conservatism.
That is how the "conservative" movement works to this day, although its methods have become even more efficient and less scrupulous. Petty allegations and character attacks begin percolating in the smear sewers of the right wing — through insinuations by talk-radio dirt-mongerers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, speculation by Matt Drudge, smear campaigns by shadowy groups and organizations, and now by attention-desperate and glory-seeking right-wing blogs. From there, the attacks are reported by the right-wing media and then fed into the mainstream media.
A lynch mob is created which seeks not the truth of what happened, but the destruction of the movement’s enemies. "Conservative" rank-and-file, confining themselves to an echo chamber, embrace the allegations instinctively, because they are made by the movement’s defenders against the movement’s enemies. And their allegiance to their movement and a desire to destroy their opponents overrides any concern for proportionality or truth. As Dean documents, it is what the contemporary, so-called "conservative" movement feeds on more than anything else — a limitless and bloodthirsty attack on the character of its opponents and enemies.
* * * * *
Dean advances and then amply documents (both with his own analysis and social science data, the former being far more persuasive than the latter) what I consider to be the book’s two central points:
First, that what is currently described as the "conservative movement" bears virtually no resemblance to Goldwater’s conservatism, and has nothing to do with restraining government power or preserving historical values. Instead, it has transformed into an authoritarian movement which largely attracts personality types characterized by a desire and need to submit to and follow authority.
Second, because those who submit to authority necessarily relinquish their own conscience (in favor of serving the conscience of their leader and/or their movement), those who are part of this movement are capable of acts which a healthy and normal conscience ought to preclude. They can use torture, break laws, wage unnecessary wars based on false pretenses, and attempt to destroy the reputation of plainly patriotic and honest Americans — provided that they are convinced that doing so advances the interests of the authority they serve and the movement of which they are a part.
The central premise of Dean’s argument is that the current "conservative" movement shares none of the core principles of the political conservatism which attracted Dean to its movement — those espoused by Dean’s longtime friend, Barry Goldwater (whose 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, is the source for Dean’s title). That the Bush movement bears no resemblance to traditional conservatism is a view shared by scores of the country’s most prominent conservatives, such as Pat Buchanan and increasingly George Will. The Father of Modern Conservatism, Bill Buckely, just yesterday pronounced that Bush’s "singular problem" is "the absence of effective conservative ideology." And before his death, Barry Goldwater himself frequently accused the religious right of assaulting core conservative principles.
Relatedly, Dean documents that the "conservative" movement is composed of various factions who actually share very little in common in the way of political beliefs and could not come close to agreeing on a core set of political principles and ideals which define their movement. In the absence of a set of core, shared beliefs, what, then, binds them and maintains their allegiance to this political movement?
The answer Dean provides is the shared hatred of common enemies. And their collective attacks on those enemies have become the consevative movement’s defining attribute. And that is sufficient to maintain allegiance because, argues Dean, what Bush followers crave more than anything else is submission to a powerful authority as a means of alleviating their fears of ambiguity, uncertainty and complexity — the same attributes which are common to all followers of authoritarian movements on both the right and the left:
Given the rather distinct beliefs of the various conservative factions, which have only grown more complex with time, how have conservatives succeeded in coalescing as a political force? The simple answer is through the power of negative thinking, and specifically, the ability to find common enemies. . . .
Important conservative opinion journals, like the National Review and Human Events, see the world as bipolar: conservative versus liberal. Right-wing talk radio could not survive without its endless bloviating about the horrors of liberalism. Trashing liberals is nothing short of a cottage industry for conservative authors. . . .
The exaggerated hostility also apparently satisfies a psychological need for antagonism toward the “out group,” reinforces the self-esteem of the conservative base, and increases solidarity within the ranks.
The heart of [New York University Professor John] Jost and his collaborators’ findings was that people become or remain political conservatives because they have a “heightened psychological need to manage uncertainty and threat.” More specifically, the study established that the various psychological factors associated with political conservatives included (and here I am paraphrasing) fear, intolerance of ambiguity, need for certainty or structure in life, overreaction to threats, and a disposition to dominate others.
This data was collected from conservatives willing to explain their beliefs and have their related psychological dynamics studied through various objective testing techniques. These characteristics, Dr. Jost said, typically cannot be ascribed to liberals.
A healthy skepticism is warranted with regard to the ability of social science data to reveal truths about political movements. But ultimately, the ability of that data to persuade is dependent upon the extent to which it comports with one’s own observations. And when Dean cites and applies the conclusions of the famous study by Stanley Milgram, in which subject participants administered what seemed to be excruciatingly painful electric shock because they were instructed by authority figures in white coats to do so, its applicability to the Bush movement becomes self-evident:
When "a person acting under authority performs actions that seem to violate his standards of conscience, it would not be true to say that he loses his moral sense," Milgram concluded. Rather, that person simply places his moral views aside. His "moral concern shifts to a consideration of how well he is living up to the expectations of the authority figure."
The Bush administration’s ability to engage in extraordinary and radical behavior has not occurred in a vacuum. The administration is radical and can act seemingly without limits because its supporters and followers are radical and limitless in their allegiance to its abuses. Understanding the disturbing and dangerous human dynamic which fuels that movement is critical to understanding the movement itself, and ultimately, to defeating it. Dean’s book is a uniquely valuable tool for understanding what the so-called "conservative" movement has become.

Difficult

2006-07-24T06:51:00.000-04:00

I try to be proud of my nationality. Often, it is difficult, and I look upon is as much of a joke. The greater majority of my country's intelligentsia, and here I refer to those who managed to survive WWII, were killed off by the Russians. Moreover, buffoons have this nagging tendency to outbreed all others. Nevertheless, I try to dismiss the stereotypes which have been forged over the last 50 years in Europe, and over the whole of American history.
Thus, I find it all the more shameful when I read that the Ducks insist on perpetuating these stereotypes with the all grace and reactionary ideals of Shrub. Give me something to work with. Throw me a bloody bone. Please.