Really, Glenn?

You don't think

"But in the same way that George Bush's ranch and fighter pilot costumes (along with his war advocacy) sent media stars swooning over his masculinity and "toughness," the Howard Finemans and Mark Halperins, along with the Bush followers in need of a new authoritarian Leader, are so intensely hungry for this faux masculine power that the illusion, the absurd play-acting, is infinitely more valuable to them than any reality, than any genuine attributes of 'toughness.' "

constitutes armchair psychoanalysis? I don't think that's an intellectually honest claim.

-- kdwmson

I don't think it necessarily is at all psychoanalytical. Glenn isn't describing their hidden mental states or subconscious processes in describing the punditocracy "swooned" over Bush's fake ranch and pilot gags.

They actually swooned, at least if a tiny bit of colorful language is allowed, in the real, empirical, observable world. They waxed romantic -- again, out loud, with words, with repetition, with video clips -- on the manliness of Captain Codpiece landing on the carrier.

Even to say that they

are so intensely hungry for this faux masculine power that the illusion, the absurd play-acting, is infinitely more valuable to them than any reality, than any genuine attributes of 'toughness.'

doesn't invoke a mental states or subconscious argument, not necessarily.

If they actually do these things -- such as failing to recognize any real people who dissent from the right wing fake macho mantras as genuinely tough, i.e., 'recognize' with the same compliments and admiration they shower on the fake macho guys -- this isn't psychoanalysis.

If my pets beg at a certain time for dinner but only eat one of two flavors I offer, to describe them as 'hungering' for one flavor over the other isn't dried and cut behaviorist science, but neither is it an unwarranted literary use of empirical observation.

The punditocracy hungered for the fake macho guys in observable ways. We weren't reading their eyes, or timing their taps on the tables. They verbalized their fervent admirations for Captain Codpiece.

Now, if Glenn were to say that in doing so a particular pundit was aiming to replace a yearning for their absent mother during childhood, maybe.

But to say that today's right wing and the pundits who worship them 'hunger' for fake displays of machismo and spurn actual examples of tough and strong people isn't psychoanalysis. It's simple empirical observation and description.

They're just playing tough guys. That's the joke. Outside of John McCain and Ron Paul, not one of these right wing twits running or thinking of running for office has displayed any semblance of a 'tough guy' biography.

Bush Jr., the same idiot ex-cheerleader and failed businessman whose obvious disregard for all security warnings ensured 9/11 took place successfully, and whose astounding incompetence (not that malevolence wasn't there) undermined the very worship of magic martial solutions upon which the Reaganite revolutionaries depended.

I'm not scared of Fred Thompson -- bring the faker on.

I'm just outraged that the punditocracy splay themselves around in weird homo-erotic fashion worshipping a fake actor old man who, well, plays tough guys on TV, and they somehow expect us to continue viewing them as intelligent professionals.

Yeah, or it's like saying that you can't comment in support of a war unless you've volunteered for the military. Or that you can't be "tough on defense" unless you've actually fought in a war.

You still don't get it. Being in favor of defense expenditures, or weapons programs, or wars, none of this makes you "tough".

It just makes you a person who backs a larger Pentagon budget, or a military attack as opposed to other options.

How hard is this to understand?

Ordering the US military to invade & occupy Iraq wasn't "tough". People who supported that were weren't being "tough". People who think we should keep the troops there aren't being "tough". And god knows these pathetic freaks scared of a Mooozlim around every corner and under every bed aren't "tough".

And it's possible to support a war as an option rationally without basing your position on being a vain, prancing chickenhawk who imagines himself to be among a valiant warrior class.

And it was precisely that the invasion & occupation of Iraq were justified not by reason and evidence (unless you count 'secret evidence which our gov't tells us it has' as "evidence") but by that very fantasy-based vainglorious prancing of immature twits who had never fought in war but who struggled to adopt the poses and facial expressions they had seen in war movies.

Vainglorious chickenhawks shouldn't be insulted that their fake machismo and non-warrior status be exposed by the very people they denounced for years as America-hating French worshipping Jihad-surrendering cowards because they rightly predicted the utterly obvious -- that invading & occupying Iraq would be a complete disaster for all concerned.

We know what "tough" is. We even know it from our friends, and families, and movies, and literature, and history.

And none of being "tough" is related to how much one postures in support of some military activity.

If I wished to be literarily psychoanalytic, maybe I'd guess that these vain and prancing authoritarian right wingers are seeking a Daddy candidate for the "Daddy" party because they never actually listened to or learned any lessons from their real parents in the first place.