Letters to the Editor
DCLaw1
Published Letters: 839 Editor's Choice: 2
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objecting to "empire"
[Read the article: Reply to Dan Drezner]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Some perspective. People reject the term "empire" to describe the US primarily because such a term holds negative connotations and is historically adverse to the American national character, since its founding.
Consider what is negative about such a connotation, and why Americans tend to shun the word -- the negativity does not hinge on the somewhat formalistic distinction of whether the US exercises total political dominion over several other countries, or "merely" forces technically sovereign countries to adopt certain behaviors in the United States' interests, under threat of retaliation (military or otherwise) by the far more powerful US. Instead, the negative connotation is rooted in the rapaciousness, unilateralism, and brute strength of the empire, and this is what we are really talking about.
In many ways, the term "empire" is an anachronism, and if the spirit of its meaning is to be preserved in the current era, it must shed the qualification that an empire formally envelops client states under its centralized political control. I think the descriptor depends instead on whether the putative empire uses unbalanced, brute power to coerce less powerful states into adopting positions that benefit the empire far more than they benefit the controlled states. What would distinguish a contemporary "empire" from a "hegemon" (although the two overlap like square and rectangle) is the scale of the power imbalance and the extent to which the powerful state ignores or minimizes the interests of subordinate states.
Again, however, it's a largely semantic quibble to protest the empire designation, rooted centrally in the negative connotations associated with an empire. Ultimately, the rift between those who think the US has become an empire and those who do not, I believe, largely tracks the extent to which one thinks American power is malignant or salutary, on balance.
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Rumi
[Read the article: Thomas Sowell offers superb Exhibit of the Right-wing Mind]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]IMO, the problem is not primarily the hypocrisy. It is that the hypocrisy is accepted as cool, and openly rewarded in government, media and business. Perhaps this is a logical fallacy, but I see my ex's actions multiplied across the country in the Bush age. Media has extolled the "coolness" of the Rove methodologies of power mongering, of win at all costs, and people like my ex were put in charge of institutions, media and the government.
I think you hit on something very important here, a mass psychological sickness that has gripped our country for quite some time. The sickness can be seen literally everywhere - in the absence of simple courtesy in public places, the disgusting premium entertainment of all types places on being a smart-ass and giving "smack-downs," the condoning of naked boastfulness (sometimes euphemized as "selling yourself"), the clear and measurable top priority that newer generations are placing on material wealth, and the political media's emphasis on gamesmanship and amoral appreciation of raw strategy and manipulation over substance.
There has been a great hollowing-out of our nation's soul for the past few decades. Its roots, like all roots, have no clearly discernible beginning, but I think the rot truly began to accelerate in the 80s. People were scornfully repudiating President Carter's sweater and the era of idealism, for the new, faux idealism of an individual's unbridled campaign to acquire as much wealth as possible. The movie Wall Street encapsulated this trend magnificently, but even at that stage the psychology was relatively primitive, raw and single-moded.
The hollowing-out of our national character has since extended beyond bald, rapacious materialism, and into an insidious octopus of subconscious cynicism of principles, earnestness, and fair-play of all kinds. The disease has morphed into an ugly ignorance of and disdain for everything from basic politeness to restraint in our competitive encounters. Our day-to-day martial arts have been replaced by a ruthless style of interpersonal street-fighting, where basic dignity is summarily sacrificed for throat attacks and eye gouges.
We, as a nation, truly revel in this rank ugliness. Our embrace of it is seen as "funny" or innocently mischievous, some sort of just retaliation against an unfair and humorless "political correctness" that was never the dominant system of oppression so many have bitterly described it as. In-depth analysis and discussion is derided as boring and slow, replaced by aggressive graphics, orchestra bursts, and superficial commentary. Unintelligent sarcasm and cynicism, masquerading as worldly savviness, sucks the oxygen from any potential for actual illumination of truth. From this now-omnipresent compost rot of our national soul, a strange and malevolent fungus has grown: the modern "conservative" movement, with its naked embrace of all things manipulative, greedy, and selfish. No small wonder that the Karl Roves and Dick Cheneys of the current era retain such unshakable and befuddling cache among our media elites, who themselves were weened upon the same synthetic, bottled formula.
In a sense, our regression into this general mentality is itself enabled by its own features. Only by convincing ourselves in the most reflexive and cursory way that this newfound emptiness is savviness and success can we then, in turn, assuage our egos that our massive bloat of personal and national debt is wealth, that bald-faced lies and semantic tricks are intellectually legitimate, and that this embarrassing parade of naked arses is in fact the most opulent display of greatness.
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Orson
[Read the article: National Review's new tough guy, Mark Hemingway]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here's an example for you:
A: Bush lied about WMD in Iraq.
B: You have lied before, therefore you are just a hypocrite for pointing that out.
A: That's a pointless ad hominem argument.
"A" clearly doesn't understand the meaning of "ad hominem." Calling someone a hypocrite, and offering simple proof of such, is not ad hominem. Glenn has attempted to say exactly this several times.
I also concur with lupercus that you make a false equivalency between lying in general and lying about a critical rationale for a massive war and occupation. Change B's response to "You have lied before about something to get a nation into an unnecessary war, therefore you are just a hypocrite for pointing that out," to make the comparison fair.
Anyway, your point has been amply heard, and now you do it a disservice by repeating it ad nauseum.