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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
While I see what you're getting at -- why be upset over someone's opinion, which is pretty much my philosophy 99% of the time -- but there's one problem:
Kurtz, and others like him, help direct our nation's political discourse.
He, Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, et al, manage to get things into the discussion that, quite frankly, have no business being there in the first place (see: Kerry, John, and his joke) ... they play fast and loose with the facts ... the serve as textbook examples of hypocrisy ... and they project their insecurities onto everyone else so much that they may very well turn into PowerPoint presentations.
If they were just fringe players with little to no audience (like, say, my old blog) then yeah, who cares?
But they're not.
They are widely read, and keep getting their buttugly visages on the teevee and their cackling voices on the AM dial. Politicians take note and repeat their false claims (the "slow bleed" term comes to mind). And, for reasons I still can't figure out, manage to frame the issues in ways that often do not match reality.
So it's imperative that Glenn Greenwald, MediaMatters, Kevin Drum, et al, point out these issues. Not so that the left can turn around and do the same thing (I'd like to think we're a bit above that), but so that the public can know the truth ... so that our national discussions can focus on real policies and getting things done, rather than on personal attacks and petty issues .... and so that we, as a nation, can move forward together.
Of course, I could be wrong ...
We might well call such a maneuver a super-lie, an ultra-lie or a meta-lie.
It's significant enough that we should hold a contest to decide on the best label for it.
>In order to establish a totalitarian regime, terror must be presented as an instrument for carryiing out a specific ideology; and that ideology must have won the adherance of many, and even a majority, before terror can be stabilized
- Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism
Its the meta lie of a nascent totalitarian movement. I've been reluctant to say that for a while now, but I can't not say it anymore. The movement LOOKS and SOUNDS like a nascent totalitarian movement. I thought I was possibly just paranoid, but when it was pointed out to me that Joe Conason had actually written the book (its ad is all over this page) I was jokingly suggesting someone should write ... and when I read the conclusion of Altemeyer's The Authoritarians and he said that if you understand what's going on you've got to start informing others ... then that pretty much convicned me of the need to start trying to make more people aware of the parallels.
"Liberals" are becoming the feindbild of movement conservatism.
Thomas Jefferson believed that all men are created equal, yet he kept slaves. He had a large farm to run, and share-cropping hadn't been invented yet.
Al Gore believes that global warming is a threat to our entire species, yet has energy bills in the tens of thousands of dollars. Tipper can't entertain their friends in an earth-covered yurt, nor bicycle to her Junior League meetings.
GWB believes he has a divine mission to spread democracy to backward nations, yet he can't find a better tool for the job than shock and awe on the one hand, and the triumph of reasons of state over habeas corpus on the other. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
Hypocrisy is a universal human trait; we're all creatures of present circumstance regardless of how fervently we imagine better ones, or how hard we work to create them. We shouldn't be ashamed of this, but we should be aware of it, and we should try to avoid lying about it. When we lie, others will point out our lies for us. This isn't an act of aggression only, in fact, we might be wiser to consider it part of a self-correction process, a way of insuring that reason and imagination don't get ahead of themselves.
There's nothing wrong with Al Gore's grand dream, or with GWB's, for that matter. What's needed from both of them -- and from us -- is a little humility, at least if we're to have a chance of realizing such dreams in the long run.
How do we know that all if not most of these comments that were posted with these "deathwishes" are not right wingers posing as liberals? My point is, we do not know who they are and what their motives are. As far as "venting" goes. I think that Kurtz and the rest of the media should thank their lucky stars that there are blogs for people to vent on. It would be much more healthy to vent on the blogs than to act out against this media which is so undermining our democratic republic.
"It always seems that the Fascist Group is the better than the Communist group. Communism seems to draw the worst of men." - Charles Lindhberg, writing in his journal (1938) after attending a fascist rally in Britian
Charles was not nor never was a Nazi. After WWII, when he was in Japan and discovered a cave full of Japanese soldiers who had been slaughtered by US soldiers he was disgusted, sickened. Yet before the war, he had led an isolationist movement while advocating the US join up with Germany to combat Soviet Communism and the "yellow danger" of Japan and China. Its like he was unable to grasp the implications of what he was advocating. Remember that. The authoritarians don't realize they're authoritarians.
http://www.blogsforbush.com/mt/archives/2006/12/pinochet_is_dea.html
Dying at 91, 18 years after he voluntarily surrendered power when the people of Chile voted to end his rule.
Since the end of his rule, various leftwing groups have been after Pinochet to try him for crimes committed under his authority. None of these groups have made a move to indict Fidel Castro, and that is all anyone really needs to know about them.
...
His last crime was 18 years ago, and now he's explaining himself to God...what the left has to explain is why they hate Pinochet, who did end up midwifing Chile's vibrant democracy, but love Castro, who had killed far more, is continuing to kill people and who will only allow Cuban democracy over his cold, dead body.
Posted by: Mark Noonan at December 11, 2006 11:47 AM
Cyber,
Where in my post or comments do you get an apology for Pinochet? He was a brutal dictator and that he was forced out of power in 1988 was a glorious moment in the history of human liberty...now please explain why you don't condemn Castro in even harsher terms? After all, Pinochet's dictatorship only last 15 years, while Castro's HAS GONE ON FOR 47 YEARS!!! Pinochet is accused of presiding over a bit more than 3,000 political murders...Castro has murdered tens fo thousands. Where is the leftwing outrage?
Nonexistent, of course, because the left doesn't care about oppression and murder, as long as a leftist gets to be the oppressive murderer.
You guys on the left reveal volumes about yourselves all the time...
Posted by: Mark Noonan at December 11, 2006 04:27 PM
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/12/washington-posts-praise-for-augusto.html
Mark Noonan is just a loon right? Just an isolated semi/quasi/possibly actual fascist thats far outside of the mainstream, right? Then why is the Washington Post (a "Pulitzer for Treason" leftwing moonbat unhinged lefty treasonous propaganda rag according to movement conservatives like Limbaugh) sounding the same - nay - why does the Post sound MORE apologetic for Pinochet than Mark "Democrats are corrupt cockroaches, we should be lashing moral degenerates in public with a bullwhip" Noonan!?
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/12/washington-posts-praise-for-augusto.html
The Post even belittles the contempt expressed for Pinochet by claiming that it is due less to his murder and torture of political opponents -- that can't possibly be the real reason -- and is driven instead by the fact that "he helped to overthrow, with U.S. support, an elected president considered saintly by the international left: socialist Salvador Allende, whose responsibility for creating the conditions for the 1973 coup is usually overlooked."
So, with the Rush Limbaugh/National Review straw man in place (i.e., Pinochet is only hated in "some" circles because he was pro-U.S. and overthrew a darling of the socialist-anti-American-internationalist-left), the Post builds its case that Pinochet is, on balance, an admirable figure despite his bad points (murder, terrorism, torture): "It's hard not to notice, however, that the evil dictator leaves behind the most successful country in Latin America."
In Goldhagen's book on German eliminationism, he starts the book with a quote from a German officer who wrote a letter of outrage to his superior officer. He was shocked, insulted, and totally amazed that his superior would have the audacity to have suggested that he make his officers sign an aggreement pledging not to commit crime against Polish villagers. He answered, indignantly, his men were Germans of high character, it was outrageous to think that they would conduct themselves in anything other than the highest moral manner. Goldhagen points out that the officer was able to think this, and see no contradiction, despite his officers already having participated in mass killings of Jewish civilians.
That's what might end up being a bit of a problem ten or 15 years from now. When figures like Michelle Malkin can see Human Rights Watch as some sort of dangerous/extremist/thuggish/radical/far left organization it makes it easy for that person to not see its persecution.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
