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Saturday, April 7, 2007 12:00 AM

The right-wing brain in action

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  • Saturday, April 7, 2007 07:27 AM

    Conservatism is NOT a mental disorder!

    It's merely a prime example of George Orwell's Doublethink in action.

    On the one hand, your generic neocon has to pay lip service to Wilsonian idealism ("we're over there to help those poor people!"), while simultaneously sticking to Ledeen's policy of picking up crappy little countries and throwing them up against the wall.

    Not surprisingly, this lead to a great deal of double-tracking on the part of Michael, Glenn & The Gang, constantly veering between bogus concern over the hapless Iraqis (unlike those callous and bigoted lefties) and WASPy contempt for those dirty Third World camel jockeys who have nothing better to do presumably than to blow each other up.

    Note the common denominator of both attitudes: you can use either or both without once thinking about what the US has been doing in and to Iraq over the past four years. Isn't that amazing! Not available in stores!

    My point here is this: we don't have to reach as far as Adornoesque theories about The Authoritarian Personality to explain these guys. They're neither fuhrers nor followers, but merely spinners, caught in a web of their own making.

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