Xark!

We could tell you, but then we'd have to kill you

Justice Department attorneys said in their legal brief that the legality of the president's actions could only be properly judged by understanding "the specific threat facing the nation and the particular actions taken by the president to meet that threat."

"That understanding is not possible without revealing to the very adversaries we are trying to defeat what we know about them and how we are proceeding to stop them," they wrote.

The Associated Press: White House Invokes Privilege in Spy Cases, May 27, 2006

 

A psychological enigma

NYU journalism professor and PressThink founder Jay Rosen dipped into his own comment section Saturday to leave this remarkable summary of our current state of political and rhetorical affairs. I reproduce it here with only minimal editing:

Maybe some people think that it's not all that important for the stated reasons to go to war (Saddam has WMD, Saddam is in bed with al-Qaeda)  and the clinching reason ("we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud") to be the actual reasons, or even to be true at all.

If it doesn't matter because the war is just and necessary, then I could see how all this furor over the rationale for going to war seems absurd and highly unfair (A variant on this theory: it doesn't matter because Bush went to war with (a) wink, and most Americans saw the wink and understood that he had many excellent reasons and picked the one that would shut the U.N. up, or sound the best to potential allies, and quiet the press, etc.).

That part I can grasp.  I don't agree with it; but I can grasp it.

What I can't grasp is why, if you hold this view, you then fight tooth and claw against the growing pile of evidence that the books were cooked and the intelligence slanted and the nuclear threat turbo-hyped and the decision to go war was a foregone conclusion from 2002 on.

In the realpolitik world where it doesn't matter what the stated reasons were because the cause is just and the deed necessary, it is precisely Bush's willingness to do such things (and take the heat) that would mark him as a leader fit for the times, tough enough for an era of global terrorism. Here's a man who does what it takes. He finds a way. He doesn't let the cumbersome formalities of reason-giving, of building a case before the eyes of the world, become an obstacle to doing what's right, what's necessary, and what's in American interests.

This should be a point of pride among Bush supporters. Instead (as this thread shows) they are being driven crazy by every piece of evidence that comes out showing that, as expected, the stated reasons were not the actual reasons, the intel was slanted to fit a pre-determined conclusion, the facts were fixed around the policy, and the decision was made to go to war regardless of all the formalities.

Why do they refuse pride and pick hand-to-hand combat over every fact emerging? I don't know the answer, but my suspicion is that the ultimate reasons are not political but psychological, or let's say they lie within the realm of political psychology. (And here I speak not of individuals but tendencies in the 35-40 percent of the body politic still with the President.)

In their view, Bush is "guilty" only of doing what's necessary for the country, even if that means breaking the rules and customs of our democracy, cooking the books, and bullshitting the world. But while his supporters admire him, a true leader, for taking on that guilt, (which they don't see as real guilt) they accept none of it for themselves. Their innocence has to remain undisturbed.  Perfect, in fact.

This, of course, is impossible.

Posted by: Jay Rosen  at April 15, 2006 08:50 PM | Permalink

I'd say that pretty much sums up my thinking on the matter, only with far greater eloquence.

E-mails from the new "Know-Nothings"

When American nativism first crawled out of the sewer in the 19th century, its targets weren't always so easy to spot: fellow Europeans who had the disqualifying characteristic of having arrived after the "real Americans" who had been born here (often to immigrant parents). Their approach to the problem? Violence, discrimination and bad government policies. With their penchant for thuggery, the group took on the name of its standard response when confronted with evidence of crimes: members would say they "knew nothing."

Today's "know-nothing nativists" aren't the violent brawlers their ideological forebears were. But if you want to see the racist mindset behind the moderate media face of the anti-immigration movement, consider these e-mails that I've received in the past week (I wound up on some interesting mailing lists after subscribing to multiple conservative newsletters)...

THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS' POEM
I cross ocean,
poor and broke,
Take bus,
see employment folk.

Nice man treat me
good in there,
Say I need to
see welfare.

Welfare say,
"You come no more,
We send cash
right to your door."

Welfare checks,
they make you wealthy,
Medicaid it keep
you healthy!

By and by,
I got plenty money,
Thanks to you,
American dummy.

Write to friends
in motherland,
Tell them 'come
fast as you can.'
 
They come in turbans
and Ford trucks,
I buy big house
with welfare bucks

They come here,
we live together,
More welfare checks,
it gets better!
 
Fourteen families,
they moving in,
But neighbor's patience
wearing thin.

Finally, white guy
moves away,
Now I buy his house,
and then I say,
"Find more aliens
for house to rent."
And in the yard
I put a tent.
 
Send for family
they just trash,
But they, too,
draw the welfare cash!

Everything is
very good,
And soon we
own the neighborhood.
We have hobby
it's called breeding,
Welfare pay
for baby feeding.

Kids need dentist?
Wife need pills?
We get free!
We got no bills!
American crazy!
He pay all year,
To keep welfare
running here.

We think America darn good place!
Too darn good for the white man race.
If they no like us, they can scram,
Got lots of room in Pakistan.

SEND THIS TO EVERY AMERICAN TAXPAYER YOU KNOW!

Low, wide right and foul

Vice President Dick Cheney threw out the ceremonial first pitch at today's home opener for the Washington Nationals, but the crowd of 25,000 didn't stick to the FOX News script. They booed him loud. They booed him long (watch the Quicktime video via ThinkProgress).

How did FOX handle this incoming-reality crisis, this bit of Heartland kitsch theater gone awry? Well, first they turned off the audio. Then their talking head made sure not to mention to crowd's surly response -- at all.

Let's put that in context. It would be like Cheney going to a photo-op at Yellowstone and being mauled by a grizzly, and the FOX New guy just nervously talking about the administration's brilliant environmental record.

Fortunately for us, the FOX producers turned up the audio in anticipation of the cheer that usually accompanies a typical ceremonial pitch -- only there was no cheer this time. Just loud derision.

What's a FOX media lackey to do? Apparently, the solution is to praise the veep's throw, which started shy of the mound and still didn't make it all the way to the plate:

Let's take a look here. There's the vice president, tossing out the pitch. Not a bad pitch. Seemed like it was over the plate. A little low. A bit of a bounce before it hit the catcher's mitt. Pretty good for the vice president. And of course wearing his Nationals' jacket. Folks in Washington, DC, thrilled finally to have a baseball team back in the nation's capital...

As someone going by the handle War4Sale commented at Think Progress this afternoon: "19% Approval rating!!! Cheney is now less popular than herpes."

Ah yes. Listen to that sound. When a politician can't do a photo-op at a ballpark without being publicly humiliated, something has changed. And it's about time, if you asked me.

When in the course of 'Human Events'...

This morning my subscription to The Conservative Voice e-mail newsletter brought this advertisement for "Human Events," and -- boy-howdy! -- it's personally signed by Ann Coulter herself!

Not familiar with the publication? Don't ask me -- let Ann describe it to you in her own (well, allegedly her own) words!

HUMAN EVENTS (which you can get at a big discount with a free best-selling book) is written and edited by gutsy people who will rescue you from the sticky tar pit of political correctness that passes for contemporary reporting... not girlie-boy editors afraid of sticking to their guns!...

Every time I wince at the brazen lies of Democratic leaders or their surrogates in the press, it occurs to me that America will never run short of natural gas...

FACT: Democrats are caught up in the Abramoff lobbying scandal too...

FACT: The Iraq war is consuming far less of the US GDP than other wars in the past...

FACT: A national survey found that Democratic professors outnumber Republican professors 3 to 1 in economics, 28 to 1 in sociology, and 30 to 1 in anthropology...

There's so much at stake today. America is at war and liberals just don't get it. Never has it been more important for you to get the truth -- and not the P.C. pabulum that filters through the establishment media.

When PC propagandists assure us that jihadist terror doesn't reflect "true," "peaceful" Islam, they're not only wrong, they're dangerous -- because in doing so they lull America into letting its guard down. And not only do self-appointed "experts" get Islam itself wrong -- they have also replaced the truth about Christian Europe and the Crusades with an all-pervasive historical fantasy that is designed to make you ashamed of your own culture and heritage -- and thus less determined to defend it. But now there's a remedy: In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), Robert Spencer reveals all the disturbing facts about Islam and its murderous hostility to the West that other books ignore, softpedal -- or simply lie about.

What an utterly amazing document.

Urgency. Danger! You're gutsy -- they're cowards! They're educated -- but you're smarter! We just want the truth -- but they've all got an agenda!

And here's what I find illuminating -- the "experts" out there aren't just wrong... they have deliberately "replaced the truth" with an "all-pervasive historical fantasy." And what's the goal of this vast conspiracy? It's "designed to make you ashamed of your own culture and heritage -- and thus less determined to defend it."

Wow. The whole of history and current events boiled down to one basic psychodrama: when confronted with evidence that challenges their beliefs, these conservatives feel ashamed. And some people simply can't handle shame. They can't accept the notion that what they believed to be noble and true was less than perfectly thus -- and so, consequently, those who speak these heresies must be the problem.

Sometimes I think that the first step toward peace is learning to take ourselves a little less seriously.

In a word: Truthiness

Charleston's own Stephen Colbert introduces the word "truthiness" (later named "Word of the Year" for 2005) on the Oct. 17th inaugural episode of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report:

I will speak to you in plain, simple English. And that brings us to tonight's word: "truthiness." Now I'm sure some of the "word police," the "wordanistas" over at Webster's are gonna say, "Hey, that's not a word." Well, anyone who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books.

I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. And that's exactly what's pulling our country apart today. 'Cause face it, folks; we are a divided nation. Not between Democrats and Republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms.

No, we are divided between those who think with their head, and those who know with their heart.

Consider Harriet Miers. If you "think" about Harriet Miers, of course her nomination's absurd. But the president didn't say he "thought" about his selection. He said this:

(video clip of President Bush:) "I know her heart."

Notice he didn't say anything about her brain? He didn't have to. He "feels" the truth about Harriet Miers.

And what about Iraq? If you "think" about it, maybe there are a few missing pieces to the rationale for war. But doesn't taking Saddam out "feel" like the right thing?

And here's Colbert, talking out-of-character to The Onion A.V. Club:

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word...

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love the president because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country.

I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true? ...

Truthiness is "What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true." It's not only that I feel  it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.

As Kurt Vonnegut Jr. would say: "And so on." (Thanks to Wikipedia for the Truthiness entry... soldier photos are of Jessica Lynch -- rescued Iraq war POW -- and Pat Tillman, a former NFL player who was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire. Both were the subjects of blatantly dishonest yet widely reported "truthiness.").

When generals whine

Via Americablog:

Guess what? America's top military leaders don't like WaPo cartoonist Tom Toles. In particular, they don't like the Jan. 29 Toles cartoon below. Now guess what they did about it.

Yep. You guessed it. Our Joint Chiefs of Staff took time out from their busy schedules to write a letter to The Washington Post complaining about Toles' "reprehensible" cartoon.

Don't like something in America? Well, fine, speak your mind! But understand that -- as you speak -- your mind is revealed. To put it bluntly, the group-mind revealed by their Jan. 31 letter -- signed by each of the chiefs -- is not pretty.

First off, the Chiefs just don't get it -- or they pretend they don't get it. Either option is unflattering.

Second, the the rhetoric employed in their assault on Mr. Toles is exactly the kind of achingly over-martyred, self-righteous victim-speak that we here at Xark (well, more specifically, ME) have come to despise. The result is a stunning triumph in the ever-burgeoning field of 21st century totalitarian kitsch. It's time that we started holding our government officials accountable for this kind of devisive, politically calculated culture-war bullshit.

In truth, I would have respected their letter if the Chiefs had said "Look, we've seen combat, and we've visited people who've had their legs blown off, and we're sensitive to images like this. No matter what Mr. Toles point was, we don't like this image." Fine. Point taken.

But that's not what they wrote. After some boilerplate about the nobility and sacrifice of our service members, the Chiefs opined:

Where do we get such men and women? From the cities, and the farmlands of this great Nation -- they serve to be part of something greater than themselves. While you or some of your readers may not agree with the war or its conduct, we believe you owe the men and women and their families who so selflessly serve our country the decency to not make light of their tremendous physical sacrifices.

Note to the Joint Chiefs: Tom Toles didn't "make light" of anyone's sacrifices. Nobody laughs at such things. This isn't Toles poking fun at mangled soldiers -- it's Toles poking our military leadership (specifically, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) in the eye for not doing right by those soldiers in the first place. And the truth hurts.

The Chiefs aren't responding to Toles -- they're changing the subject. But here's the bottom line: The act of pointing out what's wrong in your country isn't "reprehensible." It's patriotic. If you disagree, disagree, but cut the aggrieved victim act, boys. It's behavior unbecoming of an officer when generals whine.

Full text of the letter after the jump.

Dan's Wednesday links, etc. (2.1)

STATE OF THE ONION: Did you watch Bush last night? We didn't -- went out and supported the US economy by purchasing a sofa instead. For coverage of the event, I turned, as always, to America's No. 1 weekly news source: My ass.

Just kidding. I pulled up The Onion and read its lead story:  "President Creates Cabinet Level Position to Coordinate Scandals."

"Tonight, by executive order, I am creating a permanent department with a vital mission: to ensure that the political scandals, underhanded dealings, and outright criminal activities of this administration are handled in a professional and orderly fashion," Bush said.

The centerpiece of Bush's plan is the Department Of Corruption, Bribery, And Incompetence, which will centralize duties now dispersed throughout the entire D.C.-area political establishment.

THE STATE OF THE UNION IS AWFUL: I almost wrote about this over the weekend, but restrained myself. You can see how long that lasted. Here it is, short version: I can't remember a moment in my adult life in which the fundamental foundations of our Republic and the world at large were this compromised and unstable. Will 2006 be worse than 2005, which wasn't exactly a stroll in the park? Damned if I know. What do I look like, a psychic?  All I'm saying is that multiple conditions favor outcomes that could be really crappy.

YOU GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a great group that's soon to become as maligned as the ACLU, has sued AT&T for assisting the NSA with its warrantless domestic spying program (via Slashdot).

H5N1 REACHES IRAQ: And not just bird deaths, either. The WHO confirmed Monday that a teenage Iraqi girl died of the disease on Jan. 17. Remember that thing I just said about how conditions right now favor some really crappy outcomes in 2006? Uh ... this would be one of them. BTW: The big media hasn't really sorted out the importance of this: It's not even mentioned on homepages of the WaPo or NYT sites at this hour (although the NYT is promoting a story about China's spotty response to the disease).

BLOGS ON BUSH: Liberal David Corn: a "comic-book defense of the war in Iraq." Words of the night? "Retreat" and "isolationism." Corn: "Did a new memo come in from the pollsters?" Smug A-List conservative Glenn Reynolds: "The delivery was, for Bush, good, and the substance was mostly good, too, though the cloning-ban stuff didn't thrill me. The Presidential Commission on entitlement reform was also very lame, though realistically it's probably all he can do." Military-themed conservative Austin Bay: "The 'terrorist surveillance program' is the correct way to phrase it." (Editor's note: Yes, it's the correct phrase if you're intent on helping people miss the point). Liberal kos (Markos Moulitsas Zúniga): "Nowhere near as good or powerful as last year's (which I thought was his best speech ever). This was, frankly, more of the same ol'." And Wonkette: "Seriously, shouldn’t the Democratic Response have been Governor Kaine just saying, 'WTF, Mr. President?'”

A great idea from pioneer Chris Lydon: Blogs of the Union.

LUNCH-HOUR UPDATE: From this afternoon's Blogometer, which focused on the SOTU: "We'll get into issue-by-issue critiques of the speech below, but it's worth mentioning here that conservatives were anything but enthusiastic about the speech." Democrat Senator Nancy Pelosi's headline at The Stakeholder: "It Was a Nice Break from Reality TV." And there's this from War Liberal: "Did he really call for a ban on 'human-animal hybrids'? Is this a real concern? Are we at war with the Lobster People again?"

Dan's Tuesday links, etc.

Editor's note: Janet says I should go back to doing these round-up link posts. In my defense, I haven't been doing them because I haven't had the time to do as much online news reading, but now I'm thinking about a new way of handling the volume of sites I try to track. Let's consider this an experiment in process. -- dc

ALITO MORE TO THE RIGHT, NOW: I'm hardly in the mood to be flip about this. Those of us who oppose the continued plundering of the Constitution by our current ruling Washington cabal cannot be happy about today's confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr.

Was his confirmation inevitable? Probably. Do I think the Democrats missed yet another opportunity to define themselves and their opponents via a statement of values and principled opposition? Absolutely. Considering the way the Alito nomination came about, this may have been the ultimate opportunity to define the Republican party in terms of the entrenched interests it represents.

Once more, with feeling: When you can't win, you must turn the act of your defeat into something meaningful. By focusing on Alito's individual qualifications, the Democrats squandered the chance to talk about what is really in play in America: Competing values. Ironically, had they done this, they might have actually pulled over some pro-Choice Republicans and won. Instead, the Noise Machine recast the story as mean Democrats making some nice guy's wife cry. Nice job, boys.

Anyway, we're hosed. Again. Talk amongst yourselves.

KILLING ANOTHER STEREOTYPE: In yet another study (via J.D. Lasica's New Media Musings) , The Pew Internet and American Life Project says that the Internet actually makes people MORE social, not less so.

Further rebuking early studies suggesting that the Internet promotes isolation, Pew found that it "was actually helping people maintain their communities,'' said Barry Wellman, a University of Toronto sociology professor and co-author of the Pew report.

HOW NEWSPAPER EXECUTIVES THINK: An editor friend of mine forwarded me this piece, which Tim Porter also linked with this quote:

"About five years ago, I went to the Herald and I told them, 'I've got this blog and maybe you'd like to run it.' They said, 'It's a what?' But then they had a committee meeting or something and now they want everybody to have a blog. They want the security guard to have a blog."

--Dave Barry

By the way, Porter is en fuego these days, rising up the charts with a bullet... (Tim, you put that bullet down this instant! You'll put somebody's eye out!)

SPEAKING OF PRESS STUFF: Jay Rosen has posted the new introduction to the latest edition of Neil Postman's classic "Amusing Ourselves to Death" over at PressThink, and the cool thing is that the intro was written by Andrew Postman, Neil's son (Neil Postman died in 2003).

STANDING UP ... TO THE LITTLE GUYS? Crooks and Liars posts video of Jon Stewart comparing how Oprah smacked-down what-his-name, that phony memoirist, to the way supposed TV journalists treat actual public figures who lie as naturally as they breathe. A reminder to myself and my colleagues: Beating up the little guy is not proof  of bravery or toughness. Going toe-to-toe with the bully who beats up the little guy is where we prove our worth. Just don't ever expect a merit badge or a bonus, even if you win.

Moral: Stop singing to the deaf

Damn. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones comes out and says what the rest of us have been saying for months, and suddenly everybody thinks he's Mr. Smart Guy.

To wit: Intelligent Design isn't science. End of discussion. Thanks for playing.

See, you can do that when you're a judge (particularly when you're a Republican judge). Such principled analysis appears to be is far beyond the ability of the modern media, though. I mean, the President likes Intelligent Design, right? And a lot of readers/viewers like it, right? And if we don't suck up to them, "People of Faith" will call us liberal, right? Well duh! Break out the patronizing "think-pieces" and go ask the choir director what she thinks about natural selection!

But this whole thing was never about science, never about faith, and certainly never about "people of faith" (cringe). It's about a few pushy people in this country who have somehow rationalized callous dishonesty and willful ignorance into essential traits in the service of the Way, the Truth and the Light. They live in an  unending quest to inflict their gothic psychological pathologies on the rest of us.

Jones grasped  this, God bless him. From The Washington Post:

When the trial ended in early November, Jones faced two choices. He could have construed the case narrowly and ruled on whether the school board had a religious motive. That, in Jones's view, was an easy call. He found that school board members had committed "outright lies under oath" and displayed a "striking ignorance" of intelligent design.

But Jones went further. "Intelligent Design is not science," he wrote. "Proponents . . . occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist [but] no serious alternative to God as designer has been proposed."

Intelligent design scientists are adept at finding holes in the science of evolutionary theory. Some notable mainstream scientists acknowledge these gaps. But Jones concluded this effort does not amount to a new theory of life's origins and development.

He found that the Discovery Institute had a wedge strategy, to use doubts about evolution to replace modern science with "theistic and Christian science."

Enough, enough, enough. These people don't need to be convinced they're wrong and brought along. Don't waste your time. You don't sing to the deaf.

This is the gift Jones gave us: From here on out, we can cite him and just move on.

(Oh, and for the record, I think the neo-Darwinist approach to evolution will likely be replaced by a better theory, one that involves consciousness. So what's the big difference between me and the Darwin critics from the I.D. "movement?" They want to see heir ideas taught to captive school children. I hope to see mine researched by scientists.--dc)