Mitch Berg has a good piece that dissects Jonathan Chait’s apologia for Bush-bashing. Berg points that Chait’s constant smearing of the right doesn’t match the facts and displays a willful ignorance towards the arguments being made.
He also points to this brilliant piece by David Brooks in The New York Times that also takes a look at the pathology of Bush hatred.
The quintessential new warrior scans the Web for confirmation of the president’s villainy. He avoids facts that might complicate his hatred. He doesn’t weigh the sins of his friends against the sins of his enemies. But about the president he will believe anything. He believes Ted Kennedy when he says the Iraq war was a fraud cooked up in Texas to benefit the Republicans politically. It feels so delicious to believe it, and even if somewhere in his mind he knows it doesn’t quite square with the evidence, it’s important to believe it because the other side is vicious, so he must be too.
This describes the left-wing echo chamber as represented by Atrios, Hesiod, and the other hard-left anti-Bush blogs that have become virtual mouthpieces for any group that opposes Bush. I always find it interesting that the arguments of the right of the blogosphere being an echo chamber are now exactly true about the left. Considering that these sites might as well be paid propaganda and fundraising organs of the Democratic Party it seems that the echo chamber concept was the dominant model for the left-wing blogosphere. While InstaPundit, VodkaPundit, Spoons and myself have criticized Bush in the past and will continue to do so, the left wing of the blogosphere accepts whatever the DNC line is as gospel.
The policy of the left is based on a singular worldview: we’re the good guys, and anyone who disagrees with us are bad guys. They’re not only wrong, but they have to be stopped, and their mere presence is a direct threat to democracy.
In essence, it’s an argument from fanaticism. It’s an argument that is not only corrosive and childish, but when one side refuses to even acknowledge the legitimacy of the other, democratic discourse is impossible. The Republicans may have been guilty of many of the same crimes throughout the Clinton years, but in the post-September 11 period when this country cannot afford to sacrifice its national security in the name of temporary partisan advantage such actions are not only unwise, it’s simply unacceptable. Petulance and hatred is not policy, and in a time where policy is what is needed, the Democrats have proven themselves unfit to lead.
Let me first say that David Brooks is probably the most sensible conservative editorialist around today, at least judging by the columns I’ve read. You curiously leave out that in the same column, Brooks honed up to regretting the fact that he failed to condemn the “quintessential new warrior” when he was born, that being rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth Republicans who wanted Bill Clinton’s head mounted above their fireplace and spent eight years tirelessly pursuing that goal.
Using the “that behavior was only okay in the pre-September 11” world is a transparently convenient defense of what’s good for goose not being good for the gander, and a curious one for you to call attention to since the partisan vitriol spewn during the Clinton adminstration provided the petri dish from which 9-11 was born. Congress spent six years trying to destroy Bill Clinton, and two years doing little else but masturbating to the Ken Starr report, leaving precious little time for them to do their job and for Clinton to do his. The GOP has some legitimate grievances about al-Qaida being allowed to blossom throughout the 1990’s, but their role in overlooking the threat is just as large if not larger than Clinton’s, and for you to use the bloody consequences of that bipartisan misstep as a tool to mute dissent on the present administration’s unimaginably poor performance is not one that’s gonna be particularly popular outside of the right-wing blogosphere.
Jay: Thanks!
Mark: Congress spent six years trying to destroy Bill Clinton, and two years doing little else but masturbating to the Ken Starr report, leaving precious little time for them to do their job and for Clinton to do his
Which probably delayed the onset of the recession just long enough to make Clinton look like a competent president.
The GOP has some legitimate grievances about al-Qaida being allowed to blossom throughout the 1990’s, but their role in overlooking the threat is just as large if not larger than Clinton’s,
Mark, have you been bogarting Hesiod’s bong? Where on EARTH do you get this stuff?
and for you to use the bloody consequences of that bipartisan misstep as a tool to mute dissent
Where is dissent being muted?
And calling it a “bipartisan misstep” is the sort of rationalization normally credited to “everyone’s first wife”.
Mitch, on an economic level, you’re probably right. Congress’ pre-occupation with decapitating Clinton kept them from cramming hundreds of budget-busting, interest rate-spiking, prosperity-killing tax cut proposals through the pipeline in 1998 and 1999. But then again, Clinton would have had the intellect and political fortitude to veto the giveaways (as he did when Congress finally managed to put the Ken Starr report down) so GOPers fishing for dollars for their bigshot campaign contributors probably wouldn’t have been any more successful than the fishing expedition they did take with Zippergate.
And I hope you’re joking when inferring that a “bipartisan misstep” doesn’t apply to the failure that would become 9-11. The Republicans’ are supposed to be the party that has the military’s back, but failed to address Clinton’s laissez-faire policy towards al-Qaida because they were more interested in seeing Clinton removed from power than bin Laden. For Republicans who failed to hold the hand of their alleged constituency in the defense industry, let alone the hundreds of millions of Americans that industry is supposed to protect, to point their finger at Clinton as the man to blame for making al-Qaida is about as believable as John Kerry telling Democratic activists in Iowa that George Bush “tricked him” into supporting the war in Iraq.
Wow. Imagine my surprise when I came here to refite Jay’s incorrect interpretations, and find two pathological clintaon-hating wackos doing exactly to Clinton and the Democrats, what Jay accuses me and Atrios, among others, of doing.
I guess Irony really is dead?
Not to mention that Jay’s hilarious “look how hypocritical those Democrats are for attacking Arnold when they defended Clinton” is JUST as hypocritical…because HE’S defending Arnold when, no doubt, he pilloried Clinton.
The hypocrisy argument cuts boths ways.
In any event, I have been critical of Bill Clinton on a number of issues.
I have also, given Bush credit whe he [rare as it is] does something competent.
Of course, competence is the MINIMUM standard we should have for our President.
Something Bush doesn’t even come close to.
Any 8-year-old kid understood that we had to invade Afghanistan after 9/11.
And, I question the sincerity of any Ameican citizen who supports the Iraq war, and flies the Israeli flag on his website.
People who share my Jewish faith, but who put the security of Irsael over that of the United States make my stomach turn.
And I say that as a person who loves Israel, and wants to go back there again some day.
But I also love the United States. More than I love Israel That’s why I opposed this dumbass war. And why I oppose that asshole Ariel Sharon and the rest of his mafiosi.
I’m sure I’ll hear the typical attacks such as how I didn’t criticize Arafat or the palestinian terrorists, etc.
That’s just ridiculous. I loathe them. They are the Palestinain people’s worst enemies.
The Palestinians desperately need a Gandhi or a Mandela figure who will tear them away from the perpetual war and terrorist attacks that hurt everyone and help no one but the fear mongers on both sides of the conflict.
And Sharon, like a marionette on a string, does the damn bidding of the terrorists everytime he retaliates.
What really angers me is that Sharon apologists like you enable that piece of crap. We can’t do much about who the Palestinains stupidly choose to be their leaders. Not directly.
But we sure as hell can influence who becomes the next Israeli Prime Minister.
American Jews have enormous power in Israel. Sadly, dipsticlks like Jay and his neocon buddies are choosing perpetual war, and terror over peace and common sense.
I’ve got news for you Jay…the true Jewish homeland has ALWAYS been the United States. It’s been that way for over 300 years.
THIS is the promised land. As soon as you figure that out, we’ll all be better off.
On this we agree completely.
I’m not a fan of Ariel Sharon by any measure. I agree that Sharon probably could have seen Arafat toppled a year ago if he hadn’t occupied the West Bank. However, I also understand that if Israel doesn’t defend itself it will be destroyed.
If a Gandhi were in charge of the Palestinians Barak would have gotten his deal at 2000 and the al-Aqda intifada would have never happened – and Ariel Sharon would be back on his ranch rather than Prime Minister.
Until the Palestinians abandon violence, however, Israel must do all that it can to protect itself. The people of Israel developed their land. They have been there long before the Balfour Agreement, and they have a right to the land that they had settled for decades. This conflict is a direct result of the Arab’s complete unwillingness to accept a Jewish state in the Middle East. To give into this unbridled hatred is to encourage more of it – because when Israel is gone the hatred of the radical Islamist movement will not go away.
Who says Irony is dead? I just got called a “wacko” by the man who currently defines the term “moonbat”, the fella who brings all of the DNC-upsucking of Kos to the web sithout a spoonful of the style, writing talent or connections.
Irony is alive and well and can benchpress 300 pounds.