Heh. He said, "lumpen proletariat." Heh heh.
"But Glenn Reynolds is surely smart enough to know better."
Evidence?
"Lumpen" in lumpen-proletariat means "ragged", not "lumpy", btw. I've made it my mission to tell everyone this. Marx did once compare the German proletariat to potatoes in a sack, and that does seem "lumpy", but there's no connection.
The lumpen-intelligentsia are the ones who are really to be feared.
Unfogged does not like Michael Totten's picture posts (he's perfectly sane in the comments to that one).
Saying as certain thinkers seem to be operating on the principle that no statement by Iraq war opponents can possibly be true, we should probably start talking about how great Bush is to make their brains explode.
Totten is one of those annoying "I used to be a liberal until they got everything wrong about the Iraq War" bloviators (see Roger Simon and James Lileks for comparative studies). Now that they have been shown to be wrong about, oh, every goddamn thing ever as regards Iraq, they've grown twice as loud and half as coherent.
I posted a link to this post in the comments thread over there. Maybe this will lead to interesting results, though my hopes are not high.
Glenn Reynolds should know better? He links to this kind of crap sophistry and pointless 9/11-fetishism constantly; it's his bread and butter. He especially goes off the rails for anyone he's got a loin-burning hatred for, like Cole or Krugman. He's a hack of the first order, and has been for years.
But he was nice to ogged three years ago, and that absolves him of much, apparently.
It would be interesting to know how Reynolds might respond. In some cases, I suspect, what comes across as hackery is actually carelessness induced by posting so much. But in this case it seems to me to be pretty clear that no halfway competent reader can see Cole's post as claiming that there are like four guys we need to worry about-- this much is clear even from the bit that Totten quotes. (I could be wrong about that: maybe the misreading is easy.) If so, is this delusion or conscious dishonesty? I mean, I've looked at one or two of Reynolds' scholarly publications, and while they don't impress me as Solomonic, they aren't even close to being devoid of responsible ratiocination. Ah, sweet mysteries of the internet.
Actually, w/d, he continues to be gracious and reasonable whenever we correspond. Since this comes up every so often, I'll give a little response, though I don't think a thread about whether my warm fuzzies for Instapundit are justified will be very fruitful.
A lot of his posts make me want to scream, but I don't think the charge of hackery, specifically, sticks. He's not a supporter of the administration down the line. Check out Hugh Hewitt for real hackery. I suspect Labs is right that posting so much is one cause of Reynold's less, uh, convincing posts; the other, I'm guessing, is that he really does seem to hate what he sees as "the left," or "liberals." I think he's wrong to think that way, but yeah, he's been gracious to me and he's very supportive of novice bloggers regardless of political persuasion and that counts for a lot with me.
Why not simply point out that the vast majority of Instapundit's posts are entirely devoid of thought, and leave it at that?
I mean, you can't fault him for thoughtlessness when he isn't even trying to think.
(Does such knee-jerkery even count as holding a view?)
Totten is himself more reflective, for what that's worth. Though many of his posts are kinda dumb -- or, like this one, very dumb -- at least the guy's trying.
I'm sorry, you may like the guy personally (as many people seem to like George Bush personally), but this is a guy who, on the regular, encourages thousands of people to hate me and think of me as the enemy within.
There is little as personally injurious to me as this is; because I am passionate about our founding ideals, I am less of a patriot that the likes of his sycophants. Not to mention his being morally complicit in fanning the flames of liberal hatred, which I genuinely fear as a future threat to my safety.
I'm burning with anger just thinking about it.
He was always very polite to me, until I told him, via email, that I thought that he should apologize for this post:
I've thought for quite a while that "proxy war" was the appropriate characterization, and indeed I've used that term here before. Europeans should worry, though, about what will happen if Israel -- or America -- decides to return the favor. Providing financial aid to terrorists who target European civilians would be uncivilized -- but, then, the Europeans are supposed to be the civilized ones, no?
He got very nasty at that, telling me that my "anti-war buddies" and I don't care about Jews who are murdered by terrorists. It ended badly.
But then there was this. You guys are so nice, you're practically Canadian.
I actually have a tattoo circling my bullet wound that says "Practically Canadian".
"Totten is one of those annoying 'I used to be a liberal until they got everything wrong about the Iraq War" bloviators (see Roger Simon and James Lileks for comparative studies).'"
I disagree with Michael about many things he says, but I generally find him to be better connected to reality than Roger or James have been in the past couple of years. (Lileks particularly seems to conflate everyone to the left of him into one homogenous mass of Foolishness, but I also read his screeds as pent-up frustration, and like to think that he's perhaps more reasonable in actual conversation with people who aren't, say, enthused ANSWER activists; Roger seems to have simply been drinking more and more koolaid from the right every week.)
I've never had anything but courteous interactions with all of them and Glenn -- although Roger did once say he thought I wasn't speaking to him after I had a singular outburst of public outrage at him -- and I've never particularly beaten any of them up in writing, otherwise, since as a rule I try to avoid beating on other bloggers. Past experience in other media suggested/taught me decades ago that that sort of thing becomes more tiresome and troublesome than it's worth, in most cases. Not that I'm saying everyone should abide by such a creed, nor that I always will.
I do see them, like the overwhelming majority of bloggers in the political blogosphere, including myself in the past year or so, generally continuing to become more, ah, emphatic, if not downright extreme, in their views, as the positive feedback loop of interaction with readers and other bloggers who like one's more extreme statements, continues.
If you look at my first couple of years of blogging, it was relatively rare for me to wax sarcastic about the Administration, but the run-up to the election pushed me somewhat over the edge. (One blogger said that my having "descended into being a hack" was "the most depressing thing" that happened to him in 2004, which makes me glad he had such a happy life.) But, naturally, I think plenty of other folk have been far worse.
Totten seems to have and incredible vanity.
Liberal-hatred seems to be a political force independent of ideology or awareness of issues. I know several relative moderates whose bottom line is nothing more than a bitter hatred of PC and of elite liberals, based mostly on negative social encounters. I explained to a couple of them that they were acting like 9th grade girls, but I used an un-PC synonym for "girl" just to make communication more effective.
Glenn, I just happened to note, isn't at all going with Bush on Intelligent Design, incidentally.
But the whole Christian Conservative thing is rather differently aligned from the hawks, or other sorts of conservatives and libertarians. (I haven't looked, but wouldn't be surprised to find Orin Judd praising Bush for it; maybe Powerline, I dunno; I'm not particularly aware of many prominent fundie Christian conservative bloggers, but I haven't gone looking, either.)
The true nature of the Global Fight Against Those Sitting on our Oil (G-FATSO) isn't particularly in debate except by a bunch of wingnuts in denial. Does anybody actually think we would have invaded Iraq if their biggest economic activity had been growing turnips rather than pumping oil?
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
"Does anybody actually think we would have invaded Iraq if their biggest economic activity had been growing turnips rather than pumping oil?"
Relevant, but highly reductionist. Panama, Haiti, Grenada, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Kosovo, for instance, all lack oil. (Yes, yes, Afghanistan, pipeline, snore.)
But, yes, along with all the other motivations and factors, geopolitics, and the oil in the Mideast, are relevant factors. Probably no one would have realized that if you hadn't brought it up, though.
I disagree with Michael about many things he says, but I generally find him to be better connected to reality than Roger or James have been in the past couple of years.
I parted ways with most liberal hawks a while back, and Michael still linked to me afterwards, particularly a series I did on why even war supporters should vote for Kerry.
I've had a hard time reading Roger L. Simon for a while, but Michael's a reasonable guy.
Gary,
Relevant, but highly reductionist. Panama, Haiti, Grenada, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Kosovo, for instance, all lack oil. (Yes, yes, Afghanistan, pipeline, snore.)
If I may rephrase BadTux's question:
Does anybody actually think G W Bush would have invaded Iraq if it was not in an oil rich region?
Does anybody actually think...
Actually, yes. Iraq provides a very convenient base of operations for attacking just about anywhere in the Middle East. I don't think the "reason" we are in Iraq can be boiled down to a single factor. Oil motivated some of the players, military basing motivated others, some see it as essential to confronting Iran, some (like Wolfowitz, I believe) actually are quite sincere about the democracy-making stuff, US electoral politics and $$$ played an obvious role for some of them, et cetera.
Ditto 25. Also notable was the desire to Get Troops Out of Saudi Arabia, but keep them in the neighborhood.
We also seem to have managed to avoid invading Venezuela, or Mexico, I notice. (Lately.)
Oil is definitely a factor. But it's hardly the only factor.
The commonality among terrorists... Ah, that takes me back to the good old days. IRA, Bader Meinhoff, Red Army Faction, Red Brigades. As a generality you cannot pick a terrorist out of a crowd. The reason is that many, a vast majority of terrorists, are middle class or higher in economic status and educational status. They blend in to their native communities.
Reid was an exception. Anyone who believes that this homeless guy somehow created the bomb, flew all over the world, and funded it all himself, is sadly mistaken. Reid was someone's patsy.
If there is a real commonality of any kind, it is in the financing and in the philosophy. Of all the terrorists operating world-wide, the Islamofascists have been the best financed and most persistant. Totten selects that group for his example. The fact that there are Irish terrorists or Hindu terrorists does not negate the example, and that example is of particular interest to America because they have attacked us.
Ideologies attract a variety of people with differing ethnic backgrounds. The common thread is their belief system. Not every person committing a given act of terror has to hold that belief system. It's been speculated that some of the 19 murderers on September 11 did not know that theirs was a suicide mission. People can become involved in terror for social or monetary reasons. But most are in it for the ideology. It's not mistaken to point out a self-evident commonality like ideology.
"Red Army Faction."
That's "Red Army Fraction," actually. It's an incredibly common error, since most folks aren't familiar with the Communist term, and it's not otherwise much used in English.
Apostropher,
I dunno. Take away the oil and why would Bush care about the Middle East. Israel?
Why do we need military bases in the Middle East?
Location, location, location. Think bombers, then look at Iraq's location vis-a-vis Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Okay.
Europe we already have covered. Africa and Asia (at least the parts bombable from Arabia) we don't care about.
Oh, but we do. Remember PNAC's 2000 position paper on defense policy? The specific goals laid out included:
1. Repositioning permanently based forces to Southern Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East;
2. Developing and deploying a global missile defense system, and;
3. Developing a strategic dominance of space.
The goal is to be able to strike at any spot on the globe at a moment's notice and prevent any nation anywhere from achieving anything approaching parity. The move to get bases in the heart of the Middle East isn't just about now - it's about the next hundred years.
I remember it. I can't remember it stating we want to be able to strike any spot on the Earth at a moment's notice.
As for the troop movements in PNAC 2000 - I think they would be different if the ME had no oil.
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