Re: Suggestions II

1

Ogged is a wise man, and everyone should obey him implicitly.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 7:57 PM
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Now Ogged, the right wing called dibs on the terms of debate fair and square, and it's just plain dishonest trying to take them back now. We've got to play fair if we want to win back middle America!


Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 8:00 PM
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Agree. Or, "George W. Bush is the natural candidate of today's Republican Party."


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 8:04 PM
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The whole "even the conservative so-and-so" routine has always been a fool's game, and it drives me nuts whenever I see liberals falling for it. Our goal shouldn't be to simply keep piling on Bush; it should be to broaden the anti-Bush critique into a critique against the entire Republican party. Bush is a product of modern Republicanism, not some bizarre outlier or anomaly, and making that case is going to be crucial to taking back the White House.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 8:09 PM
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"Product," "product," "product." Thank you, sj. I could not remember the appropriate word.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 8:12 PM
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Yeah, who cares about Bush? He isn't running next time.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 8:15 PM
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Surely the only sane response to such Republicans - ones who disavow Bush in order to embrace even further ideological extremes - is to ask, "Ah - so why did you vote for him?"


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 8:16 PM
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This is also what bothers me when we get overly gleeful about his poll numbers. Surely some percentage of those who disapprove do so simply because they feel there have not been enough bombs dropped and Bush is being a wimp.


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 8:18 PM
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Yeah I was pretty surprised to see this formulation of which you speak on our own Apostropher's blog, a man who I would have thought to be beyond moments of identification with Joe Scarborough.


Posted by: Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 8:45 PM
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Apostropher is the hero, Clownę. Let's not let the poisoned political dialogue distract us from truths upon which all freedom-loving Americans can agree.


Posted by: Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 8:58 PM
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In this regard, Roy Edroso is the hero. He has post after post cutting through the bullshit of conservative criticism of Bush. Another one tonight!


Posted by: Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 9:20 PM
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Like the sin vs the sinner, hate the Party not its members. Having slept the evening to escape the hottest part of the day, I need more coffee to fully explicate this on the level of abstraction it deserves.
The Party is more concrete than its ideology but more abstract than its behavior.

The people ogged is concerned with are protecting the Party. I include Glenn Greenwald, whom I do not hate, but will not trust until he forever renounces heresy and Republicanism.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 9:50 PM
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Alright, I'll bite. What did Glenn Greenwald do?


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 10:12 PM
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Don't forget that most Dems, Hillary included, think we shouldn't get out of Iraq. A pox on both their houses.


Posted by: Adam Ash | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 10:17 PM
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Don't forget that most Dems, Hillary included, think we shouldn't get out of Iraq

Oh, don't be ridiculous. Yes, they do; they just call it "strategic redeployment" instead of "withdrawal."


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 10:21 PM
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Mine is not a casual or thoughtless position, but one I have been working on for forty years. Question:How is it possible that a liberal like Nixon, a libertarian like Reagan, and a conservative like Bush can all elicit the same kind of supportive passion? What does it mean? If the "Party" is only minimally about ideology, or is the battlefield of ideologies, what is its purpose? What does it provide its members?

One should not hate warriors or soldiers. It is ultimately unsatisfying to hate "This war this time this way." One can hate "War."

The level of abstraction is important, so as to make hate possible. One should not hate people, and specific policies should be engaged intellectually and dispassionately. It is possible and useful to hate a general human group project, like "War" and "The Republican Party."


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 10:21 PM
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13:Glenn Greenwald is a Republican, who like many Republicans, wishes to recreate the "Party" in his image. He doesn't understand, willfully misunderstands, that the Party created Nixon & Bush, rather than these men being "apostates" and corruptions of the True, Right, Pure Party.

Glenn Greenwald is a Republican.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 10:25 PM
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13:And the question reminds me of the discussion about liberals seeing morality being about "what you do" and conservatives viewing morality being about "what you are".


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 10:31 PM
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Does Greenwald still identify as a Republican? I haven't seen him use that lebel in a while.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 10:35 PM
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Ogged, you and Cę crack me up. I've been saying since 1999 that Bush is a stammering idiot. If Joe Scarborough goes on the air and says, "Yeah, he is an idiot," how should we respond so as not to be played? Argue the point?

Of course he's an idiot, everything he has touched his entire life has turned to shit, and we should do everything possible to hang him around the necks of every GOP candidate in sight.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 10:37 PM
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Hey hero, I wasn't naming names. I'm all for agreeing that he's an idiot, but we should add that Scarborough is playing a game and we're not letting him off so easy. Emphasis, is all.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 10:44 PM
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19:Greenwald was simply used as an example, of course. Could have been Sullivan or Barnett or any number of people. But I think it is critical that the more important argument be about the "Party" than about particular individuals or particular actions and policies.

Here is a PDF article from Social Justice:Conservatives have Moral Intuitions that Liberals May Bot Recognize Liberals have two acceptable sources of Moral Intuitions, Cons have five.

Care and Justice are shared. Ingroup loyalty, Heirarchy and Purity are considered invalid by liberals, according to the article. The article posits methods liberals can use to reach conservatives, by reframing in awareness of the three extra sources.

I believe those three foundations (affects) need to be attacked and diminished, most usefully by attacking both the affect and the object.

I am not a Democrat, liberal, or progressive. Those are not bad things, but my attaching myself to any of them would be a bad thing.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 11:03 PM
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Aha! I knew I felt different today.

bob mcmanus says Nixon was a liberal, Reagan a libertarian, Bush a conservative, and Greenwald a Republican.

Therefore, I'm obviously an egg-salad sandwich!

I'm so glad that's cleared up.


Posted by: Hamilton Lovecraft | Link to this comment | 08-17-06 11:11 PM
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23:Which of those is least true, and why?

Wasn't that long ago, when I was still watching C-Span, that I would watch Republicans pouring over Venona, the open Soviet archives, in an effort to prove that Nixon and Chambers were right all along, that Alger Hiss was really really a spy. I asked myself, "Why, for God's sake? Who cares?"

Lieberman is useful to Republicans precisely because he weakens the Party Identification of Democrats. The recent and current conflict within the Dems is about whether and why that is a bad thing.

Working with Greenwald or other Republicans on "common cause";talking about policy in a bi-partisan manner;accepting Republicans as part of your Ingroup...all weaken Party ID. There are many more Republicans like Idealist and baa on leftish blogs than there are Democrats on Rightish blogs. Often the trolls will tag-team, with "good cop/bad cop" tactics.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 12:17 AM
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Nixon was not a liberal; he was an opportunist at a time when domestic moderation paid off. Reagan was not a libertarian; he was an authoritarian thug who liked tax cuts and whose baser impulses were often reined in by a Democratic Congress. I suppose George W. Bush may be a "conservative" by today's definition of "conservative" - which seems to mean "one who opposes abortion rights and supports tax cuts for the rich" - but a far more accurate label would be "monarchist."

You seem to be lumping Glenn Greenwald in with people like Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan's project seems to be to bash Bush while waiting for a GOP Messiah who will descend from the sky to transubstantiate wafers into war. Greenwald doesn't shy away from attacking the Republican Party as a whole in the way we're talking about.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 5:37 AM
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If Joe Scarborough goes on the air and says, "Yeah, he is an idiot," how should we respond so as not to be played? Argue the point?

Not that you don't know this, but to belabor the obvious: "Damn straight he's an idiot, and you and everyone else on your side of the aisle has been worshipping him and accusing us all of having Bush Derangement Syndrome for calling him an idiot for the last six years. You have no credibility -- either you're a nitwit, for not figuring it out sooner; a liar, for refusing to admit it and abusing us when we pointed it out; or you have short-term memory loss. In any case, you're many days late, and hundreds of billions of dollars short: if you want to change party affiliations, we're happy to have your vote, but don't expect anyone to value your judgment."


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 5:51 AM
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Let us link arms with Joseph Scarborough and march forward in common cause to a glorious future!


Posted by: Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 6:00 AM
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Maybe if #26 were catchier. Could you sing it?


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 6:39 AM
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It won't work trying to hang Bush around the neck of the GOP. They are ALL going to be able to run away from Bush successfully, since he can so easily be stigmatized as an aberrant fiscally irresponsible idiot who started the wrong war.

The only thing that works is for the Dems to field candidates that look like they drink beer instead of wine. Kerry and Gore were wrong because they look like wine-drinkers instead of beer-drinkers. Still, they got half the vote. If we had a beer-drinker running against their beer-drinker, we'd win.

What the Dems don't realize is not that they have to appear strong on national security; all they have to do is look like they drink beer.

That is the road to success. To the degree that Dems don't realize this, they are simply dumb fucks and don't realize where the American voter is coming from.

We are a nation of beer-drinkers, not wine-drinkers. The Republicans have correctly stigmatized the Dems as wine-drinkers, and the Dems often help to stigmatized themselves as such.

Start fielding Dem candidates that look like they drink beer: that is the only way to political success in the US.


Posted by: Adam Ash | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 6:42 AM
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I vote for LB to write this generation's "Have you no sense of decency" speech!


Posted by: Ukko | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 6:49 AM
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candidates that look like they drink beer instead of wine

'Postropher '08!


Posted by: Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 6:56 AM
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31: Why yes, a wine drinker that looks like a beer drinker. I'm perfect, aside from the extensive documentation of my disqualifying habits.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 7:01 AM
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It won't work trying to hang Bush around the neck of the GOP. They are ALL going to be able to run away from Bush successfully

This is silly. These people all have records; anyone who's big enough to run for president has a couple hundred photos of them grinning broadly and shaking hands with George Bush. So you cut a bunch of ads saying McCain voted for George Bush's proposals 95% of the time, and George Allen voted with George Bush 98% of the time, or whatever. Everyone in the Republican Party lined up to kiss the man's ass in 2004, and there's plenty of votes and quotes and so forth to hang Bush around their necks. And before you say "nobody cares about voting records," that's bullshit. They slimed Kerry as weak on defense by running dozens of ads that said "Kerry voted to defund the X helicopter and the Y missile and the Z magical Arab-killimifing rainbow machine" and it worked well enough to give Zell Miller that neat line about spitballs.

The fact is that a president does more to brand the image of his party than any other single political figure. This is why Bush ran in 2000 on an "I won't get blowjobs" platform. That's why it's not about tossing out the anti-Bush critique; it's about broadening it to the rest of the party. We are still running against George Bush, in both 2006 and 2008. We just have to make sure voters think that, too.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 7:14 AM
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I'm just curious -- what will the Democrats do if they regain total control (except the Supreme Court) by 2008? Will we go into fiscal austerity mode to pay off the national debt? Will we have a "nuanced" way of leaving our corrupt health care system in place? Seriously, what? I know they won't be Republicans, but it seems like the only consistent message from Democrats consists of "fiscal responsibility" and a contentless "competence."


Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 7:45 AM
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I'm hoping that they wouldn't attack Iran, for one thing.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 7:55 AM
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That's a very low bar. I'm even starting to hold out some hope that Bush won't attack Iran.


Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 7:58 AM
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35 -- I thought that was already a done deal.


Posted by: Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 8:02 AM
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At this point, I'd be satisfied just to have a president who had mastered subject-verb agreement.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 8:04 AM
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I would like a president that doesn't seem to salivate over the prospect of blowing up foreigners.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 8:05 AM
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25:Calling Nixon a mere opportunist is a little weird. The fact is, an incredible amount of stuff actually got done, and he signed all those bills. The liberal coalition was nowhere near as strong as it was in LBJ's 2nd term. Do I give Erlichman and Nixon part of the credit for OSHA? Sure, why not?
And I have little evidence that Nixon was in any way a small government conservative, which is not a particularly new ideology. I would also recommend looking at Nixon's foreign policy, which is where he got the most heat from his own party. Alliances, treaties, negotiations it was a maniacally active realism.

But of course my point was that the offensive behavior of the current Republican Party is built into the Party itself, back to "Honest" Abe trying prior restraint on newspapers, buying Alaska and subsidizing the transcontinental, and engaging in a psuedo-Wilsonian foreign policy and war in service of commercial interests.

Nixon's policies were nearly the opposite of Shrub's, yet they both are "monarchial" and imperial. I would, when talking about the recent FISA case, bring up Lincoln and the Ellsberg case in order to show context. The Republican Party was born corrupt and destructive.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 8:06 AM
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Then, at the very least, there could be a diplomatic gain. Pretty much every country in the world enters negociations with our current administration assuming that the US representative is lying. My European friends held onto the "oh, you guys just got a shitty President this time" until 2004, at which point they wrote the US off as a formerly reasonable country. Very high level diplomats from all countries have been telling the US to fuck off for the past couple years. Booting the Republicans out--and yes, that means electing Democrats, at this point in history, at least--sends a signal to the world that we're ready to try something else. There are all kinds of international efforts that are stalled or going in a bad direction right now; a new US administration would be a window of opportunity to review a LOT of rather important matters. (Doha, Kyoto, Russia's energy blackmail, ICC...)


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 8:10 AM
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Calling Nixon a mere opportunist is a little weird.

Do you really think he signed onto the Clean Air Act out of a pure-hearted commitment for the natural environment? I'm pretty sure he'd dump toxic waste in the Grand Canyon if he thought it might win him an election. Calling him a "liberal" is silly. He adopted some moderate-to-liberal policies because they were popular at the time and because they'd win him votes, not because of a genuine idealogical commitment to liberalism.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 8:12 AM
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That was me.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 8:13 AM
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34:The Democrats won't do, can't do much. They are Kerensky to Repubs Lenin, Weimar to Hitler. Krugman said it early in 2002, reformers will always get their butts handed to them by revolutionaries.

The public discourse must be intense enough to provide elbowroom. There must be a huge psychological space created between the parties, an irreconcilable gap. Voters and politicians must feel committed or trapped so that the counter-revolution becomes inevitable, or the only possible course.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 8:18 AM
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42:Shoot man, I remember the "kitchen sink" debates, which are pertinent. Yeah, I believe Nixon was very much part of the post-war liberal consensus, and that the Southern strategy and anti-communism were the opportunistic acts. Nixon was much closer to Jacob Javits than to Reagan or Goldwater.

But you know his heart, so if I mention wage-price controls or any number of wildly liberal actions you get to say:"But he didn't mean it." I have no adequate response, if evidence and facts are useless.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 8:31 AM
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But you know his heart, so if I mention wage-price controls or any number of wildly liberal actions you get to say:"But he didn't mean it." I have no adequate response, if evidence and facts are useless.

Yeah, Bob, because it's not like you ever make any statements that rely on a reading of someone else's character. Or abandon facts in favor of faded memory, for that matter.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 8:53 AM
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46:You seem to have no point or purpose other than attacking me, so let's go at it, motherfucker. First one to lose temper, wit, or sense of humour loses.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 9:23 AM
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To respond with substance instead:

Nixon's history shows a host of political activity that appears to be nakedly opportunistic (the Southern strategy, his embrace of and subsequent flight from McCarthyism, his Vietnam policies, etc.). There seems to be very little within him that is motivated by a genuine philosophy of "liberalism" (see, for example, his attitudes towards transparency, covert surveillance, the democratic process and the universal value of human life). Within this context, Nixon's liberal-to-moderate domestic agenda appears to be a genuine anomaly. Some of this, like wage-and-price controls, is analogous to Bush's weirdly protectionist stance on tarriffs: it's not conservative, but it doesn't make him a liberal. It's just heavy-handedness. Some of this, like Nixon's environmental and labor reforms, seem like straightforward concessions to movements that were still fairly popular at the time. The other interpretation would be to say that Nixon was afflicted with a near-schizoid case of cognitive dissonance which made him intensely progressive on some issues and fantastically corrupt, opportunistic, and authoritarian on others. This is certainly possible, but I'm not the first to suggest otherwise, and I don't think it's "weird" or implausible to suggest that the man wanted to keep being President more than he wanted to protect workers or the environment.

To take another example: it's entirely possible that George W. Bush is seizing greater and greater control for the executive branch not to empower himself and his policies, but because he genuinely believes that the president - any president, before and after his tenure - should have unchecked power during wartime. But given everything else we know about George Bush, this appears to be a less plausible explanation than the notion that he's simply grabbing power for himself.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 9:25 AM
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First one to lose temper, wit, or sense of humour loses

I'll remember that next time I'm laughing it up at Bob McManus's Summertime Comedy Special.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 9:29 AM
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49:bzzzzt!! Safety! Failure to recognize irony and self-deprecation!

48:The policy mix of a 50s and 60s "liberal hawk" can cause cognitive dissonance for modern observers. Broadly distributed economic well-being was considered a critical weapon in the fight against communism, for obvious reasons. Broadly-based did not mean universal, and so often allowed a callousness toward minorities. Especially political minorities, conformism to the consensus is demanded, and the authoritarian and repressive measures logically flow from the guiding philosophy.
Republicanism is fascistic, has been since Lincoln, and can be nothing else.

After and as a cure for Robespierre:Napoleon.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 11:04 AM
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Yeah, I'm thinking this whole "Bush is an idiot" thing is a mistake. It just plays into the "liberals are elitists" angle, which is obviously part of why it's now okay to say Bush is an idiot. From here on out, our talking point is that he's a liar. Lots of voters suspect that they're idiots; none of them will allow themselves to consider that they're liars.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 11:33 AM
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The two categories aren't mutually exclusive, especially as regards Bush.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 11:38 AM
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Although I did once crack up a Republican co-worker by saying: "I'm being reasonable here -- I'm not saying that I know Bush is a liar, or that I know that he's an idiot. Just that he has to be one or the other."


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 11:42 AM
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52: Of course not. The man really is an idiot. I'm just pointing out that saying so is more likely to get people's backs up than calling him a liar or an incompetent is.

But the point is, it doesn't matter. What matters, as Ogged (who is right, for once) says, is pointing out that the Republicans en masse are lying incompetents.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 12:11 PM
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The man really is an idiot.

Goddammit, he read The Stranger all the way through. He's meeting you liberal bastards halfway; what do you want, blood?


Posted by: Felix | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 12:19 PM
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Jon Stewart's perspective on Bush's reading is helpful: "It's a book about a Westerner who kills an Arab for no reason and dies without remorse."


Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 12:22 PM
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And the frightening thing is that the story cannot possibly be true, it must be a lie for some purpose, and they cannot possibly think that Bush's polls will be improved if they send the message that Bush is now an existentialist, so what can they possibly be trying to say? Are they just fucking with us now?


Posted by: Felix | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 12:27 PM
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Is it a kind of reverse dog-whistle tactic? "If you're well read enough to understand this reference, this is how scared of us you should be."


Posted by: Felix | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 12:28 PM
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58: Don't underestimate this possibility.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 12:30 PM
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I once read an interview where Karl Rove said his favorite book was Conrad's The Secret Agent. This was pre 9/11. This is something not to ponder on if you don't want to end up like McManus.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 11:20 PM
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It's a good book.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 11:26 PM
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I misremembered. It was post 9/11. He didn't say it was his favorite book, but he compared its plot to what he considered the then-current situation. Only the plot of The Secret Agent lends itself more to conspiracy theories than anything else. But he probably just didn't read it very closely.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 11:28 PM
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It is a good book.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 08-18-06 11:28 PM
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From 2000 the Rove Department made a point of recasting all criticism of policy and position as personal attacks.

This strategy has now reached culmination. With everyone identifying the person as the problem, the person can be jettisoned as political theater, while the policies and positions are maintained with no discontinuity. Simulation of change.


Posted by: Forrest | Link to this comment | 08-19-06 12:02 PM
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