Excitable Andy was “horrified” (though not gobsmacked) by the State of the Union speech:
The contrast between the banal cheeriness of the president’s demeanor and the grave threats he faces was unsettling.
This from the blogger who advocates fighting Islamism with more confidence and less fear.
Sully apparently has not considered that he and his fellow travelers have helped to push public opinion toward apathy over the threats we face, in part by spending far more time hand-wringing over the actions of the US in facing those threats than the manifest barbarism and fundamentalist totalitarianism of the enemy.  Nor has it occurred to Sully that no president and no nation ever won a war by having the president give speeches conveying fear and malaise. For that matter, I have little doubt that had Pres. Bush been less cheery, Sullivan would be calling Pres. Bush a fearmonger today.ÂÂ
Sullivan’s review of the State of the Union speech is ultimately not a review of the speech at all. It is a review of the fear and loathing that haunt his Ambien-induced hypnopompic delusions.
How far down the matrix is “horrified” from “gobsmacked”? I left my Excitable Andy® Outrage Warning System™ card somewhere and I can’t seem to find it.
You know what else bothers me about President Bush? His disgusting refusal to fly like Superman. Clearly we need a president who can fly! And dark hair, nothing says presidential like dark hair, it speaks of authority and… what’s that? … oh.
Blonde hair, blonde hair is virility and youth, we need a president with blonde hair! President Bush fails us yet again!
Sullivan is hypnotised by the of continuum of outcomes possible when one plays the game only in one’s head; where every move of one’s own is countered by a move also designed by one’s own mindset – the inability to think like the enemy or to think outside the norms of ones own moral code.
He cannot comprehend the collapse of outcomes that is concomitant with actions over which one has no control – i.e. the other side, and is paralysed by this lack of control that one experiences in facing a truly chaotic system.
He can therefore only concentrate on what went wrong and never on the novel or extraordinary measures that may be necessary to engender to put it right, because he cannot bring himself to stomach the bad intermediate outcomes that may be necessary in order to win. He is Cicero, not Caesar.
To the people who must implement nuts and bolts tactics and strategy in such efforts there are three outcomes. Won, Lost and Dead. Sullivan should decide which of these three is the most desirable and proceed from there instead of bitching about the things that have gone wrong along the way.
It is a review of the fear and loathing that haunt his Ambien-induced hypnopompic delusions.
You people have no idea what I go through.
None.
~shudder~
Heh.
Kurt Vonnegut once summarized the effects of all the protests, marches, etc. I don’t have the essay in front of me for an exact quote, but it was something like “a cream pie of X diameter thrown from a distance of…” He was clearly frustrated. This is an extension of the same effect.
Consider: Sullivan and his compatriots have been throwing everything they’ve got at George W. Bush for eight years now. Insults, calumnies, challenges, lawsuits, marches, demonstrations, political opposition, Congressional hearings, you name it. For four years of that, Bush was engaged in a tactic in Iraq that didn’t work, and was hearing even his supposed allies jeering at him for it. He’s been swamped in vilification.
And at the end of it — his head is up; there’s a spring in his step, a lilt in his voice, a twinkle in his eye, and a smile on his face. If he wore a hat, it’d be a fedora with a little feather tucked into the band, tipped at a jaunty angle. Furthermore, Laura strolls about with a calm demeanor, and his daughters shrug and go about their business with smiles and surety, clearly supported by a family structure that yields a positive attitude on life.
Talk about blood-pressure-raising frustration! If you wanted to know how Lex Luthor felt when Superman shrugged off the Atomic Disintegration Ray with a curl of his lip and a flip of his cape, look no farther than Andrew Sullivan. He’s thrown everything he’s got including the kitchen sink, and the man’s still smiling. Infuriating is entirely too mild a word for it.
Regards,
Ric
I’m certain Bush knows the drill by now. Whatever he says and does, people like Andrew Sullivan will make out as if the effect is villainous. Ric nailed it.
Yeah Andrew Sullivan is basically coming to the conclusion of his real significance and meaning in the world and can’t stand it. Poor little fella.
What a coincindence. Did you realize that you could make an anagram of these words into soiled puppy buttsecks?
OK, maybe not.
So. We’re now reduced by the Squeemie Sullivans of the world to fighting a war against the jihadists using….punk rock. Got it.
Let me know how that works out for ya. I’ll be over here in the corner, loading magazines.
My handlers say that I should not post this, But, if I am running for president, I must be honest.
About Andrew.
I’m sorry to be the one to say this, but when one is obsessed with where his p____is going to be dipped, one seemss to be more fixated on orifices than offices. The only presidential candidate that would please Andrew would be the one who openly demonsrates how big his butthole is during the state of the union speech. Drop trou, baby!
Andy is an absolute nitwit. I am not gay, so I am not sure, but it seems to me that my gay friends are more into their units than they are into the reality of our times.
“My thingy comes before your security. What a beautiful butt you have!”
Nothing better than forming your opinion upon the fact that most people would rather not witness a poop stabbing, and that “homophobes” are offended by that. What a bunch of idiots we are, not wanting to witness gay sex in the street.
HOMOPHOBES! WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? HOMOSEXUAL SEX IS MUCH BETTER THAN STRAIGHT SEX, YOU UPTIGHT MOFOS!
Oh well. Wait until Obama lets the Taliban into our country on student visas. “Understanding” and all. Children are like veal to those morons…
Look out children – and sheep…
PS – I am apparently a homophobe. I think it stems from the many times that gays apparently didn’t understand the word “No”. And don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against gays (I am a musician – if that tells you anything), and have no problem with gay people. It’s just the ones who can’t hear the word “NO” that give me agita.
Kinda like socialists.
Oh well
I guess I am hopelessly mired in the world of “the ancient”, where people have actually read the constitution, and have the ability to undestand the words.
John McCain? Obviously, he can’t read. And as a kicker, he is very proud of that fact.
I am close to sitting this one out. Four years of a black “Jimmah” might just be the treatment that Americans need. As James Carvill(?) said “He sure can give a good speech”.
Exactly.
Sullivan’s brain is ever so slowly sinking into dementia, a condition induced by the drug regimen he must take in order to stay alive. Personally, I sometimes wonder if the world would be a better place if he stopped taking his meds.
Karl!!!!!!
I need you to tell me how Rudy can win.
MayBee – That would likely require things that we would never hope for – ie. natural disasters, security disasters, plane crashes, etc … Essentially, McCain and Romney would have to quit or die. Not gonna happen.
I need someone to tell me how Rudy could be so inept. Once upon a time there was a guy who looked like I could happily vote for him, instead of voting against his opponent. And it looked like he was a lock for the nomination. It looked like he had a great shot at beating the Hildabeast. He had plenty of money, and plenty of support across the center. And now it looks like he might as well quit, and that when he does he’ll endorse McCain.
Rudy, what happened? What the fuck did you do?
JD- you can lie to me, it’s ok, I’ll take the lie.
Pablo- what did happen?
MayBee – I’ll call you, and I will respect you tomorrow ;-)
What happened? He gave up before it started. Whoever thought it would be a good deal to skip the first 5 primaries and focus on Florida should never be able to get a job in politics again. Even Ron Paul had more joementum than Rudy going into Florida, after having claimed 5 wins to date. A guy in my office asked if Rudy was still running. We have seen the rise and fall of Fuckabee. The wins by Mitt and now Johnny Mc’s great surge. Through all of this, Rudy was nowhere to be found.
At least Andy was moved.
What happened is Rudy isn’t the kind of guy that can recover from a campaign setback. Fans would do well to remember why Hillary is in the Senate at all.
That’s a very good point really.
[…] MayBee writes: Karl!!!!!! I need you to tell me how Rudy can win. […]
Eric, cancer isn’t exactly a campaign setback.
Pablo, I’d call cancer a severe setback, campaign or otherwise. Bit difficult to recover from, too.
Regards,
Ric
I’d lean more toward the otherwise sort of setback, Ric. It’s the kind of thing that can render a political campaign utterly irrelevant in the greater scheme of things.
It is a review of the fear and loathing that haunt his Ambien-induced hypnopompic delusions.
Brilliant sentence, Karl. Excellent turn of a phrase.
Huh? I think Eric was talking more about when Giuliani’s infidelity first got popularized. It was pretty ugly stuff too, and way way fair game running against Hillary.
It was prostate cancer that took him out of the race. And he had boffo approval ratings at the time. He would probably have crushed Hillary, but for the health issues that derailed him.
My memory tracks with Pablo’s. I recall it being the health issues that really drove it. Then again, I am too lazy to google a timeline. He was so far ahead, the infidelity stuff left a mark, to be sure, the the health issues really drove his demise.
He was getting trounced before any health stuff came up. The cancer was his political salvation, seems to me. That and that thing with the terrorists, but that was way later, after the Senate race had been decided.
I don’t dislike him, but he had a lot of baggage going into the Senate race, and he ran anyway, against Hillary, at a time when screwing around on your wife was a bad thing. And his candidacy, tenuous in retrospect, kept others from running well-planned, well-financed campaigns. Had he just finished his mayoral term, Hillary may very well never have become a Senator.
Oh. Is Eric a troll person? I may have missed something here.
Ok I should say I don’t dislike him but if for real he’s endorsing McCain then he’s dead to me. At least until I change my mind.
hf – I think we were all kind of right. The infidelity and marriage collapse had already happened, but given how horrific that played out, he was still in the running, down 8-10% in a poll, which was likely 4-5% in real life. The health issues seemed to have just taken the starch out of him.
I can see your point. I’m not hating on him. No promises about tomorrow if he does that endorsing thing though.
I have to remember that:
“I don’t hate him, he’s just dead to me.” Can even follow up with, “He’d dead to me–and of couse I don’t speak ill of the dead.”
Look. This whole McCain thing is just hard is all. I need time to get my head around it.
Are you there Jeff? It’s me, happyfeet.
oh, gee, I don’t even want to think about what you might want to increase, happyfeet. (funny but that’s the second time today I’ve seen that book referenced)
I may have overdosed on the NPR tonight. They had David Brooks on, probably just to antagonize me, but it worked.
There was once a time that I enjoyed NPR…..
I voted for Clinton and Dukakis back then….
“The contrast between the banal cheeriness of the president’s demeanor and the grave threats he faces was unsettling.”
He faces. Not we. There never is a “we” when it comes to the President anymore.
Meanwhile, Greenwald is, possibly, more overwrought than usual. Given time, he might just top the Google hit list for “naked brazen Bush”.
Which would be nice for him.
This is Sullivan – a man facing tribulation calmly and not running around shrieking like a little girl would be unsettling to him.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
Sullivan would probably attack any President that showed that kind of behavior – oh wait, he has.