The Victory Caucus logo resembles that of V for Vendetta!
This is typical Greenwaldian tendentiousness. All of us think in terms of analogies. It is one of the fundamental ways in which the human mind operates, and if tempered by something more stringent, such as logic and an investigation of facts and premises, it can be very valuable. Even if it is used heuristically, it may be valuable provided the user understands that it is being used that way. But the way in which Greenwald uncritically elevates accidents of resemblance into figures of signification is something that I have not personally witnessed at this level of seriousness or frequency since I visited medieval herbaria, replete with Book of the World interpretation of tropes of every variety.
It relates to a fundamental flaw infecting much of liberal argumentation: that you are your aesthetic sensibility. Wilde, quite an aesthete himself, mocked the elevation of sensibility in such works as “The Importance of Being Earnest,” where it was associated with the leisured class that could afford to attend performances of his plays and who generally invested their “self-expression” in trivialities.
I am all for beauty. It is not a substitute for analysis. Greenwald is a pseudo-intellectual fraud, and–what is worse–a bore.
He does, however, according to the celebrity resemblance engine, reflect Alan Rickman as an 80% match. Rickman has played such notable authoritarians as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies, and the drunk monk Rasputin, as well as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood. It is to shudder.
oooooh, love the chickenhawk thrown down in the update by General Ellers McEllensburg.
and now I wonder what my love of cheesey loung music says about me.
I know what it says about you, Maggie: fondue!
That makes no sense – the V was the mark of the guy who wanted to liberate people from authoritarian control. He had a vendetta, see, and…
So, he was like a lazy Zorro? Is that what you’re saying?
He was an anarchist, ostensibly. He dies and the comic ends before the anarchic hilarity ensues. The autocratic government is conceived as a liberal rape fantasy. What’s up with how liberals love to conjure lurid fascist dystopias as a backdrop for struggle?
I hated that f’in movie.
The end of it, where they blow up Parliament and all the crowds are outside dressed in the poofy Guy Fawkes outfits….
They blow up Paliament and win everything and there they stand in silence with that long-suffering, earnest look on their faces.
I contrast that with the sailor kissing the gal in the iconic WWII photo on V-E day.
That’s the left–win everything and stand there looking artful and put-upon; looking doubtfully into the future….
Rightwingers? We overthrow tyranny and go “Wooooooo!” and kiss the first hot goth chick in fishnets. “Woooooooo!”
Stupid assed movie.
Of course there was the poofter with the copy of the Koran ‘outlawed in Britain’ who loves it for “its beautiful imagery”. Such horseshit. Horseshit on stilts.
Unwatchable.
oh yeah, I did earn the title of “Cheeze Wiz” some years back. anyhoo, I wound up reading the whole Hewitt interview…. interesting. gigi did some fun editing, or we’re all suffering from confirmation bias.
Double-bonus: Rickman is a raving moonbat himself.
I just think it’s kinda funny how Greenwald has the anti-war folks eating out of his hand—and yet his analyses are so predictable and puerile.
Really. Is this what passes for nuance?
In Greenwald’s piece (after having fucked up the analogy that anchors it), Glenn does what he always does: he makes his ubiquitous assertion (the Bushies and neocons have ruined a once great and proud nation and “they” need to be stopped), then he appeals to authority (one General who happens to agree with him), offers a bandwagon appeal (most people now side with him), and relies on the chickenhawks smear to try to shame his ideological enemies while hilariously trying to set himself up as a brave truthteller who is unafraid to take on the scaremongerers.
Or is it bedwetters? I forget.
He then pats himself on the back for being a true patriot, while practically declaring everyone who disagrees with him on an Iraq strategy a traitor. After all, the neocons are lawbreakers and fascists who are actively working to subvert the Constituion, relying on scare tactics so that they can go to war.
Motive? Well, they get to blow shit up, I guess.
The fact that Odom pulled the chickenhawk argument on Hewitt marks the General as an unserious thinker and a rhetorical bully. But its clear why somebody like Greenwald wants to prop this guy up as the new poster boy for the anti-war cause: He wears a uniform.
Of course, so does Petraeus. But, well—we each have to pick our generals, I guess.
Anyway, this sanctimonious, bombastic Brazilian blowhard has followed Sullivan’s lead—the “conservative” turned reluctantly by a rogue President who is then embraced as a “brave” dissenting voice—and he’s making his nut with it.
But the whole thing is a sham. This guy has been a manufactured cutout from the very beginning (not just anybody made Kos’ Townhouse list for orchestrating talking point campaigns)—and that he is able to land book deals and plum gigs at Salon after having been caught sockpuppeting all over the place just goes to show that, as with Marcotte, the anti-war crowd is only concerned with whether or not you are on message. They couldn’t care less whether you are honest, or whether your emotion-packed screeds are embarrassingly shallow and rhetorically transparent. They’ll pretend otherwise, for the good of the cause.
To borrow a phrase, Screw ‘em.
Wow, Jeff. I could read that over and over again. Well done.
happyfeet, the dystopia, the struggle against authoritarian might is part of the adolescent fantasy, as projected by Chris Bowers,last week. Wanting the thrill of belonging to the revolutionary click that overthrows the old order.
PJ O’Rourke mentioned the same thing in “Give War a Chance” when he wrote of the Kuwaiti resistance being teenagers, and how it is their fantasy – stay out late, run around with guns, kill bad guys. He also noted that adolescent fantasies are adult nightmares.
V for Vendetta was part of that adolescent power fantasy thinking that Bowers confessed to and O’Rourke wrote about. It is perfectly fine so long as it remains a fantasy and doesn’t come into the real world.
Unfortunately, I think the adolescent power fantasy has become mainstreamed into much of the radical left’s thinking – the Bush=Hitler equation being an example. I call this unfortunate because the radical left currently has a lot of influence in the Democrat Party, and adolescents do not consider the consequences to their actions.
click=clique
Even so, he still couldn’t make a case if you can actually read.
Refering to Republicans who want to surrender as “White Flag” Republicans is a smear?
Iraq was better under Saddam?
It is only getting worse in Iraq?
The chicken-hawk argument?
And most important of all:
DID YOU KNOW A V LOOKS JUST LIKE A FUCKING V!???!!?
I think Odum is angling to take Murtha’s seat if he ever retires. Greenwald just likes selling books to idiots.
Increasingly worse as it enters a new downward spiral from the quagmire of years past. Only more so.
Expect Gigi to be channeling Dante soon and writing some new circles into Hell. He’s gonna need ‘em.
So does a ‘U’. And the number 5.
(Sorry. Watched “Rome” last night.)
Well, it shouldn’t. It should look like a chaste V waiting until it finds the right person to marry and start a family with.
Glen(s) missed the obvious:
Victory Caucus
Ingsoc, 1984
That’s the image I saw first, and I support the Victory Caucus.
Well, personally I thing Glenn looks like a horse’s ass, but that doesn’t make him one.
Oh, wait…