In the past week, Glenn Greenwald(s) opened a new front in his war against the Bush Administration and Americans who support the global war on Islamic jihadism. He unabashedly argues that Vice-President Dick Cheney thinks like Osama bin Laden and that commenters at Little Green Footballs openly supported Al Qaeda assassination plots. Greenwald(s)’s hypocritical bad-faith as to the latter has been amply demonstrated. His latest unhinged attacks, however, raise the larger questions of whether Greenwald(s) is becoming that which he professes to oppose and of whether those who made his book a New York Times best-seller, his blog so widely read (including the journalists and Senators who take their lead from him) want to continue to embrace his truly crazed vision or repudiate it fundamentally.
This is what lies at the core of Greenwald(s)’s world view:
We face a genuine and profound crisis as a country because we have a President who has continuously exploited the threat of terrorism and engaged in rank fear-mongering in order to expressly claim the power to act without any checks or limits at all—including, literally, the power to break the law. And he has been exercising that law-breaking power aggressively and enthusiastically in numerous ways, all of which are radically changing our national political character and the system of government that we have had since our founding.
It is that belief in his own monarchical power that led the President to eavesdrop on Americans in precisely the way that our country, thirty years ago, made it a criminal offense to engage in. And the President’s illegal warrantless eavesdropping is but one example which arises out of these truly radical and decisively un-American theories of power which this Administration has adopted and put into practice. The Administration’s ideology of lawlessness, in every respect, is contrary to the most basic and fundamental values on which our country was founded and which have defined who we are as a nation for the last 225 years.
If we are to remain a constitutional republic, Greenwald writes, we cannot abide radical theories of executive power, which are transforming the very core of our national character, and moving us from democracy toward despotism. This is not hyperbole. This is the crisis all Americans  liberals and conservatives  now face.
Since the publication of his book, Greenwald(s) has also written:
There are some people who treat our conflicts with the Bush administration and their followers as just a matter of basic, friendly political and policy differencesâ€â€along the lines of “what should the rate of capital gains tax be?†or “what type of laws can best encourage employers to provide more benefits to their employeesâ€Ââ€â€and therefore, we treat people who support the administration with respect and civility and simply have nice, clean discussions to sort out our differences among well-intentioned people.
That isn’t how I see that… I see the Bush movement and its various component parts as a plague and a threat, as anything but well-intentioned. My goal, politically speaking, is to do what I can to undermine it and the institutions that have both supported and enabled it.
Just compare Greenwald(s)’s mentality as he himself described it to the core description offered 43 years ago in Harper’s by Richard Hofstadter of the defining attributes of The Paranoid Style in American Politics:
The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic termsâ€â€he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point…
As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.
Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.
What Hofstadter described almost five decades ago as the mental hallmark of the right-wing paranoid is exactly what comes out of Greenwald(s)’s writing. That is to be expected, as Hofstadter noted at the end of his essay:
The paranoid style is not confined to our own country and time; it is an international phenomenon…
Studying the millennial sects of Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, Norman Cohn believed he found a persistent psychic complex that corresponds broadly with what I have been considering a style made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: “the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict, fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable prophecies… systematized misinterpretations, always gross and often grotesque.”
We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.
That describes Greenwald(s) (and undoubtedly Ellers and Wilson), GG groupies like Mona (“dialogue isn’t on my agenda”), fellow Salon columnist Joe Conason and their ilk. Inasmuch as Greenwald(s) believes this is the way both Vice President Cheney and Osama bin Laden think, I could argue that Greenwald(s) thinks like both of them, leaving it to the reader to decide which comparison would most bother him.
Does Greenwald(s) really believe that President Bush is going to rule over a totalitarian empire and impose his will on the world with his stockpiles of nuclear weapons? One can debate what’s really in someone’s mind only with speculation, but I think he probably has come to convince himself of that. There is no doubt that Greenwald(s)’s hard-core audience—not to mention the one-third of the public that believes that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job”—have come to believe that.
Greenwald(s)’s twisted worldview warps his perception of current events. For example, VP Cheney said the following in last week’s speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee:
An enemy that operates in the shadows and views the entire world as a battlefield is not one we can fight with strategies used in other wars. An enemy with fantasies of martyrdom is not going to sit down at a table for negotiations. Nor can we fight to a standoff—(applause). Nor can we fight to a standoff, hoping that some form of containment or deterrence will protect our people. The only option for our security and survival is to go on the offensive, facing the threat directly, patiently and systematically, until the enemy is destroyed. (Applause.)
Greenwald(s) characterized it as follows:
Cheney, of course, is not merely speaking there about Al Qaeda, but about the whole range of Evil Enemies against whom we must seek merciless and final destruction, including those about whom his audience cares most—Iran, Syria, the Palestinians, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Greenwald(s) of course, is simply projecting there. The US is so mercilessly seeking the destruction of our Evil Enemies in Iran that we supported and ultimately joined a multilateral diplomatic effort against Iran’s nuclear program and—just days before Cheney’s speech—sat with both Iran and Syria at the Baghdad conference on Iraqi security. Given Greenwald(s)’s enthusiasm for the Iraq Surrender Group report in his Cheney attack piece, his hysterical blindness to the Baghdad conference is particularly instructive—as is his blotting out of new US plans to give $86 million in security assistance for the Palestinian Authority.
Greenwald(s) has been particularly unhinged when it comes to Hezbollah and Hamas, recently asking:
In what conceivable way are Hamas and Hezbollah enemies of the United States? They are unquestionably enemies of Israel, but what grounds exist even for arguing that they are our enemies?
Hezbollah carried out the 1983 suicide bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 American servicemen. Hezbollah’s 1983 Beirut embassy bombing killed 17 more Americans. Hezbollah’s 25,000-pound TNT bomb killed 19 US airmen and grievously wounded hundreds of additional Air Force personnel at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah trained members of Al Qaeda; the 9/11 Commission urged further investigation of Hezbollah’s role in the 9/11 attacks.
Even Greenwald(s) concedes that Hamas is an enemy of Israel—a US ally and one of the few democracies in the Middle East. Greenwald(s)’s attack on Cheney heaps praise on Jordan’s King Abdullah, but ignores that Hamas threatens Jordan as well. In 2003, Time magazine reported:
Jordanian security officials tell Time that two Hamas agents recently traveled to Afghanistan to recruit the remnants of al-Qaeda’s network to join its operations in the Arab world. The Jordanians say this spells danger for many countries in the Middle East, especially since a growing number of Hamas leaders now argue that the best way to strike Israel is to attack U.S. targets in Arab countries. A choice venue for such attacks, they say, would be Iraq, where Hamas would find local groups willing to cooperate in attacks on occupying forces.
In 2004 Hamas called on Muslims around the world to attack America. In October 2006, Time magazine reported that “Commanders of the military wing of Hamas, the Islamist movement elected to power in the Palestinian territories earlier this year, are locked in a fierce debate over whether to launch terrorist attacks on U.S. targets in the Middle East.”
Hamas operative Mohammed Saleh contributed over 200 gallons of diesel fuel for the construction of bombs that were to destroy UN headquarters and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels—a plot that would have killed thousands of Americans had it not been foiled just months before the 9/11 attacks.
Greenwald(s) may not consider Hamas an enemy of the US until it successfully attacks us—and even then, only if there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt of it.
After all, Osama bin Laden first declared war on the US in 1996—and what became of that, aside from the 1998 embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks?
Perhaps that is why Greenwald(s) is driven crazy when VP Cheney reminds people of what OBL actually says:
The most common myth is that Iraq has nothing to do with the global war on terror. Opponents of our military action there have called Iraq a diversion from the real conflict, a distraction from the business of fighting and defeating bin Laden and the al Qaeda network. We hear this over and over again, not as an argument but as an assertion meant to close off argument.
Yet the critics conveniently disregard the words of bin Laden himself. The most serious issue today for the whole world, he has said, is this third world war that is raging in Iraq. He calls it a destiny between infidelity and Islam. He said the whole world is watching this war and that it will end in victory and glory or misery and humiliation. And in words directed at the American people, bin Laden declares, “The war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever.”
This leader of al Qaeda has referred to Baghdad as the capital of the Caliphate. He has also said, and I quote, “Success in Baghdad will be success for the United States. Failure in Iraq is the failure of the United States. Their defeat in Iraq will mean defeat in all their wars.”
Obviously, the terrorists have no illusion about the importance of the struggle in Iraq. They have not called it a distraction or a diversion from their war against the United States. They know it is a central front in that war and it’s where they’ve chosen to make a stand. Our Marines are fighting al Qaeda terrorists today in Anbar province. U.S. and Iraqi forces recently killed al Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad who were responsible for numerous car bomb attacks. Iraq’s relevance to the war on terror simply could not be more plain.
Here at home, that makes one thing above all very clear. If you support the war on terror, then it only makes sense to support it where the terrorists are fighting us. (Applause.)
Greenwald(s) apparently believes the government should ignore what OBL says, though that strategy was tried in the 1990s to catastrophic results.
Greenwald(s) next asserts that the US is losing the “war of ideas” as well, and that “it is Cheney’s vision for endless obliteration of our ‘enemies’ without negotiation or compromise, which is precisely what is fueling, and will continue to fuel, that defeat.” This assertion is apparently based on a recent poll:
Israel, Iran and the United States were the countries with the most negative image in a globe-spanning survey of attitudes toward 12 major nations. Canada and Japan came out best in the poll, released Tuesday…
Israel was viewed negatively by 56 percent of respondents and positively by 17 percent; for Iran, the figures were 54 percent and 18 percent. The United States had the third-highest negative ranking, with 51 percent citing it as a bad influence and 30 percent as a good one. Next was North Korea, which was viewed negatively by 48 percent and positively by 19 percent.
Greenwald(s) thus equates winning the “war of ideas” with the popularity of the US at any given moment. Greenwald(s) might also be shocked by this:
The numbers paint a sobering picture. Just a quarter of the French approve of U.S. policies, and the situation is only slightly better in Japan and Germany. Most people around the world worry that U.S. global influence is expanding, and majorities in many countries say America’s strong military presence actually increases the chances for war.
Those findings are from a poll conducted by Newsweek  in 1983. Yet we somehow managed to win the Cold War, despite having a unilateralist cowboy president named Reagan, as opposed to a unilateralist cowboy president named Bush. To be fair, the Pew Research Center’s 2003 report from which the above quote is taken concluded that anti-Americanism was broader and deeper now than it was in the 1980s. However, the most recent report from the Pew Global Attitudes Project shows that favorable opinions of the US and the war on terror have been increasing in heavily Muslim countries like Indonesia, Pakistan and Jordan since 2003—the year of the Iraq invasion.
Greenwald(s)’s attack on Cheney also posits that:
Everyone knows that the Bush administration’s explicit abandonment of any pretense of objectivity or broker role in the Israel-Palestinian conflict—replaced by our virtual participation on the side of Israel in that conflict—has done as much, if not more, than any single other factor to fuel the Islamic radicalism which we claim we are so eager to defeat (the only cause which can possibly compete in terms of significance is our ongoing active involvement in the internal affairs of virtually every Middle East country, as symbolized by our military occupation of multiple countries in that region).
The aforementioned 2003 Pew report says the reverse is true:
While the U.S. stance on the Middle East is a factor in longstanding hostility toward the U.S. among Muslim populations, America’s international image has suffered much more as a consequence of the war in Iraq.
Moreover, when those who believed the war on terror is insincere were polled as to what they thought the real US motives were, the responses were about as likely to be about controlling the oil supply, dominating the world, and targeting unfriendly Muslim countries as they were to say it was about protecting Israel.
By 2005, Osama bin Laden’s standing had dropped significantly in some pivotal Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence “declined dramatically”… except for suicide bombings of US and Western targets in Iraq, a subject on which Muslims were divided.
Despite the data, Greenwald(s) remains fixated on the idea that Israel—and what Pat Buchanan once called Israel’s “amen corner” in DC—are the root cause of our problems:
For awhile, many people were resisting the notion that right-wing Israeli-centric groups like AIPAC (as absolutely distinct from the majority of American Jews generally) were “agitating for a U.S. war with Iran,” but the evidence proving that becomes clearer all the time… The AIPAC-type agitators combine with the Cheney-type paranoid militaristic hysterics to ensure that the U.S. continues with its warmonger posture in the world.
Greenwald(s)’s evidence that AIPAC is a right-wing group agitating for war with Iran? A Congressional Quarterly report that AIPAC was among those pushing to strike a provision slated for the war spending bill that would have require the president to seek congressional approval before using military force in Iran. So why was the provision removed?
Several officials said there was widespread opposition to the proposal at a closed-door meeting last week of conservative and moderate Democrats, who said they feared tying the hands of the administration when dealing with an unpredictable and potentially hostile regime in Tehran.
Or there is the crass version:
This was a concession to Blue Dog Dems who fear that if they vote for any measure tying the Commander in Chief’s hands in any way, it will make them vulnerable in their moderate districts, a House staffer says.
BTW, AIPAC’s actual position on Iran is that more robust sanctions could persuade the Iranian regime to end its nuclear pursuit without the need for the West to consider military force. The group supports a bipartisan bill aimed at increasing economic and political pressure on Iran to persuade Tehran to end its nuclear program.
And what was AIPAC’s response to Cheney’s speech? According to the Jewish Press:
His message was not received enthusiastically: Only about one-third to one-half of the audience in the cavernous Washington Convention Center hall applauded politely.
Behind Cheney, some AIPAC board members sat stone-faced, including Amy Friedkin, a past AIPAC president who is close to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and a fierce critic of the administration’s handling of the war.
It’s not just that three-quarters of American Jews – more than any other religious group – now think the Iraq war was a mistake. Cheney’s speech was jarring because the tone of this year’s meeting was to have been emphatically bipartisan – even more than normal for AIPAC, the powerhouse lobby that prides itself on crossing party lines.
This is what Greenwald(s) sees as a right-wing group agitating for war.
Cheney’s speech did not strike me as overly partisan. But if that’s how it struck the AIPAC conclave, it is just a further measure of how disconnected Greenwald(s)’s paranoid Buchananite fantasies are from reality. As more people recognize this, Greenwald(s) will find himself talking to his sock and his soccer ball, as the rest of the world passes by him with a hearty “Good DAY, sir!”
Ahhhh……that was a satisfying read. I think I need a cigarette now.
I hope Greenwald(s) just keeps going on and on with all this hate tripe, and furthermore I hope all the Democrats take all the cues they can from him. I believe that swing voters are completely turned off by all of this paranoid foaming at the mouth. The more extreme they make everything seem, indeed, the more transparent their paranoia becomes.
So, viva la revolución, you Greenwaldian saints.
Sounds like the entire Left to me. Does anyone else read “the obsession with inerrable prophecies” and hear “Global Warming”?
I didn’t think anybody could take down the monstrous douchebaggery that is Gleen and his army of sockpuppets better than Jeff, ace, Patterico, and John from Wuzzadem, but my hat’s off to you, Karl.
“I think the correct usage is “Greenwald are” or “Greenwalds are,” though the latter may be mistaken for a general criticism of the line.
I did also want to thank Karl for a most well-researched and heavily referenced article. Bravo!
The left in general has grown more paranoid since 2000 (though the paranoia was festering there for a long, long time), and I’m afraid that it may have become habit.
My layman’s hunch is that Glenn(s)’s are reactionary and reacting to the experience had while defending Matthew Hale.
I looked up a couple of items about the JDO and Aryan Nation’s reactions to Glenn, a Jew, and it couldn’t have been pleasant for Glenns.
What was interesting in a ‘How times change’ is that one of Matthew Hale’s
Link
My goodness – Federal Judges ordering the destruction of Bibles.
Well, here’s a dead giveaway:
Whenever someone starts a sentence with the phrase
the rest of the statement is guaranteed t be 100% pure unadulterated bullshit.
[The funny thing is that it’s exactly the same technique that used to be used by Pravda.]
What’s a matter Bumper Stickerist? You have a problem with lawyers who reveal client confidences, resulting in the client being wrongly made a suspect in the murder of a federal judge? Hale’s people are irredentist racist mouth breathers, but it doesn’t mean they are wrong about Gleeen. Attorneys can sometimes breach client confidences where they know it relates to the commission of a future crime, but this crime-fraud exception is pretty narrow, and it probably doesn’t cover granting interviews to the press discussing the client communication. If it came before me and I was sitting on the state bar disciplinary committee, at least in any of the states where I’m licensed, I know how I’d vote.
Heck, Gleen’s notion of ethics is pretty amusing, considering that he and his choagy boys are petitioning to have any of their perceived legal enemies disbarred for giving readings of the law that the Gleenards disagree with…
Voluntarily advocating for a Neo-Nazi in his quest to be admitted to the bar (which, despite all the word’s lawyer jokes, does require approval by a Character & Fitness committee) fits the Neo-Buchananite profile.
“World’s.”
One or more Greenwald wrote:
If what’s happening now is a “radical change,” then “the system of government that we have had since our founding” ceased to exist during the Civil War. Which means this Greenwaldian alarm is a crock.
But if “the system of government that we have had since our founding” was still in existence on 20 January 2001, then the far more radical changes that happened during the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression and the Cold War (to name a few) have somehow failed to be fatal, which means this Greenwaldian alarm is a crock.
Very nicely written. The “Paranoid Style” tieback is a great, big picture reference point for analyzing GG.
It strikes me that GG’s real forte, which has won him so many accolades from the left in general and from people like Ellers and Wilson, is meme propogation. Looking back at his book and earlier blog posts as you’ve done, it’s apparent that much of what he wrote has been adopted as standard HuffPo boilerplate.
You’d think that at some point, after having been practically buried time after time in his own excrement—lobbed so adroitly back at him by his intellectual superiors, well-gloved as they are by their regard for honesty and reason—the vile parasite would learn his lesson and stop flinging it.
Well done, Karl.
Oh, and…sorry about the misattribution.
Bumper Stickerist, from the link:
Shorter GiGi: “Don’t take offhand comments on the internet so seriously”
The irony is astounding. But wait, there’s more! Who is the “they” in question? Why, it’s Patrick Fitzgerald! Fascist free speech crusher or noble defender of all that is good and right against the abject evil that is Bu$hco?
We report, Greenwald(s) decide.
WE… in THIS country?
What are we, Brazilians?
Let me respond on behalf of Mona and the Puppet-bots: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean everybody’s not out to get you.”
But more importantly, Karl… who’s going to be the Hot Chip of this years’ SXSW?
I think it gets tougher every year to be the breakout act at SxSW. I’m sure attendees will be logging this question once they get home and reflect. From a distance, I would posit that The Pipettes—who played a lot to good reviews there, but are playing only a few other American dates—are building buzz with the “hard to get” approach until their album is released here later in the year.
When I read this sort of Greenwaldian drivel – and I generally try to avoid it, since its the intellectual equivalent of bad snuff porn – one question invariably comes to mind:
What in the name of God are these people going to do after January 20, 2009?
Once Bush leaves office – won’t their carefully constructed self-delusions collapse in a spastic collision with inescapable reality?
When there is no coup, when power transfer peacefully and constitutionally, with the missiles still in the silos … and perhaps even a Democrat in the White House … isn’t Greenwald (and all the rest of his ilk) going to just feel astoundingly stupid?
I don’t get it.
That’s why they’re profecies grow ever more detrimental and cynical and why they stop debating altogether. In light of objective analysis their sand castles collapse.
It’s like what Michael Crichton said about the crazy guy on the corner with the doomsday sign. What happens when that date omes and nothing happens? He just makes a new sign with a new date.
Karl, Dr. sanity has covered Hofstadter’s essay and has written an update of it. It’s somewhere on her site.
Asked and answered. The question will be how addicted are the Dems to the sweet high of victimization and beating the drum about the ‘thugs desire for fascist/corporate hegmony. This is the heady brew that fuels the nutroots who are both the hope and the bane of the party power brokers.
I suspect that they will travel the road of “cleaning up the mess” which will involve doing very little for as long as possible. They will hope for a change of scenery and a change of topics, but that will, in large part, be dictated by events both foreign and domestic. Polls will be watched with sacred text like fervor to gleen the amorphous “will of the people” (or, better put, “what the voters want to hear that will get them to vote for our candidates.”) All the while, the moderates in the party, the real holders of the of the keys to the treasury, will continue to watch the fringe elements with trepidation and will continue to wonder if the party of move-on and kos really, truly, represents their world view.
Film at 11.
BTW, most of the stuff re Hofstadter in the main post is lifted near-verbatim from GG’s attack on Cheney; For the most part, all I had to do was replace Cheney’s name with GG.
Come to think of it, why did BusHitler McThuggerburton allow his opponents to gain control over Congress peacefully? Certainly, any lawless, authoritarian monarchic dictator (“This is not hyperbole!”) worth his jackboots would’ve marched his Bu$hco Stormtroopers® up to Capitol Hill and crushed insurgents Reid and Pelosi into twin bloody pulps before declaring that “I am the Law here!”
So the answer is, of course GG(s) won’t feel stupid after the next inauguration, because even they can’t believe their anti-historical, pro-hysterical Drama Queen rhetoric.
The same thing they did after winning the mid-terms: re-characterize what they claimed, forget what they said, lie.
No, the “nutroots” in general and Greenwald in particular won’t “feel” stupid, but they will still BE stupid.
With the caveat that one (or more) can be smart (or clever) and stupid at the same time.
The “nutroots” have been with us, in various guises, for at least a century, and possibly as far back as the French Revolution (or farther – the classics are a few years ago and I wasn’t really looking for Moonbats when I read Plato or Herodotus).
Plato, as a utopianist, might qualify.
In either case, no, I think the best we can hope for is that the wave of BDS will be scattered in 2009, as the nut part of the nutroots split up along fracture lines of paranoia, each “team” pursuing their own agenda (anti-corporatism, green, terror sympathy, marxist, anti-honkey, etc.) off to the horizon.
Right. GiGi is just basking in the nutroots adulation, and playing to his feverish audience. Mona, on the other hand, her head is going to explode.
One thing is for certain: they will not say that Belgium invaded Germany.
-Clemenceau
Translation:
In alphieworld, Bush = the Kaiser.
Another paranoid heard from.
And unicorns give free rides to handicapped children while wood sprites dance the macarena and tree elves draw mugs of Guiness and serve them with pots of gold and peanut M & M’s.
Don’t get me started on the winged pigs…
Aeronautic porcines not necessary, nor unicorns.
To figure out what alphie will say on any subject, consult the Stalinist, pseudoMarxist propaganda that serves as the postulates and paradigms of its “thinking” process.
The intent of Stalinist propaganda was to establish that:
(a)Opening a McDonalds is “imperialism”, and sending a brigade of Soviet troops to take the place over is not;
(b)Soviet suppression of the populace is “peace”, and any resistance thereto is unbearably wicked violence;
(c)A political leader who doesn’t crap without Kremlin advice and permission is a freedom-loving father figure beloved of the populace, and any who does not insult the United States at every point is an Imperialist puppet.
One of the two players in that game is gone. This might seem to cause difficulty, but the other is still in place, and simple substitution will suffice. America Is Evil, therefore anybody opposing America can take the place of the Soviet Union without difficulty or, mostly, comment. Understood on that basis, alphie is revealed as not only ignorant but utterly unimaginative. The polemics are much better thought out on almost any of the Stalinist sites; working from the original material, the polemicists are better able to avoid redundancy, circularity, and self-contradiction.
Regards,
Ric
So the GG9s) are going to undermine the US Elctoral College?
Ah, but ric, don’t forget the money! Our dear little Action Chimpâ„¢ is just beside himself At the billions being funneled into Iraq and Afghanistan whilst there are wee children in NE Philly whose local library doesn’t have a copy of “Why Mommy is a Democrat.” If only the schools had all the money and the Army had to hold a bake sale, etc. ad nauseum.
Remember: Follow the money!
FOR THE CHILDREN!!!
MJ;
Short answer: Yup!
Electoral College – “hey, IT, I need a new keyboard STAT!”
I’d imagine that Gleen(s) imagines himself like a Star Wars character & would retort ”…if you strike me down… ill be more powerful than you can imagine…” – insert emasculated diabolic laughter to taste.
One does have to wonder how many more articles he can write, pushing the same message & attacking the same ideas, w/ the same arguments. Eventual it must get boring saying & doing the same thing over & over or have they developed a kind of Mad-Libs where he need only punch in the name of today’s adversary & voila! another anti-cultists masterpiece. It seems that Excitable Andy should have mastered that particular genre by now.
Very well constructed and thought-provoking post, Karl. However,
Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated
… still describes the posture of many right wingers, Cheney in particular. That’s neither good nor bad, but the unbending conviction that human affairs must be distilled to a battle between good and evil creates that blinding paranoia. And paranoid extremists in any political camp are predictible only up to a point. I’m no big fan of Greenwald, because he seems to think that extreme right wingers are transparent and predictable, and that is not the case.
I haven’t, but you have apparently not quite twigged to what the constant refrain of cost, cost, cost and money, money, money is supposed to accomplish.
We’re imperialist capitalists, right? Therefore we hate to spend money on anything but our own gratification, and absolutely refuse to spend it on the benefit of anybody outside our own charmed circle.
What alphie expects is what his Stalinist advisors have told him: that if we are reminded of how much has been spent without providing us any imperialist gratification, we will become livid and refuse to send good money after bad. The concept that we might be spending money (or attempting to) for purposes that redound to anyone’s benefit but our own short-sightedly selfish aggrandizement belongs in the same category as flying pigs. Alphie doesn’t give a damn about the money itself, except to the extent that it might otherwise be spent to support its own pet projects—and that’s an irrelevancy, since the Government always has enough money to support those; when they refuse, it’s out of vicious selfishness, no other motive admitted to exist. It things we care enough to get livid at the wastage on something other than our own pleasure.
Regards,
Ric
Cynn,
Um, the difference being that Cheney generally is referring to Al Qaeda or other concerned parties interested in attacking & killing innocent American civilians, not his political opposition or fellow citizens. Whereas Gleen(s) can not tell the difference between Cheney/Bush or their supporters in his agenda to remove the supposed cabal of neo-cons. Funny how Gleen(s) never realizes that his talking points & goals are the same as the people that Cheney refers to… I wonder if that is why the invocative is so personalized by Gleen(s) & so short on facts?
No, cynn, that’s a lie. I realize you yourself don’t intend to propagate falsehoods, but you are seeing your own prejudices reflected back at you and judging the system thereby.
Yeah, there are nutcases and misguided assholes who are calling for the destruction of Islam, just as there are nutcases and misguided assholes calling for the destruction of the Republican Party and/or “neocon conspirators”—examples seen above. None of those people are in positions of power, and none of them are going to achieve such positions. Bush, Cheney, and the whole crew have gone to great lengths to specifically state otherwise, and one of our major handicaps in achieving “security” in Iraq, and the ME generally, is a tendency to back off to avoid the appearance of indiscriminate anti-Muslim actions.
After 9/11 a bunch of us went down to the local mosque. You would have probably run screaming—a big gang of good ol’ boys in gimmee hats and pickup trucks, armed with everything from WWI Springfields to AR-15s. The imam was extremely dubious—until he realized what we were there for, which was to deploy around the building and make sure no drunken assholes did anything stupid. Which we did, and fended off any number of stupid violent assholes during the evening. The ladies’ auxiliary, whatever it’s actually called, served us hot tea.
What your stereotype interprets as general anti-Muslim sentiment is what BRD was on about, earlier. We can clearly see that if this goes on, you and your fellow-thinkers will be the ones demanding a violent reaction at some point, and when that point is reached we will be forced to do things we would prefer not to do.
Regards,
Ric
ric;
I got that, but not as eloquently in my head as on your post.
Leave us not forget the rightness and feeling that are applied to the left’s pet causes. They exist on a higher plain, blessed by Gaia or the Great Spirit or Norm Chomsky as to the enlightened way to impart our declining resources. The commune mentality assumes that any misery at all reflects a vast deficit of human kindness in the commonweal. “a” steps forward not only to tweak the forces of imperialism and “people who give money to things I don’t like and aren’t cool, like those icky military welfare criminals” but also to proclaim sovreignty over the misery pimpage that drives our gentle little Stalinists.
Please don’t forget to shaddup and die so that the burning light of proper idealism will shine without the interference of your discordant, inconvenient ramblings.
FACTIST!!
The left needs to make its enemies look very, very big – threatening the Constitution, the American Way of Life, nay, the planet itself – in order to feel important about opposing them.
It’s interesting psychology that they keep accusing Bush of overinflating the threats against us as an excuse to introduce totalitarianism. As they are projecting their own thinking on him for the first half of that, are they telling us that the second half is actually their secret desire?
In alphieworld, Bush = the Kaiser.
Kewl.
Does he get to wear a pickelhaube?
Interesting, it’s the Ted Rallification of the Left. The bigger/meaner/crazier/dumber I can make Bush the Oppressor out to be, the more Righteously Oppressed I can feel! And since the threat from my Big/Mean/Crazy/Dumb Bush that I decry is all my own invention anyway, I get all the victimization with none of the risks!
That, my friend, is whatcha call yer Drama Queen win-win!
You know, AVI, that is just brilliant.
Russia 1917-1921, Italy 1922-1926, Germany 1933-1934. There is nothing new in Greenwald’s hysteria.
Sorry, speaking for myself, I don’t feel especially empowered or imbued with that righteous authority granted by a political fluke. In fact, after a very nasty exchange with a righty, I actually had a vivid dream of my old lifeguard training days, when I had to jump in the water and haul the most flailing, uncooperative, and dying fool to safety. That kind of startled me, because I always hated that exercise, and had never thought of this perpetual war jones in those terms. I know, I shouldn’t overanalyze that.
cynn, it’s no wonder you get bad dreams—you are wrong, stupidly and fatuously insulting, and from where I sit look frankly suicidal. Would you describe your position as lifeguard as “jonesing for drownings”?
Regards,
Ric
Cynn—that is Saul Alinsky’s rule 13; a good lefty invention, and one that renders the left incapable of intelligent debate today, as this weekend’s march in LA, a revolting amalgamation of ANSWER and Truthers proved.
cynn, there is a big difference between an Al Qaeda that wants to kill you and a Republican that wantes to win your legislative seat from you.
Greenwald can’t seem to grasp that difference in scale, but I know you can.
This can be easily demonstrated: what actions have Bush, Cheney, et al. taken towards their political enemies? What actions have Al Qaeda taken?
Glenn Greewald’s World…….a surreal dada-esque place strewn with cryptic melting clocks and burning giraffes….
The mechanics of the start of the Terror War are irrelevent at this point. I’m purely amazed that the left is incapable of grasping what this really– the rule of law versus the nasty hobbesian barbarians promoting their genetic and memetic kin through the extermination of non-relatives.
If GG thinks the battle will stop at the waters edge, he is truely clueless.
We have to fight this…if we don’t, our children or our children’s children will fight it…..
If we survive this round to have them.
BumperStickerist:
Hale sued Lefkow on December 24, 2004 falsely claiming that her order violated the Constitution in requiring the destruction of the group’s bibles. So, amending your statement, it should read:
cynn makes an interesting point. but it has a presumption to it:
implies that Cheney is more of an absolutist than OBL. Which may, if fact, be true.
After all, if we simply withdraw from the ME, allow the ‘populace’ to deal with the “Israel problem” once and for all, submit to Sharia, and follow other practices that violate Occam’s Razor from a reality POV, then, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
Cheney and Bush, knowing that a ‘deck of the Missouri’ style ending to this war is impossible, are content to work on their goals, which stunningly haven’t included the incarceration of Glenn(s) (and those like him) for their words against the administration.
Ric:
Yet another specious diagnosis. Just to spite you, I won’t kill myself today.
Nishi,
Nice to see you.
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