When I wrote about Peter Beinart’s ‘A Fighting Faith’, I took it to be a proposal about what Democrats should do now, and criticized it in that light. I did not read it as a call for Democrats to purge the party of anyone who stood in the way of our presenting ourselves as somewhere to Bush’s right in the War on Terror. This was wrong — that element of it is clearly there, and I suspect I didn’t spot it because I am just allergic to that sort of thing. The idea that we should ‘disown’ people, or ‘ban’ them, except maybe when they have done something, like, oh, raping children, makes my skin crawl: if I wanted to be in the business of excommunication, I’d have a sex change operation and join the priesthood. The idea of banning people in order to make some political point is worse: it’s just wrong to treat people that way. Possibly if I were running for office I might take a different view, but since I’m not, I have no interest in trying out for the circular firing squad.
Digby at Hullabaloo did not miss this point, and he has what I think is the definitive response to it.
“If, in order to be “hard” we must support irrationality and grievous error then we are doomed as a country. We are simply too big for that. We will not have many chances to make the kind of mistake we’ve made with Iraq without suffering serious consequences. It is the very definition of hard nosed, cold hearted realism to say that we should not squander our military resources during a national security crisis by fighting the wrong goddamned war. It is not “soft” to note that sexually torturing citizens whom we were ostensibly liberating and whose cooperation we needed was a lousy war plan. And it is nothing short of hawkish to point out that proving to the whole world that our vaunted intelligence services couldn’t find Baghdad on a fucking map made this country and all its allies less safe. We are the reality based community and facing up to facts is the single most important thing we can do to protect this country. Letting the faith based morons who planned this debacle of a response to 9/11 off the hook and holding their hands in solidarity not only looks weak, it is weak.
But, as usual, all of this braying about repositioning and purging obscures the fact that we aren’t dealing with a policy issue at all, are we? We are once again drowning in perceptions, in which the alleged Democratic tough guys are accusing the alleged Democratic sissies of fucking things up and losing elections because the American people won’t support a party that is “soft” on … anything. They are right in a way but they fail to see why this perception is so widely held, who is responsible and how to change it. Mainly this is because the ones making this accusation think they are hard when they are actually soft.
(…)
This argument always implies that we are campaigning in a vacuum and fails to take into consideration the nature of the opposition. We could be Beinartian Hawks or Kucinichian doves or George Patton or Ulysses S. Grant and it would mean nothing as long as the opposition comes up with simple marketing slogans to position our candidates and our ideas as soft and we do not respond in kind.
Let’s talk about flipping and flopping for a moment. That phrase didn’t come out of nowhere, you know. “Flip-flop” was not some complicated concept in which people were persuaded by examples in his record that Kerry was unprincipled or indecisive. “Flip-flop” was an uncomplicated, symbolic slogan that stood for flaccid penis. Yes, it’s really that simple, folks. People may not have been consciously aware that the term flip-flop was meant to unman our war hero candidate, but it did so just the same. And it played off of 35 years of exactly the same kind of imagery from “with hair that long, hippie, you can’t tell if you’re a man or a woman,” to “he’s been botoxed.” This image doesn’t come from Michael Moore or indeed from any Democrat. It comes directly from the propaganda shop of the Republican party and it plays right into the lizard brains of certain white males and the women who inexplicably love them. It wouldn’t matter if Michael Moore joined the marines and MoveOn decided to merge with Club For Growth. The right has a tremendous investment in framing the left as too “soft” to keep the nation safe and they will continue to play that card no matter how tough we sound on terrorism. It is how they win.
But there is one surefire way to convince the American people that Democrats are “hard” enough to take on the enemies of the United States. And that would be for us to take on the goddamned Republicans. As long as we do not respond in kind to their in your face bully boy style of politics we will continue to look weak in the face of an existential threat — because we ARE weak. We can look to history for Scoop Jackson lessons or Arthur Schlessinger lessons, but they are not relevant to the problem at hand. Our problem is that since 1968 the Republicans have waged a take-no-prisoner war against the Democratic party and they use that proxy war to prove to the American people that they are tough enough to protect the American people from threats, both internal and external, and the Democrats are not. (Indeed, to listen to their most skilled polemicists, Democrats are the threat.) And despite the fact that they are completely full of shit, it works quite well because they practice what they preach by fighting every last Democrat to a standstill and when they lose they get right back up and start fighting again with everything they have. People can see exactly what they are about. They demonstrate it. We, on the other hand, talk a lot.”
I think this is exactly right, but I want to be clear about what I mean. I draw what I think is a very important distinction between fighting hard and fighting dirty. I believe that in the last election, the Republicans did both. I have no desire whatsoever to follow them in playing dirty. I do not think that we should misrepresent either our positions or our opponents’. I do not think that we should print flyers saying that Republicans want to ban the Bible, or have our Congressional leaders suggest that major Republican donors get their money from drug lords, and so forth. There are many reasons why I am not a Republican, but one of them is that the present Republican leadership seems to me to be willing to do literally anything to win. I do not want my party to follow them there.
But I do think that we should fight hard. When our President leads us into an unnecessary war without having the basic common sense to plan for anything but the best-case scenario, we should make him own that failure. When that failure of planning leads our soldiers to get blown up because their Humvees have no armor, and when the Secretary of Defense, in response, says that ‘you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had’, as though he had been teleported into the Pentagon the day before the invasion, rather than having been, oh, Secretary of Defense for several years, we should nail him for that. When the President’s nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security, the man whose job it is to keep us safe, turns out to have a whole raft of problems, including not just nannies but having received sizable gifts from an employee of a company with alleged mob connections and scared a woman he was involved with into hiring a bodyguard, we should ask why our administration wasn’t serious enough about homeland security to vet their nominee carefully. And when, in response, “some administration officials acknowledge that the president’s predilections work against a careful review. Bush hates leaks and enjoys popping surprise announcements on the press. He liked the idea of Kerik—the self-made tough guy—and he dismissed as gossip or press carping newspaper stories about Kerik’s bending the rules” (cite), we should be ready with a whole slew of other examples of cases in which George W. Bush’s preference for the idea of toughness over the hard work of protecting our country has put us all at risk. (Remember when he told the insurgents to “bring it on”? The ‘Mission Accomplished’ sign? Sure you do. Remember when he announced that thanks to our hard work, we had secured Russian loose nukes years ahead of schedule? Or his announcement that our rail tunnels had now been fully secured against explosives? Oddly enough, no.) Fighting hard but not dirty would have meant making this completely, abundantly clear, with nothing out of bounds but dishonesty and cheating.
Digby is absolutely right that this, not the excommunication of Michael Moore, is what Democrats need.
The more I read posts and articles like this the more I consider abandoning the party and going independent.
That’s standard party operating procedure – who’s in, who’s out. It’s not Democracy; the parties are players within Democracy. Get comfortable with it if you want to win elections.
No, the important thing is to own success. Average Americans don’t want the President to fail; if he does, they want to replace him with someone who will succeed. Jumping up and down, pointing fingers, and making Bush “own” his failure does absolutely nothing, in and of itself.
This is the nihilism of “our actual positions don’t matter, Republicans are so mean and clever that they make us look bad.” Anyone who believes this winds up inadvertently endorsing a view of the world that precludes the successful operation of Democracy. Think about it.
Marketing slogans do not create reality. The reality was Michael Moore was sitting next to an ex-President at the convention. The reality was McDermott and Bonior were whining about Bush while visiting Saddam during the lead up to the war. Moveon.org, an organization that now claims to own the DNC, didn’t support the War in Afghanistan. Go on, keep believing that slogans make the party look soft, rather than embracing and accepting people like this.
1) What kind of resources you devote, what kind of tactics and strategy you find acceptable, what sacrifices material and moral you are willing to make…depends on how threatening you view the situation to be. I will avoid insulting and speculative analogies.
2) Sometimes we are not in control, no matter how much responsibility we would like to take, historical forces and mass movements simply make our desires irrelevant.
Saints and martyrs may indeed be the best of us, but heroes and leaders compromise themselves in pursuit of their goals. Lincoln and FDR and Churchill all did terrible things.
Well, I doubt they mean “purge” in the Stalinist sense, or “ban” in the sense of “revoke the membership of.” Is it even possible to prevent voters from registering Democratic?
But there are certainly people who I think should be opposed in primaries, not invited to the convention at all, not invited to speak at the convention, or publicly criticized. And I don’t think there’s are darn thing wrong with it, provided that we do that only to people who really deserve it–Cynthia McKinney, Jim McDermott, Michael Moore, Ted Rall, and the like–and not to all those seen as political liabilities even though they are substantively, morally right–Gavin Newson, Human Rights Campaign.
Otherwise I totally agree with you.
One thing about fighting dirty–it is to the GOP’s advantage that campaigns be about sleazy charges rather than politicians’ records. It is to the GOP’s advantages that voters have factually inaccurate beliefs about many of the issues of the day. It is to the GOP’s advtange that voters conclude it’s a dirty business and too depressing to pay attention. It is to GOP’s advantage that the country be deeply divided.
It is not to our advantage–none of it.
Also, we don’t really have the stomach for it. We end up with Chris Lehane instead of Karl Rove or Lee Atwater.
Marketing slogans do not create reality. The reality was Michael Moore was sitting next to an ex-President at the convention
That’s hilarious. Trying to create reality with a marketing slogan while simultaneously whinging about marketing slogans not creating reality.
Classic.
So before I head off to sleep: Katherine: we probably agree. Part of the reason I wrote that first paragraph was that I was surprised, after my earlier post on Beinart, by the number of reactions that took the form: you shouldn’t distance yourself from Moore/you should distance yourself more/you are distancing yourself in the wrong way. I thought to myself, jeez, I wasn’t trying to position myself vis a vis Michael Moore. I had meant only to say that I disagreed with him on some things, and thought the idea that he spoke for the party was silly, both of which seemed, well, true, which was why I said it — it wasn’t some sort of tactical positioning thing. I have nothing against criticism — I mean, I have on occasion been known to criticize people myself — but I hate the idea that not just John Kerry but the likes of me are supposed to run around disowning people as a tactic.
I also agree with you about the tactical advantages of fighting clean: this administration has handed us so man opportunities to be honest and damning at the same time that the only explanation for our resorting to dishonesty would be a truly monumental failure of imagination.
Jonas: I didn’t say that policies don’t matter. I think they do, immensely. (I may possibly be the world’s wonkiest person not employed by a think tank.) But this wasn’t a post about policy. It was a post about Beinart’s idea that Democrat’s need to burnish their toughness credentials, and Digby’s response, which I took to be: the best way to do this is by actually being tough. (As the Book of Common Prayer says, ‘Let us shew forth the gospel not only with our lips, but in our lives’, though I doubt they had this in mind.) And among the object of our toughness should be our actual opponents, not, for heaven’s sake, Michael Moore, of whom too much has already been made.
I completely, totally agree with you and Digby.
But we’re up against one immovable object and one irresistable force.
The immovable object is an American electorate that is incapable of thinking clearly. Every issue we need to hammer on assumes the people we’re trying to reach have a memory that goes back more than two or three news cycles. When Bush can scare people into supporting a war – and then laugh about the very thing he scared them with – and have the country laugh along with him – we’re dealing with a level of mental disability that frankly frightens me half to death. When Bush can say one lie one day and another lie the next, and the lies are mutually contradictory, and the country goes along with the gag as if there’s been an overnight data dump and reinitialization… we’re dealing with people who are unreachable.
The irresistable force is a mainstream media that sets the tone in dishonesty and retroactive memory adjustment. It’s GIGO pure and simple. Even if people wanted to know what’s factually true, even if they intended to shape their political actions based on what’s factually true, there are precious few places they can go for good information. Americans’ sheer ignorance in matters of science, economic theory, and even history is mirrored by the institution we trust to inform us about these things. On all these issues, journalists are reduced to “he said, she said” not so much, or not only, because they’re lazy dishonest hacks: they’re also as ignorant of the subject matter as their audience.
I looked at the University of Washington’s School of Communication, at its mission statement for journalism studies. Here’s what it says:
“Using both humanistic and social scientific approaches, we focus on six interrelated areas: communication and culture, communication technology and society, international communication, political communication, rhetoric and critical studies, and social interaction. ”
“At the graduate level, the Department presents students with an integrated curriculum founded upon principles of intellectual and cultural pluralism, interdisciplinarity, innovation through collaboration, and public scholarship. Undergraduate study develops communication literacy, teaches important methods of inquiry, theories, and concepts, and promotes community engagement. A concentration in journalism prepares selected undergraduates for careers in media.”
It’s all concept and theory, it’s all soft mushy cultural understanding and touchy-feely enlightenment. There’s NOTHING in there about critical factual analysis; there’s NOTHING in there about a requirement to minor, or even take a few courses, in the subject matter a student might be reporting on: no economics, no hard science, no law – not even in political science, one of the softest of soft “sciences” (and I say that as someone with a Bachelors in PoliSci).
Whereas, in contrast, just to give an example: lawyers who want to be Patent Attorneys are required to have an undergraduate degree in the field they’ll be writing patents for: Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Chemistry, Computer Programming, etc. They have to know the subject matter
The ongoing, neverending battle over evolution points this up perfectly. “Intelligent Design” propagandists know just enough science, or just enough science vocabulary, to sprinkle their books, lectures and such with stuff that sounds impressive: a few references to molecular genetics here; a citation of some (discredited) “expert’s” modeling paradigms there; an emphasis on scientific uncertainty without an equal emphasis on how the scientific method works. And they’re talking to audiences who know little about basic science, or how science operates, and so don’t have, ready to hand, a background of knowledge that would protect them from being conned.
I’m sorry to go on at such length. But I see this, I see the patterns and forces that synchronistically conspire to keep the general population complacent and ignorant, and I can’t think of how to overcome it. Because it’s not a matter of “getting the word out.” It’s a matter of “getting the word in” – to people unequipped and unwilling to hear.
Thus my despair.
We can run & govern as the Republican lite party like Clinton (NAFTA, WTO, Welfare Reform) did and have the republicans attempt to impeach you or we can run & govern as Populist Democrats asking the tough questions such as why did executive X at corporation Y get a 10 million bonus after firing 20,000 employees, why is his overall tax rate lower than mine, oh and by the way what is this green gook floating down the river and why isn’t there any upstream from the company X’s factory.
And my whole time favorite, why Mr republican are you so eager to send my kids to fight some stupid war half way accross the world when your kids are nowhere near the battle field and you did not go yourself when the opportunity presented itself.
If we run as republican lite, the Republican party will just keep moving further to the right, if we let Republicans define morality, morality will be entirely about sex.
And I don’t think there’s are darn thing wrong with it, provided that we do that only to people who really deserve it–Cynthia McKinney, Jim McDermott, Michael Moore, Ted Rall, and the like–and not to all those seen as political liabilities even though they are substantively, morally right–Gavin Newson, Human Rights Campaign.
Classic battered woman syndrome. Gosh, maybe if we were less shrill and more accommodating, the GOPers wouldn’t club us like baby seals on an ice floe.
One thing about fighting dirty–it is to the GOP’s advantage that campaigns be about sleazy charges rather than politicians’ records.
Of course it is. Especially when the opposition opts to not fight back. Frankly, your ‘advice’ is a recipe for continued failure and more of the same.
If you want to put an end to GOP thuggery, you have to make it unGodly painful for them to engage in those tactics.
Americans don’t want the President to fail; if he does, they want to replace him with someone who will succeed.
the American people don’t care if Bush fails. they only care that he looks like he’s succeeding.
1) Read Digby’s following post about the Clinton Health plan timeline.
2) Ethics is a luxury. If you truly believe that acting ethically is a winning strategy, fine. But this is war, and while you will likely survive a little guilt, you may not survive defeat.
3) I could care less about Moore and McKinney. They have no power. I could care less about what Republicans do. I can’t control them. I want to know what the party gained by Clinton and Schumer supporting Kerik. I want the people who voted for Gonzalez, essentially locking him into a SCOTUS appointment, to pay a terrible price. I want the Senate closed for business, I want Americans to understand that Democrats will fight for Social Security, and lay their jobs on the line if only to show that somebody gives a damn.
I could care less about Moore and McKinney.
I have yet to hear why Moore is so bad–other than the fact the GOP really, really doesn’t like him.
And what was McKinney’s great sin? Well, she had the temerity to ask Bush what he knew and when he knew it WRT 9/11. The GOP painted her as a conspiracy nut. Well, as the 9/11 Commission found, McKinney was pretty much dead on.
Digby makes a great point in his last para. If we allow the GOP to define our people and our positions–we really shouldn’t be surprised they don’t have our best interests at heart.
McKinney was not pretty much dead on. And both McKinney and Moore engaged in conspiracy theorizing about Afghanistan. I know I’m a Republican, but I think that if you opposed the war in Afghanistan you pretty much define what Beinart is talking about when he talks about ‘soft’. You can have that position, but if you do you shouldn’t think that you are losing because Republicans are mean. You are losing because you have a position that 80%+ of the American public thinks is silly.
Sorry, Sebastian, McKinney was dead on. The 9/11 Commission confirms this.
As for “silly,” Sebastian, the vast majority of my side doesn’t believe Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11.
Yours does.
What precisely does the 9-11 Commission confirm?
Did you support invading Afghanistan?
McKinney was indeed dead on: no one now denies that the Bush administration received considerable warning, months before September 11, that a major terrorist attack was in process – but that Bush paid no attention to the warnings.
Moore pointed out, accurately, that the Bush administration had taken the opportunity of making war in Afghanistan and in Iraq to do a considerable amount of profitmaking. His theory that Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded in order to create the opportunity for profit is mistaken, I think – but one of the major reasons why the occupation of Iraq has failed is because the Bush administration put profitmaking for large US corporations above benefit to the Iraqi people or value for money to the US people.
Moore is a gadfly: a deliverer of nasty darts with enough accuracy and point to sting like crazy. What must drive right-wingers nuts is that he’s kinda like Ann Coulter, but funnier and more successful – and smarter.
What’s especially interesting about Republican reaction to Fahrenheit 911 is the number of people who claim that George W. Bush never lied (and are prepared to painstakingly interpret each public statement so that truth can somehow be extracted) – yet are not prepared to offer the same painstaking interpretation to Michael Moore. Nothing in Fahrenheit 911 was literally untrue: if judged by the same moral standards as Bush supporters judge (for example) the State of the Union 2003, Fahrenheit 911 comes off rather better. It was strange but interesting to see Bush supporters holding Moore to a higher moral standard than they held their President. (And that was before we knew for sure that Bush had lied about believing there were WMD in Iraq.)
bobmcmanus – my take on Schumer and Clinton re: “I want to know what the party gained by Clinton and Schumer supporting Kerik.” is a) nothing, and b) so what?
I’d like to believe that the two senators from New York were acting in what they (perhaps cynically) perceived to be their constituents’ best interests, not necessarily the Democatic Party’s interest. You’ve got to look at how the DHS pie was split under Tom Ridge and what names were being tossed around for DHS. Supporting Kerik was the best hope they had for assuring that New York would get its share of DHS focus and funding.
Tell me what they would have gained by opposing the guy absent the dirt that has come to light since they indicated their support.
His theory that Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded in order to create the opportunity for profit is mistaken, I think – but one of the major reasons why the occupation of Iraq has failed is because the Bush administration put profitmaking for large US corporations above benefit to the Iraqi people or value for money to the US people.
I’m not sure this is Moore’s main theory. It is, instead, a byproduct of Bush’s actions. And one that I don’t believe is inaccurate.
Let’s not glide too far from one argument into another. Afghanistan. Moore’s theory was that we manufactured reasons to invade Afghanistan for an oil pipeline and other related economic reasons. McKinney isn’t as blatant about it, but she suggests the same thing.
Jadegold, one of the things I hold against Fahrenheit 911 is that Moore didn’t take the opportunity to point out that Afghanistan was attacked for no good reason – bloodthirsty revenge was wanted, ASAP – and abandoned for no good reason (Bush & Co wanted to invade Iraq, not mess around doing nationbuilding in Afghanistan). Instead he offered the pipeline theory, which I agree is (for Bush & Co) an acceptable by-product/result of attacking Afghanistan, but certainly wasn’t the primary motivation for the attack in October.
Similiarly, I don’t think Bush & Co invaded Iraq to make large profits for big US corporations. They merely saw the potential for massive profit, and didn’t worry themselves that invading a nation and then looting it down to the ground is neither legal, nor moral, nor likely to endear the looting nation to the occupied nation. The looting program planned for Iraq did not succeed because of the insurgency: and may well have been one of the factors in sparking the insurgency. (Hard to convince the locals you are benevolent occupiers when you plan to sell their national industries out from under them to foreign ownership: hard to convince the locals your intent is solely to help when they see fat contracts going to foreign companies and never a one going to an Iraqi company with Iraqi employees.)
Now that was a valuable point worth making – and IMO, Moore missed that target.
Don Quijote has given me an idea: We know that going after rich people in the US doesn’t work, because most Americans are “aspirational” about wealth. But what about going after corporations, which allow executives to control huge resources for which they are not personally responsible? How about striking at the very heart of the corporation: by stripping it of natural person status? This would deprive corporations of the right to free speech. That is: it would deprive executives of the right to commit enormous resources (at no personal cost) to tipping the political climate in their favor.
While I agree with repudiating Moore on substantive grounds, seeing as how he is mostly wrong about the world and all, I do think that Beinart has to demonstrate more of a strategic interest in expanding the base. Repudiating Moore and growing the number of registered Democrats may well be in tension, but these two things are especially in tension if you don’t offer a broader way forward.
BTW, is this what we haven’t heard from Mr. Underscore in a while?
At this point his lawyer advises that his response to that question must be: “No Comment”.
“perhaps cynically) perceived to be their constituents’ best interests, not necessarily the Democatic Party’s interest”
Again, read the Digby timeline. This is exactly the point and the problem, Republicans don’t play this way. Any pork that came to NY would have come from Republicans, to Republicans or to the goal of party-building. Giuliani and Pataki and Kerik are not Schumer’s buddies.
The Democratic Party helps Hilary, but I am not sure her attitude as independent actor helps the party. I want party discipline, and I want it enforced on the top by the grass roots. Dem Party leadership is corrupt beyond salvation. Harry Reid, for God’s sake. Hilary is gonna gain nothing by being a Republican punk.
bob – I think the Democrats in Congress have to pick their fights, and I don’t think that Kerik’s nomination, before the recent revelations, was a good one. If they want to score points with the public at large on Cabinet nominees, Rice or Gonzalez look like better targets. There weren’t that many folks outside of New York beat reporters who knew much about Kerik beyond his connection to 9/11. On the other hand, Rice didn’t make many friends as NSA and Gonzalez has ties to Enron, the “torture memos”, Texas’ death row, etc. Their hearings may provide a better opportunity for the Democrats to make some hay regarding how effective the Bush administration has been in their conduct of the WOT.
Of course, I don’t really expect that to happen, either. Ack.
For example, about why it is sometimes good and acceptable and necessary to disassociate with people:
People who propose laws banning all books with gay characters from their state’s library and burying them in a giant hole should not be invited to the White House.
But if Gerald Allen is telling the truth, he has been. Five times. Including once a few days after he proposed his wonderful bill.
The other four meetings could be innocuous things, but the fifth–if Allen is telling the truth it is hard to believe it is a coincidence. And it is quite plausible given what we already know about Rove’s close ties with the FRC, Concerned Women for America, Paul Weyrich, James Dobson and pals.
It’s long past time for decent Republicans to stop putting up with this.
BTW, is this what we haven’t heard from Mr. Underscore in a while?
LOL…
I’ve been out scouting new locations for my space…good thing about working with emerging artists, there’s no one gonna accuse you of trading in forgeries.
Jadegold, one of the things I hold against Fahrenheit 911 is that Moore didn’t take the opportunity to point out that Afghanistan was attacked for no good reason – bloodthirsty revenge was wanted, ASAP – and abandoned for no good reason
Moore has a POV; he doesn’t pretend otherwise. To my mind, this criticism is akin to the rightwingers who howled that F911 didn’t present a treatise of what a brutal dictator Saddam Hussein was.
As if people didn’t already understand that.
Frankly, those liberals who would repudiate Moore are those who continue to allow conservatives to define what they should and shouldn’t like.
Moore’s theory was that we manufactured reasons to invade Afghanistan for an oil pipeline and other related economic reasons. McKinney isn’t as blatant about it, but she suggests the same thing.
Nope.
No. The fact that you can’t envisage a principled liberal opposition to Moore speaks volumes.
The fact that you can’t envisage a principled liberal opposition to Moore speaks volumes.
Volumes? Holy Cow!
Again, I ask: on what basis is this ‘principled opposition’ other than the fact the GOP doesn’t like him?
“Frankly, those liberals who would repudiate Moore are those who continue to allow conservatives to define what they should and shouldn’t like.”
Or perhaps they define themselves in ways that aren’t compatible with Moore.
Jonas: No. The fact that you can’t envisage a principled liberal opposition to Moore speaks volumes.
I see no reason for “principled liberal opposition to Moore”.
I disagree greatly with a few things Moore has said/done.
I disagree mildly (we differ in interpretation) with rather more things.
My disagreement with Michael Moore, however, does not have the force of “principled opposition”: that I reserve for lying, incompetent, arrogant people in government, such George W. Bush or Donald Rumsfeld. I see no cause for “principled opposition” to a funny guy who makes very watchable movies.
Jadegold: To my mind, this criticism is akin to the rightwingers who howled that F911 didn’t present a treatise of what a brutal dictator Saddam Hussein was.
No. The rightwingers who wanted F911 to be Bush propaganda supporting their POV, had an agenda: they wanted Michael Moore to be on their side, seeing what good work he did.
I, on the other hand, truly appreciated F911: my problems with it come from seeing where it could have been even more effective.
jeez you guys, Moore isn’t a Democrat. He’s an independent. Afganistan wasn’t an issue in the election. It’s been forgotten by most people already. The issue was Iraq and terrorism in general. And we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be involved in self-fagillation about our party’s supporters when the Republican party, leaders and supporters alike, are either religious fanatics, white collar criminals or enablers of religious fanatics and white collar criminals. Cheney? Falwell? Santorum? Rove? Delay? etc etc etc. At least our flakes aren’t running the party.
Ahh, whatever M Moore might say, I have said and thought worse. But I have yet to see a Moore movie, and plan on avoiding them to my grave.
I seem to have become allergic to rhetoric. I listened only to the acceptance speeches in the last year. I watch C-Span only for the panel shows, discussions of Iran by experts. I no longer read editorials on either side, or most columns. Many people tell me read this Kinsley or that Brooks, I rarely bother. Of course, the talk shows are rhetoric pretending to be dialectic, which is the worst.
There is rhetoric on blogs, but most often it feels like dialectic, the poster working out his arguments in the process of posting, with a wary eye out for refutation and embarrassment. An intellectual appeal, rather than emotional. Spontaneous, rather than calculated.
jill: Afganistan wasn’t an issue in the election. It’s been forgotten by most people already. The issue was Iraq and terrorism in general.
Afghanistan may well have already been forgotten by most Americans, apart from those still serving there, their families and friends, but it’s not been forgotten by “most people”.
The issue wasn’t Iraq or terrorism in general: if it had been, Bush’s lies and lack of seriousness about fighting terrorism would have lost him the election. The issue was demonizing Kerry and marketing Bush. The better marketeers won.
Exactly, and Bush simply wasn’t hammered on it. Remember the following Democratic talking point?
“Bush started out alright by going to Afghanistan, but then what did he do? He got bored, got distracted, sent our guys off to Iraq on exaggerated evidence and got them stuck there, leaving Afghanistan — where Osama bin Laden and the Taliban were — with the leftover scraps from the Iraq folly. He started a war that didn’t need to be started, pulled resources AWAY from the war on terror to do it, and has made us less secure as a result. He went to find “Weapons of Mass Destruction” in Iraq that didn’t exist, and near-ignored the Nukes in Russia that we not only knew existed but could have secured for a fraction of the price.
“Is this your commitment to national security, Mr Bush? Is this the best you can do?”
Exactly. That particular talking point was not repeated by Kerry’s camp over and over and over again. So, I think now’s the time to start. It’s not very long, it doesn’t take much to say. Democrats need to start saying it.
Moore never attempted to present a thorough, balanced view, but instead tried to cram a ton of material previously unknown to mainstream America into a feature length film, while keeping it moving, funny and entertaining. He could have added more background, but the movie’s pretty much non-stop already and he was already leaving out much additional relevant, factual, ‘conspiracy-esque’ info.
Moore sees himself not as a historian or theorist but just someone trying to get people to think in ways other than the unidirectional follow-the-talking-points system of the current right wing. He tried to stretch their minds so they could at least consider a broader array of causes and dynamics at work before, during and after 911, beyond just ‘bad people do bad things’.
Unfortunately, even if you combine Fox news + F911, you still don’t get a sane picture of events, so most people still do not have a clear understanding of the situation. Some therefore felt angry at being left in a psychically disoriented state, and want to collapse that into a simpler view that will let them sleep well at night, or allow them to explain themselves and their nation while awake. They are willing to discard Moore to make this happen.
Beinart and From are right to say they don’t want themselves or the party to be seen as acknowledging Moore as their spokesperson … then again, who does? He’s not an official spokesperson, he’s a jester, an artist, a loud mouth who hopefully wakes us out of our stupor. He’s not a serious political persona, obviously doesn’t want to be taken as such; he tries for a quirky charm that will get people into the theater. Most people know this.
If he was perceived by default as a spokesperson, it could be because the topic is so complex that it’s a non-trivial task to digest it, while not over-simplifying; and then to present it in a mainstream, entertaining format (which is the only format most people will focus on). Noone has done this yet. Anybody want to volunteer to make that movie? Or a short web video? Or a PowerPoint? It would be helpful.
It’s also not true, that if you just read Beinart, or probably any one single blog on the internet, that you would get a truly balanced and complete view.
Beinart and obviously the Repubs, would be in a better position to delegitimize the contribution of Moore, if they themselves had in some way publicized the facts that he made mainstream, or would simply, plainly acknowledge the real geo dynamics going on.
Absent that, their criticism and contribution comes off a bit too packaged; ends up sounding like, let’s all get on the TNR bandwagon, or the new, improved New Democrat one. These are fine vehicles to ride on, they have some really good ideas.
But the reality is the Left side of the equation is a messy, creative stew and is ultimately a more sane view of the world because of that. It will never be tidy, but we can work on making it more of an elegant, intelligent, harmonious dance.
The nation really did end up in a long term post traumatic shock after these events, apparently unable to think with any kind of flexibility, sustained inquisitiveness, broad inclusiveness of points of view, deep complexity, etc, etc. This narrowness is what’s killing us, it needs to be addressed. At the same time, of course people are overwhelmed … it’s as if they were being asked to become grad students in geo-politics simultaneously with being sledge-hammered over the head. How could anybody make that work?
Granted, any attempt, on Left or Right, at mass mind-therapy to remedy this situation is bound to be tricky and dangerous. Witness the ongoing fiascos in the neocons’ attempts at propaganda operations. They’re still working on the formula as well, what version are we on now?
Even though the election was lost, it did a lot of good in restoring and affirming our collective psychic functionality …
Many people became aware of a lot of information, of politics itself, of interests at play in Washington. More people got involved this time on the Left than anytime since McGovern probably. Moore got many people off the couch.
Repub awareness of people’s new-found activism and consciousness is having an effect.
Bush is in fact making a bunch of adjustments now, there’s some acknowledgement of the cost of overly facile brainwashing. There’s some sense that absolute disregard for legitimacy will have a cost. The opposition has a growing power, which will only grow further as our communication systems sharpen and strengthen.
We need to think about how to take the dissemination and assimilation of complex information to the next level, find formats that allow for precision, depth, subtlety, but are fun and engaging for the masses. When we find those formats, we’ll probably look at Moore circa F911 as simply primitive and a bit lost in the over-eagerness and panic of an election season. Maybe he’d even remake it some day as a 3 part film with proper balance and self-criticism.
The frothing rage directed at Michael Moore is bemusing. And amusing.
The guy makes no secret of his agenda, and he says his piece very well. I notice that none of the frothers have put their rage to the analytical test – or has someone claimed that $10K reward Moore offered to anyone who can prove he lied in F911?
The part of F911 that most tore at my heart was the last section, where he connects the dots between Bush’s domestic policies and the soldiers doing the fighting in Iraq. What can you say about a country that prides itself on being the richest and most powerful nation in history, yet allows the existence and perpetuation of an underclass in order to ensure a ready supply of cannon fodder?
Every time I hear about the latest batch of widow(er)s and orphans Bush’s war has created, every time I see another grisly photo of soldiers without arms or legs, hands or feet, genitals or faces… and juxtapose that with the latest self-congratulatory vaporings from the White House and the latest rah-rah bloviatings from the pro-war crowd, I want to scream and smash things.
No, it isn’t so much that I wish I believed in a Hell so Bush & Co could get the justice they deserve. I wish there was the slightest possibility they’d get the justice they deserve while I’m alive to see it – no: while the soldiers and heir families are alive to see it.