Dankdude
Well-Known Member
by David Michael Green
Wouldnt it be nice if we didnt have to worry our little heads over politics? Wouldnt it be lovely if we could just turn over control of all those vexing issues, including our health, welfare and very survival, to some nice men in Washington who would take care of all it for us, occasionally interrupting our somnambulance with this weeks latest thing - Communists! Terrorists! Lindsay Lohan! - to distract our attention?
Unfortunately, for far too many of us, this is actually precisely what is desired. And dont think Karl Rove doesnt know it.
Politically speaking, we are a radically lazy society. Thinking, lets admit it, is hard work. Many people dont realize that, but then, many people havent really had the experience. For some folks its the cognitive equivalent of traveling abroad to a foreign land - done occasionally for a change of pace, if at all. Rigorously exploring and thoughtfully understanding our world is not easy. Politics aint beanbag, as the man once said, though he meant it rather differently. Far less demanding to defer to simple stereotypes, canned passion plays and quasi-religious political morality tales than to actually do our homework, apply the logic, and generate original thinking. And hey, if you do take the easy way out, youll still have plenty of time to catch the game on TV!
Moreover, there are lots of friendly people in Washington who would very much appreciate the opportunity to do your thinking for you. They are called conservatives - though I think regressive is a far more accurate term - and they have been getting lots of practice in recent years. Theyll be glad to make your political decisions for you, and even provide you a fully developed, off-the-shelf, ready-to-use reality, any time you like. All you have to do is not think, and not learn. Or, if you really must have the sensory input, simply confine yourself to the infotainment of Fox News or Star magazine. (Though that whole reading thing is to be especially discouraged. Posh Spice is the operative model here. Lots of glamour, lots of money, lots of celebrity, lots of bling. Little substance. She apparently once told an interviewer that she had never read a book - any book - in her entire life. Now thats something, isnt it? You gotta love that. You go, Girl! There may be a Presidential Medal of Freedom waiting for you if you keep on pioneering the way toward Karl Roves dream citizenry. And why not? Paul Bremer got one, and all he did was destroy a historic civilization of 25 million people.)
We in the progressive community know that not everybody in America thinks the way we do. But we would probably be well served also by a recognition that some people in this country dont want to think at all. It is possible that some of these Borg could be knee-jerk progressives instead of knee-jerk regressives were they somehow to be re-assimilated into the reality-based community, but the odds are not high. So much of progressive thinking requires careful reflection, extended analytical probing, and a collection of just plain data - factual information - about what is going on in the world. So much of regressive thinking fits nicely, and completely, on a bumper sticker.
Support our troops!, to wit, and quite literally a bumper sticker seen all over the place (though noticeably less ubiquitous than it was in 2003). Literally a bumper sticker, that is, but not so literal in its meaning, especially since the most obvious way to support our troops - right here, right now - would be to pull them out of harms way, where they sit today for no conscionable purpose whatsoever. Otherwise, short of that, really supporting our troops today would mean screaming and hollering at the top of our lungs to make sure that they get adequate training, armor, and rest before being deployed. While were at it, we might even ask that they be paid at the same rate as the nearly equivalent numbers of mercenaries fighting alongside them, to the tune of three or four times the soldiers salary. And if we really, really wanted to support the troops, wed call for a draft, so that wed have a massively enlarged military, and each soldier would have far less of a share of the burden to carry. Hmmm - that may be a bit more than our friends with the bumper stickers had in mind. Perhaps thats why theyve been seen lately ducking out to the garage in the wee hours of the night to scrape the things off their Hummers.
The fact that the regressive mantra support the troops in reality means none of these things is a perfect example of the difference between bumper sticker politics and something much more nuanced and analytical. And real. At the end of the day, the truth is that what this little slogan really means has little to do with the troops at all. What it really means for regressives who employ it is: I let the president do my thinking for me, and Id feel a whole lot more comfortable about how utterly lame that is if you would too, so I wouldnt have to be reminded by your nonconformity of how Im embarrassing myself by abdicating my role in this democracy thing were always huffing and puffing about, especially the particularly imbecilic creature now occupying the Oval Office to whom Ive turned over my brain. Thats what support the troops really means.
But then it gets worse from there, because it isnt really the president to whom our friendly regressive is entrusting his brain, but actually certain kinds of presidents only. Dont think for a minute that Bill Clinton would have gotten this kind of carte blanche from this same crowd. Indeed, we know that he wouldnt have. Because he didnt. His interventions in the Balkans, infinitely more justifiable than the invasion of Iraq, produced only scorn and hostility from many of the same folk who now question the patriotism of anyone who finds the judgement of the current president even remotely dubious. So much for the idea that politics stops at the waters edge, eh? How very mid-twentieth century that notion was. Sorta like the war on poverty, the progressive income tax, the Geneva Protocols, or other equally quaint historical artifacts.
Truly, the entirety of the Iraq debacle - not just the more recent quagmire - can be understood in terms of this kindergarten politics motif. You need a boatload of operative assumptions banging away on all eight cylinders at once to buy, wholesale, into this line of garbage. You need to believe that the story of 9/11 as its been presented to us is real. You need to believe that America has never acted in the Middle East for purposes of profiting its overclass and at the expense of the welfare and the very lives of the people there who are inconveniently living on top of our oil and our strategic perches. You need to understand that they - Arabs, Muslims, brown people, ragheads, whatever - are all the same, and that the US attacking secular, Shiite-majority, Iraq in response to a crime supposedly perpetrated by rabid, Sunni, Islamofascists who happened to hate the Iraqi regime about as much as they hate us makes perfect sense.
You must forget that an urgent invasion to make us safe from weapons of mass destruction made no sense given the Cold War experience of forty years of deterrence, let alone the near-completion of the weapons inspections that were demonstrating that no such weapons even existed. You must not laugh out loud at the prospect of bringing democracy to the Middle East as a motivation for the war, given the very same administrations complete inaction in the face of genocide in Darfur. You must never question why Iraq should be attacked in response to a terrorist episode perpetrated (even according to the official story) almost entirely by Saudis, and no Iraqis. You have to believe that there are people sitting in bunkers somewhere right this moment, trying to determine where best to hit America in order to inflict maximum damage, and deciding that its a lot easier to deploy suicide missions in a locked down, massively fortified war zone than, or in addition to, on the streets of Burbank or Baltimore, and therefore that it is a good thing we are fighting them over there, so we dont have to fight them over here.
Wouldnt it be nice if we didnt have to worry our little heads over politics? Wouldnt it be lovely if we could just turn over control of all those vexing issues, including our health, welfare and very survival, to some nice men in Washington who would take care of all it for us, occasionally interrupting our somnambulance with this weeks latest thing - Communists! Terrorists! Lindsay Lohan! - to distract our attention?
Unfortunately, for far too many of us, this is actually precisely what is desired. And dont think Karl Rove doesnt know it.
Politically speaking, we are a radically lazy society. Thinking, lets admit it, is hard work. Many people dont realize that, but then, many people havent really had the experience. For some folks its the cognitive equivalent of traveling abroad to a foreign land - done occasionally for a change of pace, if at all. Rigorously exploring and thoughtfully understanding our world is not easy. Politics aint beanbag, as the man once said, though he meant it rather differently. Far less demanding to defer to simple stereotypes, canned passion plays and quasi-religious political morality tales than to actually do our homework, apply the logic, and generate original thinking. And hey, if you do take the easy way out, youll still have plenty of time to catch the game on TV!
Moreover, there are lots of friendly people in Washington who would very much appreciate the opportunity to do your thinking for you. They are called conservatives - though I think regressive is a far more accurate term - and they have been getting lots of practice in recent years. Theyll be glad to make your political decisions for you, and even provide you a fully developed, off-the-shelf, ready-to-use reality, any time you like. All you have to do is not think, and not learn. Or, if you really must have the sensory input, simply confine yourself to the infotainment of Fox News or Star magazine. (Though that whole reading thing is to be especially discouraged. Posh Spice is the operative model here. Lots of glamour, lots of money, lots of celebrity, lots of bling. Little substance. She apparently once told an interviewer that she had never read a book - any book - in her entire life. Now thats something, isnt it? You gotta love that. You go, Girl! There may be a Presidential Medal of Freedom waiting for you if you keep on pioneering the way toward Karl Roves dream citizenry. And why not? Paul Bremer got one, and all he did was destroy a historic civilization of 25 million people.)
We in the progressive community know that not everybody in America thinks the way we do. But we would probably be well served also by a recognition that some people in this country dont want to think at all. It is possible that some of these Borg could be knee-jerk progressives instead of knee-jerk regressives were they somehow to be re-assimilated into the reality-based community, but the odds are not high. So much of progressive thinking requires careful reflection, extended analytical probing, and a collection of just plain data - factual information - about what is going on in the world. So much of regressive thinking fits nicely, and completely, on a bumper sticker.
Support our troops!, to wit, and quite literally a bumper sticker seen all over the place (though noticeably less ubiquitous than it was in 2003). Literally a bumper sticker, that is, but not so literal in its meaning, especially since the most obvious way to support our troops - right here, right now - would be to pull them out of harms way, where they sit today for no conscionable purpose whatsoever. Otherwise, short of that, really supporting our troops today would mean screaming and hollering at the top of our lungs to make sure that they get adequate training, armor, and rest before being deployed. While were at it, we might even ask that they be paid at the same rate as the nearly equivalent numbers of mercenaries fighting alongside them, to the tune of three or four times the soldiers salary. And if we really, really wanted to support the troops, wed call for a draft, so that wed have a massively enlarged military, and each soldier would have far less of a share of the burden to carry. Hmmm - that may be a bit more than our friends with the bumper stickers had in mind. Perhaps thats why theyve been seen lately ducking out to the garage in the wee hours of the night to scrape the things off their Hummers.
The fact that the regressive mantra support the troops in reality means none of these things is a perfect example of the difference between bumper sticker politics and something much more nuanced and analytical. And real. At the end of the day, the truth is that what this little slogan really means has little to do with the troops at all. What it really means for regressives who employ it is: I let the president do my thinking for me, and Id feel a whole lot more comfortable about how utterly lame that is if you would too, so I wouldnt have to be reminded by your nonconformity of how Im embarrassing myself by abdicating my role in this democracy thing were always huffing and puffing about, especially the particularly imbecilic creature now occupying the Oval Office to whom Ive turned over my brain. Thats what support the troops really means.
But then it gets worse from there, because it isnt really the president to whom our friendly regressive is entrusting his brain, but actually certain kinds of presidents only. Dont think for a minute that Bill Clinton would have gotten this kind of carte blanche from this same crowd. Indeed, we know that he wouldnt have. Because he didnt. His interventions in the Balkans, infinitely more justifiable than the invasion of Iraq, produced only scorn and hostility from many of the same folk who now question the patriotism of anyone who finds the judgement of the current president even remotely dubious. So much for the idea that politics stops at the waters edge, eh? How very mid-twentieth century that notion was. Sorta like the war on poverty, the progressive income tax, the Geneva Protocols, or other equally quaint historical artifacts.
Truly, the entirety of the Iraq debacle - not just the more recent quagmire - can be understood in terms of this kindergarten politics motif. You need a boatload of operative assumptions banging away on all eight cylinders at once to buy, wholesale, into this line of garbage. You need to believe that the story of 9/11 as its been presented to us is real. You need to believe that America has never acted in the Middle East for purposes of profiting its overclass and at the expense of the welfare and the very lives of the people there who are inconveniently living on top of our oil and our strategic perches. You need to understand that they - Arabs, Muslims, brown people, ragheads, whatever - are all the same, and that the US attacking secular, Shiite-majority, Iraq in response to a crime supposedly perpetrated by rabid, Sunni, Islamofascists who happened to hate the Iraqi regime about as much as they hate us makes perfect sense.
You must forget that an urgent invasion to make us safe from weapons of mass destruction made no sense given the Cold War experience of forty years of deterrence, let alone the near-completion of the weapons inspections that were demonstrating that no such weapons even existed. You must not laugh out loud at the prospect of bringing democracy to the Middle East as a motivation for the war, given the very same administrations complete inaction in the face of genocide in Darfur. You must never question why Iraq should be attacked in response to a terrorist episode perpetrated (even according to the official story) almost entirely by Saudis, and no Iraqis. You have to believe that there are people sitting in bunkers somewhere right this moment, trying to determine where best to hit America in order to inflict maximum damage, and deciding that its a lot easier to deploy suicide missions in a locked down, massively fortified war zone than, or in addition to, on the streets of Burbank or Baltimore, and therefore that it is a good thing we are fighting them over there, so we dont have to fight them over here.