Steyn Kampf
S,N! is the new Steyn Watch!
Above: Steyn always lands butter side up. [Hanx! Marq]
Let’s start with this conversation between Steyn and Hugh Hewitt where they discuss that big fat meany General Odom, who does not appreciate the perils of the Vast Muslim Conspiracy like he ought. General Odom, you see, “just hasn’t done his homework” on Teh Enemy, as evidenced by his breezy humiliation of Hugh a bit prior; Steyn and Hugh have done their homework, however, and proceed, expertly, to cut the ignoramous general down to size:
HH: One other surprising thing, and again, I want people to be fair to the general and listen to the whole interview. But I asked him if he’d read The Looming Tower, and he hadn’t, and if he knew who Sayed Qutub was, and he didn’t. And I really wonder, Mark Steyn, how many people have done their homework about this enemy.
MS: Well, you know, I’m always astonished by this, Hugh. I don’t expect you very kindly always recommending my book to people, and I’m very grateful to that, but you know, certainly, you don’t have to read my book. There are an awful lot of books out there, and what always surprises me is that the President, who is regarded as a moron by, you know, “thinking� people everywhere, apparently, has actually read a lot of these books, and a lot of his critics haven’t.
HH: Yup.
MS: And I’m astonished at the level of understanding of what it is that’s going on in the world. I mean, I think the General’s point is actually very foolish, that if you’re going…for a start, temperamentally, you have to be the kind of society that can lose a war, if you’re going to decide to lose a war, lose it easily. And I don’t think America is. I think inevitably, if there was a tattered and shabby retreat from Iraq, that it would be, in a sense, Vietnam squared. In other words, it would be a traumatizing event for generations.
Above, Steyn: ‘Hugh, das ist nicht einen boobie?!’*
A Vietnam reference — so you know what’s coming next. That’s right, ‘dolchstoss, dolchstoss’:
HH: […] Let’s turn to the debate in Congress. […]
MS: Well you know, this is the stuff that matters [..]. And what we see, what astonishes me, I mean, I had a kind of out of body experience reading the Washington Post today, because it was like going through some sort of hallucination. I’ve never seen war coverage like it, where one party has in fact decided to take what it calls the slow bleed strategy, it’s quite openly telling people it doesn’t want to have the courage of its convictions and defund the war, it wants to deny the President the possibility of victory, while ensuring that it doesn’t get stuck with any blame for defeat, and this is completely contemptible.
HH: It is, and unfortunately, 13 Republicans at last count have joined these Democrats. I’m calling them white flag Republicans. They’re listed at www.victorycaucus.com. I think this is a Thelma and Louise moment for the Republicans, Mark Steyn. They are not whipping this vote, and let me play for you a little bit of Rick Keller, Orlando Republican, from his speech on the floor yesterday:
RK: Three years ago, we didn’t know whether surging more American troops into Baghdad would give us a long lasting impact. Now we know the answer, because we tried the same thing last summer. The benefits were temporary. The body bags were permanent.
HH: I think that may be the most contemptible thing I’ve ever heard a Republican say, Mark Steyn.
MS: Yes, and I agree with you that this man should be put under pressure in a competitive primary in his home district. You know, I think this is…as I’ve said, I’ve never felt more foreign in the last couple of days, and you know, I’m not…again, I feel very awkward in a way commenting about this, but I think this is simply a contemptibly immature way to discuss a war. And I think the abandonment by the Republicans of the real national security interests of this country is pathetic.
Gahhh! Hugh and Steyn are accustomed to perceiving a backstab from the left hand, but never before from the right, too!
There’s more on this theme the next time they chat — as there often is on their Kreig Kafe of the airwaves, rife with so much stilted chatter of two bedwetting brownshirts whose pudgy armchair Snotzi act comes across like a Freeper production of Sprockets:
HH: […] You wrote a column yesterday in the Chicago Sun Times, which I’m sure has earned you, well, about a truckload of venom. It had one line in it, “Nevertheless in the capital city of the most powerful nation on the planet last week, the political class spent it trying to craft a bipartisan defeat strategy, and they might yet pull it off.â€? A bipartisan defeat strategy, or as you said, the slow bleed Democrats joining the white flag Republicans. How was the reaction, Mark Steyn?
MS: Well, it’s astonishing to me that essentially, I think a lot of people on the Republican side do not seem to understand. I mean, I expect nothing from the Democrats. I think they’ve…I think really, they’ve internalized this ludicrous thing, you know, where you just say we support our troops, we support our troops, and as long as you preface any absurd action with the words we support our troops, you know, it’s fine. We support our troops, even as we cut the legs out from under them, so that the mission is doomed to fail. That’s basically what the Democrat position has come down to. And I think, in fact, if you look at the logic of that, I mean, I don’t think you can support the troops if you’re opposed to the mission. You end up, if you divorce the kind of heroism of soldiering from the nobility of the mission, you end up with a thing like the John Kerry biography, a completely incoherent one, where a guy is running as the anti-war war hero. And I think the Democrats have become the party of that incoherence, but I expect better from the Republicans, and I’m deeply unimpressed by a lot of the behavior of prominent Republicans, too.
Their dolchstosslegendekraft[1] done for the day, the zwei dumkopfs return to the subject of General Odom, who is no Moltke, nein!:
HH: […]Mark Steyn, last question. I interviewed General Odom last week, and I didn’t think he did so well, because he admitted to not knowing anything about Ahmadinejad, Mullah Yazdi, 12th Imam theology, a whole bunch of…not knowing how many people Saddam had killed…in other words, it was an extended declaration of indifference to facts, and yet the lefty blogosphere loved it.
MS: And I found this general that you interviewed, he passed himself off as an expert on Iran, and I was astonished by his answers on the 12th Imam. I mean basically, that’s a big chunk of the Shiite population in Iran, are what they caller 12’ers, you know, they belong to that particular strain of Islam, and I find it astonishing that this man could claim to be an expert on Iran without every have apparently looking at the country in anything other than as a sort of typical national nation-state. He didn’t seem to see it as any kind of broader cultural religious project.
HH: And the lefties didn’t seem to mind that he didn’t. That’s what really stunned me, Mark.
MS: No, ignorance is bliss.
For once I’m in agreement with Steyn and Hugh: I too fear crackpots who believe in the Rapture — especially when they are Presidents and have access to nukes!
But, anyway, there have been quite a few references to past Presidents lately, what with the holiday and all, and Steyn and Hewitt offer their own remarks, analogies, steaming bullshit:
MS: […]I mean, Barack Obama, who’s going around comparing himself to Lincoln in every speech, it’s hard to imagine Lincoln campaigning and simply, in effect, you know, not discussing the war. I mean, it’s hard to imagine Lincoln going around campaigning on health care and ending poverty in the middle of the Civil War. I mean, that’s…when one side basically has chosen at best to sit out the game, it is very hard, I think, to make it a serious debate.
HH: Today, George Bush went to Mt. Vernon, and I’ll read from the AP report. “Standing before the Mt. Vernon mansion, and sharing the stage with an actor dressed as George Washington, Bush said that George Washington’s Revolutionary War leadership inspired generations of Americans to stand for freedom in their own time. ‘Today, we’re fighting a new war to defend out liberty and our people and our way of life. And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for America alone. He once wrote my best wishes are irresistibly excited whenever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.’� This a very difficult argument to make in this society, Mark Steyn, that we’re under an obligation to do this. Do you think this is going to work?
MS: Well, I think you can present the sort of utopian aspect of that, that you know, we’re spreading democracy around the world in terms of hard-headed national interests, which I think generally speaking, that free nations whose citizens are preoccupied with buying homes in the suburbs, and owning stock, and going on vacations and watching TV, are less threatening to each other than nations in which there are no economic opportunities, like many Middle Eastern countries, and where the frustrations of the society are channeled in ways that are deeply unhealthy for other countries. So I think my advice to the President is to frame the export of liberty as a hard-headed exercise in America’s national interest, because I think it is.
Establishing that Lincoln and Washington are on his side, Steyn ups the ante in another venue: Larry Kudlow, a certifiable crackpot, gushes over Calvin Coolidge. Now idiotic Coolidge worship is a Corner Tradition, but Steyn runs with the reference as only he can:
Keeping Cool with Coolidge [Mark Steyn]
I would like heartily to endorse Larry Kudlow’s view of Calvin Coolidge. The other day I took my kids over to the Coolidge homestead[…] Seven generations of Coolidges are buried there all in a row – including Julius Caesar Coolidge, which is the kind of name I’d like to find on the ballot next November (strong on war, but committed to small government).
I bet he would. In H.L. Mencken’s estimation, Calvin Coolidge “actually got his first considerable office…by posturing as a fascist of the most advanced type.” But while Coolidge was religious in his corporate-whoring, he wasn’t much of a war-monger. Which is why the Caesar reference, redolent of the First Reich and its wholesale slaughter of ‘barbarians’, Steyn the Fourth Reicher finds so complementary to Coolidge’s other traits: In his mind, he’s already built the perfect wingnut beast.
Needless to say, the Caesar sentiment scandalizes a few of the libertarian Corner readers, who complain accordingly:
Julius Caesar Coolidge [Mark Steyn]
Oh, dear. Even the heartwarming Presidents Day reminiscence posts offend. A propos my admiration for the name “Julius Caesar Coolidge,� a reader writes:
committed to small government? are you mad? caesar destroyed the roman republic and founded the roman empire, the progenitor of the modern totalitarian state. think darth vader in a toga.
Er, all I meant was the “Coolidge� part of the name suggested a commitment to small government while the “Julius Caesar� bit was pleasingly warlike. And, either way, I’m happy to do without the toga, though I expect if Barack Obama started wearing one he could singlehandedly bring it back into style.
Silly Corner readers! It’s not like Steyn doesn’t know the relationship between ‘pleasingly warlike’ leaders and totalitarian states: That’s what he wants[2]! It’s the goal to which the whole wingnut movement marches. Stop trying to embarass Mark Steyn; it’s just not possible.
* Simpsons reference
1: I know this is probably wrong; I never took German.
2: Or rather what Steyn is merely “warning of”, if you’re a fellow crypto-fascist, dissembling asshole and advancer of Glennocidal Tendencies.
Wingnut welfare, what hast thou wrought?
I don’t know what’s sadder – that these morons have a platform or that anybody listens to them (although with the aforementioned welfare nobody actually has to).
Yeah, what does a General know about war? Especially from two such fine military experts as these, with Hewitt thinking the front line runs down 5th Avenue and Steyn thinking it’s the 1800s. I expect them to discuss the finer points of ballistas any day now.
they are sick puppies. Scrotes, the pair of them. Name-dropping scrotes in fact.
I think the essential problem is, those of us who actually believe in freedom of speech are basically bringing a knife to a gunfight (unfortunately, without a hidden tommygunner waiting in ambush, either). We can heap much merited derision and scorn on the likes of Steyn, but ultimately, we must grudgingly respect his right to spread his toxic bullshit, because, well, that’s what we believe in.
Steyn and his emotionally retarded ilk are under no such limitations. As is typical of what we now refer to as ‘conservatives’, Steyn believes that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, but to him the application of the phrase ‘all men’ is strictly limited to those who agree with him. If you’re not part of his tribe, then you’re not really a ‘man’, and therefore, not created equal and have no rights whatsoever.
Your opinions are treason, and when the conservative state finally manages to gets its hands on ALL the guns, you’ll be the first one up against the wall… or shipped off to a Haliburton built detainment camp.
In fact, the very notion that ‘all men’ actually includes ‘all men’ (and the wimmenfolk, too!) is just more of that permissive liberal rot that is undermining every decent, traditional American family value. Steyn and his fellow non-travelers all know in their hearts that when the Founding Fathers wrote that ringing phrase, they were talking strictly about white Christian males. After all, that’s what they all were. No non-whites, no fags, no pagans, no atheists, no chicks… and it’s very clear, therefore, that those folks, lamentably, were not created equal to the white, Christian penisized folks, and the question of their ‘rights’, alienable or otherwise, simply does not arise.
Sorry. I’m just repeating the very, very obvious, points I’ve made at much greater and more tedious length over at my poli blog. But I guess you can never say this stuff enough. We go into battle with these people with our hands tied behind us, because, ultimately, we believe they have a right to say this shit, however idiotic and dangerous it may be, while they do not hesitate to deny that same accomodation to us.
They’re doing it solely for attention now…
Can you hear ’em?
‘hehe Mark, you said cock. hehe’
‘hehe suck my schlong Hugh, hehe’
‘heheHA’ ‘that’ll make mad’ hehe.
HEY HUGH, I said ‘SUCK MY SCHLONG!’ hehehhehehe
hey knock it off! I said suck not bite asswipe!
hehe
ehhehhe
hehhee
In an ocean of mendacity, it’s still amazing to see that there is simply nothing they won’t lie about in order to inflame hate for the real enemy:
….where one party has in fact decided to take what it calls the slow bleed strategy…
As to dolchstosslegendekraft, acccording to Mark Twain, German lets you string as many words together as you want, ad infinitum, and it still makes sense. As in, Steyn und Hewitt sind echt Wahnsinnigbushleckenkriegliebefaschistsheissköpfe, i.e., Steyn and Hewitt are really insanebushlickingwarmongerfascistshitheads. See, it makes sense in English, too.
Mark Steyn means that for the first time ever, we really can “blame Canada.”
“I think this is a Thelma and Louise moment for the Republicans”
Could someone please explain this to me? Is this like when they meet Brad Pitt, or is this where they drive off the edge at the end?
“it wants to deny the President the possibility of victory”
It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again. In all serious though, the Detroit Lions have more chance of victory in next year’s Super Bowl then any war led by BushCo.
Curses! When I started writing my first comment (well above) there were no comments, and I had a shot at the pole position, but my own longwindedness has undone me!
As to explaining the “Thelma & Louise” reference, well, my interpretation of that otherwise baffling phrase was that this is the moment where the Republican Party either embraces their inner outlaw and initiates a rampage of violent criminality across the international community on their way to some imaginary safe haven in Mexico, or… er…
Um… no. No. I can’t make sense of it, either. But every conservative I’ve ever met hates THELMA & LOUISE with a passion — the idea of chicks running around with guns shooting friendly white guys who have done nothing worse than, y’know, attempt to rape them, or blowing up the property of other friendly white guys who just made disgusting tongue gestures at them seems to universally terrify and appall them. So I’m guessing that whatever the reference is supposed to mean, it’s highly unpleasant.
Maybe it just means the Republican Party now faces a moment similar to that of any decent conservative, confronted with the choice of watching THELMA & LOUISE on cable or turning over to something decent and proper, like WWF RAW. The modern Republican Party is at a similar juncture — they can side with the ‘orrible ‘orrible Democrats, chuck Fearless Leader over the side, and do their best to end the war in Iraq — or they can stay the course to inevitable victory. We all know which of those options is the only acceptable one to the likes of Steyn and Hewitt.
Aha – so Thelma and Louise could actually signify Ms Pelosi and Ms Clinton, say, so the Thelma and Louise moment is when these two start shooting back and terrifying the friendly white guys before they go out in a blaze of glory?
I still don’t understand it.
HH: …But I asked him if he’d read The Looming Tower…
MS: …Well, you know, I’m always astonished by this, Hugh. I don’t expect you very kindly always recommending my book to people, and I’m very grateful to that…
Since when was Steyn the author of The Looming Tower ?
So I think my advice to the President is to frame the export of liberty as a hard-headed exercise in America’s national interest, because I think it is.
And as we can see here, class, the only people advancing the war are blockheads.
Charlie Brown, missing the football again.
Dolchstoss, Lucy, dolchstoss.
HH: …But I asked him if he’d read The Looming Tower, and he hadn’t….
…
MS: I don’t expect you very kindly always recommending my book to people, and I’m very grateful to that,
Steyn uses the pseudonym Lawrence Wright when publishing books ?
Vhy is it that the truly brilliant are doomed to a life of obscurity, surrounded by a sea of mediocrity, only to end up covered in sores in a pool of their own filth? Oh vell, the beat goes on.
Now is the time on Sprockets vhen ve dance.
You know, I think this is…as I’ve said, I’ve never felt more foreign in the last couple of days,
THAT’S BECAUSE YOU ARE, BLANCHE!
what always surprises me is that the President, who is regarded as a moron by, you know, “thinking� people everywhere, apparently, has actually read a lot of these [MY] books, and a lot of his critics haven’t.
Regarded as a moron by, you know, almost everyone outside of America and the vast majority of people inside America. The wingnuts continue to ignore this fact among others. But when have facts gotten in the way of self-aggrandizement?
“what always surprises me is that the President, who is regarded as a moron by, you know, “thinkingâ€? people everywhere, apparently, has actually read a lot of these [MY] books, and a lot of his critics haven’t.”
QED?
THE MOST CONTEMPTIBLE THING HE’S EVER HEARD A REPUBLICAN SAY???!!!11!!
What world is he living in? It wasn’t even the most contemptible thing I’ve heard a Republican say today, and I’m still sitting in my bathrobe drinking my morning coffee.
QED?
zing!
it is very hard, I think, to make it a serious debate.
Hey, you know what else makes it hard to have a serious debate? When the Republicans refuse to have a serious debate.
Also, I know little about history but I actually remembered that George Washington said something like this: “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible,” which changes the perspective a smidge on the decider’s implication that GW supported some sort of imperialistic democracy.
I’m always bewildered by the conservative crush on Coolidge. How ignorant of American history do you have to be to hold up that guy as a model for organizing the economy and goverment? “Well, the nation was doing just fine when he left office in March 1929 ….”
I’m starting to think that Marc Stein might really be Disco Stu. “Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue… ayyyyyy!”
It would certainly explain the mini-fro.
“A Freeper version of Sprockets.”
Brilliant.
I think this is a Thelma and Louise moment for the Republicans, Mark Steyn.
You mean when they drive the T-bird off the cliff?
HTML Mencken,
How dare you repost a link to Hugh Hewitt’s wedding photo?
“A Freeper version of Sprockets.�
So which one is the monkey?
Touch my monkey. You know you want to.
I’ll give Steyn this: he’s very open about his warmongering. He doesn’t really care about the cause or reasons, any port in a storm. He has reservations about Henry Ford because he wanted to end WWI. Never mind that the war was a colossal waste of life that only led to WWII and more colossal waste of life. He wants a Caesar because the name is “pleasingly warlike.” What a fucking nutjob. He should be humping a pack in Falluja, see if he still likes war so fucking much.
According to Peter Galbraith, Bush didn’t even know there were two main sects in Islam and that both Sunni and Shia are in Iraq until just before the invasion, and when told responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”
I like the part where Steyn says he feels foreign.
I wonder whether somewhere in Iran, there’s a parallel Hewitt and a parallel Steyn in a studio, pondering in hushed tones just how many Americans are avid readers of the Left Behind series.
I like the part where Steyn says he feels foreign.
I wonder whether somewhere in Iran, there’s a parallel Hewitt and a parallel Steyn in a studio, pondering in hushed tones just how many Americans are avid readers of the Left Behind series.
If there is, the parallel Steyn is from Iraq.
They think that Gen. Odom didn’t do his homework because he didn’t read Steyn’s book. They really are beyond parody aren’t they? I envision Stephen Colbert saying that,
And, either way, I’m happy to do without the toga…
But the destruction of the Republic, the amassing of power in one man’s hands and the utter indifference to the rule of law are A-OK!
The Iran threat is so incredibly overblown, both here and abroad. Iran is a very modern industrial nation with a sophisticated and educated populace that is actually quite pro-Western and are far more secular and liberal than the clerical leadership (who themselves are generally more liberal in general than the relatively-powerless Ahmadinejad…).
The Iran “problem” would have solved itself through internal change if the US (and others) hadn’t so insistently instigated them to the point that even the Average Joe is now very distrustful of the US. Every time we threaten them, we set back the process by years. Radicalize the populace with bombs, and the problem won’t solve.
Attacking Iran is nothing but naked aggression, as the whole idea of “nuclear nonproliferation”, nice as it sounds, is both impossibly pie-in-the-sky and deeply hypocritical coming from nuclear powers.
Nonproliferation is like the UN Security Council– simply a device to help ensure the hegemony of whoever were the big cheeses at the time they were instituted. Because of that, they are disrespected by nonhegemons accordingly.
I’ve often heard it argued that in the original Dolchstoßlegende that it was also the nice moderate, centrist, bipartisan moderates whose enabling of the ultra rightwing militarists helped bring about fascism.
Admittedly, in their time, the leftist extremists were actually taking over cities, as opposed to defending Constitutionalism and reason on blogs, but I’m sure they’re all the same to our beautiful ultra-right and their enablers, our mass ‘news’ media. Also, back then in Germany the military was its own actor, not just obedient to the Unitary Executive.
When it became clear that the war was lost, a new government was formed by Prince Maximilian of Baden which included Ebert and other members of the [Social Democratic Party] in October 1918. Following the outbreak of the German Revolution, Prince Max resigned on November 9, and handed his office over to Ebert. Though the Kaiser was declared to have abdicated, Ebert favoured retaining the monarchy under a different ruler. On the same day, however, Scheidemann proclaimed the German Republic, in response to the unrest in Berlin and in order to counter a declaration of the “Socialist Republic” by Karl Liebknecht later that day. This proclamation ended the German Monarchy and an entirely Socialist provisional government took power under Ebert’s leadership.
Ebert accepted this position only reluctantly. He was a supporter of the monarchy until the abdication of the Kaiser (“If the Kaiser abdicates, the social revolution is inevitable. But I do not want it, I hate it like sin”, he said to Max von Baden on November 7), and when Scheidemann proclaimed the Republic he responded: “Is that true? You have no right to proclaim the Republic!” By this he meant that the decision was to be made by an elected national assembly, even if that decision would be the restoration of the monarchy.
Ebert led the new government for the next several months, notably using the army to suppress the Spartacist uprising, commonly identified with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, even though many of its members were centrist SPD supporters. (Ironically, years later, Ebert’s son, Friedrich “Fritz” Ebert, became a Communist, served as Mayor of East Berlin, and briefly acted as East German interim head of state.) When the Constituent Assembly met in Weimar in February, 1919, Ebert was chosen to be the first president of the German Republic.
In spite of Ebert’s support for the violent suppression of revolutionary uprisings, the German workers protected his government from the Kapp Putsch in 1920 by means of a nationwide general strike. After the strike was over, however, Ebert’s government again recruited the Freikorps and the soldiers who had wanted to overthrow him in order to quell remaining uprisings in western Germany.
While hundreds of civilians were killed (including many who had nothing to do with the uprising), most of the putschists were treated leniently. Some of the Freikorps already used the swastika as their symbol of resistance against the “red pack” at the time, and many of them as well as right-wing members of the Reichswehr would later become influential national socialists…
Ebert remains a somewhat controversial figure to this day. While the SPD recognizes him as one of the founders and keepers of German democracy whose death in office in February 1925 was a great loss, communists and others on the far left argue that he paved the way for fascism by supporting the ultra-right Freikorps and their violent suppression of Marxist urprisings.
Those [Freikorps] were the same people who spread the Dolchstoßlegende, the idea that the socialists were responsible for Germany’s defeat in World War I. This was a particularly perfidious claim, as the socialists had entered the ceasefire negotiations on request of the military leadership, after the generals had decided that the war could no longer be won. To the generals, the Weimar Republic was a temporary, necessary evil to divert blame from themselves and prepare for the next war, and Ebert is viewed by his critics as playing exactly the role that the military wanted him to play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Ebert
im just curious how the armies of the 12’ers are going to make it to these shores to take over the country. id also like to know if the US took into account the nazi elite’s pagan and occult beliefs before they planned D-Day.
“Death, Where Is Thy Steyn?”
while the “Julius Caesar� bit was pleasingly warlike.
Pleasingly WHAT?? Can somebody hit this idiot with a trank dart, or put him in a headlock or something? I want to hear him expand upon this treatise of war=good. I want him to be FORCED to explain how fighting wars, invading nations, occupying nations, threatening nations, killing people, destroying infrastructure, making refugees, causing disease and wrecking an entire generation of American kids is doing any good. I want them to have to explain what good has come of this. How we’re better, stronger, safer? Gawd, it’s amazing to me that there are people who truly think like this.
The Iran threat is so incredibly overblown, both here and abroad.
Of course it is. But when your political philosophy is dishonest and bankrupt, your economy is driven by military spending and your popularity is at an all time low, you have only one choice. Leaders (usually illegitimate ones) have known this for years. You have to create external enemies. You have to demonize them. You have to make them into some gigantic, overblown existential threat. Then you can challenge your political enemies – “Don’t you want to help fight them? Do you want to let them kill you and your family? Do you want to live under shari’a law?” You can violate the rule of law, your constitution and any political or regulatory norms you wish. Hey, it’s a time of war, it’s an emergency, our very survival depends upon my decisions.
It’s ugly, obscene and dishonest. The sad thing is everybody can see that’s what they are doing. And yet we can’t find a way out of the trap. We are still terrified of the ridiculous “you don’t support our troops”. What does that even mean anymore? But it’s still got political mojo. The other one I absolutely love is “What is YOUR plan for victory? You don’t have a plan for victory?” It’s an obvious game. There will be no victory. Everybody knows it. The victory part happened in the spring of 2003. After that was the occupation. You cannot “win” an occupation. There is no further “victory” to be had. And yet it’s politically costly to say so. Until we as Americans face up to the lies and manipulation and understand that they are the real existential threat to America, and operate on that basis, they will continue to get what they want and we will continue to watch what used to be America slide into something else altogether…
mikey
Maybe Durchfalllegendekraft would be a better description here.
Gawd. It’s like listening to two 12 year old girls talk about how much more mature they are than all the guys in their class.
I’d suggest a drinking game whereby every time one of them says anyone who disagrees with them doesn’t understand, but it’d be lethal to play.
Assuming sane people ever get control, can we all agree to send the wingnuts to jail before enacting prison reforms?
To sum up:
1. Odom, who has spent an entire career in the military, has a Ph.D., and teaches at Yale, is shockingly stupid for not having read this or that specific book, or knowing certain points of Islamic history.
2. Bush, who got into Yale as a legacy and graduated with Gentleman’s C’s, and whose Harvard MBA prepared him for a career of relentless failure, is astute because he claims to have read several books. Lately.
3. Hewitt, who ignores Odom’s points about the scarcity of the kinds of liberal democracies he (HH) champions, has no rejoinder to Odom’s point that our supposed actions to prevent Iran from acquiring nukes are guaranteed to hasten that acquisition, and who ignores the differences between Iran and Weimar Germany, denounces Odom’s “indifference to facts.�
4. Bush’s flouting of every single tenet of the Christianity about which he is supposedly so devout, goes unacknowledged (by HH and everyone, all the time). But Odom is faulted for not taking Iraqi and Iranian professions of faith at face value and for not assuming that Moslems (especially those in political power) always mean everything they say in their public religious statements.
5. Steyn, in light of the fact that the Iraq fiasco has made the US loathed around the world, ruptured the military, squandered half a trillion dollars, and killed or maimed tens of thousands of American troops (never mind literally uncounted tens of thousands of Iraqis), asserts that “you can present the sort of utopian aspect of that, that you know, we’re spreading democracy around the world in terms of hard-headed national interests…�
6. And it’s the Democrats who are guilty of “incoherence.�
Is that about it?
oops. *whereby -you drink- every time one of them says…*
Honestly I had a hard time getting beyond:
that if you’re going…for a start, temperamentally, you have to be the kind of society that can lose a war,
What exactly IS that? What is “the kind of society that can lose a war”? Isn’t ANY society that can get into a war the kind of society that can lose a war?
Mr Wonderful –
Yeah, that’s about it. Oh yeah, and as Mikey points out above, there is the whole “war is a good thing” underpinning, which they seem to regard as a way to sternly address a chaotic world. This, of course, stems from their inability/refusal to see the world in anything other than pure Manichean absolutes. With us/Agin’ us being the extent of their ability to discern affiliations. Under all that is the stunted infantile emotional core, which stubbornly insists that *everything* has to do with it.
Ex: It rains on farmland. My corn grows better. God loves me.
It rains on my birthday party, ruining it. God must hate the infidels who didn’t buy me a pony.
Update ex: The Shiites and Sunnis are engaging in the latest round of a 1,000 year old war. This means that unless we bomb them scary towelheads, Muslim troops will be marching down my street and making me eat hummus instead of McDLTs.
The notion that they would condemn a Lt. Gen. for not knowing obscure and irrelevant bits of “knowledge” is akin to a couple of drunken frats boys making fun of, and feeling superior to Albert Einstein because he can’t guess how many nickels and pieces of lint they’re holding in their trouser pocket.
Ah, fuck it.
“A Freeper version of Sprockets.�
So which one is the monkey?
Touch my monkey. You know you want to.
Touch him! Love him! Liebe meine aufsminke!
He is smitten mit you.
A Freeper version of Sprockets.
Caribooouuuuuu!
Huey and Weebelo Steyn trying to impugn the knowledge and intellect of Odom is pretty damn Colbertian. People like them aim to put satirists right out of business, the assholes.
while the “Julius Caesar� bit was pleasingly warlike.
In a manly, shower-with-hetero-NBA-players, not REALLY have to shoot at anything kind of way.
Interestingly, the pleasingly warlike Caesar invaded Britain on the pretext that “in almost all the wars with the Gauls succors had been furnished to our enemy from that country”.
The parallels amaze! Well, at least the existence of one parallel amazes!
fuck mark steyn. if war is so “pleasing” how come he’s never been in a combat zone? wouldn’t be hard, mexican immigrants in the us have served in Iraq, not even citizens but they sacrifice. He doesn’t look to old. Strap on a rifle, do some pushups and stick your fatass in the warzone steyn, if it’s so pleasing…
Well, Steyn obviously hasn’t read “The Chaotic Transactional Terrorism Doctrine”, and has never heard of Isaac McGillicudy III, so he’s an ignorant loon, and all his claims should be dismissed with contempt.
Including those claims that the book/person are irrelevant or nonexistent. Just because.
I think this is a Thelma and Louise moment for the Republicans, Mark Steyn.
If they’re talking about the part where the car goes off the cliff, then I think HH and MS may have missed the T & L moment when it occurred.
I want him to be FORCED to explain how fighting wars, invading nations, occupying nations, threatening nations, killing people, destroying infrastructure, making refugees, causing disease and wrecking an entire generation of American kids is doing any good.
Silly mikey.
None of the bad things are happening to him, personally, or anyone he gives a rat’s ass about, and it’s all so EXCITING!
No one ever paid this much attention to him when he was a mere theatre critic! He’s on the radio and the teevee and in syndicated columns and even books!
And then, there’s the money! And the meeting ‘important’ people! And the being part of Teh Greatest Clash of Civilizations EVAR! And the feeling like he’s Churchill and/or Coolidge (WTF?)!
And the being treated like he’s an actual, rational human being, and not the fucking amoral genocidal maniac we all know he is.
Know what? We need a new word. The term “genocidal” isn’t really accurate. These kinds of pricks don’t really have the stones to actually commit the attrocities they so enthusiastically describe. They recomend genocide. They describe the need for genocide and put it in historical context. They explain the value of genocide to the current situation. But they are going to need some genuine tough guys to actually employ the methods they speak so highly of.
So, they’re genocide cheerleaders. Genocide wannabes. War crimes policy wonks. Something. Anybody?
mikey
Does sugartits Hugh Hewitt think that a person can learn all they need to know about terrorism by reading The Looming Tower?
Jeebus, that’s like thinking you can lecture on business management because you’ve read Lee Iacocca’s book.
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/mark_steyn_space_dwelling_robot_brain/
an old one, but one of the best steyn slams out there
“The Genodeciders”?
I had a parent-teacher conference at my child’s elementary school yesterday. While waiting in the school office I read the commendations on the wall, the “Honored School” designation from the state legislature, etc. On one wall there was a photo of a soldier raising a US flag on some wooden structure – and apparently this was the same flag that now stood in the corner of the room. Above the pictures was an official-looking framed document. It said (I paraphrase) “This is to certify that this American flag was flow over Abu Ghraib Iraq on date x”. I was completely floored.
I turned to look at the school secretary and I can’t imagine the look on my face. She said “what’s wrong?” and I replied “Do you know what happened there? Have you seen the pictures?” She frowned and me and said “well, we’re at war you know, and bad things happen to bad people in wars”. Then went about her typing.
We’re fucking doomed. Doomed.
“I think this is a Thelma and Louise moment for the Republicans, Mark Steyn.”
I think they thought it would be a lesbo flick, then moved on………
Is anyone else more than slightly annoyed by Hewitt’s inability to refer to people by just their first name?
What time is it. Mark Steyn?
Is that a cold sore Mark Steyn?
Liebe meine aufsminke! Mark Steyn.
“6. And it’s the Democrats who are guilty of ‘incoherence.'”
What part of “We’re liberating the people of Iraq so that we can fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” don’t you understand?
Well, at least Steyn finally admits something truthful:
“ignorance is bliss.”
What part of “We’re liberating the people of Iraq so that we can fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here� don’t you understand?
I guess it’s the part about liberating people so that we can fight them. I really don’t get that, sorry.
Maybe you should be more thoughtful in your use of pronouns if you want to be understood. Is English your first language or what?
Sarcasm? Hard to tell these days.
“He wants a Caesar because the name is ‘pleasingly warlike.’â€?
I’m sure he’d be shocked, shocked, I tell you, to discover that Julius Caesar was notorious for fucking everything in sight, male or female — his men used to boast about it. I’d love to see what’d be left of Steyn after Big Julie got finished ass-raping him.
I have wanted to come back to this comment since it was first posted, and I just haven’t been able to. Of late, I’ve been too busy coughing up more green, slimy stuff than is usually seen outside of an Aliens movie. It’s pretty annoying. I hate colds.
Much as I may love you, Doc, I gotta disagree here. Tolerance in NO WAY implies a need to be tolerant of the intolerant. In fact, it pretty much neccessitates the opposite.
Chris Hedges, who wrote American Fascists – which is really something everyone should be reading – opens his book with a quote from Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies, which I will place here in full. Popper said it better than I could.
Michael Bérubé had something similar in his latest book, which I left out in my car so I can’t quote exactly – hope he forgives me if I screw it up too badly. But the essence of it was that if you encounter a person who meets your attempts at dialogue with shouts about how you are an evil person who must be put to death, then there can be at that point no dialogue with such a person. Dialogue requires the recognition of the basic humanity of both individuals attempting to dialogue, and if one party fails to concede this point, attempting dialogue with them is about as sensible as attempting it with a grizzly bear.
So, no, we really don’t have to tolerate their intolerance. I’ll concede their right to say intolerant things to a point, much as I concede the right of the KKK to exist. But when they act on their words, and when the words serve to encite further action that is intolerable in a civilized society, then steps must be taken to stop them. And the funny thing is that we even have plenty of legal channels open for stopping this kind of crap.
The only problem is that we’ve let those legal channels be taken over by people who think that dehumanizing people who think like us is okay.
So, we’re sorta screwed right now.
I blame my atrocious spelling on the massive swelling in my cranial sinuses.
I would hope that any sane person, when speaking approvingly of ancient Roman leaders, would be referring to Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and/or Marcus Aurelius. But Julius Caesar? The guy who turned the Republic into a dictatorship, and eventually an empire?
As a Canadian, I humbly apologize for inflicting Mark Steyn on you folks south of the border – but better you than us. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to take Adam Yoshida as well?
I though Yoshida was already inflicting himself on us.
You mean you have to put up with him too?
The People are not apologising for Mark Steyn, for the following reasons:
1. He is nominally Canadian and speaks with a British accent;
2. He loathes The People’s Dominion;
3. He is unable to exercise his vocation in the People’s Dominion because his skills are not economically marketable and Mr. Steyn’s requirements cannot be met with the resources available to the People’s Welfare System, which are considerably less plentiful than those available in The Southern Republic.
We will however concede that we did not intervene forcefully enough at an earlier stage of his development and direct the resources of The People’s Health Care System (padded rooms, wet sheets and ECT) necessary to arrest the further development of psychopathic tendencies, the consequences of which are now being inflicted on the polity of The Republic. In The People’s defense, Mr. Steyn was at the time incarcerated in an institution (King Edward’s School, Birmingham, England), where he was subjected to a brutal regimen of “games,” cross-dressing and an obscure practice of ritual humiliation known as “tossing off,” and was therefore outside The People’s jurisdiction.
That is all. Vive le Dominion!
Not knowing who Qutub is is roughly analogous to not knowing who Marx was during the Cold War. It shows Odom is amazingly ignorant of the basics of Islamist tought. It’s not a good sign.
“the President, who is regarded as a moron by, you know, “thinkingâ€? people everywhere,”
Well, there is common ground after all!