alternative hippopotamus

This weeks winner in the category of people that tend to make me cringe who just said something I agree with: Ann Althouse.

( Warning. The following contains Dangerstein. Readers should exercise disgression. )

Ann Althouse: (emphasis mine)

Kos worked on getting Ned Lamont to beat Lieberman for the Democratic Party nomination. As Gerstein puts it now, the “hope” candidate — Lieberman — won. You can see how this idea applies to the 2008 race for President:

Mr. Edwards, after running as the sunny son of a mill worker in 2004, returned last year as the angry spear carrier of the hard-line left, running on a dark, conspiratorial form of populism and swapping in corporations for Republicans as the villain in his us-versus-them construct. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, has not just been selling possibilities and opportunities, but reconciliation and unity — and, god forbid, promising to work with Republicans to meet the country’s challenges. (Not surprisingly, throughout 2007, Mr. Edwards was the runaway favorite in the regular Kos reader straw poll — besting Mr. Obama by 21 points as late as Jan. 2, 2008.)

Now that Mr. Edwards has formally dropped out of the race, we can say it’s official — hope and unity crushed resentment and division.

Gerstein is pleased, not just because hope is good, but because his enemy Kos is crushed:

The best evidence that Kos-ism is about kaput, though, comes from Kos’s mouth himself. Yes, the most delicious irony of this campaign is that the supposed hatemonger is supporting the hopemonger.

Markos Moulitsas will — after “a process of elimination” — have to vote for Barack Obama.

You know, I missed the part where Gerstein established that Kos is a “hatemonger.” I don’t like Kos too much, but calling him a “hatemonger” sounds at little… hatemongerish.

I wanted to bring this up for a couple of reasons. First of all, I think it’s interesting to see the preconceptions we all have about various bloggers. At this point I’ve met a fair number of the big bloggers. Some of them are terrific folks. Some of them are jerks. I was expecting to dislike Kos. In my imagination I thought he would have the temperament of a toy poodle at the Westminster Kennel Club. As it turns out, he’s very enjoyable to talk to, and is more grounded than I was expecting.

Second, I was encouraged to see Althouse acknowledge Dangerstein’s pettiness.

Finally, what the creatures of the right see as hopeful- and I really think what we’re talking about here is finding ways to feel good about post-invasion Iraq- is a form of psychosis. The glass isn’t half full, it’s half in denial. What Dangerstein calls being an “angry spear carrier of the hard-line left, running on a dark, conspiratorial form of populism” I would call solving the problems of our society. I believe that a normal person would call that “hopeful.”

Ken Roth (executive director of Human Rights Watch) asks at a WaPo blog:

“What is the best way to foster democracy in Iran?”

Some skeptics might note that, technically, Iran is older than the US (wikipedia):

Iran is one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BCE, making it a possible candidate for the earliest human civilization.[7][8][9] Throughout history Iran has been of geostrategic importance because of its central location in Eurasia. Iran is a founding member of the UN, NAM, OIC, OPEC, ECO, and seeks to join the SCO.

This makes some pointy-headed skeptics question whether we should be imposing our will on Iran, or even giving them advice. Pish tush! Where does an 800 pound gorilla sleep? Well, technically, they sleep in nests they build in trees, but that’s not the point. They’d sleep in the White House, if they wanted to. For all I know, they do sleep in the White House.

The point is that we need to remake Iran in our own image, now that the surge has succeeded in Iraq.

Here’s some specific things we should try right away:

• Take away the vote from people who live in Iraq’s capital, Tehran. Just like here in DC.
• Currently, the Iranian president is elected by universal suffrage with everyone 15 or older allowed to vote. I think you’ll agree that our electoral college system is much simpler. Florida and Ohio have simplified it to the point where you can predict the result based on the party of the Secretary of State.
• Iran currently separates the president and commander-in-chief roles. That’s got to change. What self-respecting country would prevent their president from bombing the crap out of other countries? Without the God-like power of life and death over others, being president would lack dignity.

This from one of the vociferous youngsters at the Nest of Republicans Oncrack:

I was at a roundtable last week on Americanization and an interesting issue came up. We were talking about how schools no longer do much of a job of patriotically Americanizing anyone, American kids or immigrant kids. I noted that limiting immigration was necessary in such an environment because, however poorly the schools are doing in this regard, American kids at least inherit a certain amount of American-ness from their parents, whereas immigrant parents are bringing their kids to school specifically to be Americanized. Linda Chavez disagreed, saying that the level of future immigration is irrelevant because, without rolling back multiculturalism and racialism in society in general and the schools in particular, the grandchildren of today’s Americans will be no more American than the grandchildren of today’s immigrants.

My question, and I don’t mean it sarcastically, is does anyone agree?

Just exactly what is Krikorian picturing when he laments the lack of “patriotically Americanizing” America’s youth? Would he like to have a designated “Americanizing” agent sit down with Mrs. Jenkins second grade class and explain that people who go to protests are dirty hippies that belong in jail? Perhaps they should hear the one about how anyone who criticizes, say, the systematic genocide of the American Indians, or the history of oppression of essentially everyone except for rich white males, hates America. And that the only way the liberals will ever take our guns away from us is over our cold dead Orwellian nightmare.

If there’s anything that threatens the “Americanizing” of our children, it’s the immigrants. The immigrants, you see, haven’t been indoctrinated into the America club. They would be bringing in new ideas, new customs. That’s not good.

How can we “Americanize” the kids in the midst of a non-domesticated influence?

Little LuLu points us to the straight poop on Iraq as told by the truth-tellers at FreeRepublic. This is a real he-man account. Not the candy-assed Frenchified version of events as told by the estrogen-drenched Iraq Study Group.

We have spread democracy in Iraq, much like the French spread brie on their toast and snails. Yes, Sir! We have plastered the f’ing toast with f’ing democracy, Sir! That must hurt Old Europeans like John Fwad Kerry (Citizens Report on Iraq, pp. 72-73):

In the Sixties and Seventies, the anti-American left worked with our communist enemies to bring about the political victory they were unable to win on the battlefield. For example, Democrat Sen. John Kerry, then a reserve Naval officer who had served in Vietnam and Cambodia, met with our communist enemies in Paris in 1970. The next year the testified in uniform before the Senate that we should accept the communists’ terms of surrender, while at the same hearing he vilified American soldiers as war criminals. Col. George ‘Bud’ Day, a prisoner of war being held by the North Vietnamese communists at the time ahs stated that Kerry’s actions lengthened the POW’s captivity by giving the communists hope for a then elusive victory.

Thus, it should be obvious to even the densest of the blame-America firsters, that their so-called “elected representatives” are hoping to undermine our soon-to-be imminent victory in Iraq (which we intend to rename “Valley of the Purple Fingers”), and are doing so just out of a fit of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

I have a problem. I’d like to be able to boycott the networks that refuse to air the ad for “Shut Up and Sing”, but I don’t see how I can watch the networks less than I already do. Now that I think about it, the audience demographic for an anti-administration documentary probably doesn’t spend much time on NBC, CBS, or ABC to begin with.

To badly paraphrase a line from the 1960’s: what if they gave a boycott, but nobody was planning to be there in the first place?

Anyway, I found the ad entertaining, and I for one plan to run their ad on my humble soap box.

There’s a serious aspect to this, which is what Glenn Greenwald is getting into here. As he puts it:

The very idea that it is in the “public interest” to prohibit ads that criticize the Leader is ludicrous on its face. The President is constantly given free airtime to argue his views and propagandize on virtually every issue, and the networks endlessly offer forums for his followers and surrogates to defend him.

Part of our democratic machinery are common spaces such as the public airwaves. At the point where they cease to serve the public, but instead serve the Republican party, they begin to erode our society. They should not be allowed to profit from that action.

• Orwell, turning in his grave, insists that 1984 was intended as a work of fiction. (Independent UK):
  

  The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying “Thank you Bush. Thank you USA” in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.

• And, of course the media outlets not owned by the right are hostile to the left for free: (Huffington Post)
  

  “I’ve gradually come to the realization that the single biggest obstacle facing the left is the pervasiveness of anti-left and pro-right narratives in the media. What’s the point of your message if it’s filtered through a media lens that’s unfavorable to your position? You know, ‘weak’ Dems and ’strong’ Republicans, ‘un-American’ left and ‘patriotic’ right, and so on.”

• ‘Cause, you know, the Bush administration resembles in no way the Politburo under Communism (Factesque):
  

  I marched in a local parade with the voting group to which I belong and got called a Communist and an abettor of “the terrorists” by a fellow member of the group. So that was fun. He’s one of those hysterical Republicans so afraid of the invisible enemies out to destroy “our way of life” that he sees nothing wrong with a return to the Alien and Sedition Acts because, he told me, “desperate times call for desperate measures.” He’s a very original thinker.

• Actually, I prefer the expression “Loud-mouthed Fascist.” (Matt Yglesias):
  

  The phrase “unapologetic liberal” is a very common one in the press when describing, well, liberals. You almost never hear, by contrast, about an “unapologetic conservative.” Instead, you might call someone an “outspoken conservative” or a “conservative stalwart” or what have you.

Recently, on my way to Constantinople, I dropped in an area we had recently liberated in Baghdad, where I took this shot of a supposedly “war torn region” on the brink of “civil war.”

Already you can see the difference in Iraq when democracy is spread at gunpoint. Despite what all the bedwetters say, the world is a safer place with Sadam Hussein no longer in power.

We’re just not hearing the good news coming out of Iraq.

Like Glenn Greenwald says in his post Various Matters, I see the flag-wavers on the right and know not what to say. The issue being discussed is who is waving which country’s flag, in what manner they’re waving it, whether the flag is right-side up, or up-side down.

As she-who-shall-not-be-linked puts it in her post THE AMERICAN FLAG COMES SECOND (yes, I know the caps-lock typing hurts your ears, but Michelle really hasn’t learned to use her inside voice yet):

I predict this stunt will be the nail in the coffin of any guest-worker/amnesty plan on the table in Washington. The image of the American flag subsumed by another and turned upside down on American soil is already spreading on Internet forums and via e-mail.

The battle for borders and immigration laws that actually mean something, however, hasn’t even begun.

So, here’s my question: how is it that the folks who are so anxious to export democracy to other parts of the world would prefer to keep at a distance those wishing to experience our democracy first hand?

Maybe an analogy would help to clarify the question. Let’s say your mother makes the best lasagna. It’s so good that you go around telling people how good it is. If someone says that their mother makes better lasagna, you laugh in their face. Or, if you’re the Vice President, maybe you shoot them. You go around nailing the recipe on people’s doors. You sport a magnet on your car saying “This Lasagna Doesn’t Run.”

Then, when someone says: “You’ve convinced me. I’d really like to come over for dinner so I can check out your mother’s lasagna,” we build a big wall to keep everyone away from the lasagna. If they surreptitiously get some lasagna, we throw them in prison. And, if they tell us that they’re proud of their mother’s lasagna too, but admit that our lasagna is better, we mock them. Or, if we’re the Vice President, we shoot them.

There’s a different line of reasoning I’d recommend. It’s a little less reactionary than the Malkins and Powerline’s of the world. As Thomas Paine put it: (Rights of Man)

In stating these matters, I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.