Month: July 2010

Serwer argues that the political wilderness has made Republicans less tolerant of Muslims:

As one of Josh Marshall's readers suggests, what's happened here is exactly what happened with torture, Gitmo, and using civilian trials to try terrorists. Free from the shackles of responsible governance and having to defend a Bush administration that insisted on characterizing Islam as a "religion of peace," they can give free rein to their prejudices and preferences. Hence the myth that Bush didn't have a default policy of trying most terrorism suspects in civilian court, the end of the once bipartisan agreement over closing Gitmo, and the forthright embrace of torture now that there's no need to defend Bush's insistence that "the United States does not torture." 

Once Republicans take back power, the policy implications of their current sensibilities will be unsustainable. But it will be too late, because they will have created a constituency that demands them.

Like I said, it will get worse before it will get better. The potential cost to this country's social cohesion and foreign policy remains, however, enormous.

Pejman pushes back. There's a blizzard of ad hominem insults, but no argument so far as I can see, except that we should all be careful before we write for fear of unintended consequences. I understand the point, and will try to be more vigilant about hyperbole (blogs are real-time thoughts and not the place for truly considered writing), but I have to say this is not my view of what writers should do in general, regardless of the form we are using. I think our core responsibility is to tell the truth, as best we can, to our readers. Sometimes, that means saying things that might not have the best consequences in real life, or can give comfort to those who should be given none, or foment hatred, or complacency, or any number of bad things.

But my instinct when told not to say certain things in certain ways – not because they are not true, but because it is somehow irresponsible to say them – is to talk about them more candidly. I published the Bell Curve excerpt in TNR because I deeply believed it was a debate worth outing rather than stigmatizing – although it could clearly foment racism. When I wrote "When Plagues End" in 1996 about the profound impact of new HIV treatments, I knew that all the caveats in the piece would be ignored and I'd be attacked for promoting complacency and more HIV-transmission and be accused of being callous toward those left behind in the plague. But what I wrote was true, and has been borne out by subsequent events. When I wrote "What's So Bad About Hate?" I knew that many of the arguments would be disturbing and could be used by bigots to feel better about themselves. So what? Either my argument succeeds or fails. And as long as I am vigilant against my own human dark side (we all have one), I feel I should veer toward candor rather than sensitivity.

On Israel, I see a great opportunity being wasted and a country I deeply admire slowly killing itself. The notion that I should suppress these beliefs – or focus always on relaying them with extreme sensitivity to language – is one I'll resist. In fact, I think the chilling effect of this charge of fomenting anti-Semitism by criticizing the actions of the pro-Israel lobby is worse than getting it all out in the open.

"Last night cannot be unseen. Yes, we all shared a few laughs as you gave us your list of reasons for the transformation, but our laughter turned to tears when we realized the clean-shaved Jon Stewart we knew and loved was naught but a memory," – style blogger Rika Nurrahmah, begging the Daily Show host to shave off his new go-tee.

As a strong supporter of facial hair, I do wish to concur with Stewart himself when he noted that he was twenty years late with the go-tee. Damn right. Go for the full beard, or a super-cool, ahead of the curve mustache. I'm afraid I can't look at him without thinking of Colonel Sanders right now. Or three words: Just For Men.

Monkey wrangles goat (which is close enough to a lamb).

$8 billion – and no accounting of it? That's the GOP we have come to know and love, isn't it? And notice how this story has stirred minimal outrage on the bloggy right. If $8 billion were going to the poor in America, you'd sure hear of it. Juan Cole:

In the chaotic days after the fall of the Baath government and the collapse of the old economy, Paul Bremer & Co. attempted to jump-start the Iraq market economy by giving out large sums in brown paper bags with no questions asked. They did not understand that the Iraqi market had been killed by decades of government control and that no magic hand any longer existed, so they might as well have taken that money and buried it in the ground.

Meanwhile:

About $60 billion have poured into Afghanistan since 2001 in hopes of bringing electricity, clean water, jobs, roads and education to the crippled country. The U.S. alone has committed $51 billion to the project since 2001, and plans to raise the stakes to $71 billion over the next year — more than it has spent on reconstruction in Iraq since 2003.

An Associated Press investigation showed that the results so far — or lack of them — threaten to do more harm than good. The number of Afghans with access to electricity has increased from 6 percent in 2001 to only about 10 percent now, far short of the goal of providing power to 65 percent of urban and 25 percent of rural households by the end of this year.

The madness of the national security state deepens. As the new chief for Af-Pak just stated emphatically:

"We are not leaving."

The first of many, I suspect, as what's left of American conservatism reacts to the re-emergence of the real kind in Britain.

“I am sure Ezra had good intentions when he created it, but I am offended the right is using this as a sledgehammer against those of us who don’t practice activist journalism. Journolist was pretty offensive. Those of us who are mainstream journalists got mixed in with journalists with an agenda. Those folks who thought they were improving journalism are destroying the credibility of journalism. This has kept me up nights. I try to be fair. It’s very depressing," – Chuck Todd.

I haven't commented on this dog-bites-man story of the Vatican being crammed to the gills with homosexual priests who have long since abandoned the increasingly frantic anti-gay ideology of Ratzinger. And most of the commentary has rightly focused on the extreme response of the Vatican – defrock them now for consensual adult sex! – compared with the long tolerance of child rape and abuse. But it is worth noting, once again, how utterly hollow the Vatican is on the subject of homosexuality. It is an institution so embedded with homosexuality it makes Broadway look straight. The stories I've heard! The network of gay priests is vast in Rome, and is, in my mind, as unhealthy for those who get away with it – the hypocrisy must hollow out the soul in the end – as for those who impose it. Instead of grappling with this fact, owning it, and seeking to diversify the priesthood by ending the celibacy requirement and men-only anachronism, the Vatican clings on to denial and repression. And as society and the actual church evolves – as both must – the denial and repression must increase in proportion – until the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing becomes apparent even to the most devout.

Increasingly, on these issues of modernity, the Vatican of the new millennium seems like the Soviet Politburo of the 1980s. They pretend to believe what they preach while we pretend to obey them. One day, this surreality will pop like a bubble. One day. 

(Photo: Joe Klamar/Getty.)