Author: Andrew Sullivan

Noah Millman searches high and low:

I have no love for the Tea Party, or for populism generally. I think populism is actually impossible. Elites make the decisions, and politics is a game of capture-the-electorate. But the Tea Party is a fact, and ignoring or decrying facts doesn’t help anybody. There are moments when the electorate loses confidence in the elites, and too many times recently the GOP has responded to this fact by either trying to order their base around (saying: vote for this guy because he’s electable, and we don’t want to blow this chance) or pandering to the basest instincts of the base (by fawning over radio talk show hosts, elevating symbolic culture-war issues to litmus test status, and so forth, all to try to prove that they’re really “one” with the people). Or, often enough, both simultaneously. And I don’t see how either of these strategies can possibly win back the people’s confidence.

Confidence can only be regained by showing actual leadership – saying to people: this is what’s really important, and this is what we’re going to do that the other guys can’t or won’t. There are Republicans who are doing that – Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie are two examples I cite – but not enough and precious few on the national level.

A gay soldier tells his story:

I’m … not blind to the fact that a not insignificant number of straight soldiers will feel awkward and uncomfortable around gay soldiers at first, especially in showers and barracks where many fear living with an openly gay person. It will take time for people—in the service and out—to realize that professionalism and service always prevail in the military. Just look at how we handled the integration of African Americans and Jews into our ranks.

Indeed, if soldiering is about anything, it’s about facing fear. We train to do that which doesn’t come naturally. To charge into gunfire when every fiber of one’s being says to “run!” We do this in the name of preserving the country’s core values of openness and human dignity. We do this because we seek to make freedom more than a hollow word. This is what I’ve learned in the military and what I love about it most.

Greenwald has defended Kos's new book, American Taliban, which compares the American right to terrorists. Adam Serwer protests:

[Y]ou cannot argue that the demonization of a religious and ethnic other for the purposes of justifying endless, limitless war is a bad thing and then apply the same blanket comparisons to your political opponents. Rather than "destroying the rotted premise" at the heart of the moral cretinism of the warmongers he is criticizing, Greenwald is reinforcing it by legitimizing its use in domestic political debate. This argument doesn't illuminate anything about the motivations of "The Enemy"; it makes the GOP as a whole "something utterly foreign, inhuman, and subject to entirely different drives than Us." I don't see where that gets anyone, particularly since I don't think it's accurate.

A reader reflects:

I don't know what to say as I sit here with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other. I have to think about this. Let me get back to you because I have to pee really bad and I am having a bad case of the munchies.

Does any know what is the best beer to drink with a special brownie?

Marc Lynch imagines the most likely consequences of our current Iran policy:

With both engagement and war implausible, we seem to be left with variants of the status quo. But the political and strategic logic of the situation and historical precedent suggest that changes will only be in the direction of ratcheting up the pressure on Iran, not toward de-escalation or easing the sanctions.

If and when the current sanctions are determined to have failed (what that means is an important question to be debated elsewhere), then the pressure to “do something” will require ever-tougher policies. In this scenario, expect to see a push for “crippling sanctions”, and then a propaganda battle over who is to blame for the mounting humanitarian costs and constant, debilitating battles at the UN which complicate American relations with China and Russia, as well as with much of the Muslim world.

Expect to see something like the ill-starred 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act calling for regime change to be official American policy. Expect to see military buildups in the Gulf to demonstrate strength (both our own and arms sales to our allies). Expect to see cultivated polarization of the region, including rising Sunni-Shi’a tensions (recent flareups in Bahrain and Kuwait offer a preview) and tense debates about Iranian responsibility for terrorism in a variety of theaters. Expect most of these developments to strengthen Ahmedenejad and other hard-liners inside of Iran, allowing them to blame the West for economic problems and to justify their crackdowns on critics while profiteering from the illicit sanctions economy. And then, in a few years, expect the regretful articles and books about how the still-ticking nuclear clock and the failure of all these alternatives leaves us no choice but to prepare for war. 

C.J. Chivers writes:

This particular rifle was more than a half-century old… and it was not in a reserve armory or a museum. It was still in active use, and was carried on this day, a few years ago, by an Afghan soldier on a joint Afghan-American patrol in Ghazni Province. Can you think of tools that last this long, or that you expect to? Your pickup truck? Cell phone? Refrigerator? Television? Laptop? Do you own anything that was manufactured in the 1950s and still is in regular, active use in your life?

Matt Frost is impressed:

This inventory of which machines endure explains a lot about why some of us enjoy guns. A well-maintained rifle, shotgun, or handgun will continue to perform what is expected of it more or less the same after twenty, thirty, fifty years. Firearms offer a shelter from planned obsolescence, so prevalent everywhere else in our material culture.

The parallels are uncanny:

[Former aides] remember a candidate who was less interested in conservative causes than scoring a television deal, one who suggested dodging campaign vendors, believed she could give the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention and fixated on a harebrained idea to distribute tens of thousands of two-ounce suntan lotion packets to voters.

Paranoia:

"She told me that she thought Joe Biden tapped her phone line."

Media wannabe:

Moore, who first decided to volunteer for O'Donnell after hearing about her at a meeting of college Republicans, said that at one point, O'Donnell talked to him about winning a lucrative television contract with CNN or Fox News Channel.

And, of course, totally unaccountable:

The O'Donnell campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.