The Dish

A tourist’s guide to the welcome you’re likely to receive.

A reader writes:

Re: your post on the LGBTQRSTZ community. Well, you don’t live in San Francisco. I do business and socialize with lesbians, gay guys and trans people of both persuasions on a regular basis, and we do, indeed have a community. Just because you don’t live in one doesn’t mean that none exists. Don’t opine about things which you know nothing about.

Another explains:

What T’s have in common with LGB’s is that primary opposition to all of you comes from your subversion of proper, binary, complementary gender roles.  You may be quite different from the inside, but from the outside you look similar.  I heard my southern baptist grandfather give a sermon in which one of the ills of the modern world was "men not wanting to be men."  I’m pretty sure he had gays in mind.

Surely you know this.

If we are defined by those who hate us, LGBT makes some sense, although it could also include straight women who don’t conform to traditional roles, straight men in the same position, and so on, which would mean LGBTSFSMQ or something. My point is that the respective experiences of being gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender are very distinct and different. And I do not define myself primarily by shared victimhood. Indeed, as many angry LGBTQWhatever readers have insisted, I am not a victim. I am a privileged, white sexist patriarchal rich HIV-positive-with-meds guy. So why, then, pray, am I still regarded (in your acronym at least) as a part of your "community"?

Burke urges us:

Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles, nor experienced in each other’s talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy…When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

In this election, among the central questions, it seems to me, should be: who will restore the rule of law in America? Who will restore constitutional balance? Who will restore habeas corpus? Who will end torture? And who is the wisest in tackling the extremely difficult task of isolating moderate Muslims from Jihadist terrorists across the globe, using measured force to defeat terrorism where necessary, but winning arguments where essential? Who will best secure our departure from Iraq? And who can actually unite decent, patriotic Americans around these goals again?

A very useful summary by The Week. No reputable or knowledgeable source says it isn’t torture. and there is simply no question that it is illegal  – which is why the Bush administration went to such lengths to get war criminals like AEI’s John Yoo to argue that the president is bound by no laws and no treaties in the war on terror. But its impact in poisoning and distorting vital intelligence is also crucial to understand. Money quote:

When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, was waterboarded, he revealed valuable details about the operations of al Qaida, the Bush administration says. But CIA agents say Mohammed also “confessed’’ that al Qaida was plotting to kill former presidents Clinton and Carter and Pope John Paul II, making them realize that he was inventing sensational information to satisfy his interrogators. Another al Qaida operative who was waterboarded, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libbi, blurted out details about the connection between al Qaida and Saddam Hussein, saying that Iraq had trained terrorists in the use of chemical and biological weapons. But al-Libbi later recanted, and the CIA concluded that he “had no knowledge of such training or weapons, and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.”

We traded our soul for bad intelligence. The perpetrators need to be brought to justice.

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"My primary feeling with respect to the Democratic party remains contempt."

I know. I feel the same way, and I’m a full-speed-ahead liberal. But both of us have to realize what they’re up against: a nation of voters just like…my mom. She’s a lovely woman, Andrew. I love her to death. Sweet, kind, generous–she’s got it all. But whenever I try to talk to her about torture, warrantless wiretapping, the Military Commissions Act, and the rest she just tunes out. Not only has she never heard of any of this stuff, but when I bring it to her attention it’s as if she simply cannot believe any of it. She doesn’t get angry or anything–she’s not a "my country right or wrong" type. It’s more of a "these go to eleven" sort of thing: she just can’t get it into her head that these awful things are happening.

There are millions and millions and millions of voters just like her in this respect.

They have no clue about the things that so rile you and me, and when these matters are brought to their attention they find it easier to believe that the person who’s bringing them up is crazy than that they might actually be a problem. Moreover, the issues that do get her attention are of the Obama’s flag lapel pin type.

Now let’s put ourselves in the Democrats’ shoes. How do you deal with a nation of voters like my mom, a nation of people who don’t know what the Military Commissions Act is, who are inclined to think you’re a little touched if you go on and on about it, but who are easily upset by news that a candidate doesn’t wear a flag lapel pin? How do you do it?

Yes, the Democrats need to grow balls. But the fault also lies with the media and, though it pains me to say it, with the moms–or the ones like mine, anyway.

If leading Democrats actually spoke up against torture without Clintonian defensiveness, many moms like my reader’s might actually take notice. But the Democrats are in a vicious cycle: too scared to raise the real issues, those issues get obscured so that when they are subsequently raised, it appears as if only the fringe cares about them. And so the actual scandal of Abu Ghraib – that it was a result of official policies set loose, that the images represent in many cases the interrogation techniques approved by Bush and Cheney, that it resulted in one actual murder-by-torture (see above) – might actually be transmitted.

Could it be true that women are more concerned about the race of their spouse than men are? One study suggests so, with some intriguing wrinkles:

We found no evidence of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women. However, we also found that East Asian women did not discriminate against white men (only against black and Hispanic men). As a result, the white man-Asian woman pairing was the most common form of interracial dating—but because of the women’s neutrality, not the men’s pronounced preference. We also found that regional differences mattered. Daters of both sexes from south of the Mason-Dixon Line revealed much stronger same-race preferences than Northern daters.

A reader writes:

Your reference to polls that show a slight win for Obama over Guiliani, while HRC would lose are meaningless. I don’t know whether HRC can win the presidency, but I do know that this country is not going to elect a black president at this time.  It is just not going to happen. I was born and raised in the South and I have lived in the Midwest (Iowa) and the West (Utah) and I just don’t see it happening. That is unfortunate, but it is the truth.

I suspect this is a very powerful source of Clinton’s strength. It is also yet another sign of the Democratic party’s problem. They don’t trust Americans to agree with them. And so they never say what they believe. They always say what they think they can get away with. The Mukasey collapse is another sign. They do not even trust the American people to reject torture. If they cannot stand up against that, what can they stand up against? And in a world full of cowards, the bullies smell their opportunity. Cheney, Hannity, Giuliani, Limbaugh: they are all in some respects a function of the Democratic Party’s deep, deep failure of nerve.

The proud irresponsibility is the most striking thing – the obliviousness to the future, to the debt the next generation will carry, to the huge increase in the power of government over people’s lives that Bush has engineered. Joe Stiglitz is surely right:

The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.

A reader writes:

Lately, you have noted that some who are generally labeled neocons (JPod, among others) have either refused to condemn torture or have made statements in support of its use, at least by American forces. Your reaction to this seems to be, "Look, the neocons are actually pro-torture." Let me suggest to you that a "neocon" who supports torture is as much a traitor to the cause as a "conservative" who allows the country to run up huge debts and/or who wishes to inject his own religious beliefs into people’s private lives.

Support for human rights is at the very heart of neoconservatism, properly understood.

Indeed, it is its raison d’etre. Neoconservatism is a counter to the realist school of thought, which argues that America should not care how other governments treat their citizens, as long as these same governments are friendly to American interests. Neocons believe not only that the US has a unique obligation to promote democracy and human rights, but that our political interests are best served by doing so, and that we cannot simply ignore the internal policies of even our putative allies. Sometimes, military action is required (though hopefully in these cases such action is carried out competently). If Jews are disproportionately represented among neocons, perhaps it is because we are especially aware of the consequences of inaction in the face of threats to human rights, especially aware that many times pacifism or neutrality are profoundly immoral. Anyone who believes in neoconservatism understands that torture is counter to both our moral obligations and our political interests. Thus, someone who thinks that it is acceptable for the US to torture people in the supposed service of our interests is not a true neocon. Actual neocons are as horrified by waterboarding as you are.

But when forced to choose between their principles and power, they chose power. Charles Krauthammer has endorsed torture, and an elite corps to practice it. I don’t know whether he decided that their shirts should be brown.