Carpe Datum

Another One Wakes Up

Via Eric Alterman, here it is, from the proverbial horse's mouth: Yet another lifelong movement conservative is coming to terms with the fact that this administration is anything but conservative:

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during 1981-82. He was also Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

There are some serious nutball conservative bona fides, let me tell ya.

I remember when friends would excitedly telephone to report that Rush Limbaugh or G. Gordon Liddy had just read one of my syndicated columns over the air. That was before I became a critic of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration, and the neoconservative ideologues who have seized control of the US government.

America has blundered into a needless and dangerous war, and fully half of the country's population is enthusiastic. Many Christians think that war in the Middle East signals "end times" and that they are about to be wafted up to heaven. Many patriots think that, finally, America is standing up for itself and demonstrating its righteous might. [...]

There was a time when I could rant about the "liberal media" with the best of them. But in recent years I have puzzled over the precise location of the "liberal media."

Not so long ago I would have identified the liberal media as the New York Times and Washington Post, CNN and the three TV networks, and National Public Radio. But both the Times and the Post fell for the Bush administration's lies about WMD and supported the US invasion of Iraq. On balance CNN, the networks, and NPR have not made an issue of the Bush administration's changing explanations for the invasion. [...]

With a quote like this, I couldn't resist. It's nice for a true conservative to come out from behind the curtain with a smile and a chuckle, saying, "Awww, come on, you guys, this whole liberal media one-note song is ... wait, you thought we were serious?"

There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush.

Or at least make asses of themselves by making the kind of physical threats we were all supposed to grow out of by about the third grade.

The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. "You are with us or against us."

This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.

That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal Editorial page, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of the entire concentrated corporate media where noncontroversy in the interest of advertising revenue rules.

Sound crazy? Sit and watch a couple of hours of Fox News Channel sometime, as I was forced to do today while waiting with my wife at an INS regional office. They spent pretty much the whole time trying to whip the nutball brigade into a frenzy over the fact that "Passion of the Christ" didn't get nominated for Best Picture, but then their whole outrage thing was sorta short-circuited by the fact that "Fahrenheit 9/11" didn't get nominated for anything. Wait, look! War on Terror! Iraq! Al Qaeda! Iraq!

Once upon a time there was a liberal media. It developed out of the Great Depression and the New Deal. Liberals believed that the private sector is the source of greed that must be restrained by government acting in the public interest. The liberals' mistake was to identify morality with government. Liberals had great suspicion of private power and insufficient suspicion of the power and inclination of government to do good.

Liberals became Benthamites (after Jeremy Bentham). They believed that as the people controlled government through democracy, there was no reason to fear government power, which should be increased in order to accomplish more good.

The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals' abiding faith in government. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

And this is why I am a liberal at heart. Some things are just better done on large scales. Social Security is a good one. National defense. Road building. Health care/insurance. Those sorts of things. As a liberal, I do not fully trust the government on anything. Being a liberal doesn't mean you suddenly exempt your government from any kind of accountability (that seems to be a hallmark of Bush-supporters, actually). It just means that you trust the government with power more than you trust profit-oriented corporations, and history has indicated that is wise. It isn't perfect. There are costs (like less efficiency, normally, greater integrity and transparency, normally). Anyway...

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a person's civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof. Thus, preemptive war, which permits the President to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.

This is why it turns my stomach to hear gun-rights people quote Ben Franklin at me ("Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither" or something along those lines) while saying the Patriot Act is just fucking awesome because the Boy King sez so.

Delusion is still the defining characteristic of the Bush administration. We have smashed Fallujah, a city of 300,000, only to discover that the 10,000 US Marines are bogged down in the ruins of the city. If the Marines leave, the "defeated" insurgents will return. Meanwhile the insurgents have moved on to destabilize Mosul, a city five times as large. Thus, the call for more US troops.

There are no more troops. Our former allies are not going to send troops. The only way the Bush administration can continue with its Iraq policy is to reinstate the draft.

When the draft is reinstated, conservatives will loudly proclaim their pride that their sons, fathers, husbands and brothers are going to die for "our freedom." Not a single one of them will be able to explain why destroying Iraqi cities and occupying the ruins are necessary for "our freedom." But this inability will not lessen the enthusiasm for the project. To protect their delusions from "reality-based" critics, they will demand that the critics be arrested for treason and silenced. Many encouraged by talk radio already speak this way.

Not to mention moron blog trolls.

Because of the triumph of delusional "new conservatives" and the demise of the liberal media, this war is different from the Vietnam war. As more Americans are killed and maimed in the pointless carnage, more Americans have a powerful emotional stake that the war not be lost and not be in vain. Trapped in violence and unable to admit mistake, a reckless administration will escalate.

The rapidly collapsing US dollar is hard evidence that the world sees the US as bankrupt. Flight from the dollar as the reserve currency will adversely impact American living standards, which are already falling as a result of job outsourcing and offshore production. The US cannot afford a costly and interminable war.

Falling living standards and inability to impose our will on the Middle East will result in great frustrations that will diminish our country.

This, in the end, is why the election of 2004 was so sad to me. It's not that the guy I supported lost. It's that I honestly feel the country I love is going to suffer greatly as a result of this corrupt and stupid administration.

Posted by Observer at January 26, 2005 07:40 AM