Utopian Drift

Andrew Sullivan on the state of "conservatism" in America.

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The Not-So-Funny Farm

So, if the GOP nominates one of their two (nominally) reality-based candidates for President, and that candidate loses to Obama, there is an expectation that the GOP will really lose it.

But a win by one of their reality-based candidates will return the GOP from the alternate dimension in which they currently reside, as will the defeat of a reality-denial candidate (the rest of the GOP presidential field).

Really?

I've got a couple of questions:

1) At this point, how much worse can the reality-denial get? Seriously consider the ramifications of a large, well armed segment of the United States population becoming more paranoid, more extreme, and more distrustful of any information contrary to their own self-perpetuating world view.

2) How will the GOP become more reasonable if one of the two their reality based candidates is elected President by winning a primary election in which they are forced by their own base to deny reality? The deniers will become emboldened, and think all the nonsense they have engaged over the last four years was effective. That's like giving a toddler a cookie for throwing a tantrum.

3) Is the reality-basis for American narrative really determined by individual campaigns? Think about how effective reality-deniers and historical-revisionists have been already in terms of policy: our nation is currently discussing the dismantling of Medicare, permanent occupation of Iraq and Afganistan, engaging in another war with Iran, resegregating schools based on parental ability, rolling back the medical decisions of women, paying oil companies to raise the prices of gasoline and poison our food and water, and gutting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - and these are all the parts of the right's platform currently considered "reality-based." Where, exactly, do we go from there in terms of policy? They don't need a candidate to say they support those things, their party branding and primary success makes it nearly implicit that they do.

And the crazy thing is - and the thing most "liberals" and "progressives" and "Democrats" never seem to realize - the GOP is winning all of those arguments with the voters because they aren't really worried about candidates, they're worried about marketing a specific narrative until enough people buy into it.

And the power of getting people to buy into a narrative beats reality every single time.

(HT: Andrew Sullivan.)

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Refighting the Past

You're never really done with legislation. You're never really done with human freedom or civil rights. Once you think you have them, there will always be someone who wants to try and roll them back. The price for freedom is eternal vigilance in so many definitions of the word.

Sometimes that vigilance means keeping your eyes open when the guy next to you in the subway keeps trying to light a fuse in his jacket. Other times that vigilance requires you to keep people from re-writing history to move political goal posts today.

The ongoing battle over the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - and yes I said ongoing because we aren't really done with it - got another boost with Ron Paul recently. While liberals and progressives stand around shocked to find out that people will actually say in public that they don't support the CRA (and are more shocked to find out these individuals still command political support), the forces of revisionism are hard at work to justify such political beliefs.

And it works. Remember folks, "the free market didn't enforce segregation, the government enforced segregation." Or that's the narrative, at least.

While hardly all-in with this narrative (like the Pauls), Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway comes dangerously close to rationalizing it.

Racial segregation in the South wasn’t a product of the free market, it was the product of a state imposing racial prejudices under the threat of criminal prosecution.

"Big Government" strikes again? Hardly.

While this article's explorations of SCOTUS decisions kneecapping the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873 (involving New Orleans) and the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 are quite valuable, I take issue with the idea that,

different outcome in The Slaughterhouse Cases and The Civil Rights Cases, the entire system of mandated racial segregation known as Jim Crow would have been under direct legal assault at the time of it’s birth.

There's a big concern I have with saying things like that. You see, Jim Crow was under legal assault from the time of its birth - The Civil Rights cases represented the first wave of such assaults, and Plessy vs. Ferguson represented the second wave. What we also know from our history is that these robust legal assaults, as well as others, failed.

An argument that:

So, as a philosophical matter, the Pauls are both correct that the state should not have the authority to tell businesses who they can choose as customers.

Is a almost an identical argument used by the Supreme Court to strike down the Civil Rights Act of 1875. And look what that philosophical matter got us - nearly 100 more years of Jim Crow and ongoing Jim Crow legacy today.

This issue is another place where I take exception with "libertarianism," even as I have my own robust blue libertarian streak of cynical distrust of the government.

Sorry folks, I. Live. In. The. South. Down here, you can't go six months without some popular politician reminding folks the importance of "state's rights" to ignore Federal laws (like the CRA) or complaining that all redistricting has to go through Justice Department approval in the same breath that carries discussions of diluting or off-loading minority voting strength.

Segregation and Jim Crow were state government mandates, free-market mandates, and cultural mandates all wrapped up in one. Businesses were getting subsidies and contributing to political campaigns back in the day just as much as they are today. As a matter of fact, that era is often described as the "good ole days" before all the "government regulations" came in and "ruined business." One wonders if more regular health inspections are the "government regulations" being discussed...

Should we even talk about the social stigma that would be ascribed to businesses that served "mixed" clientele during that time? After all, once schools and businesses were legally forced to integrate, white people fled to the suburbs and exurbs. There, they spent time socially engineering their own communities far away from the cities and the colored folks. They didn't have to go to school, shop with, or hire the colored folks if there ain't no colored folks around. And yet, the government doesn't interfere with their right to do so. As a matter of fact, it subsidizes the ability to self-segregate, by subsidizing road construction and oil exploration.

I think about all those free market forces at work when I drive through New Orleans East, an area where 71,000 people live where there's only ONE grocery store. Guess what race most of the residents there are.

The author sums up my whole opinion on the CRA in his closing:

by the time the 1964 Civil Rights Act came into being the distinction between private and public behavior under Jim Crow was a hard line to draw, especially when social pressure by Southern whites made it virtually impossible for any business owner who didn’t want to discriminate against blacks from doing so. The only way to bring down the whole system, a system that arguably might not have existed if the 14th Amendment hadn’t been virtually gutted in the latter years of the 19th Century, was to use the authority of the Federal Government to do so.

So, yeah, you could say that I don't mind "Big Government" robustly enforcing the 14th Amendment through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While it may be philosophically OK to think that parts of the CRA are coercive in nature, and a little bit of overreach on the part of the government, I only wished we lived in a society so perfect that we didn't need a government to make sure doors of opportunity are open to all citizens. Until we get to that More Perfect Union, I don't mind "Big Government" telling people interested in starting a business that they will be unable to segregate based on race, creed, or color if they would like to do business in the United States. We ain't yet far enough removed from the bad ole days yet.

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More Feudalism

Which, as Jay Bookman points out, should not be confused with "conservatism." With "conservatism" and the "free market," the consumers chose where to spend their dollars, and the government provides the infrastructure necessary for markets to exist.

But we don't have that anymore (if we ever really had it). In our current feudal state, the government - often those run by the GOP - choses where to spend both tax dollars and consumer dollars. That way, the Lords and Ladies of well-connected industry are sure to recieve returns on their modest investments in the form of profits that are taxed less and less, regardless of how their ventures actually perform. They even benefit from consumers who never patronize their business.

Not to say that subsidies and tax breaks aren't sometimes necessary to encourage economic development, but things have gotten quite absurd.

The GOP is very lucky that most Democrats also appear to have confused the terms "conservative" and "free-market" with "feudalism" (those both for and against it). If that dynamic ever changed, the GOP would get blown out of the polls based on economic policy alone, because they no longer represent economic conservatism.

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A Civil Discussion

This is what one looks like:

But the president’s tone, like Tuesday in Northern Virginia, was again softer than it was last week. Asked by an attendee if Ryan’s plan was bold, Obama answered, “The Republican budget that was put forward I would say is fairly radical. I wouldn’t call it particularly courageous. I do think Mr. Ryan is sincere. I think he’s a patriot. I think he wants to solve a real problem, which is our long-term deficit. But I think that what he and the other Republicans in the House of Representatives also want to do is change our social compact in a pretty fundamental way.”

Of course, there's the usual talk about "partisan bickering." Umm, folks, there is a difference between legitimate disagreement style partisanship and demagoguery style partisanship. Let me show you the difference...

Legitimate disagreement partisanship goes like this: America has a problem, and we are exploring two different and realistic ways to solve it. One side wants to fundamentally alter the national social compact to continue lowering taxes - already the lowest in about 60 years - for the wealthiest Americans based on the theory that those low taxes will create jobs they haven't been able to create previously. The other side wants to restore tax rates to levels comparable to those under the Clinton Administration, roughly the second lowest in about 60 years. Neither of these actions, taken alone, will solve our problems, and the idea that either helps solve our problems are based on economic projections and estimations of what will happen to our economy in the future. That's the way Obama and Ryan are talking right now.

Contrast that with demogoguery style partisanship, like we've heard for the last two years from certain folks: OMG TEH KENYAN ANTICOLONIALIZMS! TEH WEALTH REDISTRIBUTIONIZMS! TEH COMMUNIST FASCIZMS! THE ATHEIST ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALIZMS!! TEH ANTI-AMERICANIZMS! TEH BURF CURTIFICATEZ!! TEH VICTORY MOSQUES AT TEH GROUND ZEROIZMS!! TEH ILLEGAL IMMIGRATIONIZMS! TEH DEATH PANELIZMS!!

See the difference? Now, which one would you rather deal with?

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The Parallel Universe Expansion Kit

What is the sound of one hand, clapping?

That tree falling in the woods without anyone to hear it gets a little bit louder.

From the start, I've said that Ryan's plan was courageous. It was proved so yesterday--kamikazi courageous. It lays plain the true intentions of latter day radical conservatism: the gutting of the social safety net. Republicans will now have to run on this principle. We should all be grateful to Ryan for his intellectual honesty. The President should be especially grateful.

A lot of folks in the echo chamber of the left got really angry that people looked at Paul Ryan's plan and said the words "serious" or "courageous." They forget that such a plan has a chance to become law when it is seriously proposed by the majority party in the House of Representatives, and is the end result of a serious right-wing ownership of political dialouge in this nation for the past generation (mainly do to liberal and progressive incoherence, non-participation, and lack of focus).

The folks proposing the plan just won a national election in a landslide, control congressional partisan gerrymandering redistricting in the majority of the states, and have sold a lot of folks on their ideas through constant mass marketing. This stuff is about as serious as it gets.

But here's the catch: it is far easier to market vaugue ideas, theories, and common-sense-isms than it is to really flesh out the details of policy. "Protect Your Marriage From Gay People" and "Support the Troops With Lapel Pins" isn't policy.

That's why I've always said I prefer to discuss policy involving plans like Paul Ryan's. Disagree with it as much as you want - it presents an intellectually consistent argument; it is the tip of the iceberg of real Republican political wishes. It is this is our plan serious, and it presents something tangible to be discussed.

It is difficult to engage in fake arguments about imaginary things like the "Ground Zero Mosque," "Death Panels," and "Kenyan Anti-Colonial Islamic Atheist Birth Certifications."

But when it comes to discussing deficits and voucherizing Medicare, privatizing Social Security, and why all these tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans have yet to produce any economic expansion after 10 years, liberals and progressives may have some traction. Those are arguments that liberals and progressives won at least once already.

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Check

That's a betting strategy in a game of Texas Hold-'em. It happens when you are the decision making bettor, and you pass the decision on to the next betting opponent.

The opponent can then initiate a bet of their own or pass the decision to their next opponent by "checking" as well.

A lot of people like to compare politics with war metaphors. I prefer cards metaphors as more appropriate. Especially when it comes to complex negotiations like this.

The last Democratic Congress "checked" the issue of fiscal reform to the President. Obama "checked" the decision on fiscal reform to the GOP. The GOP "checked" to Paul Ryan, one of the only Republicans with sand, who has now opened the betting.

I disagree with Sullivan that this is a powerful rebranding of the GOP. They've deomonstrated there isn't a single issue they can't "death panel" into the news cycle. I expect the Democrats will try to do the same to this plan, so that takes care of all the usual suspects who will be yelling at each other without the ability to change minds and policy.

The interaction to watch will be between Ryan - who the GOP has either anointed or set up to take the blame (depending on which way this goes) - and the President.

Which means there is a chance for some sane policy to come out of all this. Not a good chance, but a chance.

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Of Broken Clocks & Flip Flops

You know what we need more of in this country? Real conservatives to take on the bullshit slung around by folks who play "conservatives" on TV and radio. Like when Conor Friedersdorf deconstructs the fake persona that is Rush Limbaugh, and throws in an elbow at other "conservatives" who let him get away with it:

But this is a teachable moment for his listeners: every week on his show he leads you astray by making incorrect and ungrounded assertions about the interior lives of his ideological adversaries, and even when he turns out to be wrong other thinkers in the conservative movement are loath to call him on it.

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The Great Divide

More studies on the difference between really real conservatives, and people who play conservatives on radio and television.

Our nation has truly entered a phase where a significant number of the people who think of themselves as "conservatives" are not actually conservative. The dilution of the term is what allows the Republicans and the Tea Party (and, in truth, the Democrats) to say whatever they like about politics without fear of being held accountable.

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$400 Million Dollars

We've been hearing about it for years, but the voices demanding a new stadium for the Atlanta Falcons continue to rise in volume, and look more and more serious. The whole pricetag would be north of $700M, of which $400M would be on the taxpayers. And (unlike Dallas) the plans for the new Bird's Nest would be an uncovered stadium with less seating capacity.

Meanwhile, real conservative Kyle Wingfield of the AJC goes over all the other things Atlanta could do with that stadium money.

Hell, he even includes streetcars, mass transit, and trains on his list.

Of course, if Atlanta does build a new Falcons' stadium, they might get rid of the Georgia Dome, even though they say they want to keep it. The reason to keep it is pretty solid: the Georgia Dome hosts the Chick Fil-A Kickoff Classic, the Peach Bowl, the Georgia State Panthers regular season and OH YES THE SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME. But how long do you think two NFL sized football stadiums will last a few parking lots away from one another?

Maybe the SEC could just buy the facility outright, which wouldn't be a bad idea, actually. Atlanta is, primarily, a college football town. The move could make economic sense for both the conference and the city. But such manuvering might not pan out, and who knows what will happen in 6 years?

This tells me one thing: New Orleans needs to have a 5-year bid to host the SEC Championship Game ready to roll before 2017. That's one of the only games on the planet more valuable than the Sugar Bowl. If there were ever an opportunity to get that game out of Atlanta, this would be it.

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Whistle Stop

Conservatives don't hate trains, people who play conservatives on TV and talk radio hate trains.

Real conservatives are concerned with the way we pay for trains, just like they're concerned with the way we pay for NPR and a host of other things they think government shouldn't do. That's why I like discussing politics with real conservatives, because reality is refreshing. If real conservatives are cool with subsidies for the airline industry, the auto industry, road construction and oil companies, they can probably be convinced to get behind subsidies for trains and mass transit, too. If they're against subsidies for trains, then they can probably be convinced to abandon the subsidies for the airlines, auto industry, road construction and oil companies (which would make train transport and mass transit more competitive). Furthermore, real conservatives are more likely to be convinced of the need to "diversify" the transportation portfolio while facing the reality of rising gasoline prices.

Because real conservatism is about pragmatism, the bottom line, and facts.

People who play conservatives on TV and talk radio, on the other hand, hate trains because teh ebil libruls who want trains are really Kenyan-anti-colonial Marxist Fascist Nazi Mau-Maus coming to destroy America (with the help of yOu-knOw-whO), and they're going to do it by making you give up your SUV and force you to ride trains (with, umm, those other people) because that's how the Marxists turned Europe and France into teh socialismz! What did Mussolini do? He made the trains run on time! And how did Lawrence destroy the "caliphate" in Arabia? He attacked their trains! Trains are TEH EBIL! Except when America's founders worked tirelessly to free the slaves by using the underground railroad built by well-paid non-union labor back when the EPA still let folks use coal dug out of West-by-God-Virginia by even more well-paid non-union labor. It all comes back to history, as Glenn Beck would say.

So, until the real conservatives can be found, we're stuck with that last group of folks. Which means we won't get trains until gasoline really is $8, and at that point, it will be teh ebil libruls and their environmental studies and labor laws keeping us from building trains and mass transit fast enough...

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The Unions Forever?

I don't subscribe to that apparent left-wing narrative that "all unions are always good always." Unions, like any large human organization, are just as capable of serious and fatal flaws as they are to obsolecence.

But the "union thuggery" narrative used so often by the far-right wing, despite contrary evidence, is a national one. It further erodes the credibility of real conservatives who associate with madness like this and refreshes in my mind what is at stake in Madison.

Don't fool yourself, this is all about political power, political marketing and credibility. Ending the right to collectively bargain has very little to do with actually balancing a budget. Because budgets have to do with revenues and expenditures; you don't balance those two things by significantly cutting revenues while reducing tiny amounts of expenditures and granting massive subsidies or giveaways to political allies.

In essence, the Republican runs on a platform of fiscal responsiblity, then institutes fiscally irresponsible legislation while cloaking it in some larger, more emotional national narrative. If they actually win, all the better. If they lose, they get to harvest the support that comes from intellectually incurious individuals on their "side" who see other Americans as less than Americans. Partisan political hackery at its finest.

As for the unions and their sympathizers, I can only hope this serves as a wake-up call to revitalize local and state-level activism. I hope it serves as a moment when these unions and activists become more politically savvy. (The ironic "union thug" t-shirt is a fantastic idea that needs to be replicated.) I hope this is the moment they begin to bring unions back from the brink of outdated-ness that they are fast approaching. There is some serious antipathy towards unions in this country, and for real reasons. These folks should start to see that, and not just base their support on something because all the cool liberals are doing it.

And they shouldn't couch this one event in terms of "losing" and "winning." Just because the GOP gets their legislation now doesn't mean that policy can't change later. You just have to remain vigilant and involved. If you fail to acheive your objectives here, you have to reevaluate and try again later. Once you do acheive your objectives, you must always seek to improve them. In a representative republic, we don't just get to enjoy one legislative battle and then luxuriously never revisit the issue.

Because, when it comes to unions, there is an awful lot of self-improvement that could take place.

I'm from the South, so it ain't like I've had a lot of experience with unions, even though I was in one for a year. A public employees union at that. Despite even active participation in said union, I am at a loss to figure out what that union did for me as a worker. Or for any of my co-workers, for that matter. I am at a loss to figure out what value that union added to the local area, whose public schools had experienced decades of decline and neglect.

Apparently, I was paying dues so some national-level union administrators could have snazzy lunches with congressfolk, and some local-level union administrators could throw cookouts. I also guess that, if anything had happened to me, the union might appoint some local and well connected lawyer to my case, if I didn't have the wherewithal to get one on my own. They could have just called the union I was in "legal troubles insurance." That's how membership was sold to me, after all. Though I never could find out how that would have worked. I also didn't quite trust the track record, since the union watched as 5,000+ employees were summarily dismissed once upon a time, and not one thing could be done about it.

This is all in spite of the fact that I knew some very spirited and sincere individuals who worked for that union. But that's to be expected. After all, I am from the South, and we've got a lot of spirited and sincere people here. Whatever civic or private organizations we create, there are going to be those people - just like there will be bad people. That's just the nature of things.

Despite the fact that I'm a "liberal,"* I'm a Southern liberal, and we tend to focus more on race than collective bargaining. To collectively bargain, after all, you have to accept some semblance of equality in the collective. And corporate interests didn't even have to divide us down here before we were conquered, we generally handled that for them ahead of time.




* (Roughly defined, by both "liberals" and "conservatives" as "anyone who doesn't agree with the most right-wing utopian thought processes.")
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Republican Voters on TV

In the comments section of a previous post, Dante wondered why I lump Glenn Beck in with the rest of the allegedly-conservative "right-wingers," such as Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh.

Maybe because these are the kinds of folks who explicitly stand with Beck? (HT: Daily Dish)

Now I wonder why I didn't lump Beck in with right-wingery of Iowa Republican Caucus-goers.



Here's what the President says that starts this discussion:

The President: "It is important to say that our only two options are not the Muslim Brotherhood or a suppressed Egyptian people" (though O'Reilly interrupts him during the last part).

O'Reilly (interrupting): "But you don't want the Muslim Brotherhood?"

The President: "What I want is a representative government in Egypt."

Here is where I wonder where any truly conservative individual, outside the general red vs. blue team politics of a situation, will have any problem with this. Right now, in Egypt, we don't have many options. The President of the United States can't tell the demonstrators in Tahrir Square to go home. He can't demand that citizens of Egypt not participate in self-government if they don't reflect our interests.

The President can express the opinions and interests of the United States to whatever government is currently sovereign in Egypt; he can use his influence with the current regime to decrease violent repression in the hope that the demonstrations do not turn anti-American; he can make sure the State Department is looking after US interests, and those of our allies, in that country while these demonstrations continue - which are all things he is doing.

Criticisms of the President, from a conservative standpoint, would wonder if there was anything more that could have been done to use US influence earlier, to move Egypt to a more representative government before people went into the streets in demonstrations that threatened stability. Another could look forward to other autocratic client-states of the US, and how we should begin using our influence there to promote democracy without the same instability (and the anti-American sentiment that might come with it) from happening elsewhere.

You'd think the responses of a real conservative would reflect something like that. I've read about a few, and I've posted a few. I sure hope conservatives who read this will add a few truly conservative thoughts to the Egypt situation.

But what we see in this video is the exact opposite. The responses from the "conservative" Republicans read like a litany of all that has been said by Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, Palin, Levin and O'Reilly over these last two years. Let's see how fast this "policy" conversation goes off the rails.

1. He doesn't have a grasp on how serious this could be, doesn't know what the details are, doesn't know what we want or what we need as a country.
2. Doesn't understand the difference between a Republic and a Democracy
3. No coherent policy/Doesn't know what he's doing.
4. Barack Obama is a Muslim, and that's guiding his policies.

That didn't take long at all. As a matter of fact, on video, that took exactly 36 seconds. Once that happens, you can see the affirmation of that thought process in the assembly. And before anyone says anything about this being a "liberal media setup," this was on Hannity.

The majority of individuals gathered for this panel think the President of the United States is a Muslim, that being Muslim is a problem, that the interests of Muslims run counter to that of the United States as a matter of foreign policy, and specifically as it relates to the Egyptian people demonstrating against a tyrant.

They also think they will be chided by "the media" for these beliefs. Not that some of these beliefs might be wrong, not that some of these beliefs may be erroneously held, but that they may be complained about by the media. This is what complete epistemological closure looks like: reality has no bearing here, and is seen as a conspiratorial boogeyman.

Who does that sound like?

Now, to be fair, there are some real conservatives who are surprised by this reaction on the part of Republican voters, or do not take this belief on the part of Republican voters seriously. Conor Friedersdorf explains this. On the other hand, I'm not surprised at all. If all people hear from their choice of "populist" media personalities is that the President is a Muslim, that Muslims are bad, and no one but "teh ebil liberals and medai" refute any of those ascertations, what do you think these people are going to think? What did you think they'd say on television?

Let's unpack this.

1. Taking the situation seriously? What we want or need as a country? This country has supported Egyptian autocrats for decades. This runs right up against the later comments in the video that claim President Obama:

• Feels that the United States is to blame, and doesn't respect all the "good" the United States does in the world.
• Will lead us down a "path of destruction," like Neville Chamberlain, through appeasement.
• Always seems caught unaware in the event of a crisis.

What our country "wants" is stability and peace so that our goods and capital can flow to and from foreign markets, and we can access the natural resources we need and new markets for our goods. What our country claims to promote around the world is the dignity of human liberty, individual freedom and human rights. What our country actually does is attempt to reconcile those two things, and the result ain't always pretty.

But don't tell these people. They aren't real conservatives, because real conservatives would understand that foreign policy is an ugly mixture of realpolitik and idealism. For these people, this isn't a complicated issue - the United States does only good around the world, and anyone who thinks we do anything bad hates and blames the United States, isn't a patriotic American and is most likely a liberal (the most intolerant religion).

If our country supports autocrats and tyrants it is because their people can't be trusted with representative or democratic government and hate the United States because of Marxism or Sharia. After all, just look at what happened in Cuba, Iran, Lebanon, the West Bank and Iraq! Why, as soon as those people got out from under their dictators, they started hating the United States for no reason whatsoever. All they do is sit around hating the USA, and being ungrateful for all the wonderful things we did for them under Batista, the Shah, the Israeli occupation or by bringing Saddam Hussein to justice. All these intolerant liberals want to do is encourage that sort of behavior because they hate America.

As far as being prepared for unexpected crises, that's why they're called crises. You can try and be prepared all you want, but sometimes you're not going to be in control of a situation. Real conservatives would realize that.

2. Doesn't understand the difference between Republic and Democracy? Both are governments where the people hold real elections and are not ruled by autocrats.

3. No coherent policy, doesn't know what he's doing? Hell, I told you that earlier in this post. I'll repeat it here for simplicity's sake.

The President can express the opinions and interests of the United States to whatever government is currently sovereign in Egypt; he can use his influence with the current regime to decrease violent repression in the hope that the demonstrations do not turn anti-American; he can make sure the State Department is looking after US interests, and those of our allies, in that country while these demonstrations continue - which are all things he is doing.

I'm quite unclear as to what else our President should or is able to be doing at this time from a policy standpoint. Perhaps one of my conservative readers can clue me in on this as well.

From what I read and hear from the right-wing, however, the basic idea appears as "be outraged" and "blame Obama" and "no, you don't need actual reasons."

And, of course,

4. President Barack Obama is a Muslim. Which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about these people Fox News and Sean Hannity put on television to talk about politics. It tells you everything you need to know about what these people think of Barack Obama, Muslims, liberalism, politics and religion all in one. It tells you instantly what these people really think about the United States of America and our laws, our policies and our place in the world. And if I keep hearing Republican voters talk about this, I'm going to start ascribing this erroneous belief to the whole of the GOP and the Tea Party.

Because this is exactly the reason I do not identify with mainstream Republican voters. That is exactly why I do not trust many Republican elected officials. Put the "R" after someone's name on a ballot, and these people are who I think of. I try to rise above that, and think instead of the people I know who do not act like this, but the reaction has become a gut one at this point.

This is not conservatism. Conservatism focuses on policy, regardless of religion. What you see here is right-wingery, hackery and demagougery. That's what this is.

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The Egypt Narrative on the American Right

I've long said that the GOP/Tea Party/Right-Wing folks can take any issue, and talk themsleves into being on the right side of an issue and their political opponents into being on the wrong side of the issue, regardless of what the issue actually is.

Though I don't think I've ever seen an example as good as this one. See if you can follow the pick-your-own-right-wing narrative about Egypt:

Stability Good, Obama Bad: Obama isn't doing enough to support Mubarak against these protesters, who will install in Egypt Kenyan-anti-colonial-Marxist-Sharia government at the hands of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. Stupid Cairo speech. Why does this administration hate our allies?

Freedom good, Obama bad: Obama didn't pressure Mubarak enough to liberalize Egypt over the last 30 years, and now these protesters want the sweet promise of freedom George W. Bush offered them by invading Iraq. (Visual.) Why does this administration insist on keeping dictators as allies? Neoconservatism is vindicated, just eight short years later, in a different country, that the USA did not invade. (Though Fox News appears to be confused on this last point.)

How easy is this? If anything bad happens, it is automatically Obama's fault. But if anything good happens, Obama needs to thank George W. Bush, and widely discredited neoconservatives will be proven right about...Iraq. It doesn't matter that either choice completely ignores pesky reality or contradicts the other.

Luckily, there are a few really real conservatives out there who seem to be taking the correct lessons from this. While Limbaugh and Breitbart have to give their cults of personality what they pay for, other thinkers are working it out.

I linked you to one such sample yesterday, and today I link you to Kyle Wingfield at the AJC:

But for the part of Americans, via our government, one lesson is clear. The time for demanding real change and reforms in a country such as Egypt with a regime such as Mubarak’s, into which we have poured tens of billions of dollars, is not when the people have finally taken to the streets and defied the tanks.
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But this should be a red line: No more aid for undemocratic rulers who aren’t moving their people toward greater liberty.

Glad to see some conservatives on board the "let's not pay dictators to be allies" train, finally. It has taken some time. A long time. A really, really long time.

But, hey, while we're discussing unsavory allies....

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"History Makes Fools of Us All"

It is good to know that, concerning the events in Egypt, there are a few folks out their with their rational thinking hats on. While it ain't all about us, we play an important role, and that role directly affects our nation. It is time to take a serious and sober look at the real effect our policies and diplomacies have on the world. Because:

It’s quite possible that if Mubarak had not ruled Egypt as a dictator for the last 30 years, the World Trade Center would still be standing.

Ouch. (HT: The Daily Dish.)

Good thing this guy is conservative, because if he were a liberal, he'd be accused of riding on the "hate-America-and-blame-us-for-everything" train. (I mean, hell, some individuals are already linking the protests to the onward march of Kenyan-anti-colonial-Sharia-Marxist-fascism, hating America can't be far behind.)

It is a delicate subject, after all. Just look at the confusion many Americans seem to be feeling, since they are unsure which "side" to support in Egypt. Who is doing what, how does America play a part in all this?

The last is, of course, the most complicated due to our cultural fear of introspection. No one wants to remember the US role in Cuba's history; or Iran's; or Iraq's; or Afganistan's or any of those places now that another international client of our tax-dollars is facing another popular revolt. We just like to have bad guys and good guys, and shame on History if it can't be more cut-and-dry than that.

Hell, this thing should be wrapped by now anyway, the 15 minutes of fame over, allowing our national narrative to declare us the liberator/conquerer/victims of something so we can compartmentalize it to the dustbin of national memory of vague recollection of grainy news footage and future "remember when" specials, and get back to the new season of American Idol.

Pesky reality.

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Government Did Not Do That

David Frum writes a State of the Union I can believe in. It is like a real conservative trying to explain liberal pragmatism to right-wingers who don't want to believe it and left wingers who don't want to hear it.

I'd love to hear some of this tonight. We need the injection of reality.

And a healthy dose of why "the right" owns the discussion about fiscal policy.

Both links HT: Daily Dish.

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