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This is not the place to examine why Bush is so hated by some people, though the war in Iraq surely takes pride of place. But even before that particular war, I heard people denounce the one in Afghanistan, that Taliban-controlled horror that harbored Osama bin Laden. These people are infected with a corrosive doubt about their own country. A recent Pew Research Center poll found, for instance, that 51 percent of Democrats agreed with the proposition that "U.S. wrongdoing" contributed to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (only 17 percent of Republicans agreed). Those are astounding numbers, an indictment not really of America (for what?) but of those people who compulsively blame their own country for the faults of others. You can believe that U.S. support of Israel and the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, but the term Pew used was "wrongdoing." In this respect, these people and Osama bin Laden are in agreement.
The demonization of Bush is going to cost John Kerry plenty if it hasn't already. It so overstates the case against Bush that a levelheaded listener would be excused for thinking that there isn't one in the first place.
-- Richard Cohen for The Washington Post
Mr. Cohen, a sure liberal, strikes a sympathetic note for Monk, given those discussions in which others posit that America plays something like an equal role in producing this jihad, and that whole line of thinking that Monk has come to know as the European view.
A lot of liberal Democrats and even some Republicans share this sort of thinking, but it naturally isn't the majority position of the American electorate. As a practical matter, the worst significance of this strong, almost anti-American perspective is that it may well give us a second Bush term and a much fuller consolidation of Republican power for their policies, which one believes is not something that most Americans really want.
But, on a gut-level, the electorate is probably going to go for the more gung-ho incumbent, rather than one who, say, seems more given to looking at America's war crimes rather than prosecuting a war, when a war is being waged against us.
LOS ANGELES -- I live in a state of my own. It is not blue, which is to say anti-Bush. And it is not red, long the color of lefties, commies and the like but now somehow the color of reactionaries -- the GOP and zealous partisans of the president. My own state of mind combines some of the blue with some of the red to produce my own political hue. Color me purple.
It is not the purple of rage or the purple of royalty, and it contains a lot more blue than it does red. I was only briefly enamored of George W. Bush, whom I now consider to be a divider, not a uniter, and who went to war in Iraq for stated reasons that turned out to be baseless and for unstated reasons that have yet to be publicly acknowledged. I am referring here to an entire neoconservative foreign policy agenda in which violence plays too prominent and casual a role. I am also chilled by assertions of near-royal power in handling terrorism suspects, and I do not like Bush's choice of judges, his energy policy, his unilateralism or the manner in which he has intruded religion into politics. I'm looking pretty blue, no?
I nevertheless cannot bring myself to hate Bush or, as someone here told me, to consider his possible reelection as a reason to leave the country. In fact, Bush haters go so far they wind up adding a dash of red to my blue, pushing me by revulsion into a color I otherwise would not have. For instance, I have just read Nicholson Baker's novel "Checkpoint," an audacious and repellent work about whether the assassination of Bush would be warranted. What concerns me is not one man's loss of perspective but the milieu, the zeitgeist, that produced it. Lots of people must have told Baker he had a capital idea -- a book that just had to be published -- and with alacrity. He was Paul Revere in print.
I bump into these anti-Bush alarmists all the time. Recently an extremely successful and erudite man I much admire told me he viewed the upcoming election as something akin to September 1939, the time when World War II started and, among other things, European Jewry was all but snuffed out. I add that bit about the Holocaust because the man I was talking to had been born a European Jew. I could hardly believe my ears.
This is not the place to examine why Bush is so hated by some people, though the war in Iraq surely takes pride of place. But even before that particular war, I heard people denounce the one in Afghanistan, that Taliban-controlled horror that harbored Osama bin Laden. These people are infected with a corrosive doubt about their own country. A recent Pew Research Center poll found, for instance, that 51 percent of Democrats agreed with the proposition that "U.S. wrongdoing" contributed to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (only 17 percent of Republicans agreed). Those are astounding numbers, an indictment not really of America (for what?) but of those people who compulsively blame their own country for the faults of others. You can believe that U.S. support of Israel and the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, but the term Pew used was "wrongdoing." In this respect, these people and Osama bin Laden are in agreement.
The demonization of Bush is going to cost John Kerry plenty if it hasn't already. It so overstates the case against Bush that a levelheaded listener would be excused for thinking that there isn't one in the first place. It squeezes the middle, virtually forcing moderates to pick which bunch of nuts they're going to join. It's hard to know whom to loathe more -- religious zealots who would censor my reading and deny me the fruits of stem cell research or fervid hallucinators who belittle Saddam Hussein's crimes (or even Sept. 11) and wonder, in the throes of perpetual adolescence, whether the assassination of the president would not amount to a political mercy killing. It's all pretty repugnant.
But some of us cherish moderation, recoil from conspiracy theories and would like, if possible, to stick to the facts. We may dislike Bush's policies, but we do not vitriolically hate the man, think he stole the election or blame our own country for the crimes of Sept. 11. We are the proud Purples -- once the royal color, now the tattered banner of common sense.
-- Richard Cohen, "Purple and Proud of It"
This is not the place to examine why Bush is so hated by some people, though the war in Iraq surely takes pride of place. But even before that particular war, I heard people denounce the one in Afghanistan, that Taliban-controlled horror that harbored Osama bin Laden. These people are infected with a corrosive doubt about their own country. A recent Pew Research Center poll found, for instance, that 51 percent of Democrats agreed with the proposition that "U.S. wrongdoing" contributed to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (only 17 percent of Republicans agreed). Those are astounding numbers, an indictment not really of America (for what?) but of those people who compulsively blame their own country for the faults of others. You can believe that U.S. support of Israel and the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, but the term Pew used was "wrongdoing." In this respect, these people and Osama bin Laden are in agreement.
The demonization of Bush is going to cost John Kerry plenty if it hasn't already. It so overstates the case against Bush that a levelheaded listener would be excused for thinking that there isn't one in the first place.
-- Richard Cohen for The Washington Post
Mr. Cohen, a sure liberal, strikes a sympathetic note for Monk, given those discussions in which others posit that America plays something like an equal role in producing this jihad, and that whole line of thinking that Monk has come to know as the European view.
A lot of liberal Democrats and even some Republicans share this sort of thinking, but it naturally isn't the majority position of the American electorate. As a practical matter, the worst significance of this strong, almost anti-American perspective is that it may well give us a second Bush term and a much fuller consolidation of Republican power for their policies, which one believes is not something that most Americans really want.
But, on a gut-level, the electorate is probably going to go for the more gung-ho incumbent, rather than one who, say, seems more given to looking at America's war crimes rather than prosecuting a war, when a war is being waged against us.
LOS ANGELES -- I live in a state of my own. It is not blue, which is to say anti-Bush. And it is not red, long the color of lefties, commies and the like but now somehow the color of reactionaries -- the GOP and zealous partisans of the president. My own state of mind combines some of the blue with some of the red to produce my own political hue. Color me purple.
It is not the purple of rage or the purple of royalty, and it contains a lot more blue than it does red. I was only briefly enamored of George W. Bush, whom I now consider to be a divider, not a uniter, and who went to war in Iraq for stated reasons that turned out to be baseless and for unstated reasons that have yet to be publicly acknowledged. I am referring here to an entire neoconservative foreign policy agenda in which violence plays too prominent and casual a role. I am also chilled by assertions of near-royal power in handling terrorism suspects, and I do not like Bush's choice of judges, his energy policy, his unilateralism or the manner in which he has intruded religion into politics. I'm looking pretty blue, no?
I nevertheless cannot bring myself to hate Bush or, as someone here told me, to consider his possible reelection as a reason to leave the country. In fact, Bush haters go so far they wind up adding a dash of red to my blue, pushing me by revulsion into a color I otherwise would not have. For instance, I have just read Nicholson Baker's novel "Checkpoint," an audacious and repellent work about whether the assassination of Bush would be warranted. What concerns me is not one man's loss of perspective but the milieu, the zeitgeist, that produced it. Lots of people must have told Baker he had a capital idea -- a book that just had to be published -- and with alacrity. He was Paul Revere in print.
I bump into these anti-Bush alarmists all the time. Recently an extremely successful and erudite man I much admire told me he viewed the upcoming election as something akin to September 1939, the time when World War II started and, among other things, European Jewry was all but snuffed out. I add that bit about the Holocaust because the man I was talking to had been born a European Jew. I could hardly believe my ears.
This is not the place to examine why Bush is so hated by some people, though the war in Iraq surely takes pride of place. But even before that particular war, I heard people denounce the one in Afghanistan, that Taliban-controlled horror that harbored Osama bin Laden. These people are infected with a corrosive doubt about their own country. A recent Pew Research Center poll found, for instance, that 51 percent of Democrats agreed with the proposition that "U.S. wrongdoing" contributed to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (only 17 percent of Republicans agreed). Those are astounding numbers, an indictment not really of America (for what?) but of those people who compulsively blame their own country for the faults of others. You can believe that U.S. support of Israel and the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, but the term Pew used was "wrongdoing." In this respect, these people and Osama bin Laden are in agreement.
The demonization of Bush is going to cost John Kerry plenty if it hasn't already. It so overstates the case against Bush that a levelheaded listener would be excused for thinking that there isn't one in the first place. It squeezes the middle, virtually forcing moderates to pick which bunch of nuts they're going to join. It's hard to know whom to loathe more -- religious zealots who would censor my reading and deny me the fruits of stem cell research or fervid hallucinators who belittle Saddam Hussein's crimes (or even Sept. 11) and wonder, in the throes of perpetual adolescence, whether the assassination of the president would not amount to a political mercy killing. It's all pretty repugnant.
But some of us cherish moderation, recoil from conspiracy theories and would like, if possible, to stick to the facts. We may dislike Bush's policies, but we do not vitriolically hate the man, think he stole the election or blame our own country for the crimes of Sept. 11. We are the proud Purples -- once the royal color, now the tattered banner of common sense.
-- Richard Cohen, "Purple and Proud of It"
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 07:18 pm (UTC)From:hug me
no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 07:22 pm (UTC)From:But I'll happily hug you anytime. *BIG HUGS*
no subject
Date: 2004-09-25 02:36 pm (UTC)From:And in the US you have conservatives who are pro-military and pro-hardline religion battling definitions of the modern world more about spiritual battles and more subtle contrasts.
The very thing that has been helping Kerry lead among undecideds and independents is the fact that he can paint, successfully, Bush as pre-modern. Sure, half of the US thinks that tradition worldview is just fine, but of course half the nation isn't so sure and questions the US role in the world.
But back to terrorists: it makes strange bedfellows when post-modern cultures clash. It, ironically, tends to be the traditionalists in Islam and US politics that are opposing each other. Meaning that in opposing, say, American imperialism, the terrorists and American left are agreeing on certain principles...the disagreement is over the means to fight back--the role of violence, of course. I'm excited about exploring this more in No End To War where a chapter I read while picking up the book, Laqueur suggests that this is our current logjam culturally. The thinkers in the Left are unwilling to throw their activity weight behind such violent folk as jihadists even if they quasi-agree with the underlying "anti-American"ism. But what does that mean for the future? It comes down to not being a war on terror or a political battle, but a philosophical post-modernist struggle over values and what constitutes the human condition. Much the argument that you and I have had forever now, Monk. I suppose that is why I, personally, am still interested in bothering to have it is that it is partly symbolic. Who wins out in Islam, in America, in Europe, in the world? There may indeed be a war of civilizations but it isn't the one most people think...it is more over the meaning of the word "civilization."
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 04:36 pm (UTC)From:And, god, the way you dance on the edges of lining up the Left with terrorists, even when making clear that it's on some principles and not on violent means, you make me nervous. In the narrow minds of those like Attorney General Ashcroft, such speech could be deemed at least faintly seditious, which is even more likely if things gets worse, which they probably will. Such thinking is why people like Ann Coulter writes books arguing that some liberal voices are really treasonous.
What makes me even more nervous is that you would probably get off, since your father is a lawyer and maybe even something of an elite in your community, but they would send my brown ass to Guantanamo, Cuba. And here I am arguing against you! But that sounds like my life.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 05:52 pm (UTC)From:I'm not so sure that people fight over basic things. I think people fight over what structure is used to organize the larger things. That is why religion and politics are never good smalltalk in "polite company." And the flow of intellect comes from the ability...for better or worse...to organize higher level principles better. It is a little more than a pissing contest...life cannot be boiled down into convenient power struggles that "explain away" everything. Not only would that be boring, but problems would be a lot easier to solve.
It wasn't my linking, so to speak...merely reporting some clever observations by others. The idea certainly isn't new...it is making the rounds in the books and such. I suppose, on some level, when you talk about a fight for the future of America you are talking about "treason" even if that is a shady word unless one is in armed struggle against the country...and even then who knows given detainees and the "terror war." The question is who is treasonous...the Left could make the claim that Ann Coulter is a raving, dangerous women who is subverting our nation just as easily. Such is life. I think the reason it makes you nervous is that this struggle over the future is not so cut and dried...a kind of anxiety which is understandable. I mean, we're talking about very complex, profound ideas that have vastly different conclusions and consequences if followed. Tough decisions all the way around. Republican or Democrat or even our fairly mild philosophical differences become more important than anybody realizes. In the end, this is where faith comes in though...we have no clue if what we are doing is really right. The best we can do is to use all our abilities to guide us though. And that is where terrorism and Republicans scare me alike. They do not use their brains that God gave them. It's a scary world out there.