After the Future

Authoritarian Specter

From Nat Parry at Consortium News:

As explained by Robert Altemeyer, who has spent much of his career as a psychologist studying right-wing authoritarianism, the phenomenon is characterized by a high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be legitimate, and a general aggressiveness toward those perceived to be targeted for abuse by the established authorities.

This explains why in Rush Limbaugh's mind, it's not ok to criticize Petraeus, but it is ok to criticize soldiers who are anti-war.  The latter class are targeted by authorities for abuse. Conduct unbecoming means not going with the authoritarian program.

Altemeyer sees the foundation of authoritarianism as a basic personality trait within the individuals who make up a nation.

I think the disturbing thing for me to learn in the last six years how this is perhaps a near majority trait in this country.  I thought better of us Americans, and I see now that was naive.

His definition of the authoritarian personality, developed over years of testing and experimentation based on the scientific method, consists of three attitudinal clusters: authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism – a high degree of devotion to the social conventions which are perceived to be sanctioned by society and its established authorities. [See Robert Altemeyer, Right-Wing Authoritarianism]

By “attitudinal clusters” he means “orientations to respond in the same general way toward certain classes of stimuli (namely, established authorities, targets for sanctioned aggression, and social conventions).”

He further identifies one of the defining characteristics of authoritarians as their belief “that established authorities have an inherent right to decide for themselves what they may do,” which may include breaking the laws that they make for the rest of society.

That's why most Americans don't care about the loss of habeas corpus and warrantless wiretaps.  The authorities should be allowed to do what they need to do without oversight or challenge.

While granting substantial leeway to established authorities, authoritarians generally reject the idea that regular people should develop their own ideas of what is moral and immoral, because the laws and social conventions have already been laid out.

Thinking through the issues for oneself takes too much time and effort, and besides that's what pointy-headed intellectuals do. Freedom for authoritarians is an empty phrase that has little meaning beyond choices made available to them as consumers. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with the courage to stand outside of speak against the dittohead conventional wisdom.

Most of these tendencies can be seen in America today and have risen to new heights over the past couple of weeks with events such as the MoveOn controversy and the vitriol surrounding Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York when compared to the free pass given to President Bush over his hypocrisy.

As Parry pointed out earlier in the article, "This important context disappeared in the U.S. press coverage which dutifully reported on President Bush slamming the UN for abandoning the cause of human rights around the world and calling on the international body to return to its founding principles of promoting freedom and democracy. Perhaps Bush’s hypocrisy was simply too vast for the U.S. media to explain. Perhaps major U.S. news outlets felt that properly dissecting this level of double standard would take too much time or space. Maybe they were just lazy. But more ominous may be the possibility that the U.S. media and political establishment are succumbing to a good vs. evil view of the world, in which America represents all that is good, and those designated as enemies represent all that is bad."  Most in media management, particularly on TV, are in thrall to this authoritarian collective psychology. We saw what happened to Dan Rather and Phil Donahue.  Olbermann wouldn't last but a week or two past next crisis, unless he would quickly change his tune.

For years, Altemeyer has warned that based on his empirical research into the authoritarian personality, it is apparent that many ordinary people living in advanced democracies are psychologically disposed to embrace antidemocratic, fascist policies.

Spain, France, Germany, Italy and other European countries learned this about themselves in the first half of the 20th Century.  My fear is that Americans will have to go through something similar in order to recognize this trait in themselves so as never to let it arise again.  Europe is further advanced than we are for this reason.  They've learned a lesson we have yet to learn.  We Americans think we're immune.

Because of this disposition, Altemeyer concludes that “a potential for the acceptance of right-wing totalitarian rule exists in … the United States.” [See Robert Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter]

This threat can be exacerbated by a national crisis or emergency. In such a circumstance, Altemeyer notes, the fearful mood of a populace “can create a climate of public opinion that promotes totalitarian movements.” This state of mind “can intimidate politicians, journalists and religious leaders who might otherwise oppose repression.”

With the authoritarian foundations laid by the Bush administration and to a degree legitimized and legalized by the U.S. Congress – including elimination of habeas corpus rights, warrantless wiretaps, and military commissions run by the Executive Branch – it may not be long before this authoritarian specter becomes a reality.

The legal infrastructure is laid; the collective psychology is receptive. All it will take to push us over is another major crisis. I believe that in the long run, we'll come to our senses, as Europe did.  But I fear we will have to learn our lesson the hard way. We seem incapable of learning from the mistakes of others. 

Greenspan vs. Klein

Listen to Democracy Now interview of Alan Greenspan conducted by Amy Goodman and Naomi Klein, the author of the recently released book entitled The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. I've uploaded the podcast just below--the interview starts at about the ten-minute mark:

Download democracy_now_monday_september_24_2007.mp3

It interests me that Greenspan considers Bill Clinton a Republican, a point I've often made, and that he is aware of the bad stuff that's happening.  He recognizes that wealth in this country is stratifying with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.  He recognizes that crony capitalism is a reality in the U.S. system, but insists that it isn't the dominant feature driving the American economy. For him this kind of thing is unfortunate collateral damage associated with the only system he thinks works--namely market capitalism. And he seems to think that the only alternative to it is state socialism. 

I was disappointed in Klein's questions and comments; she seemed more interested in a kind of "gotcha" game, trying to pin responsibility on Greenspan for his contributions to the mess we're in, and that kind of thing rarely works in this format.  The issues are too complex, and it's easy for anybody, especially someone like Greenspan, to slip off the hook, no matter how culpable he may be. And even if he is, who cares? But she rejected Greenspan's characterization of her as a socialist, defining herself rather as a proponent of a mixed economy, which is essentially what we've had here in the U.S. since the New Deal.

That's really the argument here.  It's not between radical laissez-faire capitalists and radical socialists, but between radical capitalists and mixed-economy conservatives. The people who want to preserve the New Deal compromise between free markets and government controls are the real conservatives, because they are trying to conserve institutions that have already been established and despite their flaws have proved themselves effective.  The fact that those who now defend the New Deal are considered leftists and that the radical capitalists are considered mainstream moderates shows how twisted our political discourse has become. The Clintons are right-of-center politicians.  When push comes to shove, they serve the interests of the economic and political elites who have taken over the levers of power on the national level before serving the needs of the broader electorate. The hatred they provoke from the radical right is a symptom of how irrational and deluded those people really are. When it comes to foreign and economic policy both the Clintons are a lot closer to Ronald Reagan than they are to, say, Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich.

And so it follows that I would identify myself as a mixed-economy conservative.  And for me the central organizing principle of a mixed economy is subsidiarity.  I'm a subsidiarist, and as such an opponent of any system which promotes top-downism as its dominant m.o. But a subidiarist expects government to step in when markets and local organizations can't solve serious problems, be they natural or financial disasters or the institutionalized suppression of rights. (Health care financing, it should be obvious, is such a disaster.)

Few people would disagree with that subsidiarist approach in principle, but I think that many have come to associate the New Deal with big government and the corruptions of pork-barrel politics. But Democrats and Republicans are equal-opportunity offenders when it comes to pork. And the whole problem with pork is a separate issue from the question whether the U.S. system ought to be a laissez-faire market economy, a top-down command economy, or a subsidiarist mixed economy.

Back to the Greenspan interview: I would have been more interested if the conversation got down to basic principles along these lines. Greenspan falls back onto the basic assumption that market capitalism is the only system that works effectively to create wealth.  So, for the sake of argument, let's assume he's right on that--that if the only problem is to create wealth, market capitalism is the best system to solve it.  But wouldn't he also have to admit that while it solves that problem, it creates other problems, perhaps more serious problems, not the least of which is the Schumpeterian destruction of traditional communities and the traditional values matrices that provide stability and ballast to any social system? Wouldn't he also have to admit that market capitalism has no inherent mechanism that insures a just distribution of wealth? And along those lines, would he not have to admit that market capitalism if left to work without interference inevitably leads to the systematic domination of the weak by the strong, particularly when the weak are uprooted, anomic, and disorganized as a result of the Schumpeterian dynamic alluded to above? 

In other words, would it be possible for him to admit that while capitalism creates material wealth, its effects in the cultural sphere are more destructive than creative? Could he admit that it's possible to imagine a healthy society in which wealth creation and getting rich isn't the most important thing?  Or that a democratic society might choose to organize itself according to different priorities. And if I could get him to agree on all these points, would it not follow that the only way to avoid the inevitable trend toward tyranny that his Libertarian principles lead to is a strong central government with the power to tax and regulate? Because what other power does the broader electorate have to protect its interests or to promote a democratically determined common good?

Now I've not made a detailed study of Alan Greenspan, and that's why I'd like to sit down and talk with him to find out how he really thinks.  (I'd like to sit down with the Thatcherite Andrew Sullivan and have the same conversation.) I do know Greenspan is fan of Ayn Rand, which suggests that he's a radical economic individualist in the Libertarian vein, and I feel safe in assuming he feels more comfortable with Milton Friedman's approach than he does Franklin Roosevelt's.  As I've written repeatedly, Libertarianism in the economic sphere is just another name for Social Darwinism. I would ask him if he would accept that characterization of his fundamental worldview. I would then ask him if he recognizes the ways in which Libertarianism creates the conditions for the flourishing of tyranny.  I'd ask him if he didn't think that the Libertarian program to remove government restraints on private parties pursuing their interests leads inevitably to the domination of the weak by the strong. If he would insist, as Libertarians often do, that he doesn't want that, I would try to make the case it doesn't matter what he wants; it's what follows inevitably from his premises. 

Libertarianism and Rand's Objectivism are third-rate philosophies adopted by people, in my experience, who don't really think things through and either don't accept the consequences of its basic assumptions--or don't care. And the people who support the Libertarian agenda, as for instance promoted by the Cato Institute, often have no idea of the liberty-squashing monster they are helping to create. Libertarians are like farmers who have a hungry-rabbit problem and so import hundreds of coyotes to take care of them.  That strategy solved the rabbit problem, but now they have a hungry-coyote problem, and they're not eating carrots and lettuce; they're eating the livestock.

If democracy worked the way it ought to, the government would be more responsive to the economic interests of the broader electorate rather than the interests of powerful minorities, but clearly that's not how it works, especially since the 1980s.  If things worked the way they should, one would expect the powerful to use their power to attempt to control both the government and media. And we should expect that a vigilant broader electorate would work hard, using government controls, to prevent the powerful from achieving their goals by using their power of numbers to vote people into office who represent their interests.  Or if, as often happens the system is unresponsive through the normal electoral channels, to organize the way, for instance, Solidarity in Poland and the Civil Rights Movement in this country organized. 

But we are in the our current predicament precisely because the powerful have behaved exactly as we would expect them to behave and because the broad electorate out of complacency has not done its part to stop them. Political victories for powerful special interests are an almost daily occurrence; victories for the broad public interest are few and far between.  It should not surprise us that this is so. The system is no longer responsive in any meaningful way to the public interest because the public has abdicated its responsibility to protect it. 

The broad electorate has been for the most part conned into trusting that the powerful are decent people who are doing their jobs as best they can.  They see people like me fomenting class warfare and demonizing  the rich. I'm doing no such thing.  I'm simply describing how the world works.  I don't see Greenspan and others like him as evil.  He's just a fallible, morally average, normally biased guy who's looking out for his interests and the interests of people in the elite circles of the political and economic spheres with whom he identifies. The system has worked well for him and others in his group, and he has little concern for those who are not in that group.

His motivations are really not that different from how most of us root for our home football or baseball teams.  There are exceptions, but most fans don't hate the other teams or wish them ill; they just don't care about them.  They care more about their team winning than the other team losing.  Humans care about the people with whom they identify, and the interests of everyone else are for the most part invisible or inconsequential to them. That's basic human nature. Hatred only arises when those outside one's identity group pose a threat to one's group's interests. That's when the demonizing dynamic kicks in, and with it the need for the more powerful group to eliminate the threat, no matter what the means, or how disproportionate the means to the real threat posed.

And so what I would like to ask Alan Greenspan, or those who think along the same lines he does, this questions: Do we agree on the basic elements that drive average, self- or group-interested behavior?  I assume we do.  If so, can we agree that the already wealthy and powerful have advantages in accumulating more wealth and power?  If so, can we agree that  they are more likely than not to use those advantages?  And if they are successful, shouldn't we expect that their success necessarily results in a stratified society in which the already powerful and wealthy  dominate the  political and economic system and rig it to work in such a way that insures their continued domination? 

Hasn't this been the story of human societies from time immemorial. If we allow this stratification to proceed, isn't it logical to assume that it leads inevitably to the destruction of democracy?  Isn't it logical to assume that if the government doesn't reflect the will of the people but rather the will of corporations and other economic and political elites, the American system morphs into a crony capitalist system in which government grows not smaller but bigger to serve the interests of these elite groups?  Isnt' that precisely what we're seeing as in the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill? If we are not a crony capitalist system like Indonesia now, isn't it clear that we're on the track to becoming something very much like it?  What does Greensapn think are the counterforces that will prevent our evolution in that direction?  Try to stand back from the politics of the Democrats or the Republicans.  This is not about political ideology; it's about common sense and seeing what's in front of your nose.

There is only one answer to the question about counterbalance, and that's a vigilant, aroused alliance of groups and individuals who are not in those elite circles, but who  organize themselves into a political force that counterbalances the interests of the elites. That's not socialism.  It's what the New Deal Democrats used to do, but they don't anymore. This alliance ought not to have in mind the goal that  government must run everything. Rather it's goal should be the maintenance of the mixed economy that has been the system in the U.S. and in the European social democracies since the 1930s. 

This alliance must fight to insure that the government be kept out of the hands of those who seek to transform it into a crony capitalist system.  They must use the tax code and other controls to keep these interests in line, and they have to work to exert similar controls on the emerging global system. Right now that simply is not our situation.  Because at the national level both Democrats and Republicans serve the interests of these elites and not the interests of the broader electorate.  These people in the political class tell the broader electorate what they want to hear, and then do what's in the interests of the elites. 

And so while it's clear what must be done if any kind of real democracy is to be preserved (or recovered) in America, it's also clear that there does not seem to be the will or the imagination in the broader electorate to do it.  And so the long-term trend is toward the historical norm, which is a stratified, authoritarian society. And that's the reason for my pessimism. I'm talking now about developments over the next ten to fifteen years.  It may not turn become quite the nightmare society that Orwell envisioned in 1984, but why shouldn't it? I don't see anything that can provide a robust resistance to the trends that seem inevitably to be leading in that direction.

How the World Works, Part 2 (Updates I & II)

Naomi Wolf in an interview about her new book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot and A Citizen's Call to Action, makes the argument I've been making. I agree completely with the analysis about what's happening to us; I'm less optimistic that there is at this point a fighting chance of doing anything about it.  I think the MCA and congress's inability to rescind it is a signal that the game is up in the political sphere:

What we really have to realize is that in a modern democracy, the shift to a closed society doesn't happen overnight.

And it doesn't happen even in a clear line on a graph that's left to right diagonally. It happens in what Malcolm Gladwell would call tipping points. You can chart it, and there may be pressure, pressure, multiple assaults, and, then, a key event that would be like a vertical line on that chart. And then you're looking at another reality.

The really important thing to understand, which is why I walk the reader so carefully through the way democracies really curve down, is democracies can reach a point of no return. And it's sudden when that happens. And it's disorienting. There's a point at which democracy can no longer heal democracy. People have got to understand that. People need to realize that the day we made it legal, essentially, for the state to torture people, that was one of those vertical lines on the chart. We're now in a place where it is legal, the White House has claimed, to knock on your door or my door, and say: You are an enemy combatant. Come with us. Then there is what Jose Padilla went through, in three years of solitary confinement -- making it difficult to see a lawyer, making it difficult to see his family.

I'm not saying he's a good guy. But I'm saying the White House is taking the position that the President -- and any future president -- can say: You, Naomi, you, peruser of BuzzFlash -- you're an enemy combatant. And the President gets to decide what that means. The President gets to decide to hold you. The first time that someone is called an enemy combatant that you and I identify with -- that's going to be another one of these vertical lines, after which you are not going to be having this conversation, because I'm not that brave. The tasering of this student was another vertical line, because, believe me, if they are tasering voting groups in Florida in a disputed 2008 election, dissent will close down pretty quickly. People are just not that brave when they start to get physically hurt.

And that's how society is closed down. Suddenly, there's news of someone getting arrested. Or someone being taken. Someone getting a ten-year sentence under the Espionage Act for publishing something in the Wall Street Journal.

And the next day, there are still newspapers. There's still online shopping. There are still so many aspects of normal society. But what there isn't is freedom, because people are scared. And that's why we need to wake up now, because, believe it or not, the President has the power to do that. The President -- any president, President Thompson, President Giuliani, President Obama -- any president now has the power to make it easier to declare martial law and to declare a state of emergency. The president gets to decide what that is. That is not what the Founders envisioned.

People who are fighting overseas for democracy understand better than we do that we are witnessing the classic danger signs. They know how dangerous it is to have a leader relegate for himself or herself the power to do that -- to seize people and to militarize civil society. Or to declare a state of public emergency or to make it easier to define a threat to public order. Those are classic signposts that other democracy activists around the world recognize as flashing warning lights.

. . . We've been so blessed and so spoiled, in a way, by over 200 years of strong democracy, even taking into account the serious moments like the McCarthy era, that we expect the pendulum will always swing back, because the checks and balances have always been in place. I've explained in the book why this is different now -- why the pendulum isn't as free as it used to be, why we can't rely on it, a point Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda made first.

The trouble is that we're so used to a democratic mindset and we're so reliant on freedom, that we, A, don't recognize the dangers, and B, we don't realize what it takes to resist them. When I talk about these threats, people tend to answer before they've thought it through, or before they've read the book, with the correctives of democracy. Well, the ACLU will sue them. Or we'll just vote the guys out. "Vote the bums out." After you've read the book, you'll realize that you cannot rely on democracy to heal democracy, as you could if our democracy was strong, and checks and balances were in place.

So it is a radical shift in consciousness that we need right now, and we don't have time. We need to understand right now that this is a crisis. It's not business as usual. We can't leave it to other people, to Congress, to activists, or until the next election, because we are much further along than people realize.

So we do what we can do to resist. I admire Wolf and everyone who is trying to raise the alarm, but her book will be easily dismissed by the mainstream as leftist loony. And the only people who will read it are the minority who already agree with it. 

The bottom line is that most Americans, even if they understood what was happening, don't really care.  They don't see this ominous rightward swing in the political sphere as affecting them in any way that really matters. "Hey, it's just the way the world works," they say. And they're right, and any memory of the American ideal as the attempt to do something differently than "the way the world works" was either never understood or is considered romantic, liberal naivete. Liberals are by definition are starry eyed airheads who don't understand how the world works. For these realist Americans, for whom Dick Cheney is the prototype, America means nothing more than "our team" in an us-against-the-world contest.

I hope I'm proved wrong, but the bottom line is that unless there is a mass outcry against this incremental movement toward the historical militarized, authoritarian norm, there's no stopping it. The people for whom this movement toward a closed society is in their interest understand this. They have been working hard to establish the infrastructure and they realize that there is no real opposition to their agenda--certainly not in the media or in the congress.  They understand that we're already on the other side of the tipping point, whether most people are aware of it or not, and that there's not going to be any significant roll back.

Wolf is calling for a reverse tipping point, one in which a majority of Americans will become outraged and demand that their representatives stop this movement toward the authoritarian surveillance state.  Anybody think such a reversal is possible?  Someone give me a scenario in which you might think such a thing will happen. I want to believe it's possible, but I don't see it.

Update I:  Interesting that it's Buddhist monks leading the protests in Myanamar:

Earlier Tuesday, the army began deploying troops in the heart of Yangon after tens of thousands of people led by barefoot monks in maroon robes defied orders to stay off the streets and marched for the eighth straight day against the junta.

Troops were also seen gathering at a military center in Mandalay and military trucks rumbled through the streets of both cities late into the night, witnesses said.

The potential for a violent crackdown had already aroused international concern, with pleas for the junta to deal peacefully with the situation coming from government and religious leaders worldwide. They included the Dalai Lama and South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates like detained Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Who has the moral stature to lead such a protest in this country?  I think that's what it's going to take for such a protest not to be dismissed as fomented by lefty rabble rousers.  This is the point I've been making repeatedly, and which secularists don't seem to get. The lead has to be taken by people who have moral stature, or such a movement will be perceived as the predictable politics of the disgruntled.

There has to be a call to conscience by a leader or a group of leaders which has real moral authority. Is there any sense from readers about potential religious figures in this country who could play a leadership role in such a conscience-driven protest movement?  I'm sorry to say that for me no one comes to mind.  What is it about God-fearing Americans that the emergence of such moral leadership is almost impossible to imagine?  Am I being too harsh?

Update II: Read this speech by Daniel Ellsberg entitled 'A Coup Has Occurred'. Ellsberg thinks an attack on Iran and the ensuing Iranian retaliation, perhaps in the form of another 9/11, is very likely. The crisis atmosphere that it will create will give the authoritarian elements in the administration the pretext they need to tighten domestic police and surveillance controls.  Does this sound paranoid?  I don't know.  Such a scenario is certainly within the realm of possibility, and should not be glibly dismissed. An excerpt:

I think nothing has higher priority than averting an attack on Iran, which I think will be accompanied by a further change in our way of governing here that in effect will convert us into what I would call a police state.

If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Will there be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? …  They may be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But if they’re not now they will be after another 9/11.

And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran – an escalation – which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps. . . .

Another 9/11 or an Iranian attack in which Iran’s reaction against Israel, against our shipping, against our troops in Iraq above all, possibly in this country, will justify the full panoply of measures that have been prepared now, legitimized, and to some extent written into law.  …

This is an unusual gang, even for Republicans. [But] I think that the successors to this regime are not likely to roll back the assault on the Constitution. They will take advantage of it, they will exploit it.

Will Hillary Clinton as president decide to turn off NSA after the last five years of illegal surveillance? Will she deprive her administration her ability to protect United States citizens from possible terrorism by blinding herself and deafening herself to all that NSA can provide? I don’t think so.

Unless this somehow, by a change in our political climate, of a radical change, unless this gets rolled back in the next year or two before a new administration comes in – and there’s no move to do this at this point – unless that happens I don’t see it happening under the next administration, whether Republican or Democratic.

The Move-On Ad and the Senate

Talk about misallocated disgust. In the same week as failing to restore habeas corpus.  In the same week as failing to bring real relief to the soldiers and their families, they pass this with 72 votes?! The whole business of the Senate has moved into Monty Python territory.  Black, surreal humor seems the only sane response. I was going to write a thing trying to understand how its' possible that this foolish, discredited, failed president can still control the war narrative.  But what's the point? It's getting to be pretty funny, really. 

To whom do they think a vote like this caters? Is it really public opinion they care about?  Do these senators, especially the Democrats, really think this will help to improve their 11% approval rating? They can't be that stupid, can they? If so, the cluelessness is beyond astonishing anymore.  It's in its own category of over the top. Perhaps a better explanation is that they see public opinion as toothless in way I described it the other day.  Perhaps it's someone else's opinion they care about-- people with teeth.

And what's with Pat Leahy?  Maybe he's finally given up and determined that if he can't beat the militarists, he might as well join them.

Restore Habeas Corpus (Updated)

For what it's worth, become a citzen sponsor here. Particularly important are the wavering Republicans--if you have one in your state, call him or her.  Check here.

Wednesday Morning Update: Cloture failed 56-43-1.  It makes you proud.

How the World Works, Part I

Any sensible, informed person paying attention to last week's theater regarding the Petraeus performance and Bush's pathetic followup would not recognize the way it played to the Beltway theater critics, who just loved the show. Greenwald this morning sums up their reviews:

Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray, The Washington Post (h/t Atrios): "MoveOn.org provided Republicans a life raft when it ran a full-page newspaper advertisement Monday taunting Petraeus as 'General Betray Us.'"

Time's Joe Klein (h/t emaydon): "It seems clear the President has won this round. An optimistic general will trump a skeptical politician anytime."

Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard: "For Democrats, Petraeus Week was a wrenching ordeal. . . . The New York Times ad by MoveOn.org trashing Petraeus as a liar backfired badly. . . . The prospect of a return engagement by Petraeus can only fill Democrats with a feeling of dread."

Mitch McConnell: "I assure you, we're going to continue to press Democrats both collectively and individually to denounce this ad. I think this organization is ruining the reputation of the Democratic Party."

Time's Joe Klein: "I remain convinced that the MoveOn 'Betrayus' ad was not only deeply stupid and an unconscionable slur against an honorable man, but also potentially very damaging to Democratic candidates running across the country."

Fox News favorite Susan Estrich: "The Democrats, especially the Democrats running for president, have a problem, and his name is Petraeus."

The New Republic's Jason Zengerle: "I think this is a pretty politically tone-deaf ad . . . . When U.S. military commanders are the only people a majority of Americans trust to end the war -- as this new NYT/CBS poll makes clear -- attacking America's most prominent military commander doesn't seem like a very smart move. . . ."

"Joe Klein makes the essential point about Bush and Petraeus in a much more cogent fashion . . . . Maybe the next time Bush sends Petraeus to the Hill, Democrats--to say nothing of MoveOn--will take a different approach to dealing with him."

All these and so many more are living on Planet Beltway, and it has little or nothing to do with reality.  It's theater and entertainment, and the Bushies put on a bravura performance that only people with their insider knowledge and sensibilities understand and can interpret for the rest of us rubes out in the hinterlands.  Not one of these people have anything to say about the substance of the message; it's all about staging, delivery, and style.  And MoveOn fits into the drama filling the archetypal role of America-hating leftists who seek to undermine everything that is wholesome, strong, and beautiful about our great nation and noble military.

Greenwald takes great pains to say that the reviews of the experts are not in line with broad American public opinion, but what Greenwald doesn't seem to understand is that American public opinion is like a crowd of people who witness a mugging and turn away and mind their own business.  Afterward they are asked what they think about mugging, and, of course, they all disapprove. The more important question is how did they act.

And then one reads articles like this one by Gary Kamiya, "Breaking the Iraq Stalemate" in which he says that " Once a mighty war god, Bush has run out of tricks, troops and time. Will Americans finally rise up to stop his endless war?"  Is he kidding?  Is Kamiya actually trying to talk sense in a world that makes no sense? Does he really believe, in this week after the Petraeus performance and the standing ovation it  received by the media and everyone who counts as "serious" that Bush has run out of tricks? Is Kamiya's essay anything but a naive exercise in wishful thinking?  Paragraphs like this seem almost as stupid as the plaudits given to Petraeus:

But beneath the surface, something may have changed. Most Americans have been skeptical of Bush's war and everything he has said about it for a year or more. Still, they have entertained hope that the situation in Iraq would improve. Bush's "surge" was his last gambit: Everyone knew that there were no more troops to throw in. It had to work. Now that it is clear that it didn't, there is nothing else Bush can do.

This is an unprecedented situation. Bush always had another trick up his sleeve, another milestone to point to, another winning tactic to propose. But he has run out of tricks. The thing he dreaded most has come to pass: He is now completely at the mercy of events in Iraq.

Of course, Bush was always hostage to the harsh reality of Iraq. But he was able to counter that reality by invoking his master narrative about how Iraq was the front line of the war on terror, a battle of good vs. evil, a crucial battle on which the fate of the West depended. Even though Americans increasingly rejected that narrative, it had enough resonance to perform its function. At least Bush came across as consistent.

Now Bush's grand war story has not only been discredited by reality, he himself has been forced to adjust it in ways that make him look both hypocritical and powerless. His aura as an aggressive winner has been destroyed. This fact has not sunk in yet, but it could lead to the final erosion of American support for the war.

Doesn't Kamiya get it?  Nothing is going to change while Bush is in office, and it's not likely to change radically if a Democrat is elected next year.

Why?  Because American public opinion is toothless and irrelevant. And for this reason, there is no real democracy at the national level anymore. We still have shreds of it at the local and state level, but national policy has little or nothing to do with the will of the people because the people, even if they have the will, have no real power.  The politicians we elect, no matter how noble their intentions at first, get eaten alive by the entrenched power system that has its own will, and elected representatives learn to serve that will or they will be marginalized as non-players. 

Because this is the way the world works. Power uses power to consolidate power.  The power system is self-perpetuating because it only hires and promotes people who serve its interests without question.  And the system and those who serve it co-opt or threaten anybody who would question it. The beltway media are full of people who have been threatened or coopted, and they may or may not be consciously aware of their acquiescence.

They live in a culture of acquiescence to power, and so it is normal and expected behavior for them to acquiesce to it.  They do it without thinking, taking their cues from whoever it is whose job it is to give such cues. And they take the cues because their careers and lifestyles depend on it.  They would not have risen to the positions they hold now if they were not ambitiously good cue takers. And so they have a vested interest in praising and supporting those who, like them, take the cues and squelching anybody who refuses to take them, because their livelihood and wellbeing depends on the charade continuing.

And whether the rest of us approve or disapprove makes no difference because we don't hire them, and our criticisms have little or no impact on their performance.  As long as the ratings are kept high by keeping tabs on Britney, Paris, and O.J. They otherwise perform for their bosses and for one another in this self-reinforcing fiction that keeps them all in the positions they worked so hard to obtain.

The self-perpetuation of the system doesn't require conspiracies and evil geniuses, just a lot of people pursuing their self interests and forming alliances with others who understand the game and will help you out so long as you serve their interests and play by the rules of the game. Challenging the rules is out of the question, and to do so gets you kicked out of the game. A guy like Ralph Nader will never be taken seriously because he challenges the rules--he's not a player.  And Liberals who want Nader thrown out of the game are basically acquiescing to the rules as they are set up.  The problem with Liberals is basically their naive belief that the system works the way its described in the civics textbooks.  That's why they are such losers when it comes to playing the game.  They think their attitudes and opinions matter.

Kamiya and Greenwald are like wide-eyed boys who are telling us the emperor has no clothes, but it doesn't matter because there are too many people with a vested interest in the charade continuing, and everyone who sees the truth of the situation has no imagination about what to do about it.  And if they do, if they express their understandable outrage, they will get ridiculed, ostracized or even tasered and arrested by those who are the established players. And for what?  Will it change anything?

So here's the point: Nothing is going to change in Washington until serious power coalitions develop that have weight enough to counter the enormous entrenched and unaccountable corporate and bureaucratic power that is the driving force behind, particularly, the M/I complex.  There are other power centers, but this one is the most deeply entrenched and the most resistant to political control.  Or more accurately it controls the political process more than it is controlled by it. It dictates; it is not dictated to. It is the locus of the most advanced elements in the crony capitalist system into which we are evolving.  Cheney is its posterboy.

I don't think the people who serve these power centers are evil, but they are the banal servants of evil.  In Cheney's case, who knows?  I'm sure in his own mind he thinks of himself as a patriot and an honorable man.  But he is first and foremost a servant of this system's will which has a bizarre transpersonal character that is bigger than any individual. It's a beast at whose teats all these servants suck, and in their sucking absorb its life and become its creatures.

These servants of power are just ordinary human beings like the media types described above. They are ambitious, and they do what they are told in order to get ahead. Petraeus is the archetype of this kind of person. The media recognize one of their own--he's a talented brown-nose, nothing more. That's what is so facetious about his being lionized last week. People like him don't think about the big picture. They are given assignments, they complete them, and they are rewarded. They mostly believe they are doing good work, serving their country. They don't think about the implications too much, and they are too willing to believe the propaganda justifying their mission because to question it would undermine their career aspirations, and, anyway, what good what that do?  Don't rouse the anger of the beast that gives suck. Unthinkable for such as he.

The  power system is self-perpetuating in this way. To tame this beast would require a high level of awareness and a level of heroic commitment from millions of people inside and  outside of government.  And what citizens do in the ballot box is irrelevant until a slate of candidates arise who say that they are willing to confront and subject this system to the will of the people.  Until that happens, the charade continues, and while Republicans are the more obsequious in serving these power centers, the Democrats, as we've seen, haven't the political will to confront them. They, too, are careerists, and first and foremost is the fulfillment of their own and their consultants' ambitions, and that requires that they, too, play by the rules. That's what it takes to be taken seriously, and that's just how the world works.

P.S. The whole Greenspan Iraq was "largely about oil'" statement in his new book is an interesting breach of the rules that even he, the most serious of serious Beltway types, felt he had to back away from by convolutedly talking about the threat Saddam posed to  the Straits of Hormuz (?!).  Just say anything, Alan--Americans don't know where the straits are anyway, and don't care.  Of course Iraq was and continues to be largely, if not most importantly, about oil.  But it's against the rules to talk about oil.  What was he thinking?  Did Andrea know he slipped it into his book?

Update:  The American Conservative weighs in on Petraeus as Sycophant.

Constitutional Hardball

Digby sums up nicely what I've been saying about the long-term effects of the pro-authoritarian changes wrought by the Republicans.  It won't matter if the Democrats win in'08, because the underlying infrastructure has changed, and it's unlikely that the Dems will have the political will to restore things to the status quo ante:

Constitutional hardball is a high stakes game of winner take all that utilizes all the levers of power and institutional advantages to further the goals of one political party and render the opposition weakened and impotent. The Republicans have been playing at it for a long time, culminating in the Bush II administration, which took office with the most audacious hardball play in American history --- Bush vs. Gore --- and then proceeded to use every bit of power at its disposal to embed its view of executive power into the government while establishing partisan Republican advantage throughout. We probably won't know for quite some time just how deeply they have salted the civil service bureaucracy, the career justice department employees and the military with partisan actors but the effect on the judiciary is already obvious. It's not hard to imagine. (And, needless to say, any attempt on the part of Democrats to dislodge them will be met with shrieking about how the president cannot just fire employees at his pleasure. They have no problem with intellectual inconsistency and the Democrats continue to be flummoxed by this fact.)

This is important because one of the most inexplicable aspects of the Republican onslaught is the fact that they seem so fearless of retribution. It may be because they have become addicted to the thrill or because they have (possibly correctly) assessed the opposition as being unlikely to ever challenge them on the same terms. But whatever the case, they have correctly understood this game to be a long one with many innings. Tushnet explains:

We might hope that political actors will realize that the worm will turn someday. That is, they might correctly believe that by playing constitutional hardball today they may be able to take control of all the levers of governing power, but they might realize that someday their opponents will seize the opportunity to play constitutional hardball in return, gain power, and shut them out of power. The problem here is with the time-horizon of political actors. They will not care if the worm turns after their politically active lives are over – after they die, retire, or assume the role of elder statesman or –woman. And, if history is a guide, the life span of a constitutional order is longer than the time-horizon of most active political actors. I would not want to be held to the following judgments, but consider the possibility that the Jeffersonian- Jacksonian order lasted from around 1801 to somewhere in the late 1840s or early 1850s, that the post-Reconstruction order lasted from around 1876 to somewhere in the 1930s, and that the New Deal-Great Society order lasted from the mid-1930s to the mid-1970s. At every point the remaining life span of each constitutional order is longer than the time horizon of almost every political actor

That's depressing, isn't it? In fact, it tracks with George W. Bush's oft quoted belief that he will be redeemed after his death. Taking the long view of such things must be very comforting. It's apparently what comes of having no fear that you will ever be called to account for your actions in your own time.

Future victorious American authoritarians will look back at Bush with the same fondness conservatives now look at Ronald Reagan.  Bush was the guy who finally broke the country's back. Read the whole post.

P.S.  I needed to take a break from the heavy lifting involved in the more philosophy/theology oriented posts begun earlier this summer.  I'll return to those themes after next week.

Why Petraeus Has No Political Credibility

Here's a six-minute video put together by FireDogLake and Glenn Greenwald to give readers some perspective on the Petraeus testimony if you are still in need of it.  It continues to amaze me how there is no public memory--how every public event, like the Petraeus testimony, appears on the public screen as if there was no historical context for it. Administration propagandists depend on this lack of context, and have every reason to expect that the media will not provide it. So even if you have the perspective, send this You Tube clip to somebody who doesn't:

Remember the art of the con man is to play a symbolical role and tell his mark what he wants to hear.  People want to believe that we're not failing, and they are inclined to believe someone in Petraeus's symbolic role.  In this instance the Petraeus isn't necesarily in on the con--he could very well believe everything he says.  It's enough that he be so invested in proving to everyone that he has been effective.  The con, therefore, doesn't require that he be aware of it. He could be; I don't know. The point is that for the con to succeed he play his part knowingly or unknowingly. And the con doesn't have to work for everyone in the electorate; it has to work just enough to get the media to bite and to neutralize congressional opposition.  Piece of cake.

Sunday Meditation

From the elder Zossima's talks and homilies:

Young man, do not forget to pray.  Each time you pray, if you do so sincerely there will be the flash of a new feeling in it, and anew thought as well, one you did not know before, which will give you fresh courage; and you will understand that prayer is education. . . .

A loving humility is a terrible power, the most powerful of all, nothing compares with it.  Keep company with yourself and look to ourself every day and hour, every minute, that your image be ever gracious.  See, here you have passed by a small child, passed by in anger, with a foul word, with a wrathful soul; you perhaps did not notice the child but he saw you, and your unsightly and impious image has remained in his defenseless heart.  You did not know it, but you may thereby have planted a bad seed in him, and it may grow, and all because you did not restrain yourself before the child, because you did not nurture in yourself a heedful, active love.  Brothers, love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is difficult to acquire, it is dearly bought, by long work over a long time, for one ought to love not for a chance moment but for all time. Anyone, even a wicked man, can love by chance. . . .

Much on earth is concealed from us, but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why philosophers say it is impossible on earth to conceive the essence of things. God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, but it lives and grows only through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this sense is weakened or destroyed in you, that which has grown up in you dies.  Then you become indifferent to life, and even come to hate it. So I think.  (From The Brothers Karamazov, Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, pp. 318-20)

The idea of the soul as a garden in which seeds germinate and grow is one of the most important metaphors for understanding the Christian spiritual life. And its the traditional wisdom about cultivating the soul's garden into something fruitful, abundant, and beautiful that is, or ought to be, at the heart of what is understood as Christian morality.  This wisdom is completely absent from the moralistic priggishness that thinks of itself as Christian.

But I think it's fair to say that it's an all-but-lost wisdom. It's there if you dig for it, but it's not a part of the contemporary Christian's imagination of what the Christian life is at its core. And for this reason there really isn't much that contemporary Christians can point to that distinguishes themselves from agnostics or atheists who live ethically principled lives.   

Anything that calls itself Christian morality that isn't about the wisdom and discipline of cultivating a beautiful, love-saturated soul has as little value as a sack of sterilized sand.

Loss of Faith in America

It amazes me how little confidence the right wing in this country has in the strength of American values and ideals.  It's probably because so many are heirs of that strain of American thinking which never understood or cared about them in the first place. This strain of right wing American always lived primarily in a thuggish domination and control box and very little light breaks in from outside of it.

Why else, for instance, are they so afraid of Mexicans?  They believe that it's more likely that these immigrants will turn the southwest into an annex of Mexico than that they come with the aspiration to become Americans. You have to have some sense of the universalist humanistic principles upon which the country was founded to believe that the desire to be an American is stronger than the desire to crash the party and change the music from Toby Keith to Selena.

The right thinks that Mexicans and others will not assimilate because becoming an American is something Mexicans and other brown-skinned people just can't do. And even if they could, they don't want them to. For the extreme right, to be an American has always been a white tribal thing. It's about us against them--'us' being white Christians, 'them' being everyone else trying to crash the party.

The cultural descendants of the slaveholders of the south and ranchers of the southwest, whose right-wing mentality now controls the GOP, while they have a hard time understanding or accepting the universalist humanistic American idea, they do understand revenge. And the reason these right-wingers fear the Mexican invasion lies in that they think of Mexicans as motivated by revenge. What goes around comes around, and they project onto the Mexicans their own motivations if they were treated as the Mexicans were treated.

The right-wing mentality assumes the world is out to get it, and that the only effective defense is an aggressive offense.  It's the mindset of the insecure, witless bully from time immemorial. And so everything has to be understood on power terms, in domination and control terms. The only realism for people in this mindset is that they must keep their foot on the ubiquitous enemy's neck lest it put its foot on theirs.

The thuggish strain has always been in the American character;  it could be argued that it has been the dominant strain. The thugs passionately defended slavery, violently and repeatedly broke the Indian treaties, destroyed the south on Sherman's march, violently and mercilessly suppressed workers trying to organize unions, lynched Blacks, ruthlessly treated South America as a collection vassal states, released the dogs on protesters, and the list goes on through Curtis Lemay, to William Calley, to Dick Cheney, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.  In our thuggishness we are no worse than everyone else who lives in the domination and control box . It's just the way humans who live in it are, no matter what their nationality.It's the normal depravity of almost anyone who has assumed tremendous power.

But alongside that thuggishness there was a strain in the American soul that transcended it. It was the strain that carried the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment and the Puritan progressivism that I've described in a few posts as the spirit of Whiggery--see here  and here. Its spirit was carried by Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, F. Douglass, T. Roosevelt, F.D. Roosevelt, M. L. King, the Kennedys, LBJ, Jimmy Carter.  None of these was  pure. All of them were profoundly flawed in different ways, but that's the way the best of us are--a mix of things, but it's the better part that redeems the worse part. But now we have the worse part unmixed with the better.  We have now in the GOP leadership unadulterated thuggishness. If there are people in the Republican Party who carry the better part, they have no influence. 

And the same can be said for the Democrats, who may not be so aggressively thuggish as the Republicans, but who have with a few exceptions been Republican enablers. Whoever is best among them likewise is not in a position of influence or power. Whatever is best in the American soul has been pushed to the margins and is scoffed at by our savvy media pundits.  I trust the better part of the American character will re-emerge in time, but I fear what we will suffer before it does.

We have become our own worst selves because we really do not believe in the best part anymore because the place in the soul where it lives has been supplanted by confusion and fear. There are always good reasons to be afraid, but it is shameful to be ruled by fear. Courage is the force of will to keep that place in the soul where virtue lives from being overwhelmed by fear. But even so, why should we of all nations, armed to the teeth, be so afraid?  Because we don't know who we are any more, and that confusion fills us with anxiety. We've lost our poise and our confidence, and we're compensating. We've lost our moral compass, and so we longer believe in the American idea. We have nothing left but bully power while it lasts. We act like cornered animals and think it virtue.

But without the American idea, we devolve into nothing more than every other bully nation that has ever existed, and we see no options except to flex our muscles and pummel those who oppose us. And so American has become a right-wing self-fulfilling prophecy: to be an American is nothing more than us against them. And because all of them hate us, we are no longer capable of  thinking unless it be with brains soaked in adrenaline.  The bad guys are everyone who does not submit to our control; they are out to get us, so we must jettison everything in the American character that calls us to be better than the bullies and thugs we so easily collapse into or throw our allegiance to when we are afraid.

We've regressed into bullies because we no longer have moral authority; we have only power, and with that power we have to prove we rule the schoolyard with acts of senseless violence, with shock and awe. Brute power, though, is only temporary advantage, because we  know that everyone else has figured out that for all our religiosity we have no spiritual strength. If there is any indicator of the what a sham the Christianity of the right is, it lies in its support of American thuggishness. This strain of Christianity, whether promoted by Christian intellectuals like Elshtain and Weigel or fools like Dobson and Falwell, has proved itself bankrupt because it has shown itself to be more in thrall to the spirit of domination and control than to the spirit of the gospels.  It's a matter of discernment of spirits, and these Christian apologists for American imperial power have failed to grasp which spirit their sophistry serves.

We are witnessing in almost every dimension of our political and cultural life a loss of faith in the American idea by Americans, especially by the Christians on the right who think they are defending traditional ideals and virtues.  Without the American idea, all we have left is the aggressiveness of an isolated, cornered animal. Or we're like the highly agitated  bull in the proverbial china shop--kicking and crashing senselessly about making a mess of things while everyone else is trying to figure out a way to restrain and calm us down.  If we attack Iran in the next several months, that will show the world that we're a bull that can't be restrained, won't it?  We will still have that to feel proud about.

Monday Update:  After writing this I remembered a similar post entitled  "The Paranoid Style", which I put up about a year ago. It was interesting that one person, whom I know to be a decent, principled conservative, in her comments made clear that she thought what I wrote then unfairly stereotyped conservatives. I wonder if she sees it that way now. It has taken principled conservatives rather long to figure out that right-wing extremists have conned them by telling them what they want to hear while working an agenda that has nothing to do with their principled conservative values.  Those who haven't yet figured it out are either closet right wingers themselves or simply ineducable because of ignorance or because their thinking is controlled by their fears. See also Chris Floyd's eloquent Post Mortem America, in which he comes at what I'm saying here from a different angle. 

Second Update: A lot of people have a hard time reconciling their ideas about the evils of stereotyping with what I've written about cultural mindsets.  Obviously people are complex, and they hold within their minds different sets of ideas and attitudes, very often sets of ideas that conflict with or contradict one another.  But I think it's fair to say that very few people take the time to think things through and resolve these conflicts, and no matter how conflicted an individual might be, one set of attitudes plays a dominant role, even if it only shows itself in moments of stress.  Remember the Michael Richards incident?  What any of us say or do when we are afraid or angry tells us more about our character than when we are just behaving according to social expectations. (Of course the purpose of right wing politics is to legitimize the most primitive of these tribal attitudes.)

In any event these 'mindsets' derive from cultural milieus that have structures and internal logics that comprise ideas and values shared, consciously or unconcsiously, by everyone who participates in those milieus and whose thinking and attitudes have been shaped by them. It is therefore valid to talk about those ideas and values as something shared within groups, whether they are broadly defined cultures or smaller subcultures (e.g., gangs or cults). To reject this as cultural stereotyping is silly.

It is a matter of everyday observation that most people, once you understand their acculturation, will have attitudes and opinions that are easy to predict.  There's no shame in being predictable in this way; it would be ridiculous if our human dignity required that we each start from scratch and come up with our own unique set of principles and values. But we can argue about whether those principles and values are healthful or toxic. And as I've argued in my Zombie Traditionalist posts, traditonalist values that persist after the traditionalist societies that gave rise to them die, are empty forms usually filled with a spirit that has nothing to do with whatever was originally wholesome and lifegiving in them.

I make no judgments about individuals, only about the mindsets that shape their attitudes.  Those attitudes function as a filtering system that allows in only the reality that they are comfortable knowing about. Groups of people very typically have filtering systems that create boxes that serve to support world view that serve their needs unjustly at the expense of the needs of others.  This simply has to be recognized, and its not stereotyping to critique the way those filtering systems create group characteristics and attitudes.

That being said, I think it's possible for people with a toxic mindset to be decent human beings. There were many in the segregated south who accepted Jim Crow without a thought and still lived decent, generous lives. That doesn't change the fact that their attitudes made them complicit in and enablers of a system that was profoundly evil.  I would make the same argument now for anybody who sees himself as a supporter of the Cheney-Bush regime--many are very likely nice, decent people, but they are complicit with and enablers of a mindset that is extraordinarily evil. These people are themselves not evil, but they are asleep to their complicity with it and need to be awakened.  And there are lots of reasons such people resist the alarm, and rather find ways to roll over to resume their slumber.

P.S. The same critique can be applied to the 'mindsets' of underclass culture, Hollywood and the broader entertainment and celebrity culture, and to the pervasive nihilism of the highbrow culture of contemporary arts and letters.  All of these, I would agree with conservatives, represent mindsets symptomatic of the decadence that occurs when the broader culture has lost its metaphysical footing. But here's the thing: people with these mindsets are not in power, and the people who are in power are the worst ones to entrust with our governance until the broader culture regains its footing.

Tuesday Update: If some people think my description of this administration as "extraordinarily evil" is over the top, I'm ok with substituting for the phrase psychopathological.  Here's a commenter from Greenwald's post today about Jack Goldsmith's quoting David Addington as saying,"We're one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court." 

I almost thought that Glenn's excellent post on Podhoretz was a hair over the line in calling him a "psychopath," but after reading this blog in particular for the past six months, I've come to believe that it's an accurate description of not only Podhoretz, but a large contingent of the current Republican political leadership. Name-calling isn't debating, but of course it's difficult to debate someone who is neuro-chemically atypical. When public figures exhibit the combination of a horrifying lack of empathy and a habitual need to lie and manipulate, I think it's appropriate to step back out of the "debate" that they want, and engage in a little bit of behavioral analysis. And under such an analysis people like Addington are clearly psychopaths. It's not productive to debate them, any more than it's productive to debate an unmedicated schizophrenic, and it's terribly dangerous to put them in positions of authority where their potential lethality is pronounced. Goldsmith may be a right-wing authoritarian, but the fact that he had a problem with the deception and manipulation that was being asked of him, and that he had a moral line he would not cross, suggests that he doesn't share the psychopathic tendencies of Addington, Cheney, Bush, and others. Yet Goldsmith was given his walking papers in nine months and Bush and Cheney are still around. It says a lot that a "normal" right-wing authoritarian ideologue just wasn't "enough" for the Bush White House.-- sphodros

See also discussion and references here.