Atrios writes of the neocons:
When the American empire crumbles, future historians will point to the fact that anyone took any of these people seriously as the main reason…
The thing I always wonder is: how did the neocons amass so much influence? Everything they attempt fails and, when you consider how unpersuasive their arguments are, this failure isn’t surprising. How did it come to pass that a naive-sounding theory with no supporting body of empirical evidence became so influential? Yes, part of it is that our media elites are hacks and morons, part of it is that the so-called think tanks are staffed by hacks and morons, but give that there are an infinitude of dumb-sounding, empirically unsupportable theories, why did this particular one become so popular?
I don’t know the answer, but I think there is an answer and that this (from Ezra Klein) has something to do with it:
Speaking of bizarrely counterintuitive articles, and with the ostentatious contrarianism of Super Freakonomics still on everybody’s mind, it’s worth saying that there’s nothing contrarian about being contrarian in elite intellectual circles. Indeed, the really contrarian move would be to try to make your way as a thinker without taking aim at somebody’s sacred cows, or at least making it seem like you’re taking aim at somebody’s sacred cows. There’s a reason the book “Everything You Know Is Wrong” is not titled “Most of The Things You Know Are Right.”
There’s no doubt that some of the appeal of neoconservatism is the contrarian reasoning: you think that by negotiating with countries and bribing them with relatively small amounts of money you can make them do what you want, but if you look more closely….filler…HITLER! It’s powerful because it combines the contrarian impulse to arrive a conclusion no one else would arrive at with with the undeniable pleasure of talking about Nazis. It’s a rare chance to play at being Winston Churchill and Mickey Kaus at the same time.
But there’s got to be something more, because there’s all kinds of theories you could come up with that would be both contrarian and Hitler-related.
Maybe it’s just this: contrarianism is fun, talking about Nazis is fun, watching smart bombs drop is fun, various industries make a lot of money from wars, CNN’s ratings go up when there is a war. So it’s a simple marriage of a fun ideology and corporate interest. Do you think that’s right?
bobbo
The main thing is that there is a lot of money in it. The ideology doesn’t even have to be fun, as long as it puts a veneer of intellectual legitimacy – however thin – onto what the folks with the money want. It’s the same with that magical “invisible hand” of the “free market” that justifies really rich people stealing everyone else’s money. It’s not empirically supported, but it sure sounds pleasing.
Just Some Fuckhead
The idea that we can advance on our own agenda by killing other people is seductive. I mean, even if we aren’t crazy enough to act on these impulses like neocons, we’ve certainly all fantasized about killing a certain so and so to make the world a better place.
Anne Laurie
Dropping Jiant Weapenisry on far-away not-white people gives the Chairborne what passes in their ranks for a stiffy. Getting another opportunity to loot the Treasury gives the Robber Barons a stiffy. Killing infidels gives the Talibangelicals a stiffy. Making the DFHs cry gives all the Repubs a stiffy. So, hey, why not promote another war or three? What are you, anti-fun? Aren’t DFHs always in favor of more stiffys, more often?
asiangrrlMN
I think it’s also because it’s lazy and easy to think, “Hey, if we bomb the hell out of them, everything will be all right.” No nuances, no tedious diplomacy–just more bombs, more better.
And, vicarious machismo. Since most of them have probably never seen war action, this is about as close as they will get.
bobbo
As for the collapse of the American empire, that is inevitable. I just hope Obama knows this and is working for a soft landing. Also.
LD50
Perhaps the missing piece is that Neo-conservatism is a natural outgrowth of the political philosophy that the hardcore rightwingers in the Likud advocate. Thus, if you’re rabidly pro-Israel and don’t particularly care whether Muslims are human beings, neo-conservatism is a natural home. That’s its foot in the door of the marketplace of ideas. Then, it ends up picking up people who may not have been such hardcore Zionists, yet who hate Muslims and who are attracted to the tough-guy posturing, i.e., Republicans.
licensed to kill time
It’s seductive to posit simple solutions to complex problems. Every problem is a nail, and they like wielding the big hammer. Neoconservatism is a belief system and if you just believe hard enough and try try again, it’ll work some day, dammit!
Also, “Koz” is arguing to himself over on the Fox News/Not! thread.
cleek
neoconism was the perfect response (from a marketing perspective) to 9/11. we were attacked by a bunch of fuck-ups from a fucked-up section of the world, and neoconism was a way to stand up and say “Enough! We are going to teach you how to behave like adults!” so, we wiped Iraq clean and attempted to install a model democracy there, telling the rest of the region to “emulate Iraq’s new democracy or we’ll do it for you!”
it’s “i’ll make an example of Bobby and the the rest of the kids will follow or get the lash” approach to foreign policy. it let’s you be a tough guy while you pretend you’re making things better.
Emma
My own personal far-in-left-field theory is that they’re trying to make up for having run away from Vietnam. It started when I realized that many of GWB’s people were all no-shows for the big conflict of their generation. They are trying to make up for their cowardice by doubling-down on their violence.
Besides, it’s a lot more fun to talk about kicking ass than to actually talk to somebody who may, at some level, be better than you are at it.
EconWatcher
This is an anti-intellectual country. It wasn’t “contrarianism” or any other intellectual fashion that gave neocons a foothold. And it certain wasn’t abstract idealism.
Instead, it was their world-weary, “wised up” posture that appealed to a certain segment of people who don’t follow intellectual fashions at all (like W, for instance). Remember, the father of neoconservatism (William Kristol’s dad) said that a neocon is a liberal who has been mugged by reality (or something like that). “We know how the nasty world out there really works, and we’re tough enough to face it and do the dirty work necessary,” is basically what they’re saying. Hence invasions, torture, detentions without trial, etc.
That kind of stance makes some people feel smarter and more macho all at the same time. Think about that knowing smirk you get from your wingnut brother-in-law when you’re arguing politics over Thanksgiving dinner.
Jay
Imperial wars drive up ratings and hence revenue for media companies. They lead to billions of dollars in defense contracts. Wars open up new markets and opportunities for investment. They drive up public debt, resulting in revenue for financial firms in the form of interest, underwriting, and brokorage fees. The neocons help make all that possible.
What’s not to love about a group that encourages wars. Pimping for imperial wars among America’s elite is like being an advocate of orgasms at an orgy. Of course, everyone involved will agree with you. As for the people who aren’t invited to the party (i.e., the rest of the American population), they can go f*&# themselves.
geg6
JSF@2: Yes, it’s true that we all fantasize about killing someone. I know I am doing just that right now as I await news as to whether my John’s daughter just killed her own dog because she insists on driving while simultaneously smoking and yakking on her cell phone.
General Winfield Stuck
Militarists need one thing more than anything else to thrive. That be enemies, real and imagined. For 40 years they had the Red Menace Soviet and could live out their violent fantasies with all sorts of little proxy wars across the globe, and play cold warrior with their Russkie counterparts each having the MAD trump card.
Now it’s AQ and the muslim Jihadi, though they still dabble in Red Baiting in some commie and soshulist holdovers, like in SA and N Korea. But AQ is the villain du jour these days, and a few other nationalist type jihadi’s in the ME.
All of it done with their benefactor money types looking to swoop in behind the international messes they make to scoop up any loose pesos to be had. It’s Imperial Capitalism American style, conquer and collect.
And lately, they’ve been trying to resurrect the Russian Bear to play with, but Obama is spoiling their fun. I have said it before, the American Neocon is the most dangerous motherfucker on the planet, and some day will likely be the end of us all.
licensed to kill time
@EconWatcher:
And remember the obverse? “A liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested.”
Chad N Freude
I think it arises from a perception that perceived threats and affronts require a hostile physical response. This seems to run through human history and has certainly been the classic knee-jerk reaction of the American citizenry. Every US administration is faced with the threat of being seen as weak and cowardly if they don’t behave this way. Past failures of acting on this principle are not seen as invalidating it; it just wasn’t somehow done quite right and would have been successful if only … whatever. Hence, the neocons, pushing the same response over and over, are never discredited. Those who will not learn from history do quite well for themselves while destroying the country whose interests they purport to support.
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: I forgot to mention that American exceptionalism plays into this, too. Also.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
It’s not anything that complicated. Remember how Neocons originated in skepticism of liberal social engineering projects? Their foreign policy is the natural outgrowth of the Randite “I’ve got mine, fuck you” philosophy they have for domestic affairs. Think “it’s a tough world, no one is looking out for you, you have to look out for yourself and do the cutthroat thing to advance yourself”–only applied to the nation instead of an individual. It’s not really based in idealism (although that’s a useful facade) so much as it’s based in an almost pathological belief that absolutely any action is acceptable to “keep America safe”.
Kennedy
Neocons in America are successful for the same reason that religions are. People will believe pretty much anything these days.
Empirical evidence? Track records? Facts? Fuck you. Don’t question my right to make shit up and assert it as the undisputed Truth.
MattF
It’s fun to have an empire, and relieves you of the stress of having to think about those billions of other-than-white types of people.
calipygian
I don’t think Neo-con-ism has anything to do with guilt over not going to Vietnam, nor does it have to do with the anti-intellectualism of the American people. In fact, neo-cons consider themselves to be more intellectual than thou.
If you look back through the mists to the first public stirrings of neo-con-ism, you need to look at it’s origins (admittedly Trotskyite leftism) and its first public stirrings (the Team B contrarian assessment of Soviet military power in 1976).
Neo-con-ism is Trotskyism victorious.
They defeated their Soviet Rightest rivals for power and now attempt to evangelically spread their power through out the world – Global Revolution in all countries simultaneously.
I think except for a few True Believers in the Soviet Union, Communism was never about “redistribution of wealth” and “rule by worker’s soviet”. It was always about power. And this particular Trotskyite faction ditched Communism for capitalism as a tactic.
But the bottom line is – it’s always been about “kto kogo” with these people.
Chad N Freude
@MattF:
That’s true, and they last forever. Or at least until the warranty runs out.
Loneoak
I don’t have a good countertheory, but I am rarely persuaded by the idea that pro-war actors like neocons are in it for the money. I think it’s a fools errand to disentangle whether Cheney wanted to bomb everyone because it would make Halliburton/KBR/his stock portfolio very wealthy or if he was invested in Halliburton/KBR because his worldview led him to believe Muslim killing was a growth industry. I think they’re a bunch of venal fuckers, but their venality is not single-causal. It’s a multiply determined phenomenon.
Furthermore, how much money did Krauthamer make from the Iraq War? How much money would he make from bombing N. Korea? I think most of the influential neocon punditry aren’t that rich, at least not in the way that turns millions into billions with a war. Compared to most of us, they’re rolling in it, but it’s not as if the Kristols are the Rockefellers of the day.
I’ll put it this way: I think investing in green energy is a money making proposition and I also ideologically believe it is a great idea. If I had lots of spare money, I would invest it in green energy endeavors. If I became Prez I would likewise sink some serious public funds into green energy. Anyone could then point to me and say I did it to get rich, but that wouldn’t be the full story.
eco2geek
I don’t know if your theory is right, but I think American politicians like to drop bombs on people far, far away who caused what they perceive as intractable foreign policy problems, and a part of the American electorate likes to watch.
With bombs, you don’t get messy things like American casualties or POWs.
In any case, it’s pretty sick and twisted.
(I don’t think it’s limited to neocons. Witness, for example, Clinton’s bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant in the late 1990s because of its alleged production of chemical weapons.)
Chad N Freude
I think it does, in a through-the-looking-glass way. “These people are really smart and they validate my need to lash back. Saves me the trouble of actually thinking things through myself.”
General Winfield Stuck
I think we can safely add the Obama Administration to this list, along with his liberal cadres at BJ and elsewhere as soshulist holdovers — at least in the wingnut lizard brain cortex/
demkat620
Can anyone of the neocons or the chairborne explain what we’ve gotten out of the War in Iraq that benefits this nation?
Seriously, six years later they still can’t answer why we are there.
angler
Hmm, in one sentence on the neocons, lets try . . . There’s money in telling rich people what they want to hear.
calipygian
The Kristal neo-con faction is the “intellectual vanguard of the proletariat”, to put it in terms Bill Kristal’s father would have understood.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Morever, and this gets overlooked constantly, the neocons looked at the highly tuned and funded military we’d developed over the previous 20 years and said “shame to be wasting this on nuthin'”. Of course said military was developed to counter threats that were no longer threatening, ie. the former Soviet Union, but no matter. We had all these great, geewhiz toys, wonderfully trained and motivated troops and an officer corps inculcated with good lessons of military history.
So, the neocons decided to piss all that away fighting wars not needed, strategically fucking up at *every* turn and putting officers into operational and tactical situations that they’d been trained to see as “we shouldn’t be here”.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
The other aspect to this is that the neocons came into sustained power only after the fall of the Soviet Union. We couldn’t afford to have lunatics and assclowns running the show for too long, or allow them to screw the pooch on a multi-generational scale, so long as there was an actual honest to goodness big bad competing empire out there looking to drink our milkshake. While the Soviets were still around the GOP modus operandi was to use the people who later became neocons for electoral purposes, to scare the rubes, but when it came to governing the James Bakers and Brent Scowcrofts and Colin Powells were put in charge of actually running the show.
After 1991 things changed. No more big bad threats to worry about, so we could act as stupid as we pleased, and it didn’t take long for us to descend to that level. After all, God looks out for drunks, stray dogs, and the United States of America. What could possibly go wrong?
licensed to kill time
@LD50:
You capped off that Koz squirt nicely on the Fox News/Not! thread. There are some seriously funny people on this site. (Is seriously funny an oxymoron?)
Chad N Freude
@Loneoak: I don’t have a good countertheory, but I am rarely persuaded by the idea that pro-war actors like neocons are in it for the money.They’re not, at least in the sense of making vast fortunes. They make a very comfortable living and have much ego satisfaction. That said, their really is a military-industrial complex, the industrial part of which has a huge financial interest in warmaking and defense, and the military part of which rotates into the industrial part upon retirement from the military to make a lot of money.
calipygian
Anybody who wants to understand contrarianism has to bone up on the 1976 Team B assessment of Soviet military capability.
I recently attended a talk by a prominent Soviet arms control researcher who produced evidence from the Soviet archives that absolutely devastated the conclusions of Team B.
Paul Wolfowitz was right there on Team B.
Anybody heard from that fucker lately?
General Winfield Stuck
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Not by me. If you really wanted to distill their thinking down past ideology and fun in wanting war, this would be it.
or,
You have a big gun, much bigger than anyone else. Who says you can’t use it to get what you want? Of course, most Americans won’t buy this logic, so they have to hope for something like 9-11 and a George W. Bush to be presnit to get away with it, at least in a big way like invading an oil rich ME country that hadn’t attacked us.
Chad N Freude
@calipygian:
He’s still around.
TenguPhule
I think they’re just evil fucking bastards overdue for a bullet to the back of the head.
But that’s just me.
General Winfield Stuck
There is more than one actor in this blood soaked play. People like Kristol, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the Weekly Standard types are not in it for the money, they are true believers. But behind the scenes are the money people, and then there’s Dick Cheney types who wear both hats I believe.
Demo Woman
@calipygian: The article was well sourced. Thanks for the link. The second Bush put all his faith into members or believers of Team B.
aimai
There’s no such thing as “contrarianism”—if there were, and it were as popular as rightist masturbatory fantasies—we’d see tons of little old ladies talking about their pet peeves on nightly TV. And that guy who mumbles to himself and walks around with a dead cat in his knapsack. And oh yeah, we’d see some actual leftists/communists/something that will put me in moderation, some atheists and serious agnostics, on TV talking about all their shit and how the world looks to them. But we never see those people. Because “contrarianism” doesn’t mean “contrary to received wisdom”—it means assholish behavior from upper class twits defending their privilege as they please, when they please, on the public airwaves.
It is anything but “contrary to received wisdom” when a noted chauvenist declaims the horrors of women’s liberation. Or when a rich man explains to you that he should not be taxed. Or when angry, aggressive, chickenhawks tell us to bomb a helpless civilian population in order to steal their oil. Its not contrary anything but, perhaps, morality, civility, and rationality. These things are not, in fact, in common usage so they can’t be common or received wisdom.
aimai
Chad N Freude
@General Winfield Stuck: See my comment @Chad N Freude. And ignore the typo I couldn’t fix because the Edit button has deserted us.
Loneoak
@Chad N Freude:
Of course there’s an obscene military industrial complex which benefits greatly from all wars, but especially from a war like OIF where we contract out half of the work. My point was that neocons do not fit neatly within the money-making aspect of the whole enterprise.
If the neocons don’t get outrageously rich from war, and those that do get outrageously rich from war don’t openly lobby for it like the neocons, it is rather hard to identify why so much influence and power flowed to the neocons. I mean, does Raytheon, Northrop-Grumman, Boeing, Shell, BP, etc., really have much influence over the WaPo editorial page or the Chairborne? It’s true that WaPo and the Chairborne push a pseudo-common sense that is economically great for the military industrial complex but I just don’t think it’s a very tight circle.
I also don’t put a lot of stock in diagnoses of mass psychological delusions, like ‘Americans are all anti-intellectual’ or ‘We just wanted to kick some ass so neoconism made sense temporarily.’ Even if true, those are just too vague to explain the fundamentally bizarre zeitgeist leading up to OIF. Basically, I think it’s possible that we could replicate every condition on the ground of 2001-2003 and not end up in Iraq.
General Winfield Stuck
@Chad N Freude:
Yes, those are the biggest money interests behind the neocon true believing Puke Funnels.
the opportunity for using that term has made my day, Thank you.
Chad N Freude
On a whim, I looked up the precise meaning of “contrarian” and was somewhat surprised. It seems to be losing its specificity.
latts
@EconWatcher:
This. We’re not only an anti-intellectual country, we’re also a young and selfish country, full of professed optimism and a desperate need for validation. The neocons have melded the permanent anxieties of lower-tier academics with the marketing genius of the right and the sociopathic tendencies of the military-industrial complex to create a narrative that speaks to and rationalizes an adolescent need for sheer dominance. We’re more a country of amateur performers than anything else, if you think about it (Octomom, Munchausen’s, endless reality shows, Balloon Boy, etc.), and the neocons– none of whom I’d bet money on if dropped onto a fourth-grade playground at recess, btw, even as full-grown adults– have set up a permanent Show of National Strength™.
geg6
OT but for those of us who didn’t see Frontline’s “The Warning,” OnDemand has it. I am watching it. Ayn Rand, if there is a hell, is burning. As will her acolytes for what they’ve done in her name.
Chad N Freude
@latts:
Somewhat OT, but see Frank Rich’s column today.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
To add some irony to this, do it like the Chinese do, execute the offender with said bullet to the back of the head and charge the family of the executed for the cost of the bullet.
calipygian
OT:
Octomom is pregnant.
Paraphrasing H.L. Menkin, America deserves what it gets and it deserves to get it good and hard.
Rick
Those things + Zionism
Chad N Freude
@geg6: It’s also on the Frontline website, a great resource for those of us who are not slaves to our TV providers (and don’t always set up our TiVos.).
Chad N Freude
@calipygian:
Fixed by Pedants, Inc.(tm)
General Winfield Stuck
@latts:
Plus they have a ready made base of the SE third of the country. Folks who don’t care much for the who and what for, when it comes to kicking someones swarthy ass.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Have they? The American drive for empire is completely bipartisan and over 150 years old. The neocons are merely the most extreme recent practitioners of it. They just had an eight year run because America elected a President who had neither the brains nor the moral fortitude to stand up to them. After Obama’s eight years are up it will have been 16 out of 24 years in the hands of foreign policy pragmatists, and the Empire will still be worldwide and impossibly expensive.
ericblair
@aimai: There’s no such thing as “contrarianism”—if there were, and it were as popular as rightist masturbatory fantasies—we’d see tons of little old ladies talking about their pet peeves on nightly TV.
Or to put in another way, the contrarianism that gets on the nooze is all reactionary contrarianism, hand-picked to “prove” that all this newfangled caring about brown people, non-penised people, and that environment thing is just a bunch of patchouli-soaked hooey and we can all get back to pissing on humanity and taking their money.
El Cruzado
I think part of it is that, channeling Colbert, what they preach is completely wrong, but to too many it feels completely right.
chrome agnomen
i opined many years ago that the right had a wonderful idea in using as their base platform, the notion that nearly everybody hated something or someone, and that the key lay in uniting them under the common banner of, ‘don’t you hate something? so do we. come join us.’
that’s a powerful incentive, hard to countermand until we reach the point where they have had their way for a considerable length of time and have royally screwed things up, mainly by having no concept of proper governance.
that is the situation today. that so many still fly that flag only bespeaks the core contrarianism and logic free thought processing that has taken root in the 20% base. the idiot factor.
Anne Laurie
Well, Michael Ledeen’s daughter got to “lose” NINE BILLION DOLLARS of our money while supervising the “Reconstruction”, and I doubt that the Iraqis managed to siphon all of those shrink-wrapped bricks of U.S. currency. Perlstein and Wolfowitz made a few million out of their Trireme Investment scam before it was exposed, and we all know about Cheney’s Halliburton stock. Not to mention Erik Prince of Blackwater infame spreading the fiscal love generously to all the neocon political campaigns & think tanks. So, while the average American citizen didn’t do so good from Operation Objectivist Crusade, the narrow circle of “people who matter” to neocons made out very, very well!
Anne Laurie
@TenguPhule:
No, not just you. I am intrigued by your ideas… !
Napoleon
Doug, to answer your question call into the Diane Rheem show next time she has someone like Max Boot on and ask her.
matoko_chan
Dude……they are EVANGELICALS.
Evangelicals of judeo-xian democracy….they are proselytizing our system to the rest of the world….with force of arms if need be.
And they are Meddlers.
Did you see Serenity?
That is exactly what happened in Iraq.
The Meddlers ripped up the culture and the social structure to bring the “enlightenment of judeo-xian democracy”.
And the Reavers came through the tears.
General Winfield Stuck
@matoko_chan:
Neocon don’t want to mess with River Tam.
matoko_chan
River doesn’t need to mess with the Meddler-neocons.
They build their own Reavers.
How about that Surge, eh?
General Winfield Stuck
@matoko_chan:
That smell, that neocon smell, I love that smell in the morning, smells like……stooopid.
Jorge
Don’t neocons retroactively give credit to Reagan having a neocon outlook for ending the cold war? Reagan called them the evil empire, demanded they take down the wall, and then outspent them on nukes and defense and scared the USSR into crumbling.
Nutella
For the generation of neocons that is soon to die out (the Rumsfield/Cheney generation) VietNam is a large part of their motivation. The humiliation of the US being driven out of a crummy little country by little brown guerilla fighters over there and DFHs over here still offends them today. They want to prove that it was wrong of us to leave VietNam as we did by successfully invading other Asian countries.
PeakVT
how did the neocons amass so much influence?
1) Squeaky wheel gets the oil. I don’t really give a hoot about anything east of the Bosporus, but clearly they do. 2) Media loves hippie punchers. 3) War brings riches to the defense industry. 4) They formed an unholy alliance with the religious right. 5) A moronic, easily-manipulated president was elected.
Fulcanelli
If you want to end Neo Con armchair war fantasies, reinstate the draft, period. No exemptions, no deferments, not no way, not no how, Mr. Cheney. If you’ve got no skin in the game, have a piping hot cup of STFU, or saddle up yourself. Pussies.
Shade Tail
DougJ:
That’s probably a big part of it for the upper 1% who run the show, but it doesn’t explain all the rabid teabaggers at the bottom of the heap.
In their case, I think it is a case of base greed combined with ego stroking. “Hey, America is #1!! And taxes are unfair!!” In other words, I’m part of something great and I don’t have to contribute to it.
So these rubes, who have enthusiastically named themselves after a gay sex act, have been conned into believing that they are on top of the world, and that it is something they are owed rather than something they have to earn.
matoko_chan
PeakVT………the neocons ARE the religious right.
They are WECs….White Evangelical Christians.
Big White Christian Bwana….just like the brits, the spanish, the rest of the western-fucktards that “civilized” the little brown people under the British Raj and cut up SA and MENA into failstates + Israel, that have gifted Africa with triple digit population growth through a halfcentury of feel-good infant mortality reduction programs without a clue about birthcontrol education.
And the best part?
They honestly believe “Jesus” wants them to spread the love this way and that they are “helping” people……tell that to hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, Afghanis, and Iranians……tell that to the 5000 dead american soldiers that the Torture President got whacked in Iraq.
Fuckin’ proselytizers.
calipygian
Problem is that some of them actually DID put skin in the game. Two that come to mind are spawn of Michael Ledeen and Bill Kristal.
Guess the chickenhawk mockery actually did get under their skin a bit.
I still think it would take about 45 minutes of boot camp until Doughy Pantload was giving blow jobs to the drill instructors to get out of PT.
matoko_chan
Religion is not evil.
Evangelism is.
The idea that their ideology is the only correct ideology, and that it is their right…..no…..their duty to impose it on everyone else.
That was the arrogant pig-ignorant stupidity that embroiled us in Iraq, and that continues to cause us to throw more young american bodies into the Graveyard of Empires.
joe from Lowell
Doug J,
You have to keep in mind that neoconservatism’s ascent only lasted five or so years, from 9/11 through the 2006 elections.
During that time, a lot of people went all in on the idea that George W. Jesus was going to lead us to utopia, and one’s opinion of invading Iraq determined whether one was fit for decent, human company.
Once the WMD scam fell apart, these numbskulls (and, oh yeah, our military) were already deeply committed, so coming up with a plausible-sounding explanation for why it was still a good idea to invade Iraq become very important.
Chuck Butcher
I’m suspicious of simple answers, but in this case I see some over thinking of the issue.
I can kick your ass
I don’t like you
I am now kicking your ass
So, I am a bad ass and things will be done my way.
They have used a lot of long sentences full of imaginative adjectives and adverbs to say that and to sell it to those who actually have something to lose. The ones with something to gain love it.
Media loves them some
The M-I loves them some
Fear mongering Pols loves them some
Americans needing some thing to hate loves them some
Pussies wanting to play badass loves them some
It isn’t that just about all the scenarios and psycho-analytical stuff above is wrong – it is just after the fact and pretty complicated.
tc125231
@bobbo:
Bingo! –’nuff said.
kwAwk
I think that theories of contrarianism and all else to explain the rise of the Neocons, as we know that philosophy, is a bit of bupkis.
The power amassed by the Neocons in the Bush years was an accident of history. The American people didn’t elect Bush, and certainly didn’t elect him to do what he did. He was supposed to be the ‘tax cut’ President not the ‘war’ President.
It wasn’t until 9/11 and that event making them look like fools did they go all in the other way. It was the fear and uncertainty of the American people in the year or two after 9/11, masterfully played upon by the right that enabled Bush to engage on his grand folly in Iraq which led to Afghanistan becoming a folly.
Weak democratic party combined with fear enabled the neocons. Nothing more, nothing less.
Mike G
There is a lot of overlap between the groups, but —
The money men get lots of lucrative war spending;
Big media gets fatter ratings;
The DC opportunist propagandists get their careers boosted behind the scenes by sucking up to the money men;
The religious-imperialists get to see non-Xtian, non-Jews killed;
The chickenhawks get a boner from the vicarious thrill of watching Murkan military action on TV;
Bullies and cowards across America grab their foam fingers and pump their fists watching scary brown people get killed.
Cerberus
Others have already pointed it out, but yeah, it’s toxic masculinity.
Basically, there’s this “idea” of masculinity floating in our culture that gets a certain type of man very anxious about how they personally measure up. This “idea” predicates how the only worthwhile measure of a man who is worth anything is their propensity towards violence and how they dominate those weaker than them. Those who believe that’s what makes a man, get really anxious that they aren’t personally beating up anyone who crosses their path like some sociopathic bully, so they start projecting it out and inventing ideologies where they can relieve this anxiety either fighting nonexistant threats (see the wingnuts battling the conspiracies of radical Obama socialism) or having someone else act out their desires in wargasmic glory in their name (see war in general).
It’s the same reason war is popular in America as a matter of course. We have not been genuinely invaded by a foreign power since the War of 1812 and we’re unlikely to ever be, so no matter how much we thrash another country, we’re unlikely to be personally threatened by engaging in it if you don’t join the actual army. Thus the neocons get to relieve their anxious need to destroy to be big dogs in their toxic idea of masculinity without genuinely risking their personhood (their reluctance to do so the main reason they were anxious in the first place) so yay.
The reason this “caught on” was because on one hand, 9/11 made a lot of men in this country feel impotent with rage which brought a lot of those anxious desires to “prove oneself” to the forefront of a lot of otherwise normal non-anxious people and our pundit media is nearly 100% filled with the type of anxious masculinity embodiers who feel their “creative” high-paying jobs isn’t as “real” as honest physical labor and thus they aren’t as “real” of men.
So Neocons fed on that and the need to punish a random enemy to get their bad idea to the front of the line.
In general, there’s no bad idea you can make to the media and a certain segment of the population if you present it as a solution to the anxiety about toxic masculinity. Which is why few media figures bother to note that the anti-choice activists aren’t brave fighters against emasculating feminists, but rather violent misogynist terrorists often blaming women for unfortunate divorces in their pasts.
Cerberus
Others have already pointed it out, but yeah, it’s toxic masculinity.
Basically, there’s this “idea” of masculinity floating in our culture that gets a certain type of man very anxious about how they personally measure up. This “idea” predicates how the only worthwhile measure of a man who is worth anything is their propensity towards violence and how they dominate those weaker than them. Those who believe that’s what makes a man, get really anxious that they aren’t personally beating up anyone who crosses their path like some sociopathic bully, so they start projecting it out and inventing ideologies where they can relieve this anxiety either fighting nonexistant threats (see the wingnuts battling the conspiracies of radical Obama sociali.sm) or having someone else act out their desires in wargasmic glory in their name (see war in general).
It’s the same reason war is popular in America as a matter of course. We have not been genuinely invaded by a foreign power since the War of 1812 and we’re unlikely to ever be, so no matter how much we thrash another country, we’re unlikely to be personally threatened by engaging in it if you don’t join the actual army. Thus the neocons get to relieve their anxious need to destroy to be big dogs in their toxic idea of masculinity without genuinely risking their personhood (their reluctance to do so the main reason they were anxious in the first place) so yay.
The reason this “caught on” was because on one hand, 9/11 made a lot of men in this country feel impotent with rage which brought a lot of those anxious desires to “prove oneself” to the forefront of a lot of otherwise normal non-anxious people and our pundit media is nearly 100% filled with the type of anxious masculinity embodiers who feel their “creative” high-paying jobs isn’t as “real” as honest physical labor and thus they aren’t as “real” of men.
So Neocons fed on that and the need to punish a random enemy to get their bad idea to the front of the line.
In general, there’s no bad idea you can make to the media and a certain segment of the population if you present it as a solution to the anxiety about toxic masculinity. Which is why few media figures bother to note that the anti-choice activists aren’t brave fighters against emasculating feminists, but rather violent misogynist terrorists often blaming women for unfortunate divorces in their pasts.
Cerberus
First comment tripped the cia.lis filter.
eyelessgame
> But there’s got to be something more
9/11 brain-damaged the nation into wanting strongmen in charge who would kill a lot of dark people. I think that’s the overriding way a fringe nutbar philosophy wound up becoming mainstream.
Jim Pharo
I can’t read the whole thread, so I’ll cut to the chase: the reason why these clowns have power is they are masters of the experts/insider move.
Our society values experts very highly, and also value “inside” information (think of it as a kind of “savviness”). That’s why doctors are revered for non-medical questions, it’s why lawyers think their clients are interested in their views on a wide variety of topics only tangentially related to the law.
And it’s why pundits who hint, intimate, and wink that they have access to superior information get air. If a pundit seems to have “sources in the intelligence community,” and can say things like, “I’ve seen some of the intelligence and it would burn your hair off,” then she/he is a genuine insider, possessed of information and thinking that is not available to mere mortals.
Democrats are congenitally bad at this b/t/w.
Chuck Butcher
When something incredibly stupid happens in politics I have begun to think that generally there is a very simple explanation that frequently has a lot of complex associations. My point was that the driver is faux manliness/studliness and that most of what I’ve seen offered are associations of that driver.
Oh shit, I just looked at the weather report from home, I’m leaving 80s FL and sun for 40s rain in Baker City. The AC is set at 70 and it just fired up. ooooock
Batocchio
I’ve written a few posts on this subject, but the neocons recruited Palin back during the presidential campaign – they viewed her as another empty vessel they could pour their crazy into. Meanwhile, the neocons themselves are successful because a) our punditocracy is not a meritocracy, and b) they tell people in power what they want to hear. They’ve also convinced themselves that bombing brown people makes them courageous, smart, and virile. There are other reasons too, but I think those are the major ones.
CalD
People are always suckers for:
1. Simple answers to complex questions.
2. Any explanation for their problems that involves them being some someone else’s fault.
3. The notion that everything they need to know in life, they learned in kindergarten.
Belief in these things respects no ideological, cultural or socioeconomic boundaries. When someone is selling there’s never a shortage of buyers.
Fifi
May I venture an hypothesis?
Money?
Who does it benefit? Who’s paying the bills? There you have you answer.
none
It’s the conservative impulse. Philip Agre’s very long essay is required reading for anyone trying to understand it.
What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?
cat48
Some of the military blogs I have read say that there is a long war mafia because of all the defense contracts. Frank Gaffney (Birther & other Obama conspiracies per wiki) who worked at defense for a while is supposed to be able to get the contracts and knows which stock to invest in for the particular war.
The US military wants to retain their Nato partners so they can keep the coalition ready to go if needed. McChrystal mysteriously appeared at the Europe Nato meeting that Gates was at. He gave them briefings on his plans and they were quite excited to escalate. Of course, Defence Ministers do not make the decison. The leaders of the countries do– so the US won’t get many soldiers from Nato. Brown sent 500 troops last wk. This one is the most peculiar reason to me but I have seen it repeated often on Mil Blogs. We can’t lose Nato coalition? maybe they withdraw? My husband is away so can’t ask.
The Pentagon has turned into the great military industrial complex that Ike warned about. It appears they look for wars. Between McChrystal’s public campaign for troops and the Pentagon leaking info like his report and Congressional hawks of both parties who do Sun shows. Feinstein openly berated him last Sun. They all work together. ‘Some say’ they are attempting to run a “soft coup” on Obama this way to put him in a box so he has to send the troops the Gen req. So far, it hasn’t worked. Bush did whatever they asked. Evidently, Obama, is acting like the civilian CIC which is supposed to make military decision and they are ticked. This has been going on for 5 wks now and he just continues to ignore the leaks. Pen and Sword.com is rooting for Obama. “Hang in there, Barry!” Retired Navy Commander who voted for him. Good blog.
I’m rooting for him too. Sorry about the long post. Can’t sleep
matoko_chan
This country was founded as a white protestant nation.
This country was built on the backs of black slaves and the land of red indians. America freed her own slaves and gave reparations to amerindians and then proceded to rape the Third World.
Its the unholy marriage of capitalism and evangelicalism…..not only are we going to rape you and steal all your stuff, but we are doing it for your own good.
tofubo
how did the neocons amass so much influence
same answer as always, it’s the result of bought-and-sold-motherfuckerism
The Raven
“It is amazing how much recent history can be explained as an expression of masculinity doubt.”–The Raven’s alter ego.
But, also, we want the appearance of creativity, without the actuality. The reality of having new ideas is that it is hard to work them out, hard to get them right, and above all lonely. These people want the cred, but not the work.
Krawk!
Rick Taylor
It has within it the opportunity to feel good about ourselves. We’re spreading democracy to a grateful world. They really did think we’d be welcomed with flowers.
Savage Henry
Think of how you would create a popular action movie. Create a generalized, steriotyped, cartoonish enemy, <>, and the bombs start falling. It all works out because everyone on the enemy’s side is pure evil, nobody of any importance on the “good guys” side gets hurt (although there a lot of faceless guys in uniform get blown up), and there are lots of explosions! And in the end, the good guys win!
This is how neoconservatism is constructed. All you have to do is distort the “enemy” into a hostile figure of pure evil and the bombs start falling. There is lots of footage of shit blowing up. Nobody is allowed to show any footage of the bodies coming home so you can make the point that nobody got hurt. And they guarantee the win.
People flock to action movies, and they make hundreds of millions of dollars. Neoconservatism became popular because it reminds people of action movies. Everything is black and white. There are no difficult moral decisions. Nobody gets hurt. Shit blows up! The good guys always win!
matoko_chan
Rick Taylor, like I said….Its the unholy marriage of capitalism and evangelicalism (of judeo-xian democracy)…..not only are we going to rape you and steal all your stuff, but we are doing it for your own good.
mclaren
Any ideology, no matter how insane, becomes widely accepted if it fits in with the reigning prejudices and dominant self-delusions of the culture.
Lamarck’s view of evolution was crazy and systematically contradicted the observed evidence…but it fit in perfectly with the mindset of an 18th century French society built on inherited privilege. Everyone around Lamarck got ahead by being born a noble, therefore that was how all living organisms must do it.
America is a brutal and sadistic culture that despises joy and pleasure and adores pain and suffering. What could fit in more perfectly with the sick twisted American culture than a neocon ideology that exalts war, more war, and yet more war, war forever, war to the ends of the earth, war now and forever, war in the morning, war at noon, war in the evening, winter war, summer war, war in the ari, war in the sea, war on land, war for conservatives goals, war for liberal goals, war and war and war and war and war as the answer to everything?
bishophicks
It’s simple and easy, as opposed to reality which is complicated and difficult.
Economic problems? Cut taxes and cut government programs that help people.
International problems? Threaten to bomb and/or bomb somebody.
Social problems? Blame somebody – preferably brown skinned.
The simple truth is that much of their philosophy involves ignoring reality and dealing with any issue in a way that involves doing nothing or next to nothing. Drugs? Just say no. Abortion? Not allowed under any circumstances. Financial markets? Food and drug safety? Access to healthcare / health insurance? Do nothing and the magic of the free market will deliver the best solution.
The one exception to their “do nothing” approach is when it comes to the use of force in any situation. As soon as that comes up, caution is thrown to the winds and no amount of money is too much to spend, whether it’s blowing up buildings and people in lands far away or providing military hardware and training to police officers.
In a nutshell, they are in favor of anything that gives the government power to oppress, subjugate and attack people and they are against anything that gives government the authority to help, heal, or otherwise care for people.
de stijl
Came here late to the party and I don’t know if this was mentioned up-thread, but the short answer is Right Wing Authoritarianism
Full source (Lengthy, but an full-bore / flat-out epiphany. Read it if you don’t want to be a garden slug oblivious to the nature of the world.)
Slaney Black
Started out with CIA funding for Encounter, then they figured out there’s serious CA$$$H to be made from the private sector by advocating regressive social policy and obscene levels of defense spending.