One of you wrote something a while ago that I’ve repeated a dozen times in conversation. It was about how police decide who will serve on SWAT teams and the gist was that they ask “who wants to be on a SWAT team” and if you put your hand up that means they will never let you be a on a SWAT team ever. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s a very smart idea, at least to me.
I thought of this when I was reading Bobo’s piece about Osama bin Laden. It’s a predictable profile, Osama has a flaccid handshake yet he inspires hard men, etc. When I read the last two paragraphs, I understood where Bobo and the other neocons are coming from. I can’t promise you that my Bobo obsession is over now, but whereas once I was blind, now I see.
In short, Osama Bin Laden seemed to live in an ethereal, postmodern world of symbols and signifiers and also a cruel murderous world of rage and humiliation. Even the most brilliant intelligence analyst could not anticipate such an odd premodern and postglobalized creature, or could imagine that such a creature would gain such power.
I just wish there were a democratic Bin Laden, that amid all the Arab hunger for dignity and freedom there was another inexplicable person with the ability to frame narratives and propel action — for good, not evil.
I heard this kind of thing from my friends on the left when I was a local blogger a few years ago, that if liberals could believe with the same intensity that conservatives do, we could have our own Fox News, write our own Lee Greenwood songs, and convert some chunk of the Applebee’s-going masses to our cause by sheer force of conviction. It’s seductive, the idea that all one needs to advance the greater good is a few tough-but-tender true believers whose flaccid handshakes go straight to your heart (like a cannonball).
Like most alluring ideas, it is bullshit. Galt’s Gulch and forty-six virgins in heaven motivate zealots precisely because they are part of larger, impractical, unworkable fantasies. A “democratic Osama bin Laden” is an oxymoron, because accepting democracy means accepting compromise, not flying a plane into a building — or refusing to raise raise the debt ceiling — to further some abstract cause.
The Raven
You hominids live in the time that Yeats foresaw, when “The best lack all conviction / While the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
The people who Brooks are looking for–they have existed, they will exist, but they are not here now.
mrami
Doug, where does Gandhi fit in your worldview?
Joeyess
“I don’t believe that just because ideas are tenacious, it means that they’re worthy.”
-Tim Minchin
srv
Hey, Gandhi, MLK, Malcom and Chavez.
The problem Doug, is that people like you aren’t willing to, well, you know, die for a cause.
Plenty of us will march behind you, as long as you go on ahead.
Doug Harlan J
@mrami:
He didn’t sit around in a cave and inspire people through flaccid handshakes, he engaged in a world of imperfect compromises. The fact that he did so fearlessly doesn’t change the fact that his methods were pragmatic. What could be less like suicide bombing than non-violent resistance? What could be less like Galt’s Gulch than an independent India?
Doug Harlan J
@srv:
You’ll have to explain to me how organizing farm workers into groups that hammered out collective bargaining agreements is like flying planes into buildings. I don’t see it.
soonergrunt
It’s a dumb idea. It’s also bullshit.
How can you get people to undertake all the pain, exhaustion, extra exertion, and everything else that comes with elite service, unless they truly want to be there?
Special Forces Soldiers do not get higher pay than other Soldiers of the same rank on jump status. Do you think for one minute that you can get someone who isn’t absolutely motivated to train on their own for months to pass the Special Forces PT test, which only gets one’s foot in the door, or get through the SFAS course that weeds out like 90% of the candidates? Why would you think it’s any different for any big-city SWAT team? Is the pay differential in city police that big that they can force people into even more dangerous duty that requires them to excel at specialized training?
People who join these types of organizations do so because they want to be among the elite of their chosen profession. You can’t take someone who doesn’t want to be there and make them into an elite member of their respective organization.
Loneoak
You realize that you are comparing people willing to die for a cause to people willing to kill for a cause, no?
And we can hardly say that Ghandi, MLK, and Chavez worked for an abstract cause. They worked for material justice and basic freedoms, things that are plausible and necessary. Sometimes they used fancy words to get our spirits to the right place, but eating at a lunch counter or going to school without getting your head bashed in is hardly abstract.
freelancer
Don Draper now writes for BJ, ladies and gents.
Doug, this is one of your headier posts, and it has a pithy, understated brilliance, while completely undermining the players involved in creating political narratives.
Just brilliant. Yet, somehow, I feel crestfallen.
srv
@Doug Harlan J: Hey, you and a dozen other unionists and teachers go out and self-immolate at every Republican primary, and I’ll bet you’ll see some change.
Loneoak
@Doug Harlan J:
A-fucking-men on that one.
General Stuck
Bin Laden was a religion fanatic who sought the same thing control freaks always seek, to force others to do bend to their will. In his case, that was convert to Islam or die. All the excuses for causation of his murderous tactics, are just that, excuses. He is the flip side of the same coin the neo cons occupy. With a blend of their own control freakishness, mixed in with some religious and mostly economic hegemony. Their method, or excuse, was democracy by force of arms for everyone.
Democracy, at it’s core is the antithesis of both of these world views. It is exactly not about control or forced compliance, and is naturally repellent to hegemony but is designed chaos running on the good faith fuel of choice. And tolerance. Neither the neo cons nor Bin Laden are, or were on board for that. They are what democracy is meant to replace.
Sly
@mrami:
Gandhi wasn’t a leftist Bin Laden for the simple reason that he insisted on forging compromises with every indigenous group in South Asia that had a stake in seeing the British leave. Marxists, capitalists, nationalists (whether ethnic or religious), you name it. From Gandhi’s perspective, every question apart from the necessity of independence had to be resolved after independence was achieved, and thus any animosity between the constituent parts of the independence movement needed to be self-suppressed. A lot of people didn’t like this.
Corner Stone
Uhhh…no. This isn’t even remotely close.
bago
Soonergrunt: They had better be able to see a suckerpunch like that from a mile away.
LosGatosCA
You must have missed this guy in explaining the neo-cons, the paleo-cons, the Theo-cons, and their mission statement:
” “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
Extremism can be exported from the end of a gun barrel.
Loneoak
@General Stuck:
Sunni Islam, to be precise. He killed a lot more Shi’ites than Christians/Jews/others.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
fear, its what is at the base of all of the conservative conviction. the basic idea, that even though it is a very old idea, that the world is slowly turning to shit.
when you are fighting existentially, you fight hard.
if your belief, and your actions point toward making things better, solving problems, you accept not being fully understood, or accepted, because even if you believe you are right, as much as “they” do, you accept that it may take time. that you can prepare people to accept what you are saying, eventually.
i don’t think its any accident that conservatism went crazy, really batshit crazy, when the world started shrinking, and even what we could do in space, or air travel, or in finding new and better ways to blowed shit up or any other frontier, became limited.
the existential fight was then limited to trying to keep from being caught from behind.
JGabriel
Bobo:
Doesn’t this go back to McLuhan? If a Bin Laden like figure is the medium, then the message is always going to be terror and authoritarianism. There is no good version of an evil process.
In one of Rand’s novels, Anthem or We The Living, there’s a passage where some sort of brutal oppressor says to the Randian heroine something like, “Admit it. You may hate our methods, but you like what we stand for.”
And our Randian heroine replies, as Randian heroines do, “No I like your methods, I hate what you stand for.”
Rand, Brooks, modern conservatives & libertarians in general, all propagandize — and seem committed to — the belief that oppressive means can produce good outcomes, even while they call for “smaller” government.
.
srv
@Sly:
Try bringing that one up in Anne Laurie’s next thread.
Doug Harlan J
@soonergrunt:
Are SWAT teams elite? I see what you’re getting at, but I’m not sure I buy the comparison with special forces.
Fred
Just what does someone like Bobo, born with a silver spoon up his ass, making a living crisizing people he’s never met. All while continuing to live his endless life of priveledge. What exactly does he know about ANY of this shit going on the in the world that he watches from his computer screen. What does he know? Precisely NOTHING, ZIP, ZILCH! HE HAS NO CLUE!
Doug Harlan J
@freelancer:
Thank you!
mrami
@Doug Harlan J: Agreed, but I was thinking of the contrast between this: “…if liberals could believe with the same intensity that conservatives do, we could have our own Fox News, write our own Lee Greenwood songs, and convert some chunk of the Applebee’s-going masses to our cause by sheer force of conviction” with this: “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history”
And this: “A “democratic Osama bin Laden” is an oxymoron, because accepting democracy means accepting compromise, not flying a plane into a building—or refusing to raise raise the debt ceiling—to further some abstract cause.” with this: “All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.” I guess I was wanting you to flesh out your views, since I’m not really a broad strokes kinda guy.
AAA Bonds
Ah yes, where are you, my Pol Pot of liberty, my Hitler of low gas prices
Chuck Butcher
I suppose the handshake could be a bit more firm…
Stillwater
Wasn’t the CIA training OBL as a powerful premodern creature in a postglobalized world around, oh, say 1980?
Xenos
And as it should be clear by now, neocons like Bobo have absolutely no understanding of Arabic culture, the meaning of a firm or flaccid handshake therein or the power of rhetoric and saintliness to the jihadists. Taking out Bin Ladin while he hides out in a comfortable mansion under state protection is how you fight Bin Laden – you completely discredit him under the terms of his culture.
And we thrive by succeeding according to our culture and our values, not by aping the worst in other cultures. That these punks see themselves as the guardians of morality and social values is a sign of a dramatic delusion on their part.
Spaghetti Lee
In short, Osama Bin Laden seemed to live in an ethereal, postmodern world of symbols and signifiers and also a cruel murderous world of rage and humiliation.
The fuck? Bin Laden lived in a world where he and his followers killed people for being from the wrong religion or country. There’s nothing postmodern about that-it’s as old as time.
AAA Bonds
I like to think of myself as a “free-trade John Wayne Gacy”
Martin
This is the religion of ideology. Some people just need some inherent, unabiding truth to drive them, and they’ll follow whoever offers them one, and look down on those that chart a rational, moderate path.
I’d put Beese in that category as well, so it hardly is a unique trait of the right.
Villago Delenda Est
I’m not sure that’s really what he was all about, at least at first.
Americans have a hard time understanding that the rest of the world doesn’t see them as they see themselves…and bin Laden’s anger at this country had a lot to do with that.
Rev. Wright was right about 9-11 being about the chickens coming home to roost. We’ve been meddling in the affairs of others for so long that we think it’s normal. They don’t appreciate it much, and 9-11 was two things: a wake up call (that we chose to misinterpret) and a recruiting stunt that paid plenty of dividends for bin Laden. He could hurt the Great Satan. So much so that the Great Satan did what he wanted the Great Satan to do…create even more recruits for his cause.
Which is why I often say that bin Laden’s cause was damaged by the expiration of the terms of Bush and Cheney. Those two twits were his best recruiting officers, ever.
Martin
@AAA Bonds: Well, gas prices were pretty low under Hitler…
Steeplejack
@soonergrunt:
I think there is a distinction to be made between the military and the police. With the military, you are talking about truly elite units that are designed to do more (and better) of what the military is there for anyway–taking it to 11, as it were.
With the police–and this is what Doug Harlan J specifically referenced–you are talking about units that may or may not be truly “elite” and that, it can be argued, diverge somewhat from the police’s core mission–to “protect and serve,” to quote the LAPD’s motto–and by their nature get into the “paramilitary” zone, which should give us pause. It does me, anyway. Do you want the face of your local police to be Officer O’Reilly on the beat or some masked guy with a submachine gun?
I’m not saying there isn’t a legitimate use for masked guys with submachine guns–occasionally–but, like DougJ, I am a little leery of people who join the police because they really, really, really want to be on the SWAT team.
Stillwater
@AAA Bonds: The Jeffrey Dahmer of oppression!
BR
Great post. I’m reminded of the 9-11 episode that they did for The West Wing. It was just after the attacks and they wrote an episode in a week and filmed it, to try to explain what had just happened. Sorkin was attacked at the time, but history has proved him right. One of his main messages was that the antidote to fundamentalism is pluralism.
Loneoak
Looks like some of the story of the raid is changing. Human shield wasn’t his wife, and Osama wasn’t firing a weapon when he got capped.
trollhattan
@ Doug Harlan J
Who’s the Islamic private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks? Osama!
Who’s the jihadist that won’t cop out when there are Tomahawks all about? Osama!
He’s a complicated man, but no one understands him like his many veiled wives. John Osama.
I got nuttin’. The lessons of asymmetric warfare have been well taught the last two or so decades and we’ll be dealing with its adherents when my kid’s generation is in charge. I’m happy Osama is fish bait. I don’t believe it affects our futures very much. Bobo, OTOH, can share Osama’s bag of salted virgin dicks.
Martin
@Steeplejack: Yeah, I get the sense (and this may be entirely wrong) that too many of the guys eager to get on the SWAT team really want to kick in doors and shoot black people. Regular cops are expected to use their gun as a last resort, not a first.
Loneoak
@AAA Bonds:
Or the Creed of music.
Yutsano
@Loneoak:
Okay that’s just wrong dude.
Sly
@srv:
I have no interest in taking part in “who’s the biggest victim of white male paternalism” debates. Even if you’re the winner, you’re still a loser.
I don’t think Gandhi would either, but I can’t really know what he would precisely believe in terms of contemporary American politics, considering that he (a) was not American and (b) has been dead for over sixty years. And even if I did, I don’t entirely know why such information would be relevant since he (a) was not an American and (b) has been dead for over sixty years.
El Cid
If only there could be a John Gotti for Greenpeace. Think of how much more good could be done if there were a Lizzie Borden for NARAL. I can’t be the only one wishing that there were an ACLU version of Beria. What this country really needs is a Consumer Reports version of the Zodiac killer.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
I guess my point is this: I accept the idea that an elite military unit–Special Forces, SEALs, etc.–is the ultimate embodiment of its institution, the military, and its purpose–to “kill people and break things,” in Limbaugh’s phrase, with the most efficiency and least loss–but I don’t accept the idea that a SWAT team is the ultimate embodiment of the police’s function–to “serve and protect.” In that sense, I’m with DougJ that you don’t want anyone who wants to be on the SWAT team to be on the SWAT team. Look at the litany of abuses and fuck-ups we have seen in the years since every little P.D. has decided it needs its own SWAT team to “keep the peace.”
If they want to be in a military outfit with all the military accoutrements, let ’em join the military.
Lv Bu
Ding ding ding ding ding!
Yes, exactly. Give the man a prize.
MLK, Gandhi, and others inspired the masses, yes, but they were also, note, non-violent. They didn’t inspire the masses to violence. There is no such thing as a violent extremist for liberal values: violent extremism is effectively opposed to liberal values. Liberalism is about compromise and tolerance, extremism is about eliminating your ideological opponents so they can’t outvote you. Opposites.
ChrisNYC
This is the essence of what bothers me about Brooks and the rest of them. This mix of the simple and the sentimental. Brooks just quivers with it. I used to feel sorry for him because his yearning for the world to match his silly reductive thinking is so apparent. As tho he cannot take another disappointment. Now I just want to tell him to grow up.
Loneoak
Just when you think a thread can’t get any better, El Cid swoops in like a jackal-faced Zorro armed with a switchblade and botulism-laced can of beans and drops a line like “What this country really needs is a Consumer Reports version of the Zodiac killer.”
DrJ
Extrajudicial murder. We should all be ashamed. Remember the demonstrations after Fallujah? DC demonstrations looked the same to me.
DrJ
Extrajudicial murder. We should all be ashamed. Remember the demonstrations after Fallujah? DC demonstrations looked the same to me.
General Stuck
@Villago Delenda Est:
At least at first, we helped him and the Afghans defeat the Soviets. Later, he cited our support for Israel and the fact we had troops on Saudi soil after Gulf War 1 as reasons to declare war on us. With permission of the Saudi government. If you or anyone else wants to hang your hat on anything more than OBL being an ambitious religionist, then okay. But he has always said his goal is a Pan Arab Islamic State, and eventually a world wide one. That doesn’t take lightly any of the awful shit our government has pulled off around the world for a long time, nor does it the good shit we have also done. It is only my opinion based on what the dood has said and written, and looking at the empirical evidence, not the least of which, our beginnings with the man was to help him and other muslims chase out the godless Soviets from Afghan. You would think most folks that would carry some gratitude. Not OBL. Fuck him and his apologists, wherever they be.
Martin
GG demands a cthulhu of constitutional rights.
M. Bouffant
I think the point of the SWAT story is that “hot dogs,” “cowboys” & the like w/ excessive gung-ho are not the ideal candidates for special/elite units; someone who is dying to swing his baton (or other appendage) around is not going to be the first choice. At least not in police departments managed by sensible people.
Steeplejack
@M. Bouffant:
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to get at.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Chuck Butcher:
but the milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@El Cid: Bravo. Just . . . bravo.
Mnemosyne
@Loneoak:
I dunno — I’m always wary when a named source (in this case, John Brennan) is contradicted by an anonymous one. There’s no way to judge whether or not the anonymous source is talking out of his ass because he’s anonymous and there’s no way to question him (or her).
Martin
Back on a more serious tone – I wonder what kind of opportunity the US now has here. We’ve eliminated OBLs two couriers and captured information that they and OBL had on hand. I wonder:
1) How much that information will lead us to other al Qaeda members.
2) How just the knowledge that we have that information will cause other al Qaeda members to move/change plans/etc. that will lead us to them.
For the next few weeks/months, this could really be a big fucking deal.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@AAA Bonds:
We need a Jeffrey Dahmer for our financial markets. Same with the Chairman Mao of international relations.
Imagine how beautiful that could be.
Mnemosyne
@M. Bouffant:
From everything I’ve heard, those kind of guys are the first ones to wash out when the real training begins.
Loneoak
@Mnemosyne:
True, but this is a correction coming a day after the event has settled down, and that actually makes the story less dramatic.
M. Bouffant
@Steeplejack:
And you did. Just didn’t see it.
Another point to make about SWAT units is that they are in some ways the result of the Defense Department’s giving military surplus, from armored personnel carriers to night-vision goggles, to local Police Dep’ts.
Can't Be Bothered
This post is off base. I’ve actually been uncomfortable with OBL being presented as evil personified. The same as Hitler etc. He was born to unspeakable privilege and gave that up to go fight and put his life on the line to fight empires that he felt were invading and degrading. Clearly, I disagree with his tactics. He was EXTREMELY misguided and lost his way long, long ago, but he was not a Hitler or Stalin level evil. He turned to the dark side, and couldn’t recognize that he had long given up any rational goal. He was literally just raging against the machine in the most despicable way possible.
You dismiss the “good” OBL comparisons as akin to Ghandi upthread by saying that hammering out agreements is not like flying planes in to buildings. Well that’s the fucking point of an analogy, no? That the comparison is not direct? I would flatly disagree with you on the level of compromise displayed by those “good” leaders. The analogy lies not in the tactics (duh) but in the devotion to cause. The willingness to not be co-opted by one’s opponent, to give up comfort, the willingness to give one’s life for a cause. And believe me, I think bobo is the stupidest asshole on the planet, but what he is saying is, surprisingly, not stupid in what you have quoted. The arab/Islamic world really could use a dedicated leader that could not be corrupted by the usual culprits.
Mnemosyne
@Loneoak:
But we still have no idea who’s saying it. Is it one of the people in this picture with Brennan? Is it an intern who totally overheard something?
It’s entirely possible that it’s true, because these things often get puffed up in the first rush of excitement, but it’s impossible to judge the credibility of the source if we have no idea who the source is.
Anonymous sourcing is probably the most pernicious problem with our “journalism” right now because it gives a whole lot of cover to the disgruntled who don’t know jack shit but know what the reporter wants to hear.
Martin
@Mnemosyne: Well, if we were going to drop some propaganda here, it’d be Brennen’s version, not the anonymous one. So, I’m leaning toward the less dramatic version.
Can't Be Bothered
@Lv Bu:
MLK was not about compromise and tolerance. He wished for that world. But make no mistake that he was tactically about confrontation. You don’t serve up that kind of stark reality to the American people through closed door sessions on capitol hill. You do that through a willingness to have your skull cracked open on a bridge. You mistake policy goals and redeeming philosophy for tactical reality. Civil Rights succeeded b/c they were unwaveringly willing to tolerate their treatment no more.
Suffern ACE
OK, I clicked through and read the Bobo. Like bin Laden, I also liked “Fury” as a boy. I mean, it was Lassie…but with a horse! I found that part interesting. Had I met him, we probably would have joked about how we learned that using a penny in lieu of a fuse was dangerous…
But I’m trying to figure out what the rest means. Premodern, modern, and post-modern folk all live in worlds surrounded by symbols and signifiers. I don’t think Bin Laden was all that concerned with exploring the implications of that insight.
Dr. Loveless
@Martin:
I’d rather have a Nyarlathotep of due process.
El Cid
@Loneoak: @Ozymandias, King of Ants: When you can be inspired by such a deep thinking, carefully researched sociologist such as David Brooks, things beyond things may happen. I do like the idea of Zorro employing a switchblade made out of botulin-infected bean cans. Sort of unwieldy, but likely to frighten the Spanish troops. Worse even than the local freshwater supplies.
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I think the suggestion that Wall Street could have its Jeffrey Dahmer leader-hero clearly understates Wall Street ambitions and capabilities. As far as we know, Dahmer only dismembered and ate a few people, just under 20. Wall Street leaves such paltry consumption to those such as Ayn Rand to admire.
kdaug
@Doug Harlan J:
Yeah, not sure they have a show of hands on “Who wants to be in Special Forces”?
Think the audition is a little more involved.
Mnemosyne
@Martin:
How many anonymous sources claiming to have inside information about the Obama administration have actually turned out to be right, though?
The Jessica Lynch story broke down because actual named sources came forward, not because of anonymous whisperings.
I’m especially wary of anonymous sources because of the way the Bush Administration used them, like by having Dick Cheney quote his own anonymously sourced story as proof that he was right. He basically sock-puppeted himself right in public, and the media let him get away with it because of the inviolability of anonymous sources.
Arshi
not sure if im the first one that gets to point out the good news, but once again, Megan McArdle is Always Wrong
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/out-of-osamas-death-a-fake-quotation-is-born/238220/
http://letthetruthlaugh.tumblr.com/post/5153185293
El Cid
@Can’t Be Bothered: At the time, such leaders as MLK were the subject of many complaints by our media and political mainstream regarding how they refused to be patient and accept the compromises which were asserted to be the maximally achievable options.
This has pretty much nothing to do with any discussion involving the lunatic Islamogangster bin Laden.
Can't Be Bothered
I don’t know why, but this post has really got my goat. “larger, impractical, unworkable fantasies” is the entire fucking Civil Rights Movement. Think how ridiculous a conception the whole thing was in the beginning. “Accepting democracy means accepting compromise.” NO. They forced confrontation as much as possible. They rejected the idea of compromise. The only reason they were successful is b/c they did not accept compromise until certain pretty amazing thresholds were reached. I like pragmatic incrementalism as much as the next guy (it’s what I believe in most), but this post is straight up bullshit. And it gets snarkily “heh indeeded” b/c the target is right and it feels good.
El Cid
@kdaug: I suppose some reporting from The Onion would be in bad taste?
Mnemosyne
@Can’t Be Bothered:
So did Che Guevara but, despite what the t-shirts of college students tell you, Che was not a good person.
I think there’s a difference between fighting for justice in your own country — which is what Gandhi, MLK, Malcolm X and Chavez did — and parachuting in to rescue other countries the way Osama and Che did.
I would argue that the reason Osama came to hate the US as much as he did was because he recognized himself in us. His motives in going to Afghanistan weren’t much different than the US’s motives in going to Vietnam — he was going to rescue the ignorant Afghans from the Soviets.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@El Cid:
I can’t argue with your impeccable logic in this matter. How about a Reverend Jim Jones? Naah, he offed himself too. Hmmm…
How about Genghis Khan for the financial markets?
El Cid
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Temuhin (Genghis Khan) was actually (in context) a responsible leader, once he’d gotten through with all the massacring. When would Wall Street ever get past the massacring phase?
Can't Be Bothered
@El Cid:
Doug is being willfully obtuse about the proper analogy to be drawn. That’s my point. It is possible to conceive of a “good” Bin Laden that used diametrically different tactics while showing the same level of “fantastical” devotion and uncompromising pursuit. He is basically just saying that no strongly felt, realized, and carried out movement can be democratic or good, b/c those values are antithetical to being willing to compromise and not overzealous. Those values are the sole property of goodness and REAL democracy. It’s ironically Broderistic nonsense. Re-read his closing paragraph. It’s horseshit.
Can't Be Bothered
@Mnemosyne:
Does nobody here understand the concept of analogy? I thought I made it abundantly clear that he was not a good guy. Straw men, straw men everywhere.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Can’t Be Bothered:
and are we still making progress on civil rights, or did we solve that problem for good back in ’74
Can't Be Bothered
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
I’m searching hard for a point here.
Mnemosyne
@Can’t Be Bothered:
Did you even read what I posted? The analogy to MLK is false because Osama bin Laden was not Afghan.
Again, there’s a difference between fighting for justice in your own country and traveling to someone else’s country to “rescue” them. Despite Bobo’s fantasies, the “democratic Bin Laden” doesn’t exist, because you can’t come in from outside and rescue a country from itself.
You can, however, work hard within your own country to change things. The people of Tunisia and Egypt didn’t overthrow their governments with the help of outsiders like Bin Laden. They did it themselves.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Can’t Be Bothered:
and you have been since before i posted.
i don’t think the civil rights movement is, as you paint it, a battle that was won because of an unwillingness to compromise.
El Cid
@Can’t Be Bothered: The problem in the first place is that in order to discuss the “concept” raised by the inane Brooks, you have to now stagger along in a discussion of zeal or (as a billion or so political science and sociological and anthropological studies have characterized it) charismatic leadership and “a democratic bin Laden”.
That first bit has always been a useful discussion.
Bin Laden wasn’t ever even a popular figure inspiring any significant action anywhere by larger numbers than required for a conspiracy or backing of this or that warlord in a situation of ungovernable chaos.
If there were a “democratic bin Laden”, what would he do from his compounds? What crack non-suicide teams with active projects would he give money to so that they can organize in Hamburg, or take classes in the US? Organize simultaneous yet overwhelmingly powerful surprise sit-ins at embassies?
Besides, shitbags like Brooks don’t need to hope for such a leader.
They regularly proclaim whatever anti-leftist / subordinating leader as a democratic hero.
“Will This Man Save South Africa,” asked the Readers Digest about the warlord hired killer, I mean, “freedom fighter”, Jonas Savimbi — whom Reagan and Casino Jack Abramoff were paying to keep attacking pro-independence forces in Angola to help his South African fascist buddies slaughter more of their black neighbors. (Until Cuba kicked South Africa’s ass at Cuito Cuanavale.)
Just wait for whatever strongman can emerge anywhere to say the sort of shit Brooks needs to achieve his release, and Brooks then need only wake shortly thereafter to proclaim his new “democratic bin Laden” hero.
Can't Be Bothered
@Mnemosyne:
You started by strongly implying that I was under the misconception that these were good but misguided gentlemen. I believe you said “despite what the T-shirts of college kids tell you, Che was not a good person.” I have no idea why the crucial distinction for you lies not in the tactics employed by the two groups, but rather in their territorial citizenship. Were foreign nuns in Central and South America not able to work hard to change things during the 70s and 80s? Citizenship may be sufficient for greater legitimacy in action, but it is not necessary. To me, at least, the crucial distinction is the tactics employed, and the useful analogy lies in the devotion to cause.
Yutsano
@Can’t Be Bothered:
So which is it?
El Cid
Oh well. I wrote a post but used the word kuh see no.
Can't Be Bothered
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
Please enlighten me then. I await your learned scholarship. You mistake “compromise” as eventually getting legislation, when the steps involved in getting to that point and the outrageousness of that achievement given the initial playing field is the opposite of compromise. Protip: being willing to be beaten, killed, and mauled in pursuit of your goals is not a willingness to compromise.
hhex65
oh, man, even tom friedman couldn’t write something that awful– omfg– might there one day be sultanas at the applebee’s salad bar in heaven?
El Cid
Bin Laden wasn’t a popular leader who inspired some sort of mass movement. Doing any useful parallel here means instantly abandoning the “bin Laden” hook and having some completely different discussion.
It’s sort of difficult to do a “hero” version of a conspiratorial a** who mainly works by giving seed money for people to blow sh*t up.
If there were a genuine, independent, pro-democracy individual able to fund and organize “democracy squads” (doing what — simultaneous large scale flash mob protests at embassies?) throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and he weren’t under the control of the US, he would quickly be pronounced a threat to international order by such as Brooks, and targeted for disruption by the US and its allies.
Can't Be Bothered
@Yutsano:
Ummm… analogizing is how things are alike: so that would be to the devotion to cause bit. The contrasting bit (not analogy) is tactical differences. So to sum up: analogy (alike things) is devotion, distinction (not alike things) is tactics.
Yutsano
@Can’t Be Bothered: I just want to be clear that you regard Osama Bin Laden, who did little to advance the freedom and self-determination of Muslims, with Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who worked tiredlessly for the greater freedom of their fellow man. Gotcha. And you don’t see the difference there?
Can't Be Bothered
@El Cid:
I don’t think it is meant to be taken as a factual eventuality. However, if you re-read Doug J’s commentary and closing paragraphs it’s high Broderism: Real democracy is all about compromise and not trying too hard for anything/hurting the delicate sensibilities of one’s opponents. Idealism has no part of real democracy, basically.
Martin
@Mnemosyne: But what’s the motive? Why would an anonymous source from a favorable outlet put out a less favorable statement? Given that people on the record can and do lie and/or provide incorrect information (even unknowingly), I don’t see a problem putting more skepticism on a statement that has a hint of propaganda, but is on the record, over a statement that makes a much more uninteresting and somewhat more unfavorable case but is anonymous.
Mnemosyne
@Can’t Be Bothered:
Because you seem to be buying into Brooks’ idea that a mysterious stranger will ride into town and solve all of our problems by not compromising. This is a pernicious myth that the Villagers love, almost as much as they love the idea of “bipartisanship.”
No, they worked hard to teach people in Central and South America how to change things for themselves.
Can't Be Bothered
@Yutsano:
Cool straw man, bro. I’ve made clear numerous times how they’re different and whether I think OBL is a bad guy.
Yutsano
@Can’t Be Bothered: Here’s a hint: devotion to cause isn’t an automatically admirable goal in and of itself. What the cause is meant to accomplish matters. I neither celebrate nor mourn Bin Laden’s death. But I also refuse to write some strange hagiography simply based upon his fanatical devotion.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Can’t Be Bothered:
but now you are picking and choosing.people would still be getting beaten, mauled, and killed if it weren’t for a willingness to compromise. the people being beaten, killed, and mauled weren’t given the option of compromising. theirs was more of an ultimatum.
the compromise came, when people with power were willing to trade some of that power, either in exchange for stopping the beatings, killing and maulings, or, for national power versus the regional power they had previously.
Can't Be Bothered
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not sure if Brooks is even saying all that and I don’t know why I have to believe that except (le sigh) it is another convenient straw man. I am not saying that a mysterious stranger can or should ride in to town. I simply see no reason to dismiss him out of hand or really why that is your focus. The meaningful distinction in the two groups you presented is not their “strangerness” but the largely non-violent tactics they employed in doggedly pursuing a seemingly unattainable goal. I don’t really care all that much about Brooks (I think he’s by and large a stupid asshole). But I think Doug J channelled Broder by suggesting that real democracy somehow means compromise.
Yutsano
@Can’t Be Bothered:
You need to go back to history class. Our very nation was founded on the idea of compromise. A bicameral legislature composed of a House and a Senate was the result of much debate between representation by state and representation by population, with the electoral college thrown in for good measure. Every single major piece of legislation ever (including the Civil Rights Act) involved compromise by the interested parties. Fanatical devotion is fine, but compromise gets shit done.
Can't Be Bothered
@Yutsano:
“devotion to cause isn’t automatically an admirable goal in and of itself.” Whew. Glad I never said that, then. Brooks said essentially, “a Bin Laden devoted to a good cause would’ve been good.” A not too insightful counterfactual, I know. To which Doug J essentially said “that’s fucking stupid because the only way someone can show that much devotion is if they are working towards some fanatical, uncompromising cause. Democracy is antithetical to that, ergo that is a complete oxymoron.” He channelled Broder. I reject that notion and merely point out that it is both possible to have uncompromising devotion, admirable goals, and admirable tactics.
Can't Be Bothered
@Yutsano:
Here is me upthread: “I like pragmatic incrementalism as much as the next guy (it’s what I believe in most)”. However, sometimes that’s not good enough. Fanatical devotion got Civil Rights legislation to the point where “compromise” could even happen. We’re just arguing semantics at this point. To me, flying planes in to buildings is the flip side of the being mauled, beaten and lynched coin. One is the epitome of selfishishness. One is the epitome of selflessness. One I reject wholly, the other I don’t think I would have the courage to embrace. But they both stem from an unshakable conviction of righteousness. It is that value that cannot be discounted as somehow antithetical to democracy as Doug J suggests.
Anne Laurie
@Yutsano: Maybe Osama bin Laden was the Islamic William Ayres? Rich sexist arsehole from a privileged background, parachuting into other people’s struggles to work out his own daddy issues by blowing shite up? Think there’s an argument to be made that bin Laden would’ve ended up like Ayres — scuttled away to hide behind daddy’s money as soon as the Nasty looked to be blowing in *his* direction — except that the American Conservatives of the Reagan era saw bin Laden as their perfect foil & groomed him to be both a weapon against the Russkies and the perfect Scary Brown Boogeyman to inspire terror in future American patsies…
Yutsano
@Anne Laurie: Sort of. Except Osama made it a point to reject his family (except the money, greed seems to triumph everything) even when they DID try to rein him back in after the Soviets left Afghanistan. The majority of the Bin Ladens were just typical Saudi wealth barons and one of the few not to make their money off oil. And Arab culture makes it very difficult to reject family for almost any reason, the big exception becoming an apostate. This isn’t necessarily exclusive of your argument that the CIA found Bin Laden a useful tool. But his family has some culpability there as well.
EDIT: and I have an appointment in the morning, so I’m off to snooze.
Anne Laurie
@Yutsano: True. But if you’re looking for a Big Bad Daddy to rebel against, the KGB was pretty good but the Great American Satan was the *best*… it was pretty clear (even to us cudlips Merkans) that the Nixon-era holdovers in Reagan’s administration were *never* going to stop throwing weapons & money & hapless human pawns around in their own sick version of Risk, Global LARPing Edition. If Osama wanted an infidel SMERSH that would make him feel like an Islamic 007, picking the CIA as his partner was an obvious strategy for the long term. His own genetic father might die, Reagan himself might die, but the American neoconservative fantasists would always have enough power in ongoing American administrations that bin Laden could be sure he’d always feel like Robin Hood, but with a better international publicity department. Hey, they outlasted *him* (although it is devoutly to be hoped, not by much) and he probably never expected to live as long as he did!
Chuck Butcher
Fer pete’s sake
If OBL weren’t OBL then …?
You have got to be shitting me that there is an argument about OBL not being OBL and getting something? What level of childish stupidity is this? If something is not itself it simply does not exist anymore.
A good OBL simply doesn’t exist because being OBL requires being him and Bobo is a fucking idiot for proposing something else.
edit
this is like proposing that if Bobo had principles…
NobodySpecial
@Mnemosyne: Discuss this post in terms of intervention in Libya and Afghanistan. Be consistent when you do so.
TheF79
This looks like a fun thread and all, but at the risk of giving Brooks the benefit of the doubt, isn’t he simply expressing a variant on the “Why is there no Arab/Muslim George Washington?”
The Raven
@Doug Harlan J: Gandhi was a rigid idealist, very much a lawgiver. He is known in the West largely through his gentler teachings, but he was in many ways harsh and uncompromising and he was intensely, if idiosyncratically, religious. What he was not was violent.
It is, I suppose, possible to imagine a life in which Osama bin Laden turned to non-violence. But he did not.
bemused
21st century republicans seem to live in an ethereal, post modern world of symbols and signifiers and also a cruel murderous world of rage and humiliation. Who could imagine that such creatures would gain such power
Uloborus
I wish to make a distinction. There’s a lot of arguments here that ‘compromise’ is better or worse than ‘devotion to cause’. These are two entirely separate concepts. You can be slavishly devoted to advancing any cause, but believe that doing so is best achieved with practical steps that work within the system. You are *still doing the best you know how to achieve your goal*.
Conservatives like very, very simple answers based on catchy sounding ideals. This makes them passionate incompetents. One particularly deep irony is that they’re rarely actually willing to sacrifice personally in any way for their cause. They just really like to scream and yell.
bjacques
I think what Brooks is really after is a Henry Lee Lucas of deficit reduction, with a little help from an Ottis Toole of slashing entitlements.
gn
@Can’t Be Bothered: You’re romanticizing the civil rights movement IMO. It was not comprised of fanatics or fundamentalists, who generally get nothing done and undermine their own stated causes with their stridency and control issues. The more productive aspects of the civil rights movement absolutely involved (and involves) concessions to political realities and coalition politics at the expense of single issue zealotry.
gn
@Uloborus: Completely true.
EdinWorcester
The use of the Van Morrison lyric is much appreciated!
Steve M.
Van Morrison allusion. Nice.
Bartleby
“If only he had used his genius for niceness instead of evil.”
Maxwell Smart
WereBear
Actually, I read it as Bobo admiring fanatical dedication, because he has none.
He’s a paid shill; we have no idea if he believes in what he writes, because that is not its purpose, and hell, he’d write it anyway. So we’re right back to the Republican love of Big Daddy; who has the money, and the power. Period.
And yeah, Bin Laden was dedicated; to what he wanted. He wasn’t dragged out of some cave, after all; we know that for certain. He was living in a luxury compound, letting others suffer and die.
What did he suffer over? What did he sacrifice for?
Nothing, as far as I can see.
MikeBoyScout
The BoBo snippet contains what is absolutely necessary to make a proper word salad in 2011. When making your word salad, be sure to find opportunities to include such ingredients as:
– seemed to
– ethereal
– postmodern
– signifiers
– brilliant intelligence analyst
– premodern
– postglobalized
– democratic (hint: ALWAYS small “d” with this ingredient)
– dignity
– freedom
– inexplicable
– frame narratives and propel action — for good, not evil.
Fresh ingredients with classic flavor!
Danny
The answer is perhaps to be a pragmatic true believer. Does that have to be a paradox?
WereBear
@MikeBoyScout: Yep, that’s the key to Bobo’s success; make people work so hard to figure out your meaning that they give up before they realize you have none.
HeartlandLiberal
Yes. What the Reichwing really wants is clear. John Galt in Jackboots. Ayn Rand would be so proud of her followers and what they have done with her ideas. Try reading Geller’s ‘Atlas Shrugs’ web site. Really. Try. But only on an empty stomach.
Or, as George Orwell explained:
– If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
– People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
–
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
– War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
And of course what sums it all up:
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
soonergrunt
@Doug Harlan J: compared to their counterparts in patrol or administration–what do you think?
Dennis G.
Spot on and well done. Thanks
Carl
“…democracy means accepting compromise, not …refusing to raise raise the debt ceiling...”
Call it crazy, but threatening to not raise the debt ceiling means the Republicans will win (i.e. more social service cuts). Obama’s just negotiating the size of their victory.
I’m not saying the liberals have to be suicidal, but if they want to keep this nation a democracy they’re going to have to be more stubborn – that is, less willing to compromise.
Emma
Can’t be Bothered: Ye gods. If you don’t get the difference between “planning and carrying out acts of mass murder” and “being willing to get your head cracked on a bridge”, well, nobody can’t help you.
Edit: Should have read the thread before I posted. Others have made similar comments. And you doubled down. Sigh.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
We had a Middle Easterner who advocate for a bunch of abstract higher ideals and was very good at framing a narrative and getting followers. His name was Jesus. We’ve spent 1970 years totally fucking up his vision.
Doug Harlan J
@soonergrunt:
I’m not sure. I think of detectives as the elites here and therefore as the right analog of special forces.
daveNYC
@Loneoak:
Jews and Christians are given specific protections in the Koran. Shi’ite vs Sunni would be more of a heresy situation, and those are always messy.
And I think what Bobo is looking for is some sort of pan-Muslim Ataturk. And a pony.
Surly Duff
It is also stupid because Bobo does not accept, or maybe he just doesn’t realize, that democracy or democratic ideals are not the solution to every problem on earth.
El Cid
@Can’t Be Bothered: I was noting that Brooks’ whine was, at root, a very, very stupid analogy. But it’s okay, because our standards are for our opinionators in our billion dollar media to spew shit they didn’t have to think much about.
El Cid
There is always a debate, typically non-explicit, about what goals are about a just but realistic “compromise” and what is unrealistic extremism.
Forces for some major change may see their policy or legal goals as realistic compromise, while a more stolid establishment sees such goals as impossibly more aspiring than possible.
The first major battle is to define what is a realistic set of goals (“compromise”) and what is a set of overly demanding fanaticism.
And that’s an argument which the establishmentarians begin on their home turf.
Uloborus
@Carl:
Hostage takers who are serious about killing the hostage have a great deal of power, yes. And in this case there’s no way to remove that power other than negotiation.
Thankfully, it looks like they’re not actually serious about this hostage. They were totally serious with the budget, and our negotiator gave them what turned out to be a book of expired coupons.
With the GOP led by a hard core of crazies holding solid control of the House, I invite anyone to explain how we’re going to get anything better than outwitting them in about four financial hostage negotiations while letting everything else grind uselessly for two years. No, defaulting on the debt or letting the government shut down are not acceptable options. The economy is bad enough.
RobNYNY1957
I wish we could work that system for selection SWAT members into our presidential election system.
Can't Be Bothered
@Emma:
The difference is abundantly fucking self evident and I have pointed it out numerous times, but I guess it is fun to purposely miss the point of what I said. Does everyone need a brush up on comparing and contrasting? Ye gods, indeed. Are we out of straw yet for building those men, or is someone going to go get another bail?
Doug Harlan J
@Can’t Be Bothered:
I don’t agree with your point at all, because I think that nonviolent protest is inherently compatible with functional democracy in a way that terrorism is not, but you’ve stirred up an interesting debate and made me think.
Caz
Maybe it’s not bullshit. After all, the conservatives DO have their own Fox News.
It’s because lefties aren’t relying on facts and common sense. If you appeal to the facts and common sense, you will have your own Fox News. But you have to stop being a lefty first.
It has nothing to do with flying planes into buildings.