This is completely obvious to any thinking person, but it’s refreshing to see it said openly in an establishment outlet:
During the past century, the GOP focused on the internal subversive threat of communism and often depicted liberals as traitors. Now many on the right have seamlessly moved on to hunt for Muslim traitors as part of a third World War against a foreign enemy. They’ve been identifying domestic traitors and declaring a broader war against Islam for years, but have been, for the most part, speaking to deaf ears… Now after Paris, the radical right is grabbing the opportunity to push their case to a wider audience.
Atrios in 2009:
I think the great failure of the Right since their awesome adventure in Iraq has been to create a new Hitler for us to fear and fight. They tried with Iran, but didn’t quite manage. Their hero Bush looked in Putin’s soul and declared it pure, so that one won’t work. The business side of the coalition won’t let them go after China. We need an enemy damnit!
Here’s the big question: is ISIS/Syrian Refugees/Muslims in general the kind of new Hitler that can scare reg’lar Americans into voting for a Dear Leader who can keep us safe, or are they just another Saul Alinsky-grade threat that only terrifies the true bedwetters of the right?
different-church-lady
If Palin unleashed the dogs, Trump is now hitting them with a stick.
What stuns me is how we turned a tragedy that happened to Parisians into something that’s all about US in the blink of an eye.
khead
I’m old enough to remember when Obama was sneaking the terrorists in with the ebola refugees.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I don’t think this is going to work for them all that well, at least not if the Democrats have the good sense to point out how fucking gutless these Republican tough [sic] guys are. I’ve said it before, people don’t like cowards, and these clowns are cowards. Hiding under the bed in fear of some three year old children? That’s mighty weak, man.
Somehow, for the last 15 years, Republicans have found a way to get away with looking tough while telling us all to wet ourselves with fear. But they’ve let themselves go overboard with it, and now we see these asswipes who are too scared of scaaaaary-ass Muslims to go to see a fucking movie. That just doesn’t look good. And it looks even worse when people begin to point and laugh, which, thank God, some Democrats are beginning to do.
sparrow
@different-church-lady: Also, a terrorist act which did not actually involve Syrians into a debate about how we must stop all the Syrians. Detachment from reality is something that can increase without bound, apparently.
Betty Cracker
The Judeo-Christian radicals have the same goal as Daesh — fomenting a “clash of civilizations.” It will take both sides working together to pull it off successfully. The Paris attack won’t be enough to bring on full-bore fascism and install il Douche in the White House, but Paris-scale or larger attacks here over the next year just might. And it would be frighteningly easy for 50 or fewer people to make that happen, thanks especially to our lax gun laws, which specifically enable people on the terrorist watch list to purchase guns.
Wordpress Developers
Folks,
The site is back up, and it wasn’t us – the host upgraded the server back-end last night and didn’t test to see if the site came back up. I didn’t realize until this morning, and before I could diagnose, Mistermix had already submitted a trouble ticket. I am now going to put on the flame-retardant gear and review John’s post from late last week asking about issues.
Some things to report – for Frontpagers, as well as Commentors and Readers:
1) We have done nothing to futz with RSS over the past week or so, and for some or all RSS users, the site has been inconsistently updated with fresh content. I expect that this server upgrade will iron out those issues. If not, please report them via email to me.
2) FYWP – eaten posts or comments. This shouldn’t happen, although sometimes it might when there’s a lot of server load. The upgrade should have enhanced multi-threading support, so we should see much less of this. So, for those that have had issues previously with either comments or posts that disappear into the aethyr, please let me know if things still disappear. Or if they seem better, positive reports are also welcome!
3) Site not refreshing for the text version on mobile or tablet devices. This should also be fixed now; when you go to the site, you should always see today’s most recent post. Over the past few weeks, some readers were seeing day-old content as the most recent stuff. This seems to have mostly affected iOS devices. Before reporting a problem, please try this step to clear out the cache on your iPhone or iPad: Close all tabs in Safari that have Balloon Juice open, then go to your Home screen, and double-click the Home button and swipe to close Safari completely. Now, restart Safari and go to the site. From that point on, you should always see the most recent content (you can check by turning off the Mobile theme via a link at the bottom of the page)
4) Accessibility for those using AT tech: through the kind efforts of a reader, I have a few things that I need to do to the site to make things better for your devices. I will be working on that as well.
5) General site usability – the site should be a bit peppier, and we’ll try to nail down any issues slowing down page loading. In my testing and development, I do not use any ad blocking or other type of filtering technology, so I should see a “worst case scenario” view of the page load. Such things as the Twitter feed and Google Analytics do slow down the page load a bit. We are working on fine tuning the caching and CDN setup to make things as zippy as possible.
6) Comments – Late last week, I briefly turned on a potential comment engine and folks hated it, especially Amir. Sorry for the confusion, but please let this serve as a warning – it may go back on temporarily in a few days for some limited testing. I’ll try to do it mid-day so hopefully less upsetting for many of the night/early morning crew. This is just to test it; the formatting is good enough for testing, even if it doesn’t have comment numbers, etc. There is no point wasting time on the formatting if I’m trying to see if the bloody thing works as it’s supposed to, and to see what kind of increase or decrease in server load it makes. It will be up for an hour or two, max, then I will disable it and return to this comment system. If it works well, we might just go with it instead of waiting for mid December when the alternate commenting plugin will have the functionality this site needs.
I’m going to post this comment in each new thread to day to maximize the number of readers it reaches.
Best,
Alain
[email protected]
debbie
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
It already isn’t. They have no control over what’s going on in their own party.
henqiguai
Bed-wetters. And the opportunity to stampede the racist (or, if you’re afraid of slinging that blade, nativists) into doing something stupid for the nation but profitable for them.
D58826
It might work but Daesh central only consists of 60k some fighters in pickup trucks driving around in the desert in the middle of nowhere, Even their global jihad has taken only 500 or so lives, much less than the weekly toll of traffic accidents in the US and Europe. If the right manages to turn this into WWIV or V or whatever number we are up to then this country truly has become the land of the cowards and maybe we deserve Trump on a white horse..
JMG
Most Americans, not just the right wingers, are going to believe that another all-out war will finally end the potential for Middle East-based terrorism because if they don’t, they are admitting that the armed forces on which we lavish so much money and which occupy such high status in our society is not the right tool to solve the problem. That takes the country down a logic path it does not wish to travel.
debbie
Glenn Beck, as usual, is blaming Obama, but today he’s claiming that US pilots are complaining because Obama’s called off 75% of their airstrikes against ISIS. Obama did this, he says, because of his fears of collateral damage. Spoken like a real Christian.
Kropadope
Hands for Hillary Clinton?
Betty Cracker
@WordPress Developers: Thanks, Alain. I kinda figured it was a WP issue because it was a WP-type error message that we’ve seen before independent of redesigns. Appreciate the confirmation.
Regarding feedback: would it make more sense to provide a sticky post up top to collect that instead of reposting it in every thread? Might make it easier both on your end (one place to collect feedback) and ours (no need to go through each thread to see if our issue has already been raised). Maybe this isn’t possible; just throwing it out there. Thanks again!
Culture of Truth
ISIS has a chance to be that new enemy; after all, even the Democratic President has said ISIS is a threat and has vowed to destroy them. On the other hand, if people ever become actually concerned, and not sort-of, pretend-worried, I’m not sure it helps the GOP. Republicans have convinced themselves they’re always better on war and terror, but I doubt voters would see it that way if it’s Trump or Carson or Cruz vs Hillary Clinton. Voters know the GOP plan; alienate other nations, then go in clumsy and heavy, create more enemies and casualties, and screw everything up. Clinton is saying, if you’re scared, you want someone calm, smart, experienced, and who can build a real coalition. Maybe that’s too nuanced, especially if there is an attack here, but I expect it will work.
FlipYrWhig
I’m not sure why there’s such a tone in the blogosphere re: Trump along the lines of “Now I’m getting scared,” etc. This is what Republicans are like. They believe stupid things, they’re aggressively ignorant and aggressively offensive, and there are millions of them–practically half the country. We knew who they were. Just welcome their hatred, outvote them, and enjoy their squirming.
Culture of Truth
@debbie: Last night on 60 Minutes they showed drone footage of an ISIS gathering and murder of prisoners. The U.S. could have bombed, but didn’t, because they could see children in the crowd. (They claimed that later after the ISIS fighters drove away they killed them all.)
Doug!
@FlipYrWhig:
I agree that they are who we thought they were.
FlipYrWhig
@Culture of Truth: Exactly. You know how there’s a healthy number of lefty types who don’t like Hillary Clinton because they think she’s too hawkish? If the world starts to feel more dangerous, that hawkish reputation is going to _elevate_ her standing.
FlipYrWhig
@Doug!: Aargh, I couldn’t remember the full line.
Starfish
Thank you for writing this so succinctly. Some people have been conflating ISIS and Syrian refugees and making comments about 9/11, and I have been rubbing their noses in it about Muslims being killed on 9/11. Somehow 9/11 Muslim victims are true Americans because they are dead, but everyone else is a terrorist. I am not sure how they make sense of all of this in their heads.
scav
@different-church-lady: The self-indulgent fear spotlight was indeed hugged.
C.V. Danes
They have indeed created a new Hitler. His name is Donald Trump.
Calouste
@JMG: Terrorism is a fact of life, it won’t go away and it’s something you have to live with. Of course that is very hard to accept for white Americans who historically have been the perpetrators of terrorism rather than the targets.
Benw
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Dammit, people, this has already been Rooseveltsplained to you. How can you not get it?
Benw
@Doug!: question is, are we gonna let them off the hook?
Kropadope
@Benw:
The people who are old enough to remember mostly forgot. Their kids grew up in a relative paradise, fear is new to them. Those people eliminated critical thinking from the school curriculum for their kids.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: While it’s true that the Trumpenproletariat reflects the long-standing character of the Republican Party, I think it really would be something new and frightening if an anti-establishment nutter like Trump or Cruz actually became president. The establishment Republicans harnessed racism, misogyny, xenophobia, etc., to get votes, but their true aim was profit, which requires a baseline national stability. Trump has no such governor on his behavior. He really would burn it all down.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: But Betty, the attack only works in their favor if it is the work of darkly complected people with funny sounding names worshiping 5 times a day. If it is done by the far more likely white right wing racist whack-a-doodle gun nut, it will be something that nobody could have stopped.
Ruckus
@Starfish:
I am not sure how they make sense of all of this in their heads.
Actually I don’t think they do. And I’m not sure the the intent is to get them to. The intent is to get them to fear the unknown, partially by making sure there is an unknown, and that the strong republicans daddies will fix everything. Using facts and logic will take away the unknown or better, the scary unknown. Too many facts about daesh, like their numbers or who actually attacked Paris takes away from the narrative. And the controlled narrative is all they have. That’s why the subject of the narrative changes all the time, while the message doesn’t. They actually need new “threats” to make the narrative work.
Hoodie
@different-church-lady: That kind of has a predicate in the reaction after 9/11, where every guy in east bumfuck was acting like his brother was in the NYFD. It’s just another variant of identity politics, folks finding an identity in some attack on what they are able to view as “us.” I guess Paris is close enough, but they ignore stuff like Beirut, Turkey and Mali. The identity dimension of this phenomenon may be why appeals to reason in the face of fear, e.g., the odds of you being killed by terrorist are less than those of being struck by lightning, don’t work very well. It’s not about fear, but rather identity.
D58826
Just saw this on twitter and it kind of sums up the problem Obama is facing with dealing with Daesh and that his critics refusal to acknowledged –
. Two examples. The Saudi’s are more concerned about their strategic position vs Iran than they are about one more Wahhabi influenced Sunni terrorist group. Turkey is more concerned with the Kurds and will not close it’s border to Daesh because smuggling is to profitable. The US can’t fix this. No amount of bombing, no magic number of American ground troops, no amount of waterboarding, no amount of scapegoating refugees will fix this. In order to drain this swamp the locals have to step up and take an active role but for most of them they have other more important regional fish to fry than defeating Daesh or preventing a terrorist attack on Washington.
Heck even in WWII American aims, British aims and Russian aims. once you got past the immediate goal of defeating Hitler very quickly diverged.
debbie
Trump’s appearing in Columbus OH tonight (at the Convention Center, which is a pretty big venue). From what I’m hearing on local news reports, there will be more establishment Republican anti-Trump protestors (like every member of the Ohio Congressional delegation) than protestors protesting Trump’s stances on immigration and women.
The GOP is clearly scared shitless.
Chris
@Calouste:
Terrorism is a fact of life, it won’t go away and it’s something you have to live with.
I really fucking wish people could get this through their heads.
gogol's wife
@sparrow:
And 9/11 involved no Iraqis.
schrodinger's cat
I will indulge in the gloom porn after Trump actually wins some primaries.
D58826
@FlipYrWhig: Hillary may be more hawkish than the left would like but at least she inhabits a universe of facts not the fact free universe of the GOP.
Chris
@Ruckus:
Yeah, this.
They pretty much tell us this straight out between the contempt for “intellectuals” and the praise for how real men “follow their gut.” It’s not supposed to make sense. Stopping and thinking is for dorks and geeks.
debbie
@Chris:
Yeah, it’s been around since Rome, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying to stop it.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: When did the Christainists morph from ranting about Christ killers to singing praises about Judeo-Christian heritage. How long before they team up with you know who under the banner of all Abrahamic religions to take on other infidels and idol worshipers?
Ruckus
@Hoodie:
We are saying the two sides to the same issue. The narrative is to get enough people to identify with the gop. They use fear as the motivator for that, but the fear isn’t the goal.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: Around the same time Protestant Evangelicals decided they liked the cut of the Opus Dei wing of the Catholic Church’s jib.
Regarding your second question — that is probably inevitable too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Even after all this time, I still can’t quite grok it. There was an article in the NYT magazine a couple of months ago about the GOP foreign policy in a post-Iraq environment. One of the featured subjects, at the time a Walker advisor (ex-McCain staffer) and slightly chastened neo-con, actually talked about how it was weird that Americans– all the Americans he talks to, anyway– think that every problem in the world is about America, either a threat to America (beheadings in Syria, now an attack in Paris) and/or a problem that the US, and only the US, and really only the US military can, and therefore, must solve. It was a surprising moment of awareness, but the guy still thought the answer to the Syrian civil war/ISIL is US troops in live combat.
dnfree
I’m just going to throw this out here and then duck. Why is it necessary to associate bed-wetting with fear, cowardice, etc.? It’s a problem some kids have, and a problem some adults have, not necessarily associated with them being afraid.
HRA
There is always some kind of fear that preys on the vulnerable. I, personally, remember all the wars, the possible leads to war and the end of one till the next one comes along. Until just recently, the dang auto dealers with their searchlights made me ask why are they doing it. Yet, I later knew scooting under my desk for air raid drills while in a row with windows was futile.
It’s quite plain by now that the R candidates have to use fear for getting votes. I will not succumb to their machinations. I will vote for whoever wins the D nomination even if I have to hold my nose to do it.
rikyrah
OHIO: Muslim UC student says she was attacked because of her religion
‘I’m terrified to cross the street now,’ woman says
UPDATED 12:20 AM EST Nov 23, 2015
Haneen Jasim, 22, said after a night of studying at the Starbucks on University Square, as she crossed the street, a man started honking, cursing and calling her a terrorist.
The University of Cincinnati pre-med student was wearing her hijab.
“Very upsetting, very scary. I’m very, very nervous for me, my friends, my family,” said Jasim. “I’m terrified to cross the street now.”
But worse, Jasim said the man drove toward her and didn’t stop. She said three people walking in front of her grabbed her onto the sidewalk before the car could hurt her.
“Within an instant he tried to run over me. If it wasn’t for the three people in front of me, grabbing me onto the sidewalk, I would have been dead right there,” said Jasim.
The man drove off, and Jasim said she didn’t catch a license plate, While shaken and terrified, she wasn’t sure what police could do.
http://www.wlwt.com/news/muslim-uc-student-says-she-was-attacked-because-of-her-religion/36606508?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=FBPAGE&utm_campaign=News
Spinoza is my Co-pilot
I think this is the big question in regards to our post-Obama foreign policy, particularly in how the answer to it affects the 2016 presidential election. Seems to me a few more Paris-style attacks (even with fewer casualties, even if nothing at all happens in the U.S.) over the next year, together with continuing Muslim (mostly) refugee migration into Europe, may just push enough Americans to vote in the most bellicose of the general election candidates (which, whatever you think of Hillary, will be whichever Republican makes it through the clown car cavalcade).
America was convinced (if just barely) to go into Iraq in ’03 based on this same “fear of the Middle East (as very broadly understood from the Maghreb to Afghanistan and Pakistan) and Muslims in general”. It was also the primary reason America put Dear Leader W back into office in ’04 (Iraq War as electoral strategy).
We may be watching a similar dynamic unfold right now, and JMG in #10 has some very salient points in that regard. Goddamn, I hope we’re both wrong.
gene108
Does ISIS have 10,000 nuclear warheads pointed at us, the way the old Soviet Union did?
Sure they can be sort of scary, but they are not going to have the staying power of the Soviet Union.
They tried to fill that roll with al-Qaeda, but al-Qaeda had been degraded.
ISIS will also get degraded over time.
Also, too I do not think Republicans can own the “they’ll keep us safe” label anymore, since they (1) failed at 9/11/01 and (2) fucked shit up worse afterwards with their misadventure in Iraq.
Memories are short, but 10-15 years should not be so far down the memory hole.
NotMax
“We have always been at war with Eastasia.”
Doublethink thrives via and is amplified more by each loop through the non-stop broadcast and digital megaphones; Can Nineteen Eighty-Four‘s Hate Week be all that far behind?
Prior to the novel –
shomi
Republicans are the best ally ISIS could want. They react exactly the way ISIS wants them to react every time some muslim somewhere does something bad.
ISIS is actually not all that strong or far reaching. However, every time some muslim somewhere does something bad they are quick to take credit. They WANT to create a war against their religion. That is how they can get more powerful. By getting all 1.6 billion muslims on their side. Repulicans are more than happy to help with that every chance they get.
Hoodie
To some extent, but I wonder if the desire to create identity comes before the fear, i.e., fear is a motivator not so much to want to seek a father figure for protection, but to serve as boundary for defining who “us” is. It’s not them scary guys, who we’re really not scared of, but are just different. This is one reason why ISIS’s theatrics are so effective, because they make it much easier to delude yourself into thinking you’re afraid and thus buy into the “West vs. Islam” mythology that ISIS wants to sell. It’s more difficult to maintain an us” vs. “them” mentality if the “them” isn’t defined as something to fear, and people like to think they’re part of some us, so they validate the fear even if it makes no sense in their own lives. Think about gay marriage. A common argument against it was that it would destroy the institution of marriage, which was completely irrational unless you really wanted to be gay and were just acting heterosexual because society told you to do so. It seems like the most effective way of removing the resistance to gay marriage has been by making gays part of “us,” i.e., every GOPer has some uncle or cousin who is gay, gays in the military, etc.
scav
@gene108: There’s still the impulse to put a good face on any stupid, viscously mean fear they exhibited by doubling down on the policies to cope with.
MazeDancer
@D58826:
No, they consist of four national TV networks, plus a few more cable ones, eager for war. Armchair America” is frothing for “Leadership”. Which means boots, bombs, and blood.
All things terrorist have has already become bigger than big. They are WWIII. It’s on. As far as national media is concerned, we’re just waiting for the inevitable. And unless some big bombs obliterate something “over there” it won’t ever be enough.
The only shift that has to finish is uniting Mr. Obama with The Enemy. He called Daesh a bunch of bad guys with guns and good social media, which shows he doesn’t understand “the real threat”. And now attacking the President’s “lack of leadership” is as big a “news” item as the latest episode of Must Elect Trump. He’ll Waterboard! He’ll let us mock and kill brown people!
The President trying to put Daesh in a category less than Hitler is now part of “the problem” for national media.
Thought I was as bottomed out, emotionally, as possible during the horror of the Bush years. But Trump’s racist game show act, the blood lust of the bigots to kill something not Caucasian, and the non-existence of any kind of actual journalism is wearing me down low. Maybe if we survive to the general election, when there are less Republicans taking up airtime, some glimmer of actual American Values will return.
D58826
@MazeDancer: (sigh) painfully true.
rikyrah
December 1st is right around the corner:
the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll.
1. Donald Trump: 32% (unchanged since October)
2. Ben Carson: 22% (unchanged)
3. Marco Rubio: 11% (up one point)
4. Ted Cruz: 8% (up two points)
5. Jeb Bush: 6% (down one point)
The latest national Fox News poll points in a very similar direction:
1. Donald Trump: 28% (up two points since early November)
2. Ben Carson: 18% (down five points)
3. Ted Cruz: 14% (up three points)
3. Marco Rubio: 14% (up three points)
5. Jeb Bush: 5% (up one point)
RaflW
@different-church-lady: “What stuns me is how we turned a tragedy that happened to Parisians into something that’s all about US in the blink of an eye.”
Sadly I’m not surprised at all. The real American Exceptionalism? Narcissism, on a grand, national scale.
RaflW
@Culture of Truth: “after all, even the Democratic President has said ISIS is a threat and has vowed to destroy them”
Well, they are a threat. I think where things get absurd is when they are characterized as an existential threat. Any NatSec wonks worth their salt have acknowledged that Daesh doesn’t have the reach or power to be anything like a threat to the existence of the US.
But asymmetric terror doesn’t need to be that powerful. They just need pants-shitting cowards like the GOP to play exactly to the manual to turn what was a French tragedy into a dangerous American farce.
schrodinger's cat
@rikyrah: Crazies 60% and the merely depraved 40%, nice!
Crazies: Trump, Carson and Cruz.
catclub
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
This worked great in the fifties. The red scare, and then being called sissies,
totally ruined the GOP’s chances.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@sparrow: Also, and did not actually happen in the U.S. The Madrid bombings occurred in 2004 and everyone didn’t freak out that Bush wasn’t keeping us safe!!!
RaflW
@dnfree: I thought this the other day. It is a bit unfair. I prefer pants-pissing — though of course incontinence is a recognized health issue, people do piss themselves when seriously fearful things happen. So at least that’s a bit more fair charge to toss at the frightened mass of GOP ‘leaders.’
Calouste
@debbie: You might as well try to stop kids from fucking. There will always be 20-something-year-old guys who have a beef with life and society, justified or not, as well as people who try to preserve the existing power structure via extra-legal means. Unless we have a completely egalitarian society where everyone has weekly counselling sessions from age 3.
Heliopause
Not sure this is a serious question. The center-left has completely bought in to the framework of “terrorism” being the greatest threat to the civilized world today. On this topic the “bedwetters” are only half a tick out of the mainstream.
catclub
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Also attacks on embassies during the Bush years did not get the same scrutiny as during the Obama admin. Funny that. The so called liberal media is still driven by Drudge.
Gex
My main quibble with the article is that the proper honorrific for D’Souza is Convicted Felon Dinesh D’Souza.
catclub
What would happen if the Sykes-Picot division of the middle east were re-worked, with a sunni enclave centered
where ISIS is now? Possibly an Alawite bit on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. A Kurdish nation.
henqiguai
@dnfree (#43):
Why is it necessary to associate evilness with left-handedness or black; why is the questionable man in the background dark-complected? Growing anger or depression characterized as some variation of a black mode? What next, ‘antisemitism’ is only directed against adherents of Judaism?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Culture of Truth: SO MUCH THIS. Let’s face it, given the dupe (Rubio, Bush) or bombastic lunatic (Trump, Carson, Cruz) the Republicans will nominate, Clinton will look like the serious, well informed expert whose capable of meeting threats and keeping us safe. This issue does not play well for them with their current crop of candidates. If they were running someone who seemed serious and knowledgeable (Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush) maybe they could make hay with it but no one outside the Conservative bunker is going to see any of these guys as the better choice for a sober, level headed response to foreign policy or defense.
catclub
Has anyone pointed out that if Trump had been in charge during the 2008 crisis, he would have been looking for a way to enrich Donald Trump, rather than deal with the problem?
RaflW
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: “no one outside the Conservative bunker is going to see any of these guys as the better choice for a sober, level headed response to foreign policy or defense”
The assumption that a majority of American voters want a sober and level headed response is both optimistic and quite possibly wrong. I do hope for sober and level headed, of course. But the electorate has disappointed on that call many times.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@henqiguai: I think you missed his point, which was not that the folks our fearless blogger called “bed wetters” don’t deserve ridicule, but that using the term “bed wetters” for them makes it a pejorative and therefore unintentionally insults people who have an actual problem with wetting the bed. These people are in many instances good people with an embarrassing problem and deserve our sympathy rather than our ridicule. So, some other pejorative might be more appropriate.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@RaflW: Maybe sober and level headed wasn’t quite the right language – a better description might be competence, or lack thereof. I really don’t think, by the time this election process is over, anyone is outside the bunker is going to see the Republican candidate as a person with the competence to keep us safe and successfully steer the ship of State. They’ll either be too stupid and uniformed (Rubio, JEB?) or too angry and/or unhinged to be seen as having the temperament to be President (Trump, Cruz, Carson). That’s my hope anyway.
Rand Careaga
I sense the potential for a “perfect storm”: the GOP nominates a crazy, which looks from here like a safe bet, and let’s just assume it’s The Donald. Under ordinary circumstances, I think Clinton, assuming the’s the contending candidate, would win in a walk. But if the Wicked Foe (among whom are some folks savvy enough to realize that President Trump would be an unimaginably effective recruiter for jihad) should contrive, say, to shoot up a shopping mall parking lot late in October, with a lot of whooping of “Allahu akbar,” then we might see some panicked binge-voting on November 1, following which we will be in for a very rough ride indeed.
I say all this based in part on the reactions to the Paris shootings on the part of friends I would have thought immune from, or at least resistant to, atavistic R-cortex thinking. Apparently they’re not. Closer to home, and close to the election, who knows?
iLarynx
And Super Creeps.
Kay
See, I think they’ll be ashamed of stuff like this when they sober up:
We just have to wait until the terror-bender part of the cycle is over. Next comes denial that they went insane and then the “offended, while defensive” period, ultimately ending with some weak apologies and fake soul searching.
henqiguai
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us? (#70):
Yes, you did. My point was that just as sinister means evil being derived from left handedness or dark or black moods are bad things can also be taken to be pejorative to those of us of a less than day-glow pink or white complexion. Or that not all antisemitism is definitively anti-Jewish (now, I must point out that I, personally, have never denigrated a Babylonian). The issue is that bed wetter has long been used to imply loss of continence due to fear (a normal fight-or-flight response), completely removed from any implication of people with medical continence issues. But I have an odd sense of humor that kicks in at the strangest times.
Gex
@catclub: I can’t honestly see how the west going in and drawing any lines, even with loftier goals than the original goal of keeping the locals infighting, will help. A large part of their complaint is that we do whatever we can to control and manipulate these regions, the borders, and the people. More of that, no matter how well intentioned is unlikely to help.
@Kay: I believe the end stage is where they tell the rest of us we were right, but for the wrong reasons. As though the losing your mind, freaking the fuck out stage is laudable.
Thornton Hall
The question is this: how do we get the crazies back to isolationism? Crazy gonna craze. But Pat Buchannan crazy is so much better than Cruz crazy.
Bill Arnold
@shomi:
There is some Cleek’s Law at play here too. Liberals policies and attitudes toward ISIL are a better predictor of Republican rhetoric about ISIL than ISIL’s actions and public statements. (I think – no numbers to back that up.)
Mike G
@khead:
Wasn’t it just last year the rightards were pants-pissing about miniature terrists sneaking across the border disguised as Guatemalan orphans?