I’m off to the parents, so you are on your own.
Behave.
This post is in: Open Threads
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
According to everything I am seeing in the newspapers, on Cable news, and the updates at Sullivan, tomorrow seems like it will be a really pivotal day in Iran. The last posts at Sullivan have a foreboding tone.
by DougJ| 108 Comments
This post is in: Clap Louder!, Daydream Believers
Let’s get this out of the way: I think it’s great that Sully et al. are so supportive of the twittering Iranian protesters and it’s quite possible that said protesters get some kind of psychological sustenance from it. But it’s important to distinguish between legitimate foreign policy and things your boss might do on St. Patrick’s Day.
John has discussed the narcissism and self-absorption at the heart of the greening of the warblogosphere and Jeff Golberg, of all people, sums up the actual situation quite well:
The overarching goal is to see the birth of a democratic Iran, not to make ourselves feel good, or get in the way….That said, the liberal interventionist/neoconservative position is the easier one to understand, because it is the more human response.
But I think it’s important here not to mock, but to try to understand. One of the few things I’ve really learned about conservatives is that they often really do believe that clapping louder works (and what could be a more obvious example of clapping louder than wearing green ties?). It’s easy to imagine that the focus on clapping louder is really just a way of stifling dissent when a Republican is in power — and make no mistake, that aspect of it is a feature, not a bug — but I think that a lot of conservatives really believe the world be a much better place if everyone cheered harder for Jesus, for Reagan, for freedom. Remember, we would have won in Vietnam if not for the pesky war protesters.
This was driven home for me when I had a conversation with a local Republican official (whom I mostly respect) who told me that she’d vote for Hillary in the general but not Obama because of the flag pin stuff. I told her that struck me as typically conservative because conservatives believe more in symbolic gestures than in policy. She agreed and wasn’t the slightest bit insulted.
Don’t get me wrong, liberals like to clap louder too. But they’re much less likely to believe that they can get the rest of the world to clap along and might never have even entertained the possibility that doing so would lead to world peace.
Where does the faith in clapping louder come from? My feeling is that it comes from the notion that government policies are ineffective in the face of the power of culture, something Brooks yaks about all the time. Once you accept this (not unreasonable) idea, it’s a short step to believing that clapping louder is more important than action.
Update. Michael Berube has a good post dissecting the Brooksian “power of culture” stuff. Money line:
This just makes me want to lie down on top of the Applebee’s salad bar and never get up again.
Shine all the buttons on your green shirtPost + Comments (108)
by DougJ| 72 Comments
This post is in: Politics
I think it’s a bit of a mistake to see the Ensign scandal as just another example of a Family Values champion engaging in extrafamilial activity on the DL. There seems to have been some real misconduct here — here’s Josh Marshall with a quick summary:
Ensign now seems to be conceding that he arranged for employment for Hampton during a period in which Hampton was repeatedly confronting him to demand Ensign stop sleeping with his wife.
When Larry Craig was tap-dancing in Minneapolis, he wasn’t offering anyone anyone a job in return for some bathroom loving. Sure, it may have been “conduct unbecoming a Senator” but so is singing “Let the Eagle Soar”. And if hypocrisy were a crime, everyone in Congress would be in jail, along with most of the rest of the population.
I honestly don’t care what these guys do in their spare time. But when they’re using their position to pay for Senatorial sexytime, I think it becomes a legitimate issue. Do people agree? Or is this just another waste-of-time scandal we should all ignore?
by John Cole| 69 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Greg Sargent reports that Obama aides will sit down with GLAD and other groups next week, which is interesting in itself and a good step, but because I am at heart twelve years old, his headline made me laugh:
Obama Administration Set To Hold Powwow With Big Gay Groups
I know we like to refer to things as “Big Oil” and “Big Pharma” and whatnot, and maybe there is history here I am unaware of, but “Big Gay” just makes me think of South Park.
by John Cole| 40 Comments
This post is in: Media, Clown Shoes
I’m crying right now. I bet if he asked Peter Hoekstra, he’d learn this is just like the potato famine.
(via)
by John Cole| 35 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Sullivan, a little over an hour ago:
2003 Again
Some stragglers on the left do not seem to have gotten the message. Check out this defense of Ahmadinejad’s victory and warning about “the birth pangs of Obama’s new regional order.”
Yeah. I was just imagining things when I talked about sensing a 2003 warblogger vibe in the coverage of the events in Iran.
*** Update ***
A commenter claims he is referring to Crowley’s discussion of his 2003 comments from an earlier post, and that is what “2003 Again” refers to. I’m not convinced.