The Right Wing: Supporting the Troops, As Usual
Posted by
KTK
The news has been reporting for the last day or so on the plight of young Harry Windsor, Prince of Whateverthefuck and one of the few members of the British royal family who doesn’t turn your stomach merely by existing [oops - yes he is]. Bowing to his family’s destiny, Harry joined the Army, but it was made clear that his royal arse was much too precious ever to be exposed to combat. Legitimately, also, there were fears that the knowledge of his presence in a combat theater would subject his unit mates to increased danger as enemies from around the globe fell over each other to take the most exalted scalp since Mountbatten’s. The issue was especially poignant given the British Army’s long and less-than-exalted history in Afghanistan.
To his credit, he complained of being kept back, going so far as to threaten to resign his comission if he wasn’t allowed to play a full role. He was eventually shipped over - spending most of his time in a behind-the-lines role, but also going on patrols with his air-cav unit. The British press were briefed on his participation, under “embargo” conditions (they agree not to publish the information until given permission, in return for being informed). For less than three months, Harry was in the combat theater, if not exactly in frequent combat, and things were going OK.
Yesterday, Matt Drudge revealed these facts, and within 24 hours Harry was homeward-bound. It seems likely that Drudge was not subject to the embargo - that is, he did not personally agree to its terms - but likely got a leak and chose to publish the information anyway. That he was, in actual effect, working to get a prince of the British royal succession, and soldiers of the coalition forces in Afghanistan, killed, was apparently not a reason in his mind not to do so.
The [British] Defense Ministry announced Friday that Prince Harry, the third in line to the British throne, would have to come home from Afghanistan because it was too risky for him to stay there.
The prince, 23, has been in Helmand Province with the British Army since December with the knowledge of most of the British news media, who agreed to keep the news secret for security reasons. Details of his deployment became widely known only when they were reported by the Drudge Report on Thursday and the British media decided that the agreement was off.
This is hardly an unusual incident. Responsible journalists, as well as the likes of Drudge, have to deal with questions of the consequences of revealing unknown information every day. Often, secrets are revealed, even in contravention of legal restrictions on access to the information in question. Often, too, that turns out to be the right thing to do. And it could hardly be argued that affairs of great moment hung in the balance in this case; I suppose some people care to read about Harry playing soldier, and the harm done by the revelation is merely that he has to stop playing.
But there’s something interesting about this leak. Drudge took it on himself to reveal operational information about an individual soldier - information that, not merely potentially, but in all foreseeable likelihood, would expose both him and his unit-mates to a considerable increased risk of attack - information the Defense Ministry considered so sensitive that they (perhaps over-protectively) felt they had to pull him from the region to protect his life after it was printed. And those fears, however much prompted by monarchist hypersensitivity, seem perfectly credible. And there was no good reason for it.
Drudge put a soldier and his mates in danger in order to publish a “scoop” that had no bearing at all on any issue of justifying significance. The story says nothing about any of the underlying controversies regarding the war - it was published for no reason than to gain attention for himself and to satisfy a superficial interest in the doings of celebrities.
Small as the issue is, in terms of justification it goes far beyond stories about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, or the Bush administration’s other abuses. Those stories revealed torture, sexual abuse, war crimes, and other systematic and secret crimes so repulsive that they had to be brought to light, because no decent nation can allow such crimes to go unknown or unremarked. The sources and writers who brought those stories forward are heroes, the more so where they had to defy secrecy and the legal strictures of the abusive regime to do it. And they were universally vilified for it, by Drudge himself and the other slime-crawlers of the right wing.
Those who told the truth about the Bush regime’s abuses and crimes were called “traitors”, threatened with prison, in some cases (still ongoing) actually imprisoned without warrant or charge. Foreign news sources were shot to death in Baghdad and their headquarters targeted by bombs and artillery. The right wing has howled incessantly at the revelation of their crimes, and fought for whatever restrictions and punishments they could impose on those who revealed them. But none of the reporting on the war has exposed secret information about actual troop deployments, and certainly never for the shallow purpose of filling celebrity gossip columns. Here Drudge ramps up real danger of combat casualties for one particular unit for no reason other than prurient interest in celebrity.
So - will we see him called a “traitor to the coalition”? Will be be shunned, vilified, harassed, imprisoned, or merely calumniated by howling mobs of his own imitators? Will anyone note that his providing prospective targeting information to the enemy makes him “objectively pro-Taliban”, as was said of those who merely told the truth about US crimes long after the fact? Is Drudge’s knowlingly telling the enemy where to find one of their most hated, high-value targets going to get any criticism - to say nothing of the kind of treatment given those who told truths about things that must not be allowed to stay hidden, long after the fact? I’m sure the right wing will demonstrate its traditional allegiance to principle, and the welfare of combat troops, in this case as in others.
If he had been the first one to present the info, I would agree with you. However here are the facts:
1. The embargo was with the British Media only, not world wide.
2. New Idea (a woman’s magazine) published the info back in January. So Drudge wasn’t even the first to do so.
So why not attack New Idea or Bild in the same fashion?
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade/2008/02/why_did_the_prince_harry_media.html
Comment 2/29/2008
Quick question. What adjective best describes someone who uses the phrase “turns my stomach merely by existing” to describe a group of people?
Comment 2/29/2008
U:
I don’t know what those stories said (and apparently neither does the author of that link - he says he can’t actually find any of them, but only heard about them). And I said already that Drudge wasn’t breaking the embargo - but he was leaking unauthorized information. And I said as well that that is often the right thing to do - but that there was no justifying benefit in this case.
My point was not that Drudge wrote a story based on unauthorized information - or even that he reported the Prince Harry story. The point is that that story - to at least some limited degree - materially increases the risk in combat to soldiers of the coalition in Afghanistan, and Drudge is so far getting a completely free pass on that. All the commentary I have seen has to do with the embargo, and whether it’s a good or bad thing that Drudge ended Harry’s combat tour - not with whether Drudge was justified in putting soldiers at risk.
And my real point is not so that he did so but that it does not seem to have occurred to anyone on the right wing to criticize him for doing so, while they have gone ape-shit over the mainstream press, and war critics, for merely reporting things that have already occurred in ways that do not reveal operational information. MSM reporters and liberal bloggers have been pilloried incessantly as “traitors” and the like for revealing abuses by coalition troops and contractors - reports that do not reveal any information about where those troops are. Drudge names a high-value target and prints his general location where it can be read by the Taliban and al-Qaeda - who have already been quoted responding to the stories - and there is no response at all.
My conclusion - which is in no way surprising to me - is that the right wing really doesn’t care about media reports about the troops, they simply work themselves up with tired cliches and slogans and use them to attack anyone they think doesn’t share their opinions about the war. They bring the most unhinged and vicious accusations against anyone who merely reports things they find it inconvenient to be known, while celebrating someone who actually puts individual troops in such danger they have to be immediately extracted from the entire theater of combat.
What would Michelle Malkin, or Rush Limbaugh, or Bill O’Reilly, or Ann Coulter, or anyone at “The Corner”, or any Republican politician - or Drudge himself - say about someone from the left who posted the name and location of individual troops who were being personally targeted by al-Qaeda, and then had to be removed from combat for that reason? What have any of them said about Drudge for doing exactly that? Do you imagine they will have anything to say about him at any time in the future? But how long do you think it will be before they each accuse someone on the left of “treason” for commenting on Abu Ghraib or the CIA’s torture airline?
The right wing’s accusations of “treason” and “anti-Americanism” are as disingenuous, meaningless, and empty as their concern for “the troops”.
Comment 2/29/2008
Quick question. What adjective best describes someone who uses the phrase “turns my stomach merely by existing” to describe a group of people?
I didn’t use it to describe any people as a group. I used it to describe certain people in particular - the historically pro-Nazi, permanently reactionary, and bizarrely stupid members of the British royal family (a phrase, you’ll note, which appears verbatim in the sentence you quote).
Jeez, I wish I could charge conservatives for these reading comprehension lessons. It wouldn’t help, but it would make me rich.
Comment 2/29/2008
KTK:
For the record, Ted is not a conservative.
Ted:
All I could come up with is “bigot,” but that’s a noun. But I don’t think you have much of a point in this case. The British royal family is hardly the same thing, as groups of people go, as gays or blacks or whites or hispanics or whatever else. Further, there’s no indication that KTK hates the royals for who they are, but rather for what they do (and have done) — and he doesn’t even claim to be repulsed by all of them.
Comment 2/29/2008
Well, I guess I’m just stupid. When someone tells me they hate someone merely for existing, that means to me they hate them merely for existing; that nothing else is required. In this case, to be born into a family is grounds to hate someone. Because they exist, and are a member of a specific family. The fact that you have to use the term “historically” reveals something. You can not attribute the characteristics you hate to specific individuals, so you use a generalization to blanket them. Two generations of the family were either very young or not yet born during WWII; the nazi charge is getting a bit stale when applied to the family as a whole.
You are so bigoted about certain things it is absolutely comical. And you really don’t have a clue. I suppose that is typical with most bigots. Your assumption that I am conservative, just because I disagree with you, just adds to the fun.
Tgirsch, if wearing a nazi getup (at about age 17) as a costume is grounds to hate someone, then there ain’t gonna be much love in the world. As for who they are vs what they do, KTK stated he hates them for existing. His words. Hard to misinterpret.
Comment 2/29/2008
Let me correct something. I should not have written that KTK is bigoted, I think a more descriptive term would be prejudiced. Tgirsch had used the term bigot in his comment and it was thus forefront in my mind, but I don’t think it was the appropriate term for my comment.
Comment 2/29/2008
I don’t know why any of this matters.
For that matter, I don’t know why there is such a groundswell of teary-eyed sympathy for pampered, morally solipsistic assholes in this Comments section lately. Why are so many of you carrying water for the likes of William F. Buckley and princes of the British Empire? Even if you are not as averse as I am to the ugly products of lives defined by reactionism, self-absorption, and an unbelievable degree of cocooned indulgence, why does it bother you that others would be repulsed by the repulsive behavior of such persons?
Over and over I have named for you the people who were hated and harmed. I’ve described the evil works done by those I’ve criticized. I’ve almost literally begged you to care about the real damage done to real lives of decent people who aren’t barricaded in luxury, who can’t call on the most privileged and powerful people in, literally, the entire world to solve their problems for them. And again and again you complain that I am mistreating the people who are doing the harm. Mistreating them . . . by using harsh language.
I pointed out a tiny fraction of the lifetime of offenses and self-congratulatory outrages William F. Buckley deliberately perpetrated - and promoted to a gullible crowd of vicious yahoos who believed that cheering a fascist who knew more words than they did somehow made them smart. I pointed out his contribution to the politics of self-indulgence and class warfare that destroyed America as a community, bankrupted the government not once but several times under Republican Presidents, and resulted in wars of deception, subversion, torture, death squads, and oil-crazed imperialism again and again across the world. There was not a single word spoken of concern or sympathy for the victims of the disasters he encouraged and enabled. You were sorry . . . for Buckley. He was a shit. I said he was a shit, and showed why. Faced with a clear choice, you decided I was at fault - I, for saying it, not him for making it true.
I’ve painted pictures for you of gays subject to literal, state-sanctioned persecution and prosecution, to literal second-class citizenship (truly second class: it’s not even Jim Crow, for gays - it’s straight-out, written, statutory, denial of rights and criminalization of behavior that is sanctioned without question for everyone else). I praised one man who stood against the haters and the bigots. There was no reaction. You didn’t even bother to nod in the direction of equality and fairness. The point of the post, and of Obama’s speech - the grinding unfairness and oppression that informed and motivated it - got no response from anyone. But you picked one word out of that post - the word “bigot” - and complained that you were offended because, by your own description, it obviously applied to you. I cheered equality, and invited you to do the same. You accused me of offending bigots.
I praised Harry for standing up when his number was called. I also pointed out, rightly (though somewhat elliptically), that the previous two generations of his family showed a marked affinity for Nazis, that his grandmother has been a pillar of priggishness, self-absorption, and stultifying reactionism her entire useless life, and that - with some exceptions - the current generations of the family are little better (and appear in certain specimens to be genetically deformed as well). All that telescoped into a single sentence - the only sentence you reacted to, in a post about the right wing’s utter falsity in its continual imprecations of the left wing’s concern for troop safety. You don’t mind the Nazism, the staggering drain on the British public year after year, the revolting worldwide kowtowing to the ancient offense of monarchy in its ugliest guise. You mind anyone mentioning it in a negative light. I offered you the chance to stand against hypocrisy about the war and our military forces. You accused me of insufficient sympathy for the British Royal Family.
The fucking Prince of Wales [Jr.]?! Are you kidding me? That’s where your moral sympathies lie? Believe me, Harry’s doing just fine. So are the bigots and the homophobes who are still busily ginning up anti-marriage laws around the country. And don’t worry about William Buckley - no one ever disturbed his equanimity in the entire 83 years he spent sniffing his own anus and calling himself top dog. I can’t believe that these are the people who get your sympathy.
You don’t mind that Buckley wanted to tattoo gays or subject women to Caesarian sections by force. You mind that I said he was bad for wanting it.
You don’t mind that gays faced jail, or worse, simply for being gay, until just recently - and still face legal barriers of many other kinds. You mind that I said something uncomplimentary about the parasitic and reactionary British royal family.
Over and over you’ve been given the chance to express some sympathy for the downtrodden. Over and over you’ve chosen to side with their oppressors - invariably because I said something unkind about them. Over and over you ignore real harms and real misery to go out of your way to condemn words that happen to be uncomplimentary to those causing that misery.
Why are you so blind? What makes anyone do such a thing?
Yes, it’s certainly true that I’ve spoken harshly about the haters and the bigots and the reactionaries and the prudes and the censors and many of the vile right-wing Visigoths who have ravaged our country and as much of the rest of the world as they can get their hands on. I hate them. It’s true. I hate them, viscerally, emotionally, and in no small or timid way.
I hate them for their bigotry, and for their voluntary, chosen, practiced and deliberated viciousness. I hate them for their devotion to ruining other people’s lives, for no reason or benefit to themselves, and as much again for doing so to profit themselves on others’ desperation. I hate them for their stupid and angry hostility toward whatever their primitive mystery religions declare to be unclean. I hate their oblivious, self-indulged indifference to other people’s misery. I hate their reflexive anti-intellectualism and the gasping stupidity of what passes for thought or argumentation on the right wing. I hate their hypocrisy and their preening moral grandstanding, their double standards and moral nitpicking and constant uncritical self-absolution.
The right wing is essentially an armed and hostile country club of inbred perverts, camped in a state-of-nature wilderness, the inhabitants of which they simply don’t regard as being part of their moral universe. At bottom, I hate them because they are horrible people who deliberately hurt others to gain what they want for themselves.
I want you to hate them. I want everyone who reads this blog - anyone who just reads a newspaper, or simply knows what’s going on - to recognize that vast, in many ways controlling, amounts of power are exercised in this world by horrible people who use it to hurt others to get what they want, and I want them to hate that. I want them to hate the people who do so enough to try to stop them. I don’t care at all if Prince Harry feels bad when I call his great-grandfather a Nazi sympathizer. He was one, and it’s his own fault for being so, and he deserves no consideration or coverup. I don’t care if anyone likes it when I quote William F. Buckley’s own disgusting words on the day of his death. He spoke them, and it is but the tiniest, most incidental fraction of his just deserts that he should be remembered for them. I don’t care at all if evil people are offended by harsh words. I don’t care at all what they want or what they think they’re entitled to. I don’t want civility for them. I don’t want the rules of decent society to be enforced to keep their crimes from being known, but never enforced while they are committing them. What I want is for people to care more about the crimes and less about the embarrassment of naming the criminals.
Time and again, over and over, you are given that choice and you make the wrong one.
LGBT people are murdered at rates that approach the lynchings of the 1800s, by people who “disagree with their lifestyle”. I called someone who disagreed with their lifestyle a bigot, and he got angry. You get to choose which one of these matters to you. They’re not the same. One matters so much more than the other that you simply can’t expend the energy of moral attentiveness on both of them with any kind of decency. But you have to decide which one that is. Almost everyone here has already made the wrong choice.
William Buckley wanted to use the power of the state to tie women to an operating table and cut their bodies open to save their fetuses, rather than let them have an abortion. I said he was a terrible person for wanting this. You get to choose which one of these matters to you. They’re not the same. No decent person can care about the unimportant one if they care about the important one. But you have to decide which is which. Most of you have already made the wrong choice.
Matt Drudge deliberately printed a story that hundreds of professional journalists had voluntarily refrained from printing out of regard for troop safety in wartime. He distinctly put particular people’s lives in danger, and he did so out of entirely personal self-interest, with no issue of justificatory social or public policy importance involved. In doing so he forced the highest levels of the British Defense Ministry to redeploy particular troops in a combat zone because of the increased threat to their lives. I criticized him for this, and by extension the right wing for its hypocrisy in overlooking this significant transgression by Drudge while condemning articles in the mainstream press that they did not like but which posed no safety threat. I also said negative but true things about the British Royal Family. You get to choose which one of these issues to react to. One of them is far more important than the other. They’re not the same. No one who cares about events in the world can imagine that setting up a member of the Royal Family to be killed along with his unit by the enemy in wartime, and using harsh language about a member of the Royal Family’s great-grandfather, are equally significant offenses. You have to decide which one really cuts at the foundation of public discourse about military matters. And, predictably, many of you have made the wrong choice.
Why?
Comment 2/29/2008
Ted:
My remarks about the British Royal Family were probably too telegraphic to be clear. I am contemptuous of monarchies, but my criticism of the Windsors is prompted by their behavior.
The previous King openly endorsed Neville Chamberlain’s pact with Hitler, which he was forbidden by law to do, and was known to be sympathetic to Germany. Prince Phillip has long been believed to have similar sympathies, and is known as the most reactionary and cold-blooded of that notoriously backward family. Both the former and current Queens were touchstones of 19th-century morality, class consciousness, and defensive monarchical privilege. Charles is simply a dickhead, and Harry takes after him, though it is fair to say he hasn’t embarrassed himself too much lately, and his conduct in his notably brief military career was acceptable. As a family they’ve been bleeding England dry at an unconscionable rate for generations - and they had the gall to negotiate their own limited tax payments when Parliament finally threatened to cut them off. The treatment of Diana by all the adult members of the family speaks for itself. And even when they try to do good, they are hampered by their own ridiculous privilege and parasitism. Who gives a shit if horse-faced Anne shows up at another orphanage for a few hours? There is nothing they could ever do that would be enough to wipe out what they cost, and what they represent, just by breathing.
So there’s a lot to disapprove of, there. And I see it whenever I see them. Harry’s choice of party costume was particularly unfortunate given his family’s history, but he doesn’t have to be actively doing something offensive to bring out what he is: a parasite, born to rule, bred to unearned superiority, coddled even in war, pampered and celebrated literally every time he goes to a pub or dates another airhead socialite. Mind you, they’re not all that bad. Andrew behaved creditably in the Falklands fiasco, and he later even had the decency to actually get a job and do something useful (making documentary films). Prince William seems like a decent chap, which is probably more of an accomplishment than it seems, given his upbringing. But in each case, the response they evoke is the one they have earned for themselves. It’s not their fault they were born as gormless parasites. It’s their fault they (most of them) lived that way.
As for the charge of bigotry, note that I didn’t say I hated them for existing. (Again: read the words.) I said they were repulsive, and they didn’t have to do anything more than exist to be repulsive. This may have been unclear, even so. I meant that they had lived their lives in a repulsive manner, to the point that I can’t help feeling that reaction just on seeing or hearing about them. To a lesser degree, they’re like George Bush - so puke-inducingly disgusting that he seems evil just standing still. But I didn’t mean it as a categorical statement. I expressed it too definitively.
As for the rest of this exchange, I have been dismayed by the response to my last several posts. I have tried to clarify why and how in my previous comment. But I have reacted too strongly, and too clumsily. I am sorry to have offended you. (In particular, I apologize for wrongly calling you a conservative. I got confused for a moment, but that is not an excuse. No one deserves that.)
You have had many thoughtful things to say on this blog, and you have contributed a lot to these conversations. I should have respected that more than I did. Even if we disagreed, I’m sorry to have swept you up in the many things I felt deserved a harsher reaction.
As a point of clarification (not defense) however: I really don’t think I’m a bigot. I’ve just ended the polite charade that says you can’t speak the truth as long as anyone objects - that nobody is bad or wrong as long as they tell you they are not.
There really are “two Americas”, not in the economic sense, here, but in the fact that there is a broad and diverse group of people who are willing to let others alone and live on equitable terms with them for the most part, and a minority of truly awful, greedy, hateful, selfish, bigoted, and exclusionary people who insist on the best of everything for themselves at others’ expense, and who make it their business to make others miserable, both for personal benefit and out of mere animus. And the same people fall into the same groups across almost the whole range of issues upon which those groups are divided. (There are exceptions, of course.) It’s basically the decent people vs. the haters, bigots, and greedheads - and the wrong side has always been ahead in the game. And I’m tired of pretending otherwise.
I’m tired of bigots openly saying “well, I just *disagree* with other people in a way that has always been used to kill, imprison and outlaw them” and then getting all offended at being called bigots, while “fairminded” people stand around helpless and go “gee - that’s just his opinion . . . now don’t use no harsh language or nothin’”. I’m tired of the richest and most pampered people in the world spending their lives superciliously dumping shit on those worse off than them, and being praised for their large vocabularies, or their fine yachts, or their lovely collection of 18th-century harpsichords while it’s not permitted to say that they harbored and promoted vicious, divisive, and often deadly ideas aimed mostly at people helpless to defend themselves.
Wm. Buckley, George Will, George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney - and Limbaugh, and Coulter, and Drudge, and so many others - are, each in their distinct ways, irredeemably shitty human beings, simply worthless, disgusting, and beyond civil regard for all that they have said or done. There’s absolutely no point in pretending otherwise, and absolutely no point in giving them the benefit of the doubt the next time they say some stupid or offensive thing about someone who doesn’t deserve it, or promote some horrid and destructive policy against those in need.
We have to proceed from that perspective in dealing with them. You know how you can tell Bush is lying because his lips are moving? You can also tell he’s being a disgusting, putrid waste of space, bent on destroying people not as lucky and indulged as him, because he’s breathing. Make that your starting point in understanding anything he says or does, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time, and avoid a lot of wasted effort imagining well, maybe . . . this time it won’t be so bad . . . . It’ll be that bad. Get used to it - and deal with it. Own up to it. Stop pretending the evil shits aren’t what they are.
Oh - and anyone who responds to a moving and long-awaited call for full equality for LGBT persons, and a rollback of centuries-old discriminatory statutes, by saying “Well, I just disagree with their lifestyle” - has just dug a huge fucking hole for themselves to climb out of. If you act like a bigot, you’re a presumptive bigot. Maybe you can convince me you’re not, but . . . nah, you pretty much can’t. I know you’re a bigot because you told me you are. And that’s all I need to know about you. If you want me to take you seriously - as a human being, let alone as someone with an opinion on social policy - give me a reason. A reason that doesn’t involve speaking that sentence up above. ‘Cause I don’t have time to investigate every presumptive bigot to discover the poor, misunderstood ignoramus that’s really inside.
I don’t really think that’s prejudiced, either, any more than bigoted. I don’t presume that the evil people will do evil things because of some sort of irrelevant superficial characteristic that they all share. I presume that evil people will continue to do evil things because they have done them before and in many cases are doing them now. I’m not prejudiced against them, I’m just looking at their test results. They’ve failed the test of moral decency; they didn’t get promoted to full human species membership. And now we’ve got to move on to the next lesson.
Comment 2/29/2008
KTK, if you check, you will see I withdrew my bigot comment in comment #7, immediately after I made it. And, assuming your LGBT comments were addressed to me, you are still attributing to me comments made by others. I took your side in that thread.
To be frank, I generally find disagreeing with you to be an unfulfilling experience (as much my fault as yours IMO) and since neither of us will ever have any impact on the other’s thinking, I will probably refrain from commenting on your posts in the future.
I will offer one piece of unsolicited advice (I consider it unsolicited because I assume your questioning “why” at the end of comment #8 to be rhetorical). You find that few commenters support you in your posts, and that those who do comment focus on your style and not your substance (a situation that the other two bloggers here do not encounter nearly as often), well, maybe the bulk of the fault does not rest with the readership as you implied in your comment. Something to consider anyway. I mention this because I think you are a very gifted writer and 90% of the time I agree with your basic premise. A change in approach would, in my opinion, allow you to be more effective in communicating your views. My assumption here is your objective is to influence people. If, on the other hand, it’s just about having a rant, then have at it.
Just one person’s observation. I apologize if it comes across as paternalistic. That is not my intent.
Comment 3/1/2008
KTK:
For that matter, I don’t know why there is such a groundswell of teary-eyed sympathy for pampered, morally solipsistic assholes in this Comments section lately. Why are so many of you carrying water for the likes of William F. Buckley and princes of the British Empire? Even if you are not as averse as I am to the ugly products of lives defined by reactionism, self-absorption, and an unbelievable degree of cocooned indulgence, why does it bother you that others would be repulsed by the repulsive behavior of such persons?
Speaking only for myself, I suspect it’s because you seem to vilify the person even more than you vilify the person’s actions. Which probably won’t ruffle many feathers among those who already agree with you, but for everyone else, it’s going to be a problem. The world is not a place of black and white. There are ideologues on both sides, and the likelihood of changing their minds is close to nil. But believe it or not, there are people in the middle, people who are open to being convinced one way or the other, and your tone, which insults all those who don’t share your point of view right out of the gate, will turn those people off before they even consider whether or not your actual points are legitimate — which, to be fair, they usually are.
I understand that the world is full of right-wing authoritarian assholes who vilify and dismiss anyone who doesn’t share their autocratic views. But I just don’t see how acting like the liberal equivalent thereof is in any way constructive.
The whole point of blogging isn’t just to act as an echo chamber for people who agree with us, or to insult and assault those who don’t — there’s more than enough of that on the right, and we frankly don’t need it on the left. The point of blogging is to convince others that our view is the morally correct one — or, at least in my opinion, it’s supposed to be.
I understand that we’re “at war,” as you put it in the other thread, and that the other side often has no scruples at all. But I simply refuse to accept that the only way to beat them is to sink to their level or below. I’d rather lose, than win a race to the bottom.
So you can criticize the William F. Buckleys of the world all you want, as far as I’m concerned, but when you dance on their graves and actually take joy in their deaths, I’m not afraid to say that this is going too far. It’s possible to hate the policies, and even to hate the man, but that still doesn’t mean you have to be a total dick about it. Buckley may very well have been a piece of shit of a human being, but that doesn’t preclude him from having friends and family who aren’t. I understand that you want everyone to hate him and everything he stood for, but your attitude, which came across as “he was a piece of shit and the world is better off without him, and anyone who disagrees on that count can go fuck themselves” isn’t likely to win you any converts to that cause.
When my lazy, no-good alcoholic uncle died at 49 last year, I gave my mother, aunts, and grandparents my condolences. I didn’t tell them that they were much better off now that he’s dead (even though that’s probably true.) There’s a time and a place.
I really don’t mean this to come across as condescending and patrician as it probably did. But you seem to genuinely wonder what all the hubbub was about, and I figured why not give you a genuine answer.
Comment 3/1/2008
Ted:
I saw that you changed “bigot” to “prejudiced”. I wanted to offer a general response.
A change in approach would, in my opinion, allow you to be more effective in communicating your views. . . . If, on the other hand, it’s just about having a rant, then have at it.
Well, having a rant is part of what blogs are for. Did you think I talk like this in my regular life?
But I still have to say I find it dismaying that there is so little concern shown for the actual, daily abuses and trespasses that carry so much significance for contemporary society, and so much concern for the sin of offending the abusers. I just don’t regard it as necessary to be polite to the worst people in the world. I do regard it as necessary to call attention to their crimes. And I find it bewildering, as well as wrong, to notice the former and not the latter.
I just really don’t get it. Why would anyone here possibly care that I execrated the memory of William F. Buckley? More to the point, why would they possibly comment on that, in response to a thread about the horrid policies he promoted? I said it above, but I really can’t think of any other way of putting it: a post like that essentially offers you a clear choice of moral offenses to focus on - the harmful behavior of bad people, or the discourtesy of calling them bad. Everyone who responds declares their own moral priorities. And one choice is obviously wrong - but it’s the one you, and others, keep going on about.
Maybe it’s true that more people would respond if the issues were addressed more circumspectly - that we could have a polite, superficial conversation about not very much if we let the upper classes hide their crimes behind the shutters of upper-class etiquette. I don’t find that a very encouraging though, though.
Tgirsch:
that still doesn’t mean you have to be a total dick about it.
Oh, du-u-u-u-d-e . . . !
Comment 3/1/2008
“That he was, in actual effect, working to get a prince of the British royal succession, and soldiers of the coalition forces in Afghanistan, killed, was apparently not a reason in his mind not to do so.”
I don’t think Drudge should have published the information about Prince Harry. However, NBC reported on Friday night that the info had previously been reported in an Australian paper.
Comment 3/1/2008
“The story says nothing about any of the underlying controversies regarding the war -”
Leftists have put many more soldiers in danger of their lives by encouraging the enemy and telling them that the U.S. has lost the war.
Comment 3/1/2008
KTK, if these issues really are important to you, important enough that you would like to actually contribute in a positive way, then I don’t understand why you choose a blogging style that is radically different from your communication style in regular life. You seem to get that it would be ineffective in life to rant, but you rant here - here where you have a chance to reach a large number of people and possibly change their opinion.
It’s ironic that you keep bringing up WFB. By your very admission his style allowed him to advance his ideals far more effectively than otherwise would have been expected.
Comment 3/1/2008
WFB. By your very admission his style allowed him to advance his ideals far more effectively than otherwise would have been expected.
Well, you have a point there.
I guess I’ll wire my jaw shut and shove a wad of $100 bills up my ass. That ought to get me a show on PBS.
Comment 3/1/2008
Mind you, they’re not all that bad. Andrew behaved creditably in the Falklands fiasco, and he later even had the decency to actually get a job and do something useful (making documentary films)
KTK: your pretensions of knowledge would be more believable if you could tell the difference between Prince Andrew (ex-helicopter pilot) and Prince Edward (maker of documentaries).
Comment 3/4/2008
Prince Andrew (ex-helicopter pilot) and Prince Edward (maker of documentaries)
Oops. Thanks.
Comment 3/4/2008
Prince Andrew is primarily involved these days in promoting the British royals business interests.
Comment 3/4/2008
It should go without saying that I support KTK here. I also kind of think the echo chamber argument is something of a strawman; these aren’t total strangers KTK is talking to - if they haven’t been converted by the congeniality of TG and the other Kevin, I don’t know what KTK is supposed to do…
This doesn’t apply to the regulars here so much, because through sustained interaction, we develop a more textured understanding of each other’s views, which are not monolithic - Fred being the notable exception. But, if your sympathies lie with William Buckley, or the British aristocracy, when you’re reaction to the plight and oppression of people LIKE YOU is lukewarm - fuck you; die slow! For real, it ain’t rocket science.
I make no bones about the fact that I’m not some tree-hugging, P.C. police, peacenik type. We are approaching, if not already past the point, of critical mass. The times for niceties are done - either you’re a part of the problem, or part of the solution. Either you care about displaced factory workers and young black men being thrown in jail indiscriminately, or you care about the Prince of Wales. The Prince will do just fine without me or KTK shedding a tear for him, trust me.
When talking about violent vs. non-violent revolution, Ward Churchill always makes the point that a peaceful protester is not obliged to be a Weatherman, but that protester is obliged to not be an obstructionist to those undertaking other (more radical) means to accomplish the same goal. In terms of rhetoric, TG and Kevin are peaceful protesters and KTK is a Weatherman. The only obligation you guys have to each other (outside of running the blog) is to respect each other’s hustles.
If you don’t respect the hustle of the more radical party, you effectively do your enemy’s work for him/her. Who needed the cops to stop the Black Bloc smashing the Starbucks windows at the WTO rally in Seattle when the non-violent protesters (there precisely to protest places like Starbucks in the first place) did it for them…
True radical voices are shut out of so many outlets, it’s a shame when they are met with the same scorn by those who claim to be progressives. One big happy, moderately left P.C. family may be your ideal, TG, but perhaps the utopian vision of others is a bit more radical, perhaps their tolerance for the same old platitudinal, self-serving rhetoric is a little lower, perhaps they’ve made a decision to not give a flying fuck about the sensibilities or welfare of those who have failed to show any sort of similar compassion toward them - you just gotta respect that.
Comment 3/5/2008
Digg, thanks for tells all of us how we should act and think. Don’t know how we could get by without your guidance.
Comment 3/5/2008
“Digg, thanks for tells all of us how we should act and think. Don’t know how we could get by without your guidance.”
Yeah, that’s Ted’s job.
Comment 3/5/2008
I wasn’t talking to you, Ted.
Some people were saying they felt KTK was unjustified in making his post, I was saying I thought it was perfectly justified - and one of the best posts I’ve read here, for the record.
I mentioned, by name, TG, KTK, and Kevin in my comment; it was about them. I explicitly noted that my comment was, in fact, less applicable to “the regulars here” (i.e. a group that includes you) than to a total stranger. If your comment was just general sarcasm, fine. If you were insinuating that I was giving you instructions, then you’ve misunderstood.
Did my post offer my opinion on how more moderate groups should treat and consider more radical, but like-principled, members? Yes. I don’t know how that qualifies as being more of an edict on how would should think and act than any other post here, by any other member, stating any other opinion, on any other matter.
The points that are more decree-like, (a group’s “obligations,” and so forth) are paraphrased from somebody else and extrapolated by me to fit this situation; I think that’s made pretty clear.
Comment 3/5/2008
Digg:
One big happy, moderately left P.C. family may be your ideal, TG, but perhaps the utopian vision of others is a bit more radical
You’ll probably never agree with me here, but I just think the times when it’s constructive to start with a big “fuck you” are exceedingly rare. That said, however, when you essentially accuse me of being a saccharin “PC” type, I’m pretty sure a “fuck you” in response is in order.
And for the record, since when is pointing out that an approach is counterproductive — especially when it clearly is so — akin to “doing the enemy’s work for them?” When someone plays directly into the right-wing caricature of liberal-elite-in-ivory-tower-looking-down-upon-the-unwashed-masssed-with-scorn and I point out that they’re not helping by playing into that stereotype, how am I the one doing the right wing’s dirty work?
By the way, speaking of “doing the enemy’s job for them,” why the hell have you picked up on the “politically correct” bullshit? You realize that’s just a right-wing term for ridiculing people who think it might not be a bad idea to try not to be a racist asshole all the time. “Politically correct” = Not being a racist asshole. Look at the right-wing whining about things like Little Black Sambo in Song of the South or the “Injuns” in Peter Pan, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Anyway, where were we?
Comment 3/7/2008
Well, that is based upon whether one feels something is counterproductive or not, doesn’t it? I’m not sure if we are talking about violent protest, or KTK’s writing style now, but I was using one as a metaphor for the other, so either way the next paragraph should make sense.
To paraphrase Churchill again, there is nothing at all noble about bearing moral witness to destruction and death. The context of what you are opposing is already violent - unwavering pacifism only serves to ensure the continuation of that violence. If all the protests and marches on Washington haven’t saved a single Iraqi life, then we have, in effect, done (accomplished) nothing moral, period!
Maybe, I shouldn’t have used the PC word, perhaps I was excessively judgmental, or at least came off that way. I’m not trying to alienate you. I know “PC” is entirely a meaningless righty platitude (who cares what you call people with dark skin if the police still TREAT them like niggers, right?). My point was that KTK’s views, or at least chosen manner of expressing them, are more radical than yours. What does it help to go out of your way to attack him about it?
Acting as more a broker, facilitating discussion between two sides is seen as the, de facto, “high ground.” That’s a lot of what you do, TG. You do a great fucking job and I’m grateful for it; trust me, I am. I’m here more than I’m on the very blog I contribute to! I’m just saying that there is also a place for KTK’s more intense confrontation style. I totally feel what he was saying, and totally understand the need he felt to say it!
Comment 3/7/2008
If I ever paraphrase Churchill, I guarantee it’s Winston and not Ward. When citing a historically proven source re what constitutes effective demonstration (and by effective, I mean leading to positive change), I would suggest a little more Dr King and a little less Ward Churchill.
Comment 3/7/2008
Successful, yes. Effective, hardly.
The current state of Black America is proof of that.
I don’t really want to get into a tangential argument about this. Suffice to say, I think the collective Civil Rights Movement put the cart (the ideas of King) before the horse (the ideas of Malcolm).
Not surprisingly, I’d suggest the reverse.
Comment 3/7/2008
“The current state of Black America is proof of that.”
What is the state of “Black America”?
Comment 3/7/2008
Digg:
What does it help to go out of your way to attack him about it?
Wait, what? Attacking him? He asked why people were responding to him the way they were, and I answered that question as fully and honestly as I could. Now perhaps the question was intended to be rhetorical, but I still felt it deserved an answer, and a candid one at that. He’s a big boy, I’m pretty sure he can take it.
And I still fail to see how it constitutes “doing the enemy’s work for them” to point out the difference between saying that someone who just died did some contemptible things which should not be forgotten, and saying “Hooray! He’s Dead! When can I piss on his grave?”
Comment 3/7/2008
He asked why people were responding to him the way they were, and I answered that question as fully and honestly as I could. Now perhaps the question was intended to be rhetorical, but I still felt it deserved an answer, and a candid one at that. He’s a big boy, I’m pretty sure he can take it.
My bad. It was rhetorical; maybe I didn’t make it clear.
To be clearer:
I don’t care what anyone thinks about how I talk. I care what they think about what I talk about. The responses to my remarks were a repeated exercise, of bizarre flagrancy, in missing the point. To me, it seems utterly clear - almost a deductive proof:
I tried as hard as I could to make all this plain, and I gave you (collectively) chance after chance to change your stance and come down right on this issue, and still you (collectively) go on down the wrong path.
Let’s start over:
I say: “William F. Buckley was, by his words and actions, a fascist and a bigot, and remained one, in various respects, until he died. That he was rich, snotty, and could play the harpsichord in no way ameliorates those facts. In view of his being a fascist and a bigot and his role in bringing fascism to power in America, I’m glad he’s dead, I think the world is better off with him gone (even if he was not the worst of his type), and I’d welcome the chance to piss on his grave.”
Now, you say: . . . ?
Comment 3/7/2008
Kevin T. Keith: “I say: “William F. Buckley was, by his words and actions, a fascist and a bigot,”
Now I say, “You are an idiot.”
Comment 3/7/2008
TG,
Those who took offense at KTK’s comments are big boys too, yet you offered your support.
I thought your comments about doing your enemies work for them were in relation to the protestors smashing the Starbucks windows (they’re extra satisfied now if they were also Supersonics fans). But, whatever, let’s not get into that.
I don’t really even know why it is contemptible, de facto, to advocate to pissing on somebody’s grave (even assuming it’s literal, and not figurative as the expression was arguably used here). Can we say that about Hitler’s grave; can O.J. say that about “the real killer’s” grave? I don’t get it. Is there a short list of acceptable individuals for whom it is acceptable to advocate figurative or literal grave-pissing, or is it a hard-line, “under no circumstances shall any grave-pissing be perpetrated” mandate?
But, I’ll put my money where my future decomposed mouth is. If this site is still around when I kick the bucket, I’ll have somebody post my burial plot’s location, and Morris (should he outlive me), or anybody else who chooses is welcome to come and literally piss on my grave. I’m fucking dead, what do I give a shit?!
Comment 3/8/2008
digg:
I thought your comments about doing your enemies work for them were in relation to the protestors smashing the Starbucks windows
Huh?
I don’t really even know why it is contemptible, de facto, to advocate to pissing on somebody’s grave
That’s not really the issue. The issue is whether or not doing so is a good starting point, and I suppose that’s going to depend on what your goal is.
But, I’ll put my money where my future decomposed mouth is.
On this, at least, I’m with you. People are welcome to piss on my grave, too, for whatever little that’s worth.
KTK:
Again, I guess it depends on what your objective is. If your objective is simply to vent, opinions of others be damned, then there’s really nothing wrong with the approach you’ve taken. But if your objective is to influence people in any way — in particular, people who don’t necessarily already agree with you, but who are open to coming around to your point of view, then I continue to contend that your approach here is counterproductive.
To that end, you write:
I somehow doubt that you tried “as hard as [you] could,” but whatever. I’ve never argued that Buckley wasn’t contemptible. All I’ve ever argued is that in the game of influencing public opinion, how you say something is almost as important as what you say. I think the majority of the reaction you got — much of it from people who had no love whatever for WFB — vindicates me on this point.
Not much else, except that this it’s a bit of an improvement, insofar as you start by pointing out that he was a bigoted fascist, and conclude with the grave-pissing part. Believe it or not, there may exist people who are simply ignorant of WFB’s racist and fascist stances (it’s not exactly as if the MSM was Johnny-on-the-Spot reporting them, especially lately), so I think it helps to point out why he deserves to have his grave pissed on before advocating doing it.
As for why taking joy in someone else’s death is bad form, don’t ask me, I don’t make society’s unwritten rules. No doubt some of those rules need to be changed, but I’m not sure that one’s a good starting point. What’s surprising to me, I guess, is just that the reaction you got surprised you. I don’t think you could have provoked a more dramatic reaction if you’d specifically tried to do so.
Comment 3/10/2008
I say: “William F. Buckley was, by his words and actions, a fascist and a bigot . . . and I’d welcome the chance to piss on his grave.”
Now, you say: . . . ?
“People are welcome to piss on my grave, too”
No, no, no! You’re doin’ it wrong, boy!
Comment 3/10/2008
No, no, no! You’re doin’ it wrong, boy!
:)
Comment 3/10/2008
I’d just like to point out the potential of future grave pissing is an oft-overlooked point in favor of cremation for anyone who is, as yet, undecided.
Comment 3/10/2008
You say: “William F. Buckley was, by his words and actions, a fascist and a bigot . . . and I’d welcome the chance to piss on his grave.”
I say, “Let me know when you are going, and I’ll meet you there.”
Comment 3/12/2008